A new report reveals widespread labour exploitation among food system workers, warning that keeping the world fed comes at the cost of human dignity.
Extreme heat is increasingly threatening pregnant women and newborn babies around the world, with almost all maternal health professionals surveyed across five continents saying they have cared for women or infants whose health was affected by high temperatures.
Post-harvest losses, particularly in rural areas, threaten the gains Africa is making in agricultural production and export capacity.
“You’re living a life drained of joy,” is how Shehnaz Sher Ali describes her “perpetually wet and stinky” existence. “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” says the 35-year-old, who travelled by bus for more than 12 hours with her husband from their village in Rahim Yar Khan, Punjab, changing diapers whenever possible to keep the smell from reaching the fellow passengers.
Villagers rush to the vulnerable spot of the embankment—early warning of the rising tide has alerted them. Together, they save the village from tidal flooding by repairing the vulnerable embankment, which is at risk from the impact of low pressure in July this year. The message is clear: early warnings of the rising tide save lives and property.
Imagine your morning coffee. You smell the aroma as steam rises from the cup. It wisps and swirls, thins, then disappears. You lift the cup to your mouth. The first pure joy of the day.
Fatuma Makame learned to farm seaweed in the shallow water where her parents worked. These days, she grows it farther from shore.
“Artificial intelligence (AI) must be shaped by humanity, with humanity, and for all humanity... Life-and-death decisions must never be surrendered to machines. Killer robots must have no place in our future.”
Agricultural, land, forestry, environmental and trade policies in the Congo Basin remain compartmentalised at country levels, leaving proven agroecological models trapped at pilot stages due to a lack of advisory services, organic inputs, market outlets and sustainable financing.
The United Nations 2026 Climate Summit addressed critical strategies to mitigate the compounding impacts of the climate crisis and accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
For Mohammed Dullah, recent cuts in UN food rations for Rohingya and other refugees in Bangladesh are not just spreading hunger but also forcing them to save on basic needs such as schooling and healthcare for his children.
CIVICUS discusses the role of art in climate and rights struggles in the Brazilian Amazon with Tom Wheeler, executive director and co-founder of Treesistance. Treesistance is a platform operated by the Netherlands-based Sinchi Foundation that partners with Indigenous communities across four Brazilian states on cultural preservation and forest protection.
World leaders have warned that the most vulnerable people have been left behind as the right to development has promised more than it has delivered, with development seemingly the preserve of the superrich and powerful.
Among the three of us, we have 15 decades of high-level experience in climate science, policies and actions, and we have never been more alarmed than we are at this moment. The United Nations has just
officially declared that
the world has failed in limiting global warming to a safe level. During the last decade, heat-trapping pollutants nearly
doubled the rate that heat is being added to the planet—a rate that will push temperatures across the 1.5°Celsius threshold in five years or less and breach the first barrier of the Paris Agreement. This will further destabilize natural climate systems and amplify weather extremes, which are already costing the world economy more than
$ 2 trillion annually. At the current rate of warming, the global temperature is likely to cross 2° Celsius in
about 15 years, the outer limit of the Paris Agreement, taking us into a climate not witnessed by homo sapiens, ever.
Isolated and at constant war with itself, Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis is deepening as global challenges far exceed the capacity to respond of a military regime increasingly focused on its own survival.
The Climate Group’s annual conference in New York City has attracted thousands of attendees this year, among them world leaders, corporate heads, philanthropists, and climate advocates. Those leaders present at the opening ceremony of Climate Week have made clear calls to collectively tackle climate issues.
In March 2025, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres launched “UN80”. Recognizing that the world is in a state of dramatic and rapid change at a time when funding for the UN is under threat from budget cuts, Guterres declared that, on the anniversary of the UN’s 80th birthday, a review of its work was long overdue. Now, UN80 is coming to a head with a set of recommendations that cover almost every aspect of the UN’s work.
In the remote Highlands region of Papua New Guinea (PNG), humanitarians are life-saving beacons to women and girls facing myriad forms of violence. Despite years of awareness programmes and advocacy, the incidence of domestic and sexual violence is not declining. But Janet Kilea is one survivor who has rejected the fear and stigma of her experience and now dedicates her energy to transforming other women’s lives.
On September 16, at the lead-up to the 81st UN General Assembly, Equality in Family Law (GCEFL), Equality Now, TrustLaw, and the World Bank Group convened in New York City for the event titled
The Gender Equality Dividend: Investing in Women’s Economic Prosperity Through Family Law Reform. Hosted by APCO, the event introduced new data on barriers to family law reform and highlighted strategies to help the international community maximize women’s economic participation.
Migrants now send home more money than foreign aid, and this is pulling rural families out of poverty, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Agriculture remains underfunded in Africa as governments struggle to deliver on decades-old promises to dedicate 10% of national income to agriculture.