Children play outside their home at a shelter in the Philippines. Credit: UNICEF/Joshua Estey

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12 2026 (IPS)

On July 7, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres presented a report from the Special Rapporteur on the sale, sexual exploitation, and sexual abuse of children, Ai Kihara-Hunt, to the General Assembly, underscoring her goals and priorities for the implementation of protection measures for children worldwide. The report, submitted in coordination with the Human Rights Council, highlights the systemic barriers that leave children increasingly vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse, including weak government oversight, limited support and justice services for victims, and worsening protracted crises.

“Given the complexity, hidden and transnational nature of the sale, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children, the Special Rapporteur believes that robust child protection systems and effective cooperation within each State and across borders are essential to combat the phenomena,” the report reads. “Addressing the sale, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children requires a human rights-based approach grounded in the best interests of the child and informed by the dignity, agency and resilience of children.”

Drawing largely from contributions by UN member states, international agencies, civil society groups, and humanitarian organizations, the report outlines key mechanisms for cooperation, accountability, and the prevention of human rights violations against children. The report incorporates global perspectives from diverse stakeholders and the lived experiences of survivors, prioritizing protection, recovery, rehabilitation, and access to justice through frameworks that are gender-responsive, disability-inclusive, victim-centered, trauma-informed, and fundamentally grounded in children’s rights.

This follows the sixty-first session of the Human Rights Council on March 10, where former Special Rapporteur Mama Fatima Singhateh warned that emerging digital technologies are revolutionizing how perpetrators commit abuse and rendering online spaces increasingly dangerous for children. Singhateh urged closer cooperation between humanitarian actors, governments, and stakeholders to prevent digital advancements from creating “new pathways” for human rights violations.

Singhateh also issued a child-friendly version of her final report to the Human Rights Council on April 20, emphasizing the importance of accessibility so that children can engage meaningfully in the discussions that affect them most. Moving forward, Kihara-Hunt aims to build upon her predecessors’ work by addressing issues that have not received adequate attention or sustained engagement from the UN. Key priorities include the “complex or rapidly evolving” challenges linked with intersecting global crises and the alarming rise of sexual exploitation across digital contexts.

The Special Rapporteur notes that online spaces allow children to express consent and agreement based on their evolving capacities, which may grow increasingly complex amid the introduction of emerging technologies. The rise of artificial intelligence has been a major concern for humanitarian organizations as these technologies have streamlined the production and dissemination of harmful child material, as well as the collection of unauthorized images and the misuse of personal data.

Additionally, the report highlights how digital technologies—such as social media platforms, messaging applications, and cryptocurrencies—have streamlined recruitment into armed groups and trafficking and exploitation, while simultaneously helping perpetrators evade law enforcement.

“Child sexual exploitation and abuse are driven by a range of factors, including harmful social norms, stigma, gender inequality, power imbalances, poverty, and weaknesses in child protection and support systems,” Afrooz Kaviani Johnson, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, tells Inter Press Service. “Today, the digital environment is increasingly implicated in these harms. Children face risks such as grooming, coercion, sexual exploitation, and abuse facilitated through digital platforms. Emerging technologies, including generative AI, are also expanding the scale and severity of risks.”

A core pillar of Kihara-Hunt’s mandate is to urge the private sector to adopt stricter safety policies rooted in human rights and children’s privacy—a responsibility that extends across organizations, from employees and volunteers to business partners. The report notes that market incentives and commercialization and profit-driven systems will be monitored in the ways they may or may not be contributing to a harmful environment that facilitates the sexual exploitation of children, particularly online.

“A safety-by-design approach involves assessing and mitigating foreseeable risks that platforms, messaging services, gaming environments or artificial intelligence systems may facilitate the sale of children, child sexual exploitation and abuse, and to actively detect, report and remove child sexual abuse materials,” the report states. “Beyond these responsibilities, the Special Rapporteur intends to examine how business actors can play proactive roles, in collaboration with States and other relevant stakeholders, in prevention, safeguarding, reporting and support for children.”

The report also noted that children residing in areas affected by armed conflict and humanitarian crises face heightened risks of sale and sexual exploitation, leaving them roughly twice as likely to experience rape and sexual assault during childhood compared to the global average. Other related drivers of sexual exploitation include forced displacement, natural disasters, and climate change. In these contexts, humanitarian aid is significantly limited, which often leads to constraints on protection measures and civil society intervention.

“Humanitarian crises such as conflict, displacement, climate-related shocks, and public health emergencies can disrupt the systems that help keep children safe,” said Johnson. “They can increase children’s exposure to risk while reducing access to essential services and support.”

“Poverty and financial hardship can also increase vulnerability, particularly in situations where exploitation involves an exchange of money, goods, or other benefits. Children who are displaced, on the move, living with disabilities, or affected by humanitarian crises often face multiple and overlapping risks.”

Economic instability and inequality also serve as primary drivers of child sexual exploitation. According to the report, children who are “outside the formal protection networks”—such as those experiencing statelessness—frequently are the victims of abuse from adults, peers, and in some instances, even law enforcement officials. Displaced children are similarly vulnerable, often barred from reporting crimes out of fear of detention or deportation. Without official identity documentation to access support services, and frequently separated from family members, stateless and migrant children face reduced adult supervision, which drastically increases vulnerability.

To build on her predecessors’ initiatives, Kihara-Hunt intends to prioritize youth participation and develop a mandate that empowers children. She aims to urge governments, tech companies, and stakeholders to build safer online spaces. Furthermore, Kihara-Hunt is committed to pressing for stronger cooperation between sectors, particularly within public health and education.

“The role of the public health sector in the rehabilitation of child victims and survivors extends beyond recovery and reintegration and includes promoting a shift from a criminal justice response towards one centered on the health and well-being of the child. Meanwhile, the education sector contributes across all stages of prevention, protection and response, as further elaborated on below.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Geography of the Makkah Defence Agreement, illustrating the strategic triangle formed by the capitals of the three signatory states—Ankara, Türkiye, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Islamabad, Pakistan. Credit: Maximilian Malawista

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 11 2026 (IPS)

In Makkah, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Republic Türkiye, and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan agreed to the framework for a joint defence agreement where an attack on any of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all.

The agreement, signed on August 7, comes as Saudi Arabia is regularly attacked by Iranian strikes or proxies. Under the agreement, such attacks could fall within the pact’s collective defence provisions.

The Saudi Press Agency says “The agreement is intended to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression, and stipulates that any armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all. It further provides for the enhancement of all aspects of defense cooperation among the three states.”

Strategically, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan form a triangle axis around Iran, with Türkiye and Pakistan both sharing land borders with Iran. This geographic positioning means any regional conflict involving Iran could potentially involve pressure from multiple directions, increasing the agreement’s deterrent value.

Iran, however, has played down concerns over the agreement. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Monday that Tehran sees no reason to be concerned, describing the pact as part of a broader shift toward greater regional self-reliance in security matters.

In the Strait of Hormuz, a framework is reportedly in its final stages to be signed as Iranian and Omani delegations finalize a proposed “temporary” commercial shipping agreement, aiming to allow traffic to resume flowing through the Strait.

“This understanding does not signify a full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz; rather, it represents a new model—distinct from the practice of the past sixty years—under which a significant portion of the shipping route will pass through Iran’s territorial waters,” said Kazem Gharibabadi, Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs of Iran.

The geographic location of the proposed shipping route has been agreed upon, meaning a significant portion of commercial shipping would pass through Iranian territorial waters under the new framework.

Gharibabadi also mentioned that whether Iran would collect transit fees from vessels passing through the Strait would depend on decisions by the country’s highest authorities and on the United States’ conduct.

Baghaei has said the talks with Oman are focused on establishing a route for safe passage of shipping, but stressed that such an agreement would be a necessary, rather than sufficient, condition for reopening the Strait. The talks between Iran and Oman have been ongoing for two months, while Pakistan and Qatar are continuing efforts to reduce tensions, according to Iranian state media.

As long as the U.S. naval blockade of Iran remains in place, and what Tehran describes as U.S. military aggression continues, Baghaei said, there would be no significant change in the status of the Strait.

If implemented, the agreement could represent one of the most significant changes to commercial navigation through the Strait of Hormuz in decades, shifting portions of international shipping into Iranian shipping lanes/territorial waters, potentially giving Tehran greater influence over one of the world’s busiest energy chokepoints.

These two developments together illustrate the competing dynamics unfolding in the Gulf. While Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan are strengthening collective military deterrence, Iran is simultaneously attempting to reshape how global shipping and navigation occurs through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategically important maritime corridors.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

UN Indonesia Solar power is widely used on the islands of Java, Madura, and Bali. Credit: UN News

By Delia Paul
MELBOURNE, Australia, Aug 10 2026 (IPS)

In much of the Asia-Pacific region, energy is a success story. Electricity access has greatly increased and the use of clean cooking fuels is now widespread. The region has kept pace with the rest of the world in adopting renewable energy. Many countries have made energy efficiency gains; the Republic of Korea is one of those in the lead worldwide. Progress has continued even in the face of recent energy crises sparked by the war in Ukraine and conflict over the Strait of Hormuz.

Yet, this year’s High Level Political Forum on sustainable development (IHLPF) in New York— a yearly event to review progress on the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) —sounded some warning bells.

With SDG 7 on energy, the international community agreed to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services. Clean cooking fuels are part of that transition. SDG 7 also set targets to increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix, and double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency. On all these measures, Asia-Pacific countries have done well. This year’s HLPF, however, raised some important questions.

Firstly, success is a matter of definition. In 2010, Central and South Asian countries accounted for 36 per cent of the world’s electricity-access deficit; by 2024, that proportion had shrunk to just 3 per cent, a turnaround that the UN’s latest report of progress on SDG 7 attributes to rapid grid expansion, regional power market integration, and rising incomes. That achievement is nuanced, however, when we consider the livelihood dimension, where many countries still face challenges especially in rural areas.

Vijay Modi, a professor at Columbia University and director of its Laboratory for Sustainable Energy Solutions, addressing HLPF delegates on the first day of the talks, noted that access is not the same as affordability. Affordable energy is needed, for example, to run the water pumps for farm irrigation, and to light shops that may want to extend their opening hours — aspects of electricity access that are missed, if focusing only on household-level energy services.

Secondly, generalised statistics can mask the true scale of the challenge that still remains. The share of people using clean fuels and technologies for cooking has nearly doubled across most of Asia since 2010. Central, South, East and Southeast Asian countries have done especially well: India alone is responsible for about 40 percent of the worldwide reduction in the clean-cooking access deficit, China for roughly 30 percent, and Indonesia for about 10 percent.

In terms of percentage points, this all looks great. In terms of absolute numbers, though, India still has the largest numbers of people without access to electricity services and clean cooking fuels; China ranks third in the world; Indonesia ranks 16th. These are countries with large populations, where a percentage point gained in access represents many more people than a percentage point gained in a smaller country. While their progress should be applauded, the challenge is far from over.

Third is the question of financing. From 2023 to 2024, international financial flows for clean energy fell in Central, South, East and Southeast Asia. That is a troubling trend, given that much remains to be done. The role of public utilities remains crucial.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Cambodia’s state utility, Electricité du Cambodge, transformed the fragmented, war-torn nation’s power grid into a unified network, partnering with independent power producers, using foreign investment to build transmission lines and power stations, and prioritising electricity connections and financing for low-income households. Such success is not a given.

Damilola Ogunbiyi, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-Chair of UN-Energy, reminded the HLPF that in Africa, some utilities have not achieved viability and are facing bankruptcy. “It’s about finance, at the end of the day,” she said, while highlighting that renewable energy is the least-cost pathway to meeting energy needs worldwide.

The current geopolitical situation only strengthens the case for increasing uptake of renewables and decreasing reliance on traditional fossil fuels, said Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). This process, he noted, could be accelerated through mini-grids, peak time management (strategies to reduce and shift electricity consumption away from peak demand times), and removal of trade barriers to renewable energy technologies. Some of this is already happening in Asia, but with just four years to go until the 2030 deadline for achieving the SDGs, UN monitoring shows that progress is insufficient.

Globally, four structural trends are holding back progress. They are explained in the 2026 UN report, “Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report.” Progress on reducing energy intensity has mainly been achieved in industry, and is now slowing. Energy efficiency standards don’t necessarily match the technology available in the marketplace. Demand for air conditioning has increased, pushing up electricity demand. Growth in electricity demand now outstrips the supply of renewable energy that is actually available. Tackling just one of these barriers — let’s say energy intensity, for example — would require tripling the rate of progress in the next four years.

For now, the UN has launched a new work programme to accelerate action leading up to the 2030 deadline for the SDGs. On the current rate of progress, the world will probably not meet all the SDG 7 targets. But, given the energy gains already made in this region, Asia-Pacific countries may do better than others.

Dr Delia Paul is an associate of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and is affiliated with Monash University’s Global Peace and Security research hub in Australia.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Peter George attaching the solar lights and panels on the plastic design bags. Credit: Madina Kula Sheriff/IPS

By Madina Kula Sheriff
FREETOWN, Aug 10 2026 (IPS)

Growing up, Peter George, a young innovator in Bo District in Southern Region, Sierra Leone, watched people dump electronic waste near the farmland where his grandmother cultivated crops.

He told IPS that people would dump electronic waste, such as discarded batteries and other damaged electronic components, near the area where she grew crops, and the chemicals from the waste affected the crops and reduced yields.

But that experience triggered his curiosity and fascination with how electronic devices worked and led him to use e-waste to create solar lamps for students.

“We started using some of the electronic waste to develop solar lamps. These lamps helped students study at night, and we also donated some to other children,” George said.

However, George’s innovation shifted from solar lamps to recycling plastics to make backpacks as plastic pollution worsened in Bo.

“Many people often think plastic pollution is only a problem in Freetown, but the issue is also very serious in provincial cities like Bo. During the rainy season, the roads become flooded because water cannot flow properly in drains due to blockage by plastic waste. This disrupted our school and displaced people,” George said.

George later founded Ideal Technologies in 2018, a youth-led enterprise operating in Bo District that transforms plastic and electronic waste into solar-powered backpacks and lighting systems for school children.

Through his initiative, George believes he is tackling the problem of e-waste and plastic pollution in Sierra Leone, which has become a serious challenge.

The World Bank estimates that Sierra Leone generates about 130,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year, much of it from single-use plastic bottles, water sachets and plastic bags that pollute the country’s coastline and harm marine life. Globally, electronic waste is also rising rapidly.

The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 says the world generated 62 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022, but less than 22.3 percent was formally collected and recycled.

Authorities say plastic pollution has become a growing threat to Sierra Leone’s coastal ecosystems and tourism industry.

Yet, despite the scale of the challenge, Sierra Leone’s plastic waste management policy is still under development.

“I looked at everything happening around me and started thinking about how to solve the challenge of poor access to electricity, e-waste pollution and plastic pollution. I started developing solar-powered backpacks made from recycled plastic and e-waste.

“During the day, the backpacks are carried like ordinary school bags. At night the attached solar-powered lighting allows children in communities with limited electricity to continue studying after sunset,” George told IPS.

For him, innovation represents more than recycling. He says it is about changing the way people think about waste.

“Things that people saw as waste, I saw as solutions,” said Peter.

Turning Discarded Plastic into Livelihoods

Like George, Manty Sulman Beckley in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, refuses to see plastic as the end of a product’s life. Instead, she recycles waste into everyday items that she sells for a living.

For the past five years, Beckley has transformed single-use plastics into shopping bags, handbags, baskets, chairs, tables and bricks.

The climate activist and founder of the Beckma Empowerment Initiative said her passion for recycling began during childhood, watching her aunt repair and make household furniture. Inspired, she started fixing broken chairs at home.

“As a teenager, I started thinking about how to repair broken chairs around me. Gradually my passion for creating things grew, and as an adult, the passion developed into a plastic recycling initiative after I witnessed how plastic waste was destroying communities across Freetown,” she said.

To source materials, Beckley works with households and young waste collectors in her community.

Despite these efforts, she said securing enough recyclable material remains difficult.

“In my house and surrounding communities, I advocate against throwing plastic waste carelessly. I provide bags for households to collect their plastic waste, which I later gather for recycling.

“Even fifty full rice bags of single-use plastic are not enough to create items like bricks, baskets, and other products, meaning we constantly need to collect more,” she said.

Setbacks

These innovators believe recycling offers an opportunity to give waste a second life, but they say limited financial support and a lack of equipment continue to hinder progress.

For George, the lack of equipment for large-scale production is the key challenge.

“One of our greatest challenges is having the right tools and equipment. If there is greater investment in recycling, especially for young people, it could significantly change the story of single-use plastics, providing income for waste collectors and recyclers,” he told IPS.

But beyond this, Beckley said being a woman in the recycling and innovation space also comes with unique challenges.

“There are people who call asking for products or services, but once they realise a woman is behind the work, they begin to doubt my ability. Some openly say they would rather work with a man,” she said. “I usually tell them that everything posted on my page is work that I have personally done.”

Impact

Over the past two years, George said Ideal Technologies has expanded its work, particularly among schoolchildren in underserved communities. In 2024, his innovation was recognised through the Youth-Led Innovation Challenge, organised by the UNDP and the Environment Protection Agency Sierra Leone, where he was the winner.

The recognition brought financial support that allowed the initiative to reach more communities.

“Through grants from this and other initiatives, we have supported more than 400 school children in rural communities. This does not include people we have supplied products to through partnerships or buyers overseas,” George said.

For Beckley, she measures the rewards of recycling differently and urges greater government support for youth-led recycling initiatives.

“This is my main source of income, and I have also created job opportunities for people who have learnt from me. Some of them now continue making bags and other recycled products on their own,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau

 
CIVICUS discusses India’s Cockroach Janta Party movement with Harshit Singh, a young activist, poet and storyteller who took part in protests in Delhi.

Harshit Singh

What’s the Cockroach Janta Party, and how did it start?

On 15 May, the Chief Justice of India said that young people who couldn’t find a job and turned to media, social media and activism to attack the system were like cockroaches. He corrected himself the following day, saying he had meant only those entering the legal profession with fake degrees, but it was too late. Everybody felt hurt and frustrated.

Abhijeet Dipke, a young Indian, posted a tweet asking what would happen if all the cockroaches came together. Within 24 hours he had set up an Instagram page, a website and a manifesto that said that if you were lazy, unemployed and had time on your hands, you qualified as a cockroach. The name, Cockroach Janta Party, was a parody of the ruling party. The response was enormous. Artists and creators began promoting the platform, and within weeks over 20 million people were following it.

It grew that fast because the frustration was already there. Two weeks before Surya Kant spoke, the question paper for the national medical entrance exam leaked in advance, and the exam was cancelled for over two million students who had spent years preparing. At least 21 students died by suicide; every morning we woke up to news of another death. And this was not an isolated case. Every other day we hear about another exam paper leaking somewhere.

The Cockroach Janta Party gave young people somewhere to channel their frustration with the education system and unemployment. It gave us hope and a chance to demand a better education system, one that isn’t privatised and doesn’t cost so much that only privileged people get a good education.

But education is just the baseline. Beyond it, this is a movement that brings together everyone who has been neglected and not listened to for years, so they can express their frustration and ask for change. What started as satire became a national movement that nobody, not even the person who started it, expected.

Would you call this a Gen Z movement?

It was organised by Gen Z, and most of us in it are, but it’s not only that. I have seen every generation at the protest. People of different castes, gender identities and religions have come together under one umbrella to ask for their rights. At the end of the day, we are all Indians, and every issue this country is going through is our issue.

There is no criterion for joining and no enrolment process. If you think something is wrong, or that your basic rights are not being respected, that is the moment you support the movement, however you can. Come to the protest, talk about it online or in print, and be a voice where you are.

What struck me most is how many people came who didn’t support Abhijeet or disagreed with something a spokesperson had said. Some didn’t even like that we call ourselves cockroaches. They came anyway, because the movement is bigger than any person in it and because after a long time we have a platform where we can speak out loud, with other people standing next to us. That’s why it grew so fast.

What role has social media played?

Social media has played a central role. The movement started online and the vast majority of what it has achieved rests on that. Nobody expected it to come onto the ground and organise protests at this scale.

The reason it mattered this much is that the media here is compromised. If you say anything against the government, mainstream television and print media will not carry it. There was a protest in the heart of the capital for weeks and you wouldn’t find a single headline about it in the newspapers or magazines.

But when you are on the ground with your phone, taking photos and videos, you become your own media. And everyone was using their platforms. It didn’t matter whether someone had 10 followers or 5,000, each person was reaching the audience they had. In the end, mainstream media just reaches a limited number of people, but social media reaches everyone.

The turning point was when artists and creators started speaking. I hesitated at first. My livelihood is social media and ticket revenue, so I doubted what would happen to my future if I spoke against the government. I feared my accounts would be taken down. But I couldn’t deny what was happening, so I spoke out, and many other artists did too.

How has the government responded?

The government has responded very negatively. People who question the government, protest against it or ask for their rights get labelled as anti-national or terrorists. There’s no second thought about it. When I was a child, those were heavy words. Watching this government make them ordinary and using them against us was frightening.

For seven weeks we were at Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in central Delhi. The Prime Minister’s Office, the President’s house and every ministry are within a five-kilometre radius. Still, not official came to meet us. What they did instead was try to dilute the protest by dividing us with anything they could find. They mocked queer people and spread hatred between Hindus and Muslims, but the unity held and we stood together.

On 20 July, we marched from Jantar Mantar to parliament. Delhi hadn’t seen a peaceful protest this massive in about 15 years. Thousands of people, including children, teenagers and grandparents, were on the streets asking for their basic rights. We were carrying flowers, banners and posters, and chanting slogans.

But the security forces met us with repression and violence. They used pellet guns, teargas and batons against anyone, even if they were just standing nearby. There’s a girl who’s still in intensive care on a ventilator.

The way the police handled the protests was illegal and unconstitutional. At that moment a lot of people in India realised something was badly wrong, and support for our movement grew massively across the country. Cities, districts and small towns started protests in solidarity. That is when the government understood it had to listen.

What has the movement achieved?

Our non-negotiable demand was the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan and action against everyone involved in the scam. Pradhan stepped down, and we are glad he did, but it shouldn’t have taken this long or this much violence. He even framed it as a way to stop the protests and prevent terrorist activity, not as an admission that anything had gone wrong. Accountability is still missing.

Our other two demands are still unmet. We asked for compensation of 10 million rupees (approx. US$115,000) for every family that lost a child to suicide. Those families haven’t received anything, not even an apology.

We also asked that nobody who took part in the protests face legal action. Instead, the police have spent the past days tracing protesters and opening cases against them. There’s a lot of rage about it, and Abhijeet and others have said we may have to protest again.

What support does the movement need now?

What we most need is for people to stop being afraid. Protesting here is almost a taboo, because people expect repercussions and stay away, which makes organising anything at all difficult.

That fear is not irrational. This government controls the security forces, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate, and it can do whatever it wants with them, as we saw on the streets. The courts will not stop it either, because the judiciary is compromised in the same way the media is.

But if something is wrong, it is fine to ask the government why. They are here to serve us. All we are asking for is to be able to protest peacefully in what is supposed to be the world’s largest democracy.

We need young people in this country to keep showing up and artists to stop being silent, because if the mainstream media will not speak out, art must become the mode of resistance. Support from abroad matters too. When people elsewhere talk about our movement, it creates pressure on the government. And we must hold on to what we know – our rights and our intentions – because diluting the agenda is what the government will try next.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

India has recently been added to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries where a severe deterioration in the quality of civic space is taking place.

GET IN TOUCH
Instagram

SEE ALSO
India added to human rights watchlist as repression intensifies in Modi’s third term CIVICUS Monitor 29.Jul.2026
Gen Z protests: new resistance rises CIVICUS | 2026 State of Civil Society Report
India: ‘When civil society is constrained, it cannot challenge power or amplify excluded voices’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Devanshi Vaid and Smarinita Shetty 11.Dec.2025

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Woman milks a cow in northern Mongolia. Credit by Katiekk, Shutterstock

By Solange Bandiaky-Badji
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 6 2026 (IPS)

This is supposed to be the year the world finally sees and recognizes pastoralists. The United Nations has designated 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, bringing long-overdue attention to communities who have sustained some of the world’s most fragile and important landscapes for generations.

Yet right now, the world is on fire… quite literally. All eyes are on the wildfires in France, Spain, and Canada. California is coming up on wildfire season. And scientists are predicting the strongest El Niño in history.

As climate-fueled disasters become more frequent and severe, now is an important moment to learn from pastoralists, whose traditional knowledge, adaptive land management practices, and deep understanding of living with climate variability have helped sustain people and landscapes through centuries of environmental change.

In August, governments will gather in Mongolia for COP17 of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17), where rangelands, land degradation and climate resilience will be central to the global agenda.

This will be the first UNCCD COP since the e.stablishment of the Caucus of Indigenous Peoples and the Caucus of Local Communities—hard-won victories at COP16—with “Land and People Day and tenure rights included formally on the COP17 agenda.

Dr. Solange Bandiaky-Badji is Coordinator and President of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI)

Yet the scale of what is at stake is enormous. Rangelands cover more of the Earth’s surface than any other land use type, and up to 500 million people directly rely on pastoralism for their livelihoods. These lands are central to food security, biodiversity, climate resilience, and the survival of communities across Africa, Asia, Latin America and beyond. Yet pastoralists remain among the least protected and understood land stewards in the world.

This year of recognition must become more than a symbolic milestone. Unless governments and institutions use this moment to move from visibility to rights, pastoralists will continue to be praised in speeches while being pushed further to the margins in law, policy and investment.

Resilience Is Not Invulnerability

Pastoralists are incredibly resilient. Across drylands, savannahs, mountains and rangelands, they have adapted to shifting seasons, scarce water, and fragile ecosystems through sophisticated systems of mobility, customary governance, and ecological knowledge. Their way of life is one of the world’s most climate-adapted livelihood systems. But resilience should not be confused with invulnerability.

At a New York Climate Week event last year focused on Indigenous pastoralist knowledge and nature-based solutions, pastoralist leaders described the reality their communities face every day. One speaker from the Sahel spoke of droughts, severe flooding and wildfires that continue to destroy livelihoods and cost lives. She recalled stories from her grandmother about struggling to find even a grain to eat in order to survive and warned that extreme weather is threatening their lives.

While Climate change is intensifying the pressures on lands and livelihoods that were already under strain, it is only part of the story. Pastoralists are also being squeezed by policies and development models that misunderstand and overlook how their systems work and focus on a narrative that pastoralists are a threat to ecosystems. Their livelihoods depend on mobility, but many legal frameworks are built around fixed land ownership and permanent settlement. Their governance systems are collective and customary, but many governments recognize only formal administrative structures. Their territories include grazing corridors, water points and seasonal routes, but these are rarely treated as essential infrastructure. Even where policies exist focusing on pastoralism, they often do so from restrictive approaches that only center pastoralists as part of a chain of production or tourism exploitation.

The Gap Between Recognition and Rights

A recent analysis by the Rights and Resources Initiative across Kenya, Niger, Tanzania, Mongolia, Nepal, Bolivia and Peru found a persistent gap between recognition on paper and protection in practice. While governments may acknowledge pastoralist land access in some form, mobility—the foundation of pastoralist livelihoods—is rarely protected in law. Among the countries studied, Niger stands out as the lone exception explicitly recognizing mobility as a fundamental right. The legal gap among the rest of the countries has real consequences.

Across regions, rangelands are being fragmented by agricultural expansion, infrastructure projects, extractive industries, conservation restrictions, carbon initiatives and green energy projects. These pressures are often presented as development or climate solutions. But when they are imposed without pastoralists’ full participation and consent, they deepen inequality, fuel conflict and weaken the very systems that have protected rangelands for generations.

Invisible in Data, Invisible in Policy

That exclusion is also statistical. Pastoralists are too often missing from the data systems that shape national priorities, development financing and climate policy. When governments do not accurately count pastoralist communities, map their mobility routes, measure their economic contributions, or document the pressures they face, their needs and contributions remain invisible. When communities are invisible in the data, they are often invisible in budgets, laws and global commitments.

This is especially alarming given the scale of pastoralists’ contributions. In Africa, pastoralists produce much of the continent’s milk and a significant share of its meat. They sustain local markets, support rural economies, manage vast rangelands and carry knowledge that is essential to climate resilience and biodiversity protection. Yet their contributions are rarely matched by legal protection, public investment or meaningful political representation.

Women face even greater barriers. Pastoralist women are central to livestock economies, food systems, households and community resilience. But they are often excluded from land ownership, mobility rights, leadership and formal decision-making. Any serious effort to strengthen pastoralist systems must address women’s rights directly, not as an afterthought.

Tenure Redefined

At COP17, land tenure returns to the agenda as a standing policy item, carried forward from previous sessions alongside rangelands and pastoralists. That is progress. But tenure conceived as titles, boundaries and fixed parcels cannot secure people whose security depends on movement. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) already names transhumant, nomadic and semi-nomadic communities as rights holders and requires states to protect their land rights, an obligation that cannot be met by extending sedentary tenure models to mobile peoples. Pastoralist tenure must be redefined: adaptive, embedding mobility, recognizing shared use, seasonal occupation and overlapping claims and anchored in customary governance. For pastoralists, secure tenure is flexible tenure.

The Solutions Are Clear

The good news is that pastoralists are not waiting for the world to act on their behalf. They are organizing. There is a growing movement across Africa, Asia and Latin America. They may be communities separated by continents and colonial borders, but they are connected by shared histories, livelihoods and struggles.

First, governments must recognize pastoral mobility as a legal right. Movement is not a weakness of pastoralist systems; it is what allows communities to manage climate variability, protect ecosystems and sustain livestock in changing conditions.

Second, states must protect the physical infrastructure of pastoralism, including grazing corridors, water points, dry season reserves and seasonal migration routes. These are as essential to pastoral economies as roads and ports are to national economies.

Third, customary governance systems must be legally recognized and supported. Pastoralist communities have long managed land, water and conflict through local institutions that are adapted to their realities. Replacing these systems with rigid, top-down frameworks weaken both rights and resilience.

Fourth, pastoralist women must have equal rights to land, mobility, resources and leadership. Climate resilience cannot be built while half the community is excluded from decisions that affect them and shape our collective future.

Finally, climate finance, conservation funding and development investments must reach pastoralist communities directly and respect their rights. Projects that restrict access to land without consent or compensation undermine both livelihoods and global environmental goals.

COP17 in Mongolia is an opportunity to turn this year of recognition into a year of action. Governments should arrive prepared not only to discuss rangelands, but to listen to the people who know them best. Pastoralists must be at the table as rightsholders, experts and partners.

The world cannot meet its goals on climate resilience, food security, biodiversity or land restoration while ignoring the communities already holding these systems together.

This is the year of pastoralists. Now it must become the year the world finally recognizes their rights.

Dr. Solange Bandiaky-Badji, is President and Coordinator, Rights and Resources Initiative

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Workers are patrolling in a wind power plant on Tan Thanh beach, Go Cong city of Viet Nam. Countries in Asia and the Pacific are moving towards green transitions in the wake of higher oil prices. Credit: Unsplash/Thompson Le

By Michał Podolski
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 5 2026 (IPS)

Inaction and maintaining the status quo of fossil fuel dependence carry significant costs. The recent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, caused enormous losses to the global economy, with many Asia-Pacific countries bearing disproportionately larger adverse impacts. Had these economies had a more diversified energy mix, they would have benefited from such resilience under current circumstances.

Green transition, however, comes at a significant cost – investment in environmental sustainability. This investment brings tangible returns and benefits, such as cleaner air, better health, a vibrant natural environment or reduced negative climate impacts. What is the overall balance of these costs and benefits, opportunities seized or lost, innovation, or status quo maintenance?

This overall balance amounts to decisions for a faster or slower shift towards environmental sustainability and green transition. Each carries fiscal, investment and financing consequences with differing socioeconomic outcomes. Overall, because of these countless dimensions, decision-making for green transition is inherently complex. In principle, humanity has never undertaken a green transition before and lacks established blueprints.

ESCAP’s Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2026 sheds light on this challenge. The report identifies decarbonisation pathways that offer lower costs and higher benefits, highlights bottlenecks that inflate expenses, clarifies current priorities, and examines socioeconomic impacts. In short, the Survey 2026 identifies cheaper options with greater impacts.

For instance, in some Asia-Pacific countries, the choices on decarbonisation are relatively straightforward. With limited fossil fuel dependence, low risks of asset stranding and minimal vested interests in coal, oil and gas industries, these economies are advancing renewable energy expansion. They are leapfrogging decarbonisation hurdles and reaping steady benefits from carbon-free energy.

However, economies heavily reliant on fossil fuels are confronting tougher dilemmas. Faster carbon withdrawal brings higher immediate costs, offset only by longer-term benefits. Labour markets face greater pressure from anticipated reskilling and green sector development. These economies face elevated risks and must proceed cautiously. Ultimately, the green transition demands strong and prosperous economies capable of delivering goods and services to build a carbon-free world.

As for labour markets, net employment effects of green transition can be positive overall, yet uneven across countries and sectors. Fossil fuel job losses, potentially abrupt ones, are often concentrated in mineral-rich areas, with knock-on effects on related industries. Historical coal phase-outs without prompt government support reveal prolonged unemployment, youth out-migration, and community decline. Older workers are particularly at risk of exiting the labour force permanently. In contrast, green jobs emerge more gradually, often elsewhere, and require different skills. This mismatch highlights the need for proactive government planning – including funded reskilling and economic diversification – to redeploy skills from declining sectors.

Inflation provides another example of dilemmas faced by policymakers that are or want to pursue green transition. Higher inflation undermines economic activity and complicates transition-oriented policymaking. For instance, green transition policies, such as carbon pricing, can gradually increase prices, and thus inflation. This can raise interest rates, hinder capital-intensive green investments and pose financial stability challenges for central banks. Economies may tolerate modest and stable inflation, but high and volatile inflation will undermine the green transition efforts.

The Survey 2026 also highlights that government interventions like subsidies can be beneficial but can also lock-in suboptimal technologies. Too much of a good thing can be harmful. Government policies should guide objectives and priorities, for example, the need for better and cheaper energy storage, and enable people and enterprises to discover the most effective solutions. Market-friendly policy tools, such as technology-neutral emission limits, clear long-term plans and streamlined permitting, are all important policy adjustments.

“Take the right decisions, allow markets to work in a fair way” was a message on climate action by the UN Secretary-General António Guterres in 2025. The Survey 2026 builds on this, emphasising that market mechanisms can drive decarbonisation by identifying the best opportunities. The report also reinforces the call for “right decisions” to ensure a just and inclusive transition.

There are often easier and harder paths to the same goal. With due regard to diverse national circumstances, Asia-Pacific economies must progressively move to a low-carbon future, while safeguarding socioeconomic well-being of their people. There is no universal set of policies, but there is one clear direction. Although some costs may seem high today, inaction would prove far more expensive. At the end, optimal paths require pragmatic, evidence-based judgement: gradual where necessary, ambitious where feasible, and always mindful of who bears today’s costs versus tomorrow’s benefits.

Michal Podolski is Associate Economic Affairs Officer, ESCAP

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit IMF Photo/Nicholas Karlin

By Kristalina Georgieva
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 4 2026 (IPS)

My first meeting in Buenos Aires began with an unexpected gift. Economy Minister Luis Caputo presented me with an Argentine national team jersey bearing my name and the number 10—Lionel Messi’s iconic number.

It was a fitting start to my first official visit. When Messi finally lifted the World Cup in Qatar, he was 35 years old—an age when many footballers have already retired. His triumph was the culmination of years of perseverance, setbacks, and relentless dedication. It underscored how great achievements require persistence—and can take longer than expected.

Economic transformation follows a similar path. Restoring stability is difficult. Making it endure is even harder. The greatest rewards come only after years of persistence.

That stuck with me during my visit to Argentina this week. Everywhere I went, I encountered people looking beyond today’s challenges and asking what their country could become over the next decade.

For a country that has spent much of its recent history focused on the next crisis, shifting attention to a longer horizon was, I found, to be the most encouraging sign of all.

Impressive stabilization

Only two and a half years ago, Argentina faced one of the most difficult economic moments in its modern history. The government was running constant deficits. Inflation exceeded 200 percent. The economy was contracting. Poverty had climbed above 50 percent. Families watched the value of their wages and savings fall. Businesses found it difficult to plan beyond the next few weeks.

Today, the picture is markedly different.

Argentina has delivered two consecutive years of primary fiscal surpluses for the first time in 15 years. The economy is growing. Inflation has fallen to around 30 percent. Poverty has declined. The central bank is rebuilding international reserves. Sovereign borrowing costs have fallen.

All three major credit rating agencies have upgraded the country. In addition, more than $45 billion in investment projects have already been approved under Argentina’s large investment incentive framework. The pipeline under development is more than twice that size. These achievements reflect the commitment to stability and determined policy actions by Javier Milei’s administration and, above all, the perseverance of the Argentine people.

From stability to growth and opportunities

Stabilization gives a country back something that isn’t easily measured: time. When families believe prices will remain stable, they start to save instead of simply protecting themselves against inflation. When businesses believe policies will remain predictable, they invest for years rather than months. Banks extend longer-term credit. Governments can focus on improving institutions instead of responding to the next emergency.

In other words, stability extends a country’s time horizon. I know how transformative that can be because I experienced it in my own country.

When Bulgaria suffered hyperinflation and a banking crisis in the 1990s, my mother’s lifetime savings disappeared almost overnight. I kept my own modest savings in dollars, in a tin box hidden in the cupboard. Restoring stability required difficult reforms, stronger institutions, and persistence over many years.

The results did not appear immediately. But because Bulgaria stayed the course, confidence gradually returned. Investment increased. People found work. Living standards improved. Earlier this year, Bulgaria adopted the euro—a milestone that would once have seemed impossible.

The lesson was not simply that stabilization can succeed. It was that its greatest rewards emerge only with time.

That challenge is even greater today. The global economy is becoming more uncertain. Trade patterns are shifting. Geopolitical tensions remain elevated. Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries and labor markets at remarkable speed. Capital is increasingly selective, flowing to countries that combine sound policies with predictable institutions.

In this environment, macroeconomic stability is not merely desirable—it is a prerequisite for attracting investment, creating jobs, and remaining competitive.

Unleashing potential

I saw that opportunity very clearly at the fast-developing Vaca Muerta oil and gas fields, in Neuquén province. That Argentina enjoys world-class natural resources has long been known. Yet Vaca Muerta shows that it also has talented engineers, entrepreneurs, and public and private leaders committed to developing them. And it is doing so at a moment when the world is looking for secure and reliable energy supplies.

Vaca Muerta is only one example of a broader opportunity. Mining investment is accelerating, knowledge-based services export nearly $10 billion annually, and agriculture remains among the world’s most competitive sectors. Beyond its natural resources, Argentina boasts world-class entrepreneurs, strong universities, and exceptional human talent.

The next phase is to ensure that these opportunities spread across the broader economy.

That message came through clearly in my discussions with business leaders. They welcomed the country’s renewed stability and growing investor confidence, while emphasizing the importance of reducing barriers to investment and broadening the recovery across more sectors.

It also came through in two very different conversations.

On my first morning in Buenos Aires, I met Marina, a makeup artist who kindly helped me get ready for the day ahead. She told me she works three jobs and that life remains difficult. Yet she also told me she hopes the country stays the course. Her circumstances have not changed overnight. What’s changing is her confidence that progress can last.

I later met renowned tango dancer Mora Godoy. Beyond her celebrated career, she has built a dance school and offers scholarships to young people who otherwise might never have the chance to learn.

Different stories, different professions—but both reflected the same belief that investing today can create opportunities tomorrow.

I heard that same longer-term perspective from students. Their questions were not about the next six months. They were about artificial intelligence, innovation, leadership, and Argentina’s place in the global economy. They wanted to know how their country could compete—not just next year, but over the coming decades.

Across these conversations with business leaders, workers, and students, I heard a common, encouraging message: Argentina is beginning to look beyond the next crisis to the opportunities ahead.

In the end, success will not be measured only by lower inflation, stronger reserves, or healthier public finances. It will be gauged by whether more businesses invest, small and medium-sized enterprises expand, workers find better jobs and higher wages, and more Argentines see the benefits of economic growth in their daily lives.

The next steps

That same long-term perspective guides the IMF partnership with Argentina.

Our role is to support the policies and institutions that make lasting stability possible. The government’s proposal for a stronger and more independent central bank can help ensure that progress on inflation endures. A durable fiscal responsibility framework, with clear rules and strong institutions, can help future governments preserve today’s hard-won gains. These reforms allow families to plan, businesses to borrow and invest, and governments to look beyond the next crisis.

Argentina’s economic transformation will also take time. The country has laid the foundations for a more stable future. The challenge now is to stay the course—to keep building the institutions, confidence, and opportunities that will allow today’s progress to become lasting prosperity.

Kristalina Georgieva is Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Washington DC.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

President Trump has blamed trade liberalisation advocated by globalists for US deindustrialisation. Instead, his own weaponisation of economic policies, instruments and institutions purport to ‘make America great again’ (MAGA).

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

While rejecting globalists’ claim that trade liberalisation enhances growth, employment and incomes for all, his own ‘America First’ policies are slowing the world economy, including the US.

Post-war trade policy
The US has dominated international relations and institutions, including multilateral economic governance, since World War Two (WW2). The US Congress rejected the 1948 Havana Charter proposing the International Trade Organisation (ITO).

Selective trade liberalisation was key to the ‘neoliberal’ Washington Consensus, which has been recommended, if not required, by multilateral economic institutions from the 1980s.

Meanwhile, the neoliberal era has been associated with slower, more volatile growth than the post-war Keynesian ‘Golden Age’ of the first quarter-century after WW2.

The West pushed for the World Trade Organization (WTO) to consolidate the international economic order on a neoliberal basis. The 1994 Marrakech Agreement establishing the WTO left little room for development policy initiatives.

For many in the West, neoliberal trade liberalisation ended with the first Trump presidency from 2017. However, the reversal had begun earlier in the 21st century, especially after the 2008-09 global (actually Western) financial crisis.

However, Trump should be acknowledged for brazenly weaponizing international trade and investment instruments against the rest of the world, including US allies.

Hegemony
Free trade advocate Jagdish Bhagwati showed that anything less than trade multilateralism, including plurilateral and bilateral free trade agreements, is sub-optimal and unfair.

Compromises, including those promoted by international financial institutions and the OECD, have, instead, strengthened US and Western hegemony.

Postwar decolonisation of Asia and Africa has seen discontent grow in multilateral institutions, prompting selective Western undermining of multilateralism after the Cold War.

Unable to ensure the WTO’s dispute settlement system consistently protects and advances its interests, the US has paralysed it by blocking key appointments since the Obama presidency.

Collective assertiveness by developing countries in multilateral fora has mitigated some adverse consequences of international economic integration under Western auspices.

Partial and uneven trade liberalisation has constrained Global South industrialisation. Recent deindustrialisation has reduced manufacturing’s share of national output in many developing countries.

Little new manufacturing capacity has developed in Africa beyond some minimal import-substituting and resource-processing activities protected by high transport costs.

Divide and rule
Economic concessions, such as trade preferences, to developing countries have been used to divide the Global South, including the ‘least developed countries’ and ‘small island developing states’, effectively weakening their collective negotiating strength.

Trade liberalisation has also reduced tariff revenue, especially important for the poorest developing countries, where it often accounted for up to half of total tax collected.

Additional taxes, typically from consumption or income, have never compensated for tariff revenue losses due to trade liberalisation. This has undermined their already weak fiscal capacities, often requiring them to borrow even more.

Promoting food agriculture in supposedly ‘land-abundant’ African countries was supposed to make them more food-secure and even export-competitive but there is no evidence this has happened.

Developing nations have long unsuccessfully asked the Global North to eliminate agricultural subsidies, tariffs, and non-tariff import barriers that protect their output.

This would make food production in developing countries more competitive. But rich countries have long insisted that developing countries must first ‘reciprocate’, e.g., by eliminating their manufacturing tariffs.

Structural adjustment has also undermined agricultural infrastructure and smallholder productivity in many developing countries. Meanwhile, lower farm subsidies in Europe have raised many food import prices in the South.

Gains from trade?
Purported gains from trade liberalisation are often either merely theoretical or one-time gains from static understandings of comparative advantage, with no cumulative potential.

Claims of gains from trade liberalisation presume internationally competitive productive and export capacities capable of generating a strong positive supply response.

Such preconditions are unlikely in most developing countries, especially the poorest, and need to be developed, typically by protecting against external market pressures.

Most studies of realistically achievable outcomes of WTO Doha Round negotiations from 2001, including those for the World Bank, projected net losses for most developing economies, except for a few Asian economies.

There is also no robust evidence of trade liberalisation significantly reducing poverty and hunger. Developing countries, especially the poorest ones and those in sub-Saharan Africa, would be worse off.

One may well ask why developing countries have to be bribed with ‘aid for trade’ if it is in their own best interests to commit to trade liberalisation, multilateral or otherwise.

Worse, trade liberalisation has made sustainable development nearly impossible by significantly reducing policy options for aspiring developmental states, especially for trade, industrial, investment and technology policies.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

IInternational experts have reported a uptick of human rights violations committed in Iran, notably arbitrary executions of protestors since January 2026. Credit: Amir Sarabadani/Wikimedia Commons

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 3 2026 (IPS)

Over the past several weeks, the humanitarian landscape in the Middle East has deteriorated significantly, exacerbated by escalating security concerns and serious human rights violations. In late July, the United Nations (UN) highlighted a sharp uptick in hostilities between the United States and Iran, alongside growing concerns over wider regional instability.

On July 30, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that the “humanitarian consequences of the Middle East escalation are worsening by the day.” The conflict between the United States and Iran has grown increasingly volatile over recent months, with both parties intermittently resuming bombardment following the breakdown of the April ceasefire.

On July 28, Iranian forces attempted a series of ballistic missile attacks targeting U.S. bases in Jordan and vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. This prompted an immediate military response from the U.S. military, with defense officials confirming that it had completed a “heavy wave” of airstrikes targeting numerous bases affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

This recent wave of airstrikes in Iran affected numerous provinces—including Hormozgan, Bushehr, Fars, and Khuzestan—notably impacting the country’s primary oil-producing region. According to the Iranian Ministry of Health, at least 60 civilian deaths and 670 injuries have been recorded over the past month alone. On July 30, a strike in Qeshm in Hormozgan province hit a residential building, killing three civilians, including a two-year-old child.

This conflict has severely disrupted global shipping and oil production, driving a considerable increase in domestic gasoline prices in the U.S. and compounding Iran’s economic collapse. On July 29, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres expressed concern about the risk of a broader regional conflict if effective diplomacy is not established soon.

Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Farhan Haq, told reporters that current developments are “not positive”, noting that Guterres is hoping for an immediate cessation of hostilities. “The Secretary-General has been worried for some time that if the parties do not return to negotiations, you could have a widening of the conflict, and that seems to be what has been happening in recent hours,” said Haq at a press briefing at the UN Headquarters.

“These are not positive developments, and he wants to make sure that the parties can cease fighting and again return to the diplomatic efforts, including the mediation efforts being pressed forward by Pakistan, Qatar and others…Having more parties involved in the fighting, having the fighting spread to a larger number of countries, all of these are adverse developments and could get us into a much worse situation even than before.”

Following discussions with regional allies, U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on August 1 that he had halted planned military strikes against Iran as negotiations toward a de-escalation of hostilities are scheduled to pick up on August 3. Contingent on both sides “rapidly” securing a deal, Trump told reporters that these plans include frameworks for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which would allow for the immediate decongestion of stalled global cargo traffic and the resumption of commercial oil shipments.

In response, Iranian officials confirmed that Tehran did not ask the U.S. to halt these strikes, stating that Iran remains “on high alert and ready for any eventuality.” As of August 3, no new negotiations were held between the U.S. and Iran. Esmail Baghaie, the spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, has said that there are no plans to send an Iranian delegation, nor to receive any delegations, however diplomatic engagement is ongoing.

Although the Strait of Hormuz is currently closed, Jordan and Egypt remain critical lifelines for humanitarian aid deliveries and medical evacuations for struggling Iranian communities.

Furthermore, Iran continues to grapple with a sharp rise in human rights violations recorded over the course of 2026. Since March 19, the Center for Human Rights in Iran recorded the executions of at least 46 civilians on politically motivated charges. Reflecting a considerable surge in the use of the death penalty to repress civilian dissent, at least 23 of those convicted were protestors arrested during the protests in January.

On July 23, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran urged Iranian authorities to halt all executions and establish frameworks on the use of the death penalty in accordance with international humanitarian law. The Mission condemned the arbitrary executions of two young protestors, 18-year-old Erfan Esfandiari and 23-year-old Mohammad Mohammadi on July 19.

In the wake of these executions, Iranian authorities proceeded to publicly execute protestors Amir Hossein Safari and Abolfazl Sepahi following what Amnesty International described as a “grossly unfair mass trail involving dozens of defendants.” Ten additional Iranian men now face an imminent threat of arbitrary execution over their involvement in the January demonstrations, with the Mission calling for an immediate halt to these executions.

“The Iranian authorities are unleashing a horrifying wave of executions and death sentences to punish and suppress dissent and project an image of strength and absolute control in the wake of the January popular uprising and amid ongoing attacks by US and Israeli forces,” said Heba Morayef, Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

“The muted response from the international community emboldens the Iranian authorities to continue their deadly rampage. UN member states must take urgent coordinated diplomatic action to press the Iranian authorities to halt further executions. They must place Iran’s human rights and impunity crisis high on their agenda, support the creation of an independent international justice mechanism for Iran and urge the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Iran to the International Criminal Court.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit: Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash

By James Alix Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Aug 3 2026 (IPS)

Earlier this year, I called publicly for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining, arguing that it is not a rejection of progress, but a commitment to sound science.

I made that appeal because I believed governments meeting this year at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) would finally choose caution over haste. Watching the results emerge from Kingston, Jamaica, over these past weeks, I must admit to real disappointment.

But I want to be equally clear: disappointment is not defeat, and there is still every reason for hope.

The 31st session of the ISA concluded its work in Kingston with the Council ending two weeks of negotiations on 24 July without adopting the long-debated Mining Code. Unresolved issues, ranging from environmental safeguards and liability to inspection, compliance and benefit-sharing, remain exactly that: unresolved.

Governments including France, Costa Rica, South Africa, Mexico, Germany, Palau and Brazil rightly insisted these gaps must be closed before any commercial mining is contemplated. That the Authority could not bridge them after fifteen years of negotiation tells its own story about how far science and governance still lag behind commercial ambition.

James Alix Michel

That pressure has an external source too. The United States, which is not a party to the Law of the Sea Convention and sits outside the ISA altogether, has continued to advance its own unilateral licensing process for the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, the vast Pacific seabed that holds the largest concentration of exploration contracts on Earth. Five applications are already on record, with reports suggesting more may follow. When a single state can simply step outside a multilateral framework and issue permits for a shared global commons, it does not just threaten the ocean floor; it threatens the very idea that humanity can govern anything collectively. That, to me, is Kingston’s deeper failure: not that a code went unfinished, but that the multilateral system protecting our common heritage was tested, and did not hold as firmly as it should.

And yet.

I have spent much of my life in rooms where the odds seemed stacked against the ocean, and I have learned that setbacks in these negotiations are rarely the last word. There is real cause for hope in what else happened in Kingston.

When four deep-sea mining companies sought observer status at the Assembly, dozens of governments pushed back, and the decision was postponed rather than rushed through. Vanuatu brought forward an agenda item on “Ensuring Adequate Scientific Understanding to Support Informed Decision-Making,” precisely the argument I have been making since earlier this year: that we cannot regulate what we do not yet understand. And crucially, the Council did not simply walk away. It agreed a roadmap for further work, inviting states and observers to submit written proposals on the outstanding issues by 1 October 2026. The door to a properly safeguarded process remains open. It has not been slammed shut.

Most encouraging of all is the growing number of nations refusing to be rushed. When I first raised this call earlier this year, more than 40 countries had already backed a moratorium or precautionary pause. Today that number stands at 45, including seven Pacific nations, alongside outright bans by France and by Palau and New Caledonia within their own waters. They are joined by more than 70 companies, 82 financial institutions representing some €24 trillion in assets, and over 900 scientists from more than 70 countries, all saying the same thing: we do not yet know enough to proceed safely.

This is not an anti-mining movement. It is a pro-science movement. Nobody serious is arguing that the world will never need these minerals, or that the seabed must remain untouched forever. What I am arguing, and what the evidence increasingly supports, is that decisions with potentially irreversible consequences for ecosystems we have barely begun to map should not be made under commercial or geopolitical pressure. Scientists directly observed less than a tenth of the size of Belgium’s worth of deep seafloor before these negotiations began. This year’s IUCN Red List found that 62 percent of molluscs known only from hydrothermal vents are now at risk of extinction, many of them identified within the last decade. We are still discovering what we might destroy, and we are only beginning to understand the deep seabed’s role in storing carbon and regulating ocean chemistry.

I say this as someone who has governed a small island nation whose entire future is tied to the health of its ocean. Seychelles did not treat marine protection and economic progress as opposing forces. Through marine spatial planning protecting thirty percent of our waters, and the world’s first sovereign blue bond, we showed precaution can be financed and delivered without halting development. That experience is precisely why I believe a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining is a down payment on progress, not a brake on it.

Small island developing states cannot afford to gamble with the ocean systems that feed us and anchor our economies. I say this with humility: Seychelles has banned deep-sea mining in its own waters under our Marine Spatial Plan, yet is not among the 45 nations formally backing the international moratorium. That gap between what we protect at home and what we champion abroad is one I hope Seychelles, and others like it, will now close.

So my message to fellow leaders, particularly across Africa and the small island states that depend most on healthy oceans, is this:

Kingston’s disappointment is real, but it is not the end of the story. Forty-five nations have already shown that caution and ambition can coexist. I urge every government that has not yet done so, especially those still weighing their position ahead of the October deadline for written proposals, to add its voice to that growing coalition. This is not about obstructing progress; it is about demanding the evidence that ensures whatever progress we make does no lasting harm to the seabed we all share. I also urge regional bodies, from the African Union to Pacific and Caribbean groupings, to adopt common positions, so no single small state stands alone against powerful commercial interests.

The common heritage of humankind deserves patience as much as ambition. Kingston reminded us how much work remains. It also reminded us how many are still willing to do it.

James Alix Michel is the former President of Seychelles (2004-2016), Founder of the James Michel Foundation and the University of Seychelles, and a global advocate for the blue economy, ocean conservation and climate resilience.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Galala city, Egypt, the southern exit to the Suez Canal. Credit: Unsplash/M abnodey

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 3 2026 (IPS)

As the United States and Iran continue to escalate with military strikes across both fronts, the conflict took a new turn with Saudi Arabia becoming militarily involved on July 29, following coordinated airstrikes with U.S. Central Command according to the Saudi Ministry of Defence.

These strikes were carried out under what the Kingdom says was its right to self-defense, recognized under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, with the Saudi armed forces coordinating with U.S. Central Command to target Iranian-backed proxies operating from Iraqi territory, after interception of several UAVs which were attempting to target oil facilities in Eastern and Riyadh regions. The Kingdom reiterated that it does not seek escalation but will respond decisively to any aggression directed against it, according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

On Saturday, August 1, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on his platform, Truth Social, that Iran and other Middle Eastern Countries have asked the U.S. to “hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.” Trump added that “This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.” Following this, the U.S. has canceled a planned attack on Iran, but Tehran still has not claimed that these talks are ongoing, let alone any measure of mediation. The cancellation of the planned attack, however, does not mean U.S. military operations have ceased.

On Sunday, August 2, The Saudi Press Agency reported that HRH Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman spoke by phone with U.S. President Trump and “stressed the need to prioritize dialogue to reduce escalation and the importance of making every possible effort to achieve calm that paves the way for diplomatic solutions” in order to preserve both regional and international security. Prior to these latest updates, Washington has maintained that the U.S. and Iran were already engaged in what was described as “very friendly negotiations” following a pause in military strikes. However, Tehran had publicly denied holding direct talks with Washington. According to Axios, Oman is leading the mediation effort, with Qatar, Pakistan and Egypt involved alongside Washington envoys.

Last week on July 30, Saudi Arabia announced a multinational Red Sea maritime defense alliance, seeking the support of over 50 countries and organizations. Thirteen countries other than Saudi Arabia have already signed on, including Türkiye, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Nigeria, Jordan, Bangladesh, Yemen, Djibouti and Somalia. Other participating countries have also expressed support and are in the process of completing their internal procedures and approvals to join the declaration.

The declaration remains open to other interested parties. The Gulf states of the United Arab Emirates and Oman have not yet signed, despite having similar security objectives. Representatives from 43 of the 51 countries and organizations invited to join the alliance attended a meeting on Thursday in Riyadh, the headquarters of the operation.

The initiative effectively places Saudi Arabia at the center of multinational maritime security in the Red Sea at a time when U.S. naval resources are increasingly divided between deterring Iran in the Gulf and protecting commercial shipping.

The Saudi Defence Ministry noted that the EU already has a naval protection mission in the Red Sea, with a delegation from the European Union being present at the meeting. Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman also held a meeting with President Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday, however he reportedly told Washington that the Kingdom was opposed to further escalation of the wider U.S.-Israel war, and its objective is to “defend itself”.

The Kingdom reportedly told Washington that it can manage the situation with the Houthis in Yemen itself, and does not need the U.S. to get involved.

Why is the Red Sea so crucial?

The Red Sea forms part of the maritime corridor leading to the Suez Canal, through which around 15 percent of global maritime trade moves. When security in the Strait cannot be guaranteed, shipping carriers are rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid sailing through an active military zone, where cargo is at risk and war-risk insurance premiums can increase significantly.

Beginning in 2023, Houthi attacks on commercial vessels similarly targeted carriers in the Red Sea, which reduced container tonnage moving through the Suez Canal by 82 percent, and increased booking a voyage on short notice from Shanghai to Europe by 256 percent.

The Houthis demonstrated in that conflict that they did not need to strike every ship in order to create an incentive to avoid the Strait. However, when carriers chose to avoid the Strait, major consequences arose, significantly increasing the cost of every ton of cargo.

Rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope can add roughly 3,000 to 3,500 nautical miles, approximately seven to 10 days in additional sailing time, for a Europe to Singapore voyage. For some routes, consequences are substantially greater. A tanker carrying Saudi crude from Yanbu to Taiwan that avoids the Bab el-Mandeb Strait could extend the voyage from 19 to 48 days, adding roughly USD 2.5 million in cost, according to a Reuters analysis based on Kpler and LSEG data.

All of this is compounded by the severe disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, where on Aug 2, only 19 ships transited in 24 hours, representing only 31 percent of pre-conflict traffic, which has limited deadweight tonnage throughput (DWT) to 3.2 million of the 10.3 million pre-conflict average. However, this is an increase from Friday, August 1, where only 10 transits were recorded in 24 hours, marking only 11.4 percent of transits and 1.2 million DWT compared to pre-conflict levels.

Before the conflict, 25 percent of global seaborne oil trade moved through the Strait, alongside 29 percent of global liquefied natural gas trade, 38 percent of liquefied petroleum gas trade, 19 percent of crude oil trade, 19 percent of refined petroleum products trade, and 13 percent of chemical trade. Together, severe disruption of the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb would simultaneously constrain Gulf energy exports and render the shortest maritime route connecting Asia and Europe increasingly untenable for commercial shipping.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

For the last few years, Artificial intelligence has been making increasingly intrusive demands for our attention.

It burst onto the scene like a child prodigy, enthralling us with feats of brilliance. With consummate ease, it removed drudgery from our tasks and began helping us achieve our personal and workplace objectives.

Daud Khan

As is the case with adolescents, there have been calls to set rules and regulations on AI, applying appropriate limits on what AI can and cannot do. The aim being to allow us time to deal with its immediate impacts on, for example, the jobs market, on media and communication, and on its military use.

But would government imposed regulations solve the problem? The answer is no for several reasons.

Firstly, there is the siren call of easier access to vast stores of knowledge, top quality writing skills and polished images and infographics. It is hard to resist the temptation to delegate boring tasks to AI, such as drafting emails that respond to routine messages. From there it is a slippery slope towards AI writing our university or job applications, office memos, or manuals and instructional content. However, these are tasks that define who we are and how others perceive us. And this reliance on AI kills creativity, individuality and human relations – there is no longer a turn of phrase or a spelling mistake that makes the message special.

Thomas McMahon

Secondly, AI Psychosis is becoming a pervasive disruptor of social relations. AI models are purposely designed for “engagement farming” – a fancy term for hooking people into an ever-increasing reliance on these services. It achieves this through sycophantic responses that feed one’s ego or anxieties, releasing endorphins and creating a craving for more.

We can now access gratifying, yet wholly synthetic, social interactions at our fingertips via chatbots. Consequently, we risk crafting individualised reality bubbles that are unchecked by the social norms we experience in the real world. Will it become easier and more pleasurable to interact with an intelligent machine to fulfill our need to talk, to discuss books, or for emotional engagement without fear of rejection – at any time of day or night?

Thirdly, if we allow machines to shape our thoughts and emotions, we risk destroying diversity of opinion, crushing creativity and resulting in a unified, monolithic narrative that is controlled by the megacorporations providing these AI services.

Pope Leo XIV expressed this concern in his recent encyclical where he warned of “the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance”.

Lastly, it is essential to consider how the mismanagement of AI has the potential to drive a further wedge between rich and poor populations. The Pope cautions us of being misled by “a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations”.

Increased focus is being placed on the impact of data centers within local communities, given their inordinate usage of electricity and water and the constant noise pollution these facilities generate. At full capacity, processing a daily 10 billion Gigabytes of data, a 100 MW data center consumes up to 2.4 million KWh of electricity and 2 million litres of water per day – more than a small city.

The human brain can process 74 Gigabytes of data while sipping a tiny 0.3 KWh of electricity (260 calories or 12% of total daily energy intake). Our bodies require a daily ration of 2.5 litres of water to function normally. Contrast this with preparing a 100-word email using ChatGPT, where each prompt-and-response interaction consumes the water in a standard 500 ml bottle. Even from a strictly environmentally-conscious viewpoint, surely it would be better to use our brains for this instead?

However, whatever our concerns, the genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back – we must learn to use AI properly. We need to better understand its limitations and where it delivers greatest impact, given the resources required.

AI should not be seen as a substitute for human expertise but instead complementary to it. Indeed, the more expertise one has in any given field, the more valuable a contribution AI makes. Experts can better formulate more pertinent questions and redirect the conversation should the AI meander off course. Experts also detect errors more easily in what may appear to be perfectly valid responses.

It is essential that we encourage people, particularly our young people, to continue learning and perfecting their chosen crafts, ignoring the wild marketing claims that various professions have been largely solved by AI already. The more knowledge and expertise the younger generation can build, the more judiciously and selectively they can deploy AI in their work and for society’s future benefit.

Daud Khan is a retired UN staff based in Rome. He has degrees in economics from LSE and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from Imperial College London.

Thomas McMahon is a Data Engineer who specialises in developing bespoke AI systems for UN agencies.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

A container port in Bukit Merah, Singapore. Credit: Unsplash/CHUTTERSNAP

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 2026 (IPS)

East Asia and the Pacific’s (EAP) maritime system has powered the region’s rise as the world’s largest trading and manufacturing center, but the infrastructure supporting that system has become increasingly vulnerable.

According to a new World Bank report, EAP will require nearly USD 900 billion in maritime investment through 2040, as aging vessels, growing trade volumes, and the transition towards alternative fuels place pressure on vital shipping networks propping up the region’s rapid economic growth.

Container trade across the region is projected to grow by 3.5 percent to 4 percent annually over the next decade, meaning ports have to build the additional capacity to accommodate approximately 300 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) by 2040. The World Bank estimates that modernizing ports will require USD 180 billion through 2040, while more than USD 280 billion will be needed to replace and upgrade regional and domestic fleets.

Such investment comes as maritime transport remains a major contributor to economic activity across the region. Maritime trade in the region supports up to USD 3.7 trillion in economic activity, moving over 6 billion tons of cargo, approximately half of the entire seaborne cargo trade. For every ton of cargo moved through the region’s ports, approximately USD 155 in overall economic output is generated, alongside USD 75 in direct GDP. A ton of imported steel, for example, can become an input for manufacturers producing automobiles, machinery or construction materials, generating additional economic activity well beyond the initial movement of the cargo through the port.

EAP’s role in global maritime trade is particularly significant when looking at the countries that border the Strait of Malacca, where an estimated 38 percent of global maritime trade passed through in 2023, according to the OECD. More than 100,000 vessels transit the Strait of Malacca annually, making it the busiest maritime chokepoint globally, with more than twice the traffic of the Strait of Hormuz under normal conditions.

In Singapore, merchandise trade–the combined value of goods imported and exported– reached USD 964 billion in 2024, equivalent to approximately 179 percent of the country’s USD 540 billion GDP. Singapore’s ports simultaneously handled approximately 41 million TEUs of container traffic, and processed 295 million tons of seaborne trade, making it the second busiest container port in the world. In neighboring Malaysia, merchandise trade reached approximately USD 631 billion, equivalent to nearly 150 percent of its USD 422 billion GDP, while its ports handled another 28 million TEUs, processing 447 million tons of seaborne trade, with Port Klang, Malaysia’s main port, being the 10th-busiest port in the world. Indonesia processed the greatest volume of the three nations, at 900 million tons.

China demonstrates the scale at which the region’s largest ports are already operating, and how investment in automation and digital infrastructure can increase their capacity. The Port of Shanghai became the first in the world to handle more than 50 million TEUs in 2024, while its newest automated terminals require approximately 70 percent less labor while achieving 30 percent higher productivity. Container vessels spend an average of only 1 to 1.2 days at Chinese ports, compared with the Port of Los Angeles where container vessels spend an average of two days. For reference, six of the top 10 busiest ports in the world are located in China, demonstrating its role in global maritime connectivity.

Beyond the direct costs of port operations, ships can spend up to 9 percent of their time waiting at anchorage. These delays can leave vessels with less time to complete subsequent legs of a voyage, encouraging higher sailing speeds and increasing fuel consumption and operating costs. An IMO-backed study found that optimizing container-ship speeds around expected port arrival times could reduce average fuel consumption by approximately 14 percent per voyage. Greater predictability and faster turnaround can therefore allow ports and vessels to move cargo more efficiently while reducing fuel costs and emissions—an increasingly important advantage as EAP prepares to accommodate an additional 300 million TEUs by 2040.

While premier global ports require significant investments in automation and new technology to increase efficiency and expand potential TEU throughput, smaller ports can achieve substantial results through simpler, less capital-intensive infrastructure improvements.

At the Port of Funafuti in Tuvalu, improvements as basic as paving cargo-handling areas and improving drainage reduced cargo-handling breakdowns by 80 percent and cut average vessel turnaround from seven days to between two and three days. These gains show that the approach to modernizing ports in the region is not uniform. Some ports will require more advanced technology and higher investment while others simply need to revitalize their existing systems, in accordance with the volume of cargo their ports already receive.

Modernizing ports, however, addresses only one side of the region’s maritime infrastructure challenge. The vessels docking at ports are themselves aging. Replacing and upgrading vessels operating within and between economies across EAP will require more than USD 280 billion through 2040. Of that total, approximately USD 150 billion will be needed to renew domestic fleets and another USD 97 billion to replace regional vessels, with dual-fuel capability adding USD 36.5 billion in additional costs.

The investment is not solely about expanding capacity. Significant portions of the region’s fleets are already more than 25 years old, making vessels more expensive to maintain, less fuel efficient and more susceptible to breakdowns and accidents. The World Bank estimates that replacing just 30 percent of domestic vessels by 2035 with ships meeting international standards could cut accident rates in half.

The reliability of these vessels also carries consequences beyond the shipping industry, particularly for the region’s archipelagic economies. In the Philippines, 98 percent of inter-island trade in food, fuel, and other goods depends on domestic shipping. Across Southeast Asia in general, maritime networks are critical to regional food trade, with rice shipments alone supplying more than 60 million people across EAP.

Disruptions caused by aging or unreliable vessels can therefore extend beyond higher costs for shipping companies, affecting the movement and price of essential goods in communities dependent on maritime transport.

Yet the largest individual component of the region’s maritime investment requirement lies not in ports or vessels, but in the fuels that will power them.

Developing supply chains for alternative marine fuels could require approximately USD 433 billion through 2040. Green ammonia alone could require approximately USD 310 billion, followed by USD 81 billion for green methanol and USD 42 billion for renewable liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The scale of the required investment reflects how early the transition remains. More than 99 percent of marine fuel consumed in 2025 was still conventional fuel, while fuel accounts for approximately 40 to 60 percent of vessel operating costs, according to the report.

Transitioning away from those fuels requires more than replacing engines. New fuels must be produced, transported, stored, and ultimately supplied to vessels through new bunkering infrastructure at ports, effectively requiring the development of new maritime energy supply chains alongside the existing system.

The transition also presents a coordination challenge. Shipowners have limited incentive to pay premiums for dual-fuel vessels without confidence that alternative fuels will be widely available, while ports and fuel producers face similar uncertainty about investing in bunkering and production infrastructure without sufficient demand. The World Bank argues that predictable regulation and coordinated investment will be necessary to develop vessels, fuel production and port infrastructure simultaneously.

The nearly USD 900 billion investment requirement ultimately extends across every link of the maritime system. Ports will have to accommodate hundreds of millions of additional containers through a combination of new capacity, automation and basic infrastructure improvements, while aging domestic and regional fleets will require replacement on a massive scale. At the same time, the transition toward alternative fuels will require not only new vessels, but the development of entirely new production, storage, transport and bunkering networks.

Financing this maritime venture through 2040 is not the only challenge. The investment must be coordinated across ports, vessels, and fuel supply chains so that each leg of the network can develop alongside others, matching the volume of cargo that moves through rapidly growing region.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

 
CIVICUS discusses disinformation campaigns targeting the LGBTQI+ community in Armenia with Hripsime Kizogyan, Executive Director of Pink Armenia, a community-based organisation that defends the human rights of LGBTQI+ people and advocates for policy change.

Hripsime Kizogyan

What was the fake Pride campaign about?

In late January, online stories started appearing that claimed that Armenia’s first LGBTQI+ Pride march would take place in the capital, Yerevan, on 7 April, supported by our organisation and personally led by Nikol Pashinyan. The date was no accident, because 7 April is a religious holiday and Mother’s Day in Armenia.

None of it was true. The stories first appeared on a brand-new website that had been created only 11 days earlier. It used an AI-generated image of Pashinyan and disappeared shortly after. But the damage was done. Georgian and Turkish media outlets and dozens of Facebook and Twitter/X accounts had already picked up the story.

The same false campaign came back in April, this time amplified by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and Russian outlets. It came with two new claims, both equally false: that Pink Armenia helped write same-sex marriage into a supposedly leaked new draft of the Armenian constitution, and that we’re funded by the US Agency for International Development. We denied this publicly, but by then the story had travelled.

The fake Pride story was just one piece of a much bigger campaign against our organisation and, more broadly, against LGBTQI+ people. A fake account impersonating Pink Armenia on Twitter/X managed to buy a verification checkmark before being suspended. Someone also set up a lookalike domain and sent emails in the name of our former president, telling schools that an LGBTQI+ curriculum would be introduced in 2027.

We also know that foreign bloggers were approached and offered paid trips to Yerevan to publicly urge Pashinyan to ‘support Pride’ as a show of solidarity with Europe. Someone pasted images of same-sex couples on walls in Yerevan, then photographed them as ‘evidence’ of activism that wasn’t happening.

What was the campaign trying to achieve?

Whoever was behind the fake Pride campaign wanted two things: to provoke fear and hostility towards LGBTQI+ people and to damage the government and its pro-European course by association. The false claims reinforced a familiar storyline in which European integration will bring the imposition of ‘foreign values’ and LGBTQI+ rights are the leading edge of that imposition.

This rhetoric didn’t come out of nowhere. Across the region, anti-LGBTQI+ discourse is increasingly tied to anti-democratic narratives, attacks on civil society and conspiracy theories that portray human rights organisations as foreign agents and threats to national identity. The same thing happened in Moldova and elsewhere in the region, with LGBTQI+ rights used to split the electorate ahead of a vote.

Although Armenia isn’t like neighbouring countries where anti-LGBTQI+ campaigns are written into state policy, the election showed our community being used when politically convenient. That kind of rhetoric makes the public environment hostile, legitimises discrimination and creates conditions in which hate speech and violence become more socially acceptable.

What has changed, and what hasn’t, for LGBTQI+ rights in Armenia?

Some things have improved. Earlier this year, Pink Armenia was formally included in public advisory councils at the health, internal affairs, justice, and labour and social affairs ministries. This means we can now raise issues directly with them.

But the law hasn’t changed. Armenia still hasn’t recognised same-sex partnerships. There’s no anti-discrimination protection covering sexual orientation and gender identity in most areas of life. When someone is the victim of a hate crime just for being LGBTQI+, that still doesn’t count as an aggravating factor.

Social attitudes are the other barrier. LGBTQI+ people still face discrimination in education, employment, family settings and healthcare. Being open about who you are still carries a risk, so many people hide it or leave Armenia in search of safety.

How is Pink Armenia countering disinformation?

We monitor media and social media systematically, documenting disinformation and hate speech targeting LGBTQI+ people and tracking the politicians and outlets pushing it. This gives us the evidence to respond publicly, take issues to policymakers and, when needed, go to court.

When false claims about us circulate, we answer them directly. We issue public clarifications and work with independent fact-checkers such as the Fact Investigation Platform and Media.am.

On digital security, we report impersonating accounts and fraudulent lookalike domains so they get taken down, and we warn partner institutions such as schools when fake messages go out in our name.

What support does Armenian civil society need?

We need stronger international cooperation to deal with disinformation networks that operate across borders to spread anti-gender narratives. Sharing of advocacy strategies, best practices, digital security expertise and research would strengthen civil society across the region.

We also need long-term support, not just project funding that responds to one crisis at a time. We need funds that are sustainable and flexible enough to keep our services running while we react quickly to disinformation campaigns and security threats.

International partners can do something else too: keep raising discrimination, hate speech and attacks on civil society in their diplomatic conversations with Armenian authorities. Public attention and international scrutiny make it harder to treat these issues as optional.

Ultimately, supporting LGBTQI+ rights in Armenia isn’t only about one community. It’s about defending democratic values, protecting civic space and making sure no group is excluded from human rights because it has become a politically convenient target.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

GET IN TOUCH
Website
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube

SEE ALSO
Armenia: ‘Foreign interference was real and documented, but its impact is hard to measure’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Samvel Martirosyan 16.Jul.2026
Armenia’s westward turn overshadowed by personal rule CIVICUS Lens 18.Jun.2026
Armenia/Azerbaijan: ‘Civil society has an essential role in preparing societies for peace’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Konul De Moor 19.Sep.2025

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

An expert panel segment during the Fifty-eighth session of the Economic Commission for Africa Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, held from 28 March to 3 April 2026 in Tangier, Morocco. Credit: UNECA

By United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Jul 30 2026 (IPS)

Africa’s digital revolution is gathering pace, but the financing needed to sustain it remains uneven, fragmented, and often out of reach.

To bridge this gap, African multilateral financial institutions, policymakers, development partners, and private sector leaders are calling for a more coordinated, innovative, and better-structured financing approach to support Africa’s digital and technological transformation.

That was the central message from policymakers, financiers and development partners who convened on the sidelines of the 58th session of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, held in Morocco in April 2026.

Their conclusion was clear: Africa does not lack capital—it lacks the right kind of capital, deployed in the right way.

From artificial intelligence to digital infrastructure, the continent’s innovation sectors are expanding rapidly. Yet, access to affordable, long-term financing remains a major bottleneck, constraining growth and limiting impact.

Hanan Morsy, UN ECA’s Deputy Executive Secretary and Chief Economist

That gap, experts say, is holding back productivity gains, job creation and broader economic transformation.

Capital vs opportunity

Africa’s financial landscape is not devoid of resources. In fact, speakers at the event repeatedly emphasized a paradox: capital exists, but it is not flowing into innovation-driven sectors at the required scale.

According to Haytham Elmaayergi of the African Export-Import Bank, one of the continent’s leading multilateral lenders, the issue lies in the pipeline of viable investments.

“One of Africa’s key challenges is not a lack of capital, but a shortage of bankable projects and stronger institutional collaboration to scale investment,” he said, pointing to weak project preparation and limited institutional coordination as key constraints.

This disconnect is further compounded by high borrowing costs, currency volatility, and insufficient mechanisms to share risk—factors that deter both public and private investment.

For early-stage innovators, the challenge is even more acute. Venture financing remains thin, and traditional lenders are often reluctant to support projects perceived as high-risk.

“In the technology space, risk is harder to structure,” said Adeniran Aderogba, head of the Regional Maritime Development Bank, “we need more creative financing models and dedicated funds to support early-stage innovation.”

Africa’s innovation challenge is not a shortage of ideas. It is a shortage of long-term, affordable, and well-structured financing.

Rethinking how Africa finances innovation

Participants agreed that solving these challenges will require a shift away from traditional financing approaches toward more flexible, blended models.

Blended finance—combining public and private capital, guarantees and technical support—was highlighted as a critical tool to reduce risk and attract investment into emerging sectors. Co-financing arrangements and tailored instruments that reflect the unique risk-return profile of digital investments are also gaining traction.

But financing alone is not enough.

“Technology and innovation go beyond digital,” noted Robert Lisinge of UNECA. “We are talking about a broader ecosystem—including infrastructure, energy, and emerging technologies.”

This broader lens underscores the need for complementary investments in enabling systems: reliable electricity, robust connectivity, and supportive regulatory frameworks. Without these, even well-financed projects struggle to scale.

The role of African institutions

At the center of the conversation was the growing importance of African-led financial institutions in shaping the continent’s development trajectory.

The Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions—also known as the Africa Club—has emerged as a key platform for coordination. Established in 2024, the alliance brings together major African financial institutions with a combined balance sheet exceeding $70 billion.

Its members—including Afreximbank, the Africa Finance Corporation, and the Trade and Development Bank—are increasingly seen as critical players in mobilizing capital for large-scale development projects.

By strengthening collaboration among these institutions, participants said, Africa can better align financing with its strategic priorities and reduce reliance on external funding models that may not fully reflect local realities.

From dialogue to delivery

The Tangier discussions ended with a strong call for action: move beyond diagnosis and toward implementation.

Key priorities include reducing the cost of capital, expanding risk-sharing mechanisms, improving project preparation, and mobilizing long-term funding at scale. Equally important is strengthening collaboration among governments, financial institutions and development partners.

For Africa’s digital transformation to deliver on its promise, participants agreed, financing must become more coordinated, more innovative—and more responsive to the continent’s realities.

The stakes are high. With one of the world’s youngest populations and a rapidly expanding digital economy, Africa has a unique opportunity to leapfrog traditional development pathways.

But as the Tangier meeting made clear, realizing that potential will depend not just on how much money is available—but on how effectively it is used.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Time and again, evidence has shown that proactive investments in anticipatory action, preparedness and mitigation can reduce the negative impacts of extreme weather events while minimizing economic losses. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, US, Jul 29 2026 (IPS)

Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations put out an alert, warning countries around the world about an impending new El Niño  phase that is expected to significantly increase the likelihood of drought, heat waves, storms, and flooding and pose major risks to agriculture across multiple regions.

But this is not surprising, as in recent years, including 2026, droughts, storms, tornadoes, heat waves, and flooding have become increasingly frequent and severe.

These erratic and extreme weather events have resulted in the loss of lives, caused billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure, while inflicting devastating consequenses to crop production, food security, and agriculture, a sector that supports millions of livelihoods, provides employment, and contributes significantly to national economies in both the United States and globally.

Countries need to invest in developing anticipatory action plans, strengthen early warning and forecasting systems, and equip citizens and at-risk communities with practical solutions and mitigation strategies they can implement before these catastrophic weather events happen

The question then becomes, how can countries including the United States best prepare for these devastating extreme weather events that have such negative impacts on agriculture and food security?

First and foremost, countries need to invest in developing anticipatory action plans, strengthen early warning and forecasting systems, and equip citizens and at-risk communities with practical solutions and mitigation strategies they can implement before these catastrophic weather events happen.

Doing so is a win–win for everyone. Time and again, evidence has shown that proactive investments in anticipatory action plans, preparedness and mitigation reduce extreme weather events negative impacts while minimizing economic losses.

Complementing these forecasting systems would be the need for countries to develop national preparedness plans with the goal to protect food and agricultural supply chains from production through to consumption, before, during, and after extreme weather events.

Countries should also promote a culture of preparedness by encouraging its citizens, farmers, and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector to take anticipatory action before weather events happen. For example, in 2025, the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged producers to prepare for the hurricane season.

Taking anticipatory actions by farmers and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector can vary depending on resources and expected weather events. For example, if heatwaves and droughts are forecast, farmers can take anticipatory measures including planting drought tolerant crop varieties and using other innovative drought solutions. When flooding is expected, farmers can plant flooding tolerant varieties.

In parallel and beyond preparedness, countries must encourage farmers to adopt regenerative agriculture practices including cover cropping, reduced till and no till farming, crop rotations, pest management conservation system, mixed cropping and other soil health building strategies.

Collectively, these practices enhance soil health, improve water retention and ultimately strengthen agricultural crops’ ability to withstand heatwaves, drought, flooding and other extreme weather events.

Notably, agricultural research continues to reveal other effective approaches including harnessing beneficial soil microbes to improve crop production while strengthening plant resillience to droughts and other biotic and abiotic stressors.

Importantly, there is a continued need to invest in research and development. To stay ahead of the increasing weather events and their devastating impacts on agriculture, countries must continue to invest in science by funding research. Sadly, many countries continue to cut the federal budgets allocated for research and development beginning with the United States. This needs to change.

When scientists are funded and investments are made, researchers can continue to research not only the impacts of these weather events but also potential innovative solutions to address these challenges.

Alongside investing in research there is the need to invest in extension. Extension is the arm that allows for the last mile of research to be effective, since extension people work with communities to transfer research and to share the research discoveries.

Agricultural extension work with farmers to provide advice throughout the growing season suggesting changes and strategies farmers should take to ensure that crops survive the weather brought about challenges.

Finally, continued collaboration across sectors and countries is necessary to confront weather associated challenges impacting agriculture.

This includes forging creative partnerships that engage governments, federal and state funding agencies, research institutions and researchers in both public and private institutions, universities, growers, extension experts and agents, NGO’s and philanthropists.

Coordinated collaborations will go a long way to ensure that extreme weather events have minimal impacts on agriculture and food security.

At a time when unpredictable extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe, investing in developing anticipatory plans, early warning and forecasting systems, as well as developing preparedness plans and creative and innovative ways to disseminate available information, solutions and strategies to growers will go a long way in improving agricultural productivity while strengthening our ability to sustainably grow crops and meet our food security needs both today and in the years to come.

Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Ammar Mohammed Mahmoud Mohammed, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of the Sudan to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council meeting that heard reports of the Secretary-General on Sudan. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 2026 (IPS)

In the three years since the outbreak of the Sudanese Civil War, the humanitarian crisis has deteriorated significantly, with the United Nations underscoring a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law among warring parties. This includes the deliberate targeting of civilians in residential areas, widespread sexual violence, and attacks on critical infrastructure that have hindered aid efforts and pushed communities to the brink of collapse. To manage rising military expenses, the warring parties have increasingly relied on the exploitation of trade routes and territories, prompting humanitarian experts to express concern about a persistent, self-sustaining “war economy.”

“Sudan’s vast wealth of natural resources should benefit its people. Distressingly, what we are seeing today is anything but that. In fact, this wealth is only serving to undermine human rights and drive conflict, bringing pain and suffering on an enormous scale,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. “This war economy must be disrupted, and the international community must pay much closer attention to the commodities and trade routes that help keep it alive.”

On July 15, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a report titled Business and Human Rights in Conflict: Gum Arabic from Sudan, underscoring how the illicit trade of gum arabic is being exploited to fund the violent activities of both the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Beyond gum arabic, the report shows that warring parties are generating massive revenues from gold, livestock, and other commodities by seizing control of local extraction, transport, and trade routes.

Historically, gum arabic has been a critical economic staple for Sudan, serving as a key ingredient in food, drinks, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals around the world. Sourced from the bark and branches of the acacia tree, gum arabic acts as a lifeline for over five million people in Sudan and remains deeply embedded in local rural communities.

Before the eruption of hostilities in 2023, Sudan’s gum arabic trade accounted for roughly 70 to 80 percent of the global crude gum arabic exports, with annual exports reaching as high as USD $183 million. Today, the vast majority of acacia forests in Sudan—which form the country’s “gum arabic belt”—are located in regions that are largely under RSF and SAF control, such as Kordofan and Darfur.

The report found that rural communities relying on gum arabic for financial stability have faced numerous protection risks and severe human rights abuses—including looting, extortion, and arbitrary detention. This further compounds the struggles of their daily lives as they face shrinking access to basic services, such as food, clean water, education, and healthcare.

Traders working along corridors stretching through RSF-controlled sections of Darfur and Kordofan have experienced confiscation of goods, excessive taxation, and violence. Additionally, the report notes that considerable quantities of gum arabic have been redirected by the RSF from West Kordofan and Darfur to Souq al-Na‘am, South Sudan, Juba, Chad, Cameroon, and Kenya. Furthermore, the UN has reported that lootings of gum arabic conducted by the RSF are often used as a form of compensation rather than traditional salaries, with roughly 3,700 tonnes looted between January and June of 2024.

OHCHR noted that gold is also a primary driver of Sudan’s war economy, being considered “the most financially significant commodity in export terms”, as well as a major source of revenue for the RSF and SAF. Figures from the Central Bank of Sudan and the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company show that in 2024, roughly 65 tonnes of gold were produced in SAF-controlled areas, including 28 tonnes that were exported through Port Sudan. This generated approximately USD $1.6 billion in revenue, contributing to 48.5 percent of the nation’s annual exports.

Despite gold production climbing to 70 tonnes in 2025, considerable portions of the gross output have been smuggled outside of the country. According to the report, in 2024, only 52 percent of the annual gold exports were passed through formal export channels. Additionally, RSF-affiliated economic entities continue to extract and trade gold from Darfur and Kordofan, with the RSF seizing over 1.3 tonnes of unrefined gold early in the conflict.

“Gold is the most important and decisive financial driver, while gum arabic provides supporting liquidity and demonstrates how the war has extended into agricultural commodities and global trade routes,” said Dr Abdelmonem Mukhtar, Executive Director of the Centre for Evidence and Data-Based Policy. “If it is established that a supply chain contributes directly or indirectly to financing parties to the conflict, regulatory, civil or ethical responsibilities may arise, in addition to reputational and commercial risks.”

Emphasizing the need for more rigid oversight, Türk called on UN member states to strengthen accountability and monitoring measures to ensure that commodity trade in Sudan does not fund violations of international humanitarian law, but rather helps to alleviate the suffering of civilians. He also urged corporations to prioritize human rights.

“Companies cannot continue business as usual when sourcing from conflict-affected value chains,” Türk said. “They should undertake heightened, conflict-sensitive human rights due diligence, including stronger scrutiny of routes, intermediaries, documentation and possible re-labelling, and ensure that affected people have access to safe and effective grievance and response mechanisms.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

A view of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Credit: Unsplash/Ekrem Osmanoglu

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 2026 (IPS)

On Wednesday, July 22, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, and Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy, HRH Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman bin Abdulaziz signed a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, best known as a 123 agreement, as well as an accompanying bilateral safeguards agreement, according to the U.S. Department of Energy and the Saudi Ministry of Energy.

While the agreement was expected to be submitted to Congress for review, President Donald Trump has conditioned U.S. nuclear cooperation on Riyadh, normalizing relations with Israel in order to receive U.S. nuclear technology. A condition that appears difficult to satisfy given the Kingdom’s hardline stance that it will not normalize relations with Israel until a Palestinian state is established with East Jerusalem as its capital, according to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader.

Washington mentions that these two agreements “lay the legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership that advances several priority economic and strategic objectives, including nuclear nonproliferation.” The agreement has a 30-year term.

The 123 agreement, named after Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 – a U.S. federal law – provides the legal framework for long-term civilian nuclear cooperation between the United States and partner countries. The 123 agreement is mandatory before any significant exports of U.S.-origin nuclear material, such as nuclear reactors, nuclear fuel, and other major components can go to any partner.

Saudi Arabia’s nuclear agreement with the U.S. is more than an energy deal. It has the potential to reshape the Kingdom’s relationship with oil, and its geopolitical role in building the Middle East’s next-generation clean-energy infrastructure.

The advent of nuclear energy could also free up the amount of hydrocarbons Saudi Arabia can export. The Kingdom produced 22,744,529.0 TJ of oil and oil products in 2023, having consumed 6.4 million TJ domestically, equivalent to approximately 28 percent of its production. The Kingdom also produced 3,640,348.0 TJ of natural gas, having consumed all of its domestically produced natural gas that year. For reference, 3,600 TJ is equal to 1 TWh.

Expressed in barrels of oil equivalent (boe), Saudi Arabia produced the energy equivalent to 3.72 billion barrels of oil, in oil and oil products in 2023, consuming 1.05 billion barrels of that oil. This indicates that roughly 72 percent of the Kingdom’s oil and oil products, measured in energy terms, are not domestically consumed, leaving a substantial share available for exports and other uses. Saudi Arabia is the world’s second to third largest exporter of oil, producing 11 percent of global demand.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), transport accounts for roughly 30 percent of Saudi Arabia’s final energy consumption, followed by non-energy uses (29.7 percent), industry (19.9 percent), and commercial and public services (11 percent).

Although the pace at which Saudi Arabia can transition away from fossil fuels remains uncertain, nuclear power could gradually reduce domestic oil consumption, freeing up oil for export. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), a reactor can take about five or more years to be built after licensing and regulatory approvals are already completed.

Saudi Arabia’s first nuclear plant is expected to consist of two reactors, each producing around 1.4 GW, bringing the plant to a total capacity of 2.8 GW (2,800 MW). Assuming a 90 percent capacity factor, annual energy generation will be 22.1 TWh per year, nearly five percent of Saudi Arabia’s 431.9 TWh electricity generation.

Although Saudi Arabia’s first nuclear plant would account for only about 5 percent of the Kingdom’s current electricity generation, it would represent an important step toward reducing domestic hydrocarbon consumption in support of the country’s national strategy, Vision 2030.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Student-made posters and artwork line the streets of Jantar Mantar, capturing messages of resistance and hope. Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS

By Aishwarya Bajpai
NEW DELHI, Jul 27 2026 (IPS)

On July 25, after 50 days of protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned.

The movement had begun in May as a satirical social media page called the Cockroach Janta Party, founded by Abhijeet Dipke after the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, used the term “cockroaches” during a Supreme Court hearing, apparently referring to young people with fake law degrees, but his remark sparked a massive public backlash.

Weeks later, the NEET-UG paper (for admission into medical colleges) leaked, and alleged irregularities in the Central Board of Secondary Education on-screen marking process transformed satire into a nationwide campaign.

On June 6, Dipke called for a sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar, demanding Pradhan’s resignation. But by the time the protest entered its seventh week, the movement had outgrown its original demand – and many argue that replacing one minister will not restore faith in an education system battered by paper leaks, administrative failures and growing privatisation.

The crowd reflected that evolution.

Protesters gather at the main stage at Jantar Mantar, where peaceful demonstrations and slogans continued throughout the sit-in. The stage later became the focal point of the movement as education reformer Sonam Wangchuk began his indefinite hunger strike. Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS

The seat of the protest, Jantar Mantar, had become far more than a student protest. Farmers stood beside parents, young professionals, senior citizens, queer activists and wage labourers. Volunteers distributed food, arranged train tickets for protesters travelling home and coordinated donations. People travelled from across India, while a handful of foreign nationals joined in solidarity. Despite their different backgrounds, they shared one belief — that the crisis threatened the future of public education itself.

Ashutosh Agarwal (centre), national vice-president of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, India’s Youth Wing, stands with colleagues from Meerut in solidarity with the student-led movement. Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS

The seriousness and urgency are also reflected in the numbers. India has recorded 152 examination paper leaks in the past decade – roughly one every month. In 2026 alone, more than 20 million candidates appeared for NEET-UG, while reports of the leak were followed by the deaths of nearly 20 aspirants by suicide. Yet clearing these examinations offers no certainty. According to the State of Working India 2026 report by Azim Premji University, nearly 40% of graduates aged 15–25 remain unemployed, while unemployment among graduates aged 25–29 stands at 20%. Although the country produced 5 million graduates each year between 2004/05 and 2023, only 2.8 million found employment.

As the protests grew, they also drew support from opposition leaders, public figures and education reformers, expanding the movement beyond student circles.

The turning point came on June 28, when education reformer Sonam Wangchuk joined the sit-in with an indefinite hunger strike. CJP announced a march to Parliament on July 20, the opening day of the Monsoon Session. Later, on 18^th July, Delhi Police removed Wangchuk from the protest site and admitted him to Safdarjung Hospital for medical observation, a move his family described as forced hospitalisation against his wishes.

What followed altered the course of the movement.

On July 20, police and the Rapid Action Force dispersed marchers using batons, tear gas, water cannons and pellet guns. Protesters alleged that some lathis were studded with nails, while the RAF’s own chief later admitted that “excessive force” had been used during the operation.

Nazia Khanam (left) and her friend travelled across Delhi to join the protest. Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS

Instead of dispersing the protesters, however, the crackdown brought more people to Jantar Mantar.

Nineteen-year-old Anshil Khan was among those who returned.

A first-year student at Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University, he had spent nearly three weeks at the protest. Four days earlier, he said, police had beaten him while demonstrators were trying to march towards Parliament Street. Even as he spoke, he carried hospital reports documenting his injuries.

“I got hit three times by the Delhi police,” he said. “I have been resting for four days, and today I have come back.”

He recalled crossing two barricades before police stopped the march at the third.

“We were peacefully protesting and only raising slogans of “Inquilab Zindabad” (Long Live Revolution). Nothing violent happened from our side.”

Delhi Police had issued a public advisory before the march stating that no permission had been granted for any procession beyond the designated protest site and later maintained that officers were enforcing prohibitory orders. Officials also said that both protesters and security personnel suffered injuries during the clashes.

For Anshil, however, the police action only strengthened public support.

“The students are coming along with their parents now,” he said, referring to the days following Wangchuk’s detention and the July 20 crackdown.

Anshil Khan, a member of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), joins fellow protesters at Jantar Mantar. Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS

His demands had also evolved.

“Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation is the first step,” he said. “Education is our first priority.”

That sentiment surfaced repeatedly across conversations at Jantar Mantar. Protesters were no longer speaking only about accountability for one minister; they were debating how India’s education system itself should function.

Standing nearby with a placard reading “We are fighting for our rights,” Nazia Khanam had travelled across Delhi to join the demonstration, despite never having been directly affected by an examination scandal.

A law student from Jodhpur interning in the capital, Khanam had successfully cleared the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT). But with her younger sister now preparing for the same examination, she felt she could not remain on the sidelines.

“Being an elder sister of a student who is going to give a competitive exam, it becomes my responsibility,” she said. “Even though I’m not personally affected, I should still come here and raise my voice.”

Unlike many demonstrations driven solely by outrage, Khanam arrived with ideas for reform.

“There should be stricter checks and balances at every bureaucratic level,” she said, referring to agencies such as the National Testing Agency, examination centres and other bodies involved in conducting competitive exams.

She also questioned how education policy is made.

“There should be other stakeholders involved,” she said. “Educators who have done actual groundwork, who know the ground reality, should be part of consultations before policies are formulated like Sonam Wangchuk.”

That conversation had drawn unexpected allies.

Among those standing with the students was Ashutosh Agarwal, National Vice-President of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, India’s youth wing. Before arriving in Delhi, he said, the union had organised meetings across Meerut, Muzaffarnagar and other parts of western Uttar Pradesh to mobilise support for the students.

“We demand one nation, one education,” he said.

For Agarwal, the increasing commercialisation of essential public services was inseparable from the examination crisis.

“We demand the end of privatisation of both education and health,” he said. “Otherwise paper leaks won’t stop.”

He argued that growing corporate influence over private schools, colleges and hospitals had weakened public institutions, making quality education increasingly inaccessible.

Parents had reached a similar conclusion.

Alisha Siddique came to Jantar Mantar thinking about her three children, particularly her daughter pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree. Unlike many protesters, she did not begin with paper leaks. Instead, she pointed to the everyday rules that, in her view, unfairly punish students.

“If students reach one or two minutes late because of an accident or emergency, they are not allowed to sit for the exam,” she said. “Their entire year’s hard work goes to waste.”

For Siddique, the issue was larger than examinations.

“We want our children to become good citizens,” she said. “That starts with good education.”

The examination crisis merely provided the spark for Avinash Kumar, a human rights practitioner and activist who is the former Executive Director of Amnesty International India and the Director of Policy, Research and Campaigns at Oxfam India.

“The constant leaking cauldron of competitive exams provided that cause,” he said. “Yet everyone knows it’s now not just about that.”

According to Kumar, the protests became an outlet for frustrations that had accumulated over years — declining public services, rising costs, increasing privatisation, shrinking civic freedoms and a growing sense that institutions no longer worked for ordinary citizens.

“You need a cause which cuts across classes and masses, age and gender and religion,” he said. “Competitive exams became that cause.”

What struck Kumar most was not just the scale of the demonstrations in Delhi but also the emergence of protests in places that rarely make national headlines.

“My attention was particularly drawn towards mass-scale showings in small unknown towns like Begusarai, Narnaul and Aurangabad,” he said. “All were speaking in one language of years of frustration.”

To him, that distinguished this movement from many previous protests.

Rather than revolving around one organisation or one political leader, it drew strength from multiple voices – student leaders, education reformers, farmers, parents, opposition politicians and ordinary citizens – each contributing from their own experience.

“It is a movement with very different leaders at different points of time,” Kumar said.

Two days after resignation, the protest site is almost empty.

The questions raised over 50 days of protest — about accountability, privatisation, public education and the future promised to India’s youth — remain standing.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau

A man walks past a sign reading 'unjustly persecuted' featuring journalist José Rubén Zamora, former CICIG lawyer Claudia González and Maya leaders Luis Pacheco and Héctor Chaclan in a Guatemala City, 12 May 2026. Credit: Johan Ordóñez/AFP

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jul 24 2026 (IPS)

José Rubén Zamora, founder of elPeriódico, Guatemala’s now-defunct leading investigative newspaper, spent 1,295 days in detention before a court granted him house arrest on 12 February. He endured long stretches of solitary confinement in a military jail, held in near-constant darkness and subjected to treatment that six UN experts warned could amount to torture. His offence was simply doing his job. For decades, he exposed the corrupt dealings of Guatemala’s economic and political elites. Prosecutors are still trying to send him back to prison.

Police arrested Zamora in July 2022 on a complaint brought by a former banker who was under investigation for financial crimes, following Zamora’s reporting on corruption under then President Alejandro Giammattei. Within months, elPeriódico had shut down following intimidation of its advertisers and criminalisation of its staff. A court convicted Zamora of money laundering in June 2023, and when an appeals court overturned the conviction, a second case kept him in jail anyway. Courts ordered his release several times, and each time appeals chambers reversed those decisions. The Supreme Court transferred a judge who ruled to free him to a court in another part of Guatemala. At least 10 lawyers who took up his defence were forced to abandon it under pressure. Some were prosecuted and jailed.

In May 2024, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared Zamora’s detention arbitrary and retaliatory and recommended his immediate release. It took almost two more years for him to be allowed home. In March, the Supreme Court voided the rulings that had returned him to prison, finding they violated due process. The Constitutional Court heard the prosecution’s latest appeal to send him back to jail in June, but has yet to issue its ruling.

The machinery of impunity

Zamora’s ordeal is no aberration; it’s how captured institutions are designed to work. The Guatemalan state has long been in the hands of what Guatemalans call ‘the pact of the corrupt’, a coalition of business leaders, drug traffickers, military officers and politicians that has captured the justice system to guarantee their own impunity. Anyone who threatens that arrangement risks prosecution on fabricated charges, reinforced by coordinated smear campaign. This includes journalists who investigate corruption, judges and prosecutors who pursue it, and Indigenous, land rights and climate activists who mobilise against its consequences. The aim, as a Guatemalan civil society leader put it, is to instil fear so nobody dares question anything. Over 100 people, including around 50 judges and prosecutors, have fled into exile rather than face trumped-up charges.

Because the justice system serves the corrupt pact rather than the law, any serious attempt to dismantle corruption has required external support. In 2006, the UN and the Guatemalan government agreed to establish the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Over 12 years, CICIG and the Public Prosecutor’s Office investigated over 70 complex criminal structures and brought charges against more than 1,540 people, including former presidents, ministers, members of Congress and business figures. This challenged the perception that the powerful were untouchable.

But success sealed its fate. When CICIG investigated sitting president Jimmy Morales in 2017, he moved to destroy it, refusing to renew its mandate and appointing a compliant attorney general, Consuelo Porras. President Giammattei reappointed Porras, who prosecuted or forced out dozens of judges and prosecutors who had worked with CICIG. She turned the Public Prosecutor’s Office into an instrument of persecution while dismissing 74 per cent of the complaints filed with it without investigating them. By the time her term ended in May, over 40 states had sanctioned her and some associates. The institution built to prosecute crime had become the state’s key tool for committing it.

New president, same system

Guatemalans elected Bernardo Arévalo in 2023 with a mandate to dismantle this system, but the system has consistently tried to disable him. His unexpected win – he scraped into the runoff largely because the establishment had not seen him as a serious enough threat to block – triggered what civil society described as an attempted electoral coup, with spurious legal complaints, raids on his party’s headquarters and at least two credible assassination plots. It took 106 days of peaceful resistance led by Indigenous authorities to ensure he was sworn in.

But taking office was not the same as taking power. Arévalo’s party had only 23 of 160 congressional seats, and its legal status was subsequently cancelled by judicial order. Congress blocked the legislative change that would have allowed him to dismiss Porras, and the Supreme Court, 13 of whose judges were selected in 2024 through a process stacked with candidates tied to corruption networks, refused to lift her immunity. Throughout Arévalo’s term, the Public Prosecutor’s Office continued to criminalise dissent and repeatedly tried to strip Arévalo of immunity.

A narrow window

But Porras’s term eventually expired, and his successor, Gabriel García Luna, a career judge with no ties to corruption networks, has moved quickly, dismissing prosecutors linked to Porras and closing the special prosecutor’s office that fabricated cases against Zamora and many others. His arrival offers the first genuine opening in eight years. But it’s a narrow one. Congress remains in opposition hands, and the Constitutional Court, the Comptroller General’s Office and the electoral authority are all due for renewal this year. Corrupt interests are well placed to exploit these processes to entrench their grip.

Much now depends on whether Arévalo throws his political weight behind García Luna’s efforts to rebuild the institution Porras weaponised, and whether the bodies up for renewal can be kept out of the corrupt pact’s hands. The clearest sign of change will come if Zamora and the dozens of others criminalised for exposing corruption and defending rights no longer face prosecution, and instead their persecutors face justice.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Research and Analysis, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report. She is also a Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War brought together more than 200 of the world’s most authoritative figures on peace and artificial intelligence. Here the 'The Rome Declaration for a Disarmed and Disarming Peace' was signed in the main council chamber in Rome's city hall Campidoglio. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

By Ariel F. Dumont
ROME, Jul 24 2026 (IPS)

After two days of debate at an international conference devoted to the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI), nuclear war and global security, Nobel laureates, former heads of state and government, scientists, human rights defenders, religious leaders and representatives of civil society adopted a joint declaration, calling for it to be based on human dignity.

Inspired by Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas and signed in the halls of the Capitol, Rome’s city hall, this text states that artificial intelligence cannot be left solely to military or commercial interests. It also calls for international cooperation based on human dignity, the development of global AI governance and the continuation of efforts towards nuclear disarmament.

As major powers are investing increasingly substantial sums in the development of AI, participants considered that humanity stands at a genuine crossroads. The choices that will be made will have a decisive impact not only on tomorrow’s geopolitical balances but also on the future and place of human beings in a world where decisions could increasingly be entrusted to artificial intelligence.

This point was highlighted by Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, the master of ceremonies of this meeting, organised by the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War, who described it as historic.

The declaration, named “The Rome Declaration for a Disarmed and Disarming Peace”, was signed on Thursday, July 16.

For Rome’s mayor, “the crucial issue, both at the global and local levels, is technological development, which must be inspired by fundamental ethical principles: respect for individuals, equality among human beings and democratic responsibility in the name of the common good.”

Gualtieri also stressed that today, more than ever, “the world needs an international coalition capable of promoting a new model of development combining economic growth, social justice, human rights and environmental protection”, thus echoing Pope Leo XIV’s call for “a disarmed and disarming peace”.

A few hours earlier, Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, had warned against the development of autonomous weapons.

“The idea that decisions to kill could be made by machines is repugnant to us.”

Delegates at the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War pose in the main council chamber in Rome’s city hall Campidoglio. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

According to Callamard, the danger does not lie in an artificial intelligence that would suddenly become conscious but rather in the decision to delegate to it responsibilities that belong exclusively to moral judgement.

“It is not that the machine decides that it will become the boss; it is we who programme these systems,” she explained.

For the head of Amnesty International, the growing integration of AI into military operations represents a major change. These systems can already analyse enormous quantities of data, identify targets and recommend strikes, while gradually reducing the need for human intervention.

Beyond autonomous weapons, the Callamard reminded the world that it must pay close attention to the implications of the progressive integration of AI into what the military calls, in its jargon, the “kill chain”, meaning the process from target identification to the conduct of an operation.

“Even when a human being officially retains the final decision, the growing dependence on automated systems profoundly changes the way military operations are prepared and conducted,” Callamard stated, adding that these technologies rely on immense volumes of data that may themselves be altered.

“Analyses and recommendations can be biased because they are based on data that themselves carry these biases. We must remain attentive to the risks arising from erroneous or discriminatory decisions in contexts where the consequences can be irreversible.”

Another danger: the multiplication of force. Thanks to artificial intelligence, a single operator could simultaneously supervise dozens, or even hundreds, of drones or other autonomous systems, considerably increasing military capabilities.

“These technological developments are taking place within a broader context of strategic competition between states. We are living in a period when many governments are seeking military hegemony,” Callamard concluded.

Beyond military issues, several speakers also insisted on the geopolitical consequences of this technological revolution. Romano Prodi, former president of the European Commission and former Italian prime minister, estimated that the growing rivalry between the United States and China considerably complicates the emergence of genuine international regulation.

In an increasingly fragmented world, Prodi warned, no nation will be able to address alone the challenges linked to artificial intelligence, global security or the control of ever more powerful technologies.

These words anticipated the essence of the final declaration, according to which international cooperation is now an indispensable condition for preventing artificial intelligence from fuelling a new arms race and widening geopolitical fractures.

The discussions also focused on the economic and social consequences of this technological revolution. In the world of work, the sudden arrival of AI is already raising many concerns, particularly regarding the professional future of younger generations and the profound transformation of several professions in the coming years.

The programme brought together a number of leading international figures, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Chief Advisor to Bangladesh Muhammad Yunus; Yoshiyuki Nagaoka, Executive Director of the Office of Public Affairs at Soka Gakkai; Filipino journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa; Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard; and several scientists and nuclear experts.

Research published by King’s College London shows that a study carried out on hundreds of millions of job advertisements across 39 countries reveals an average 6.1% decline in job offers in professions most exposed to automation, while the remaining positions require increasingly specialised skills.

Ultimately, what will remain of this conference and of the Rome Declaration? The main point to remember is that participants accept the development of artificial intelligence and do not believe it should frighten us. On the contrary, they consider that this technology can become a powerful driver of progress – provided, however, that it remains at the service of humanity. The ball is therefore in the court of states and their leaders, who must above all place human dignity at the forefront.

The real question is no longer only what artificial intelligence will make possible, but rather what limits societies and humanity as a whole will choose to set for it before the imperatives of power permanently override collective responsibility.

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau

Satellite image of the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb strait being at the bottom right opening. Credit: Wikimedia/NASA

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 24 2026 (IPS)

With regional friction between Iran and the Gulf monarchies escalating, Houthi leadership in Yemen has proclaimed a total maritime blockade against all vessels linked to Saudi shipping. While this declaration does not constitute a verified military obstruction of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, it significantly heightens the risk of volatility at the Red Sea’s southern gateway, potentially severing the primary arterial link to the Suez Canal.

The embargo is already being framed as more than a simple ban on Saudi-flagged vessels. In messages sent to shipping companies navigating the Strait, the Houthis warned against any activities at Saudi ports, including by non-Saudi-flagged ships, saying that vessels could be targeted “in any location.” This is significant as Saudi Arabia’s maritime infrastructure managed 331 million tonnes of freight in 2024—a volume roughly equal to 12 million fully laden 20-foot containers.

Within days of these threats being made, five ships have been recorded turning around after heading towards the Bab el-Mandeb passage. Among these ships, the Xin Long Yang, a VLCC loaded at Yanbu and bound for Qinzhou, China, carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude, initially reversed north towards the Suez Canal. The vessel later reversed course again, choosing to resume its original route heading south towards Bab el-Mandeb.

Additionally, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said that two Saudi oil tankers, named Encelia and Layla, were targeted for their “violation of the blockade decision issued by the armed forces.”

Jeddah Islamic Port, the Kingdom’s principal commercial gateway on the Red Sea, received 3,805 vessel calls in 2024, more than any other Saudi port. Yanbu has become Saudi Arabia’s critical Red Sea oil-export network, where crude is moved from eastern fields using the East–West pipeline before being loaded onto tankers. With the Strait of Hormuz severely disrupted, the Red Sea corridor is no longer simply an alternative route: it is Saudi Arabia’s critical remaining maritime outlet to Asian markets.

Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu port was loading approximately 4 million b/d in mid-July, close to 4 percent of daily global oil demand. Disruptions at Bab el-Mandeb would also affect the Suez Canal, which carried approximately 22 percent of global seaborne container trade in 2023 and acts as the link between European and Asian markets. Of the cargo which transits through Bab el-Mandeb, 3.97 million b/d of crude passed through its gates in March, according to Kpler.

If the Houthis can continue to enforce their threat and create enough uncertainty, even selective attacks on some vessels can increase wartime insurance costs and undermine security guarantees, which could push carriers to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.

Credit: Maximilian Malawista

For an Asia–Europe container voyage, rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope can add roughly 3,000 to 3,500 nautical miles and approximately seven to ten days of sailing time. This also increases the cost of the voyage, heightening fuel costs, requiring more vessel capacity to maintain scheduled services, and exposing cargo to higher insurance premiums. The World Bank has estimated that the additional fuel bill alone could reach USD 1 million for a round trip. Analysis by the OECD put the wider cost increase at USD 1.7 million for a medium-sized container ship on an Asia–Europe round trip—roughly an increase of USD 272, or 19 percent, for one standard 40-foot container.

In late 2023, similar Houthi threats, which led to selective attacks against commercial vessels, led major carriers to avoid the Red Sea passage and use the alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope. In just three months, by mid-February 2024, UNCTAD had recorded 586 container vessels taking the longer route around Africa, while container tonnage moving through the Suez Canal had simultaneously fallen 82 percent. Spot rates—the price of booking a container on short notice—also rose by 256 percent during the same period on voyages from Shanghai to Europe.

The Suez Canal in Egypt. Credit: Unsplash/Samuel Hanna

For Yemen, the consequences could be especially severe. The country relies on imports for more than 90 percent of its staple foods, including about 90 percent of its wheat and all of its rice requirements. Much of that supply enters through the ports of Aden and Hodeidah. The World Food Programme estimates that 18.2 million people in Yemen require humanitarian aid, being in dire need of humanitarian assistance and protection services.

Even considering that the Houthis formally exempt humanitarian cargo from the embargo, an escalation of insecurity can delay vessels and raise freight and insurance costs, deterring commercial shipping lines from calling at Yemeni ports. Humanitarian aid will not be nearly enough to replace the normal commercial flow of food and fuel, which affects Yemeni civilians first, who are already facing hunger and economic collapse.

The central question is not whether the Houthis can permanently seal Bab el-Mandeb. It is whether they can make the route risky enough that insurers, carriers, and oil traders abandon it themselves.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Investments in jobs, basic services and community infrastructure can reduce the pressures that drive displacement in Myanmar. Credit: UNDP Myanmar

By Norimasa Shimomura
YANGON, Myanmar, Jul 24 2026 (IPS)

When asked what development looks like today, a community leader in Kalaw township points to these fields. Once destroyed by a typhoon, they are now productive again. What began as emergency food assistance in the first month was followed by UNDP support in the community—seeds, training, debris removal, support to microbusinesses and small infrastructure—backed by the Republic of Korea, Norway and Switzerland. One year on, the fields sustain three annual production cycles—rice and flowers—with more resilient practices and higher yields. “This is what development looks like to us,” he says.

Communities in Myanmar today are not facing a single crisis. They are facing many, and layered on top of one another, recurring over time. Conflict, insecurity, economic uncertainty, market volatility and climate- and disaster-related shocks do not occur in isolation. Global crises are placing added pressure on already-stretched humanitarian and development financing. Together, these dynamics reinforce one another, creating a cycle that is harder to break. These protracted, compounding crises are reshaping the country’s social and economic fabric and putting communities under enormous stress.

Myanmar shows why separating humanitarian action from development no longer fits reality. Relief keeps people alive, but it will not on its own restart livelihoods, steady local services, increase risk preparedness or reduce the pressures that drive displacement. The smarter play is to link emergency support to a continuum of recovery, stabilization and longer-term development, backing community systems and local markets so today’s spending also buys a more durable future.

A crisis that feeds on itself

Myanmar is fragmented: conflict in too many areas, economic freefall in others, and climate shocks across the country—from floods and droughts to rising temperatures and environmental loss. But these pressures are connected. When livelihoods collapse, people move. When insecurity rises, local economies contract. When disasters hit, already-fragile services give way. Families then face hard trade-offs; taking on high-interest debt, moving to precarious urban fringes, attempting risky migration, or turning to illicit markets.

For many, participation in informal, and sometimes criminal economies is less a choice than a last resort. Others flee, often towards cities such as Yangon. But urban areas are already under strain. In peri-urban Yangon, poverty rates are estimated to be around 50 percent, and new arrivals stretch housing, services and jobs further, deepening vulnerability and inequality. Women shoulder this burden most heavily, with women-headed households in peri-urban areas more likely to have lower incomes, depend on precarious and poorly paid employment, and facing heightened safety concerns.

This is how the crisis sustains itself. Conflict and violence breed insecurity; insecurity forces people from their homes and pushes some into illicit economies; displacement fractures livelihoods and the resulting economic hardship reinforces instability. And so the cycle continues.

The limits of a humanitarian-only response

Myanmar has received humanitarian aid for decades. It remains essential. People need immediate support for food, shelter and protection. But the challenges Myanmar faces today are not only humanitarian. They are structural and long-term. When support can only be planned and financed in short cycles, it can help people survive, but without enabling them to rebuild livelihoods, restore services or reduce future risk. This can create dependence on humanitarian aid without a clear exit.

The question is no longer whether humanitarian support is needed—it clearly is—but whether it is sufficient on its own, and how development can help build resilience. To break the cycle, investments must also focus on recovery, livelihoods, risk preparedness, access to finance and local systems. The bridge between humanitarian action and development must be deliberately built. UNDP in Myanmar has designed a new phase of its Community First Programme backing community-led solutions that can absorb shocks now while laying foundations for medium- and longer-term development.

Where the bridge matters most

There are three areas where this bridge is critical.

By combining community-based approaches with more targeted economic interventions, it is possible to offer a more comprehensive response in a protracted crisis. Credit: UNDP Myanmar

First, livelihoods and early recovery. Investments in jobs, basic services and community infrastructure can reduce the pressures that drive displacement. When people have viable ways to earn a living, they are less likely to move out of necessity. This also reduces the burden on humanitarian systems and can be an immediate stabilizing factor.

Second, local systems and community capacity. Even in constrained contexts, support to community-level structures can have a powerful effect. It enables people to manage their own recovery, strengthens local decision-making and builds a sense of ownership. It helps communities to think longer term and create some community wealth. These are the building blocks of future governance.

Third, economic alternatives to illicit activity. When large parts of local economies in some regions operate in grey or black markets, the implications go beyond livelihoods, they affect national and regional security. Creating alternatives—through job creation, support to small businesses and financing—gives people options. It reduces reliance on illicit networks, lowers risks of exploitation and opens pathways for more sustainable economic activity. These directly affect stability within Myanmar and across its borders.

Navigating a complex funding landscape

Despite the clear need to bridge humanitarian and development approaches, funding structures often work against it. In Myanmar, much of the available funding is still categorized as humanitarian. This creates challenges for organizations with strong development expertise, which must adapt their language and delivery models to fit short-term funding criteria.

At the same time, partner expectations are evolving, but not always consistently. Some continue to fund purely humanitarian outputs. Others expect development impact from humanitarian interventions. Still others fund development but want to demonstrate humanitarian impact.

This creates a fragmented landscape: humanitarian funding for humanitarian results, humanitarian funding seeking development impact, development funding framed as humanitarian and, more rarely, development funding investing directly in long-term results.

Navigating this requires flexibility and clarity of purpose. Development actors must be able to articulate the longer-term impact of their work, even when operating in a humanitarian context. The value lies precisely in that distinction: connecting immediate interventions to sustained recovery and future stability.

A window of opportunity

There are signs of change. Some partners are beginning to recognize that continued investment in short-term relief, without parallel investments in recovery and livelihoods, is not sustainable.

This creates an opportunity. By combining community-based approaches with more targeted economic interventions—jobs, enterprise development, access to finance, climate and energy solutions—it is possible to offer a more comprehensive response in a protracted crisis context, one that addresses both immediate needs and underlying drivers of crisis. But this window may not remain open indefinitely. As other actors reposition and global priorities shift, the space for shaping this agenda could narrow.

Looking ahead

Myanmar’s challenges are complex but the direction of response is clear. Humanitarian aid remains indispensable. But on its own, it cannot break cycles of crisis that are structural and self-reinforcing.

Bridging humanitarian action and development is how people regain agency. It is how communities stabilize. And ultimately, it is how countries begin to move beyond crisis—not just survive it.

Norimasa Shimomura is UNDP Resident Representative in Myanmar.
Source: UNDP

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Amir Saeid Iravani, Permanent Representative of Iran to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council high-level debate on the safety of global waterways, amid growing concerns over threats to shipping and freedom of navigation, held on April 27, 2026. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 23 2026 (IPS)

Prior to the latest round of hostilities between the United States and Iran, freight traffic had been increasing in the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations were underway for a new agreement to fully restore trade through this channel.

According to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), energy markets were likely to bounce back to normal pre-conflict levels faster than that of food, public finance, and transport, leaving many vulnerable economies worse off. UNCTAD research shows a change from about 125 daily ship transits through the Strait of Hormuz in 2026, January 1st through February 27th, to a drop of around 10 daily transits from February 28th through June 14th during the conflict, marking a 92 percent decrease in overall transit ability.

According to UNCTAD and the Strait of Hormuz monitor, levels on June 2nd recorded around 40 ship transits, with an average of 60 through the days after signing the MOU (The Memorandum of Understanding signed by both US and Iranian delegations). This represents roughly half of pre-conflict transit levels.

Source: Author’s visualizations using data from Strait of Hormuz Trade Tracker (WTO)
Note: Daily outbound shipments represent AIS-traceable crude oil tanker departures from the Strait of Hormuz to destinations outside the Persian Gulf. Additionally, this graph is roughly similar to overall shipments of LNG, fertilizer, and Agricultural products through the same period.

Following the closure of the Strait, the daily price of crude oil jumped to USD 120 per barrel, then averaged around USD 100 per barrel throughout the conflict. The daily price of crude oil fell to USD 70 per barrel upon the signing of the MOU, roughly returning to pre-conflict levels. However, following the latest escalations and the breaking of the MOU, crude prices have risen again to approximately USD 100, indicating that agreements to cease conflicts can quickly bring prices down significantly, if agreed to once more.

On the contrary, the IGC Grains and Oilseeds Freight index (GOFI), indicates a slow decrease of the heightened costs of transporting both grains and oilseeds by sea (e.g., Wheat, Corn, Barley, Sorghum, Soybeans, Rapeseed (canola), Sunflower seed), across 68 key exporting origins in the regions of the United States, The European Union, Canada, the Black Sea region, Brazil, Australia, and Argentina.

Source: Author’s visualizations using data from the International Grains Council (IGC).
Note: The index is normalized so that 100 represents the average grain and oilseed freight rate on January 1, 2013. During the conflict, the index rose to approximately 190, representing a 90 percent increase relative to the base value and a 30 percent increase from the beginning of the conflict on February 28, 2026.

As a result of the heightened price of grains and oilseeds, among other agriculture components, UNCTAD says, “Past input price shocks remain a risk to future food security,” laying out the cycle in which costs can amount:

1. Traffic through the strait was disrupted.
2. Limited freight traffic constricts the availability and raises the cost of oil, gas and nitrogenous fertilizer.
3. A decrease in energy exports creates higher energy prices, increasing transport and shipping costs.
4. Further fuel inflation slows down the global economy.
5. Agricultural production costs increase.
6. Food production may be affected by the increased cost of agricultural components such as fertilizer, pushing domestic food prices further up.
7. Vulnerable populations may face greater food insecurity and hunger, as a result of the heightened cost of importing food, and domestic agriculture production.

This process has exposed 61 vulnerable economies to dual impact of higher oil and cereal import prices. (e.g., wheat, rice, corn, barley, oats, sorghum, millet, rye) These countries consist of 35 least developed countries and 26 small island states, with seven of those countries being both least developed and small island developing states.

According to UNCTAD, the pressure is “sharpest for economies that rely heavily on imported fuel”, citing an example in Cabo Verde where net imports of oil and petroleum products averaged 24.6 percent of GDP within recent years. This dependence on fuel imports means that those extra costs can quickly make food prices, electricity, transport, and public finances more expensive.

Source: Author’s visualizations using data from UNCTADStat.
Notes: Orange countries are small island states, and blue countries are least developed countries (LDCs).

Yemen was also cited to be at high risk, with analysis showing that net imports of cereal and cereal products averaged 10.8 percent of GDP. For countries like Yemen dealing with conflict, hyperinflation, debt pressure, and limited public financing, a higher import bill for grain compounds an already declining situation.

Source: Author’s visualizations using data from UNCTADStat.
Notes: Orange countries are small island states, and blue countries are least developed countries (LDCs).

UNCTAD analysis indicates that a real increase of food cost by just 5 percent is associated with a higher risk of child wasting (a life-threatening form of acute malnutrition), especially among poor children and children living in rural landless households.

While restoring full trade through the strait is a necessary step to recovery, this will not undo the aftermath that higher import bills, delayed shipments, and higher priced food and energy have on the global economy, especially vulnerable economies.

“The policy task is therefore broader than reopening a route. Vulnerable economies need support to manage higher import bills, protect households from food and fuel shocks, and invest in systems that reduce exposure before the next disruption hits household budgets,” said UNCTAD, indicating the importance for vulnerable economies to develop supply chain resilience, sustainable systems, and have less reliance on concentrated international trade for vital goods such as food and energy, among financial support from the international system.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The reef surrounding Namotu Island, Fiji, has experienced serious coral bleaching caused by increasing ocean temperatures. Credit: Beau Pilgrim / Climate Visuals

By Kizito Makoye
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Jul 23 2026 (IPS)

Every morning, as the Indian Ocean retreats from the reef off Zanzibar’s Jambiani village, Chiku Chande steps into the knee-deep lagoon carrying bundles of seaweed seedlings. Years of farming these waters have taught her about every channel and coral outcrop. But lately, the corals that once glowed in brown and gold have become chalky white.

“You don’t need anyone to tell you these changes,” Chande tells IPS. “We see it with our own eyes. The coral has lost its colour.”

Like many families in Jambiani, the 48-year-old grandmother depends on the reef. It shelters her seaweed farm from crashing Indian Ocean waves, supports fish stocks and brings tourists to the village. As the corals bleach and slowly die, she worries about the future.

Chande has watched the reef change year after year. Scientists say her observations mirror what is happening across the world’s tropical oceans.

Scientists long regarded El Niño – the natural warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that disrupts weather patterns globally – as the main driver of mass coral bleaching

A new study led by Climate Central and published in Oceanography concludes that human-induced climate change has driven every global coral bleaching event over the past four decades. The researchers found greenhouse gas emissions have warmed the oceans so much that El Niño now acts mainly as a trigger rather than the root cause.

“Our study shows that without climate change, coral bleaching would be a rare and isolated event, and global mass coral bleaching simply would not occur,” says Andrew Pershing, Climate Central’s chief programme officer and the study’s lead author.

2026-2027 projected bleaching risk map. A report published in Oceanography argues that nearly every global coral bleaching event over the past 40 years would not have occurred
without human-caused climate change. Credit: Oceanography

Corals bleach when unusually warm water forces them to expel the microscopic algae that provide most of their food and give them their vibrant colours. If temperatures quickly return to normal, corals can recover. But prolonged heat starves them and can kill entire reef ecosystems.

To determine how much of that warming came from human activity, researchers compared today’s sea surface temperatures with computer simulations of a world unaffected by greenhouse gas emissions. They then assessed whether bleaching would still have occurred under those cooler conditions.

Their analysis showed that every global bleaching event since 1998 – including those in 1998, 2010, 2014-2017 and the ongoing event that began in 2023 – required human-caused warming to push ocean temperatures beyond bleaching thresholds. Although El Niño coincided with many of those events, the study found they would not have become global bleaching episodes without decades of warming driven by fossil fuel emissions.

Women seaweed farmers in Zanzibar’s Jambiani village receive guidance while tending seaweed farms in the shallow lagoon, where warming seas have also left nearby coral reefs increasingly bleached. Scientists say human-caused climate change, rather than natural climate cycles, has driven every global mass coral bleaching event on record. Credit: Muhidin Michuzi

The findings have particular implications for Tanzania.

The country’s 1,400-kilometre coastline, which includes the reefs surrounding Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia islands, supports fisheries, tourism and thousands of coastal livelihoods. Healthy reefs also protect beaches and coastal settlements by absorbing up to 97 percent of incoming wave energy, reducing erosion and storm damage.

As reefs deteriorate, fish populations decline, tourism suffers and coastlines become increasingly vulnerable to flooding and erosion.

Similar pressures are happening across tropical reefs worldwide. Although coral reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean floor, they support roughly a quarter of all marine species and generate an estimated US$2.7 trillion annually in ecosystem services through fisheries, tourism and coastal protection. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network estimates the world lost about 14 percent of its coral between 2009 and 2018 as repeated marine heatwaves left reefs too little time to recover.

Recent ocean temperature records suggest the pressure is intensifying.

According to the Copernicus Marine Service, June 2026 was the warmest June on record for global sea surface temperatures, while marine heatwaves covered about 82 percent of the world’s oceans by the end of the month. Because the oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe, increasing the likelihood of coral bleaching.

The Climate Central researchers project that by 2028 human-caused warming will outweigh El Niño’s influence in every coral reef region worldwide. Bleaching, they say, will increasingly reflect persistently warmer oceans rather than unusually strong natural climate cycles.

Using the same attribution methods, the researchers also assessed bleaching risk during the developing 2026-2027 El Niño. They found that while the climate pattern could still trigger bleaching in some regions, human-caused warming would account for most of the risk, particularly in the southern Caribbean, the Pacific coasts of Central and South America, and parts of East and Southeast Asia.

Globally, the monthly average sea-surface temperature for the extra-polar ocean (60°S–60°N) was the highest for June, exceeding the previous record set in June 2024 by just 0.01ºC. This partly reflected the development of strong El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Credit: ECMWF/Copernicus Climate Change Service

The study challenges the long-held assumption that bleaching is mainly a response to natural climate cycles. Researchers say bleaching can no longer be viewed as an occasional event linked to natural climate cycles; scientists say it is increasingly becoming a recurring consequence of steadily warming oceans.

“By isolating the effect of climate change, our study shows that the fate of reefs is closely tied to how much carbon pollution goes into the atmosphere. Protecting reefs from overfishing and pollution is very important. We need as many thriving reef areas as possible. Even during severe events, there are often pockets of coral that persist. These areas can be the source for recovery in the short and long term,” Pershing tells IPS

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that even if global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, up to 90 percent of the world’s coral reefs could disappear by mid-century. At 2 degrees Celsius of warming, losses could reach 99 percent.

Chande does not speak in terms of climate attribution. She only knows the reef looks different from when she began farming seaweed. Researchers say the bleaching she has witnessed reflects a much deeper shift: oceans that have steadily warmed over decades because of greenhouse gas emissions.

“When I was younger, the corals were full of colour and fish,” she said. “Now everything looks white. I worry about what is happening to the sea,” she says.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau

Sunday’s World Cup final focused world attention on the stench of corruption, past and current, surrounding some of its main protagonists, including Argentina, and the presidents of FIFA, Argentina and the main host nation.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

In the run-up, Argentina committed the most fouls — largely in midfield to disrupt their opponents’ play — but only received a controversial red card in the final. It had the most opponents’ goals disallowed but never conceded a penalty.

Of course, there are always subjective elements in applying football rules, and it is difficult to prove foul play. But it is suspicious when referees refuse to use a video-assisted referee (VAR) to check for fouls.

In Argentina’s first game, Messi stepped on an Algerian opponent’s Achille’s tendon with his studs up. Such an offence would typically get a red card, but in this case, there was no card or VAR check.

As many presume, FIFA would not allow the biggest star of world football, now playing in the US league, to get a match ban at the start of the tournament; it would have been a business disaster.

Many believe the ‘inconsistent’ use of rules and VAR checks helped Argentina reach yet another World Cup final. With VAR, the inconsistent application of rules and procedures, such as awarding cards, can tip games with narrow margins in a team’s favour.

Iggy Rodriguez

While controversial refereeing and VAR decisions were common in this tournament, Argentina has been accused more than any other team. Many believe the level football field was tilted to favour Argentina and its superstar, Messi.

Such advantages only work at the World Cup level if the team is highly competent and competitive, which Argentina certainly is. The latest World Cup has seriously tarnished the reputation of FIFA and football itself.

Billionaire haven
Meanwhile, Argentine President Javier Milei is trying to remove most remaining restrictions on foreign ownership of Argentine land.

A day after the England semi-final, the Argentine Senate began debating Milei’s bill on the “inviolability of private property”. If passed, it would repeal a 2011 law limiting the acquisition and ownership of rural land by foreigners.

As foreign purchases of Argentine land surged after its late 20th century crisis, its Congress limited sales to foreigners. Already, 13.2 million hectares, or 5% of Argentina, are foreign owned. The Milei government now wants to eliminate remaining restrictions on land sales to foreigners.

Foreign ownership of Argentine land is concentrated in specific areas such as Patagonia, rich in energy and mineral resources. Once approved, the bill will allow foreigners to own such strategic areas with water, minerals and foreign borders.

Peter Thiel, famous for arguing ‘competition is for losers’, is promoting the privatisation of public land by creating charter cities such as Prospera Inc in Honduras.

Thiel recently moved to Buenos Aires, where he is believed to be advising the Milei government. Apparently, he envisions Argentina as an economic haven cum ‘laboratory’ for his investments.

Forbes reports Milei is trying to attract billionaires like Thiel to his “new land of freedom” with a full-citizenship-by-investment scheme and by eliminating property ownership restrictions.

Milei scolded Argentina’s footballers and fans for protesting Britain’s ongoing rule of the Falkland Islands at the England semi-final as his government tries to sell off the most valuable rural Argentine land.

As the dispute between Honduras and Prospera Inc. has shown, once sovereign land is transferred into foreign hands protected by international investment treaties, getting that land back is nearly impossible.

From Nazi to Zionist refuge
Milei enjoys Netanyahu’s and Trump’s support, both of whom want him to stay in power.

Asked why he supported Argentina in the World Cup, Netanyahu made clear it had more to do with Milei than Messi. “Milei is a huge friend of Israel”, recently calling himself the “most Zionist president on the planet”.

Patagonia was identified as a possible site for the establishment of a Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, in the late 19th century. After World War Two, the southern cone of South America became a haven for fascist war criminals fleeing Europe.

Milei’s government has cut public spending and welfare benefits for Argentine citizens. During the last Argentine summer from December to February, vast Patagonian forests went up in flames after Milei cut Argentina’s fire-fighting budget by 80%!

Many believe the government has agreed to allow Israeli settlement on the scorched earth after an Israeli was caught setting fire to 17,000 acres in Chilean Patagonia over a decade ago.

Milei has already signed agreements with the Netanyahu government to grant Israeli citizens living in Argentina access to all government benefits, including pensions, maternity leave and disability allowance.

In the final, Argentina went down to Spain, one of a few European countries to oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the US-Israeli war against Iran, despite repeated threats by Trump.

Despite Spain’s conquistador and fascist past, much of the world supported Spain today against the land of Maradona and Messi, two of the most popular icons of the beautiful game.

Iggy Rodriguez is a Filipino artist and football enthusiast. His solo exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, ‘Under a Borrowed Sun’, runs till mid-August.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit: Luke Dray/Stringer via Getty Images. Source IMF

By Martin Schindler, Nikola Spatafora and Andrew Tiffin
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 22 2026 (IPS)

A farmer in Kenya gets weather and planting advice on a basic phone. A teacher in Nigeria uses a chatbot to help students catch up in math. South Africa’s revenue authority uses data analytics to better target tax audits. These are not futuristic examples from Silicon Valley. They are early signs of the broader transformation that artificial intelligence (AI) could bring to sub-Saharan Africa.

AI will reshape the global economy. The question for Africa is whether it rides the wave or gets left behind.

Transformative potential

Our research shows AI’s promise, but it also points to significant risks and challenges. At current levels of preparedness, we estimate that AI will add just 0.2 percent to the region’s GDP over the next decade—little more than a rounding error. However, if countries can put the right foundations in place to accelerate adoption and extend the impact of AI beyond today’s digitally connected firms, the gains could rise to about 4 percent over the decade—nearly half a percentage point of additional growth a year.

That extra growth is critical given Africa’s vast jobs challenge. By 2030, sub-Saharan Africa will account for roughly half of new entrants into the global labor force. But the issue is not only the number of jobs needed—it is also their quality. Most workers are still in informal microenterprises or smallholder agriculture, where productivity is far below that of formal firms.

For the region, AI’s main promise is not about replacing office workers, but boosting productivity across the economy—helping informal firms manage inventory, enabling farmers to increase yields, and supporting mid-sized firms to transition to formality and export readiness.

The risk is that the opposite happens. AI adoption in sub-Saharan Africa currently lags well behind every other region. If richer economies race ahead while African firms and governments lag, the productivity gap between the region and the rest of the world will only widen.

A different reality

Aid flows have always fluctuated. But this episode stands apart.

The recent cuts are large and broadly simultaneous across countries. They are driven by donor decisions rather than changes in recipient economies. And they come at a time when traditional buffers are weaker: multilateral institutions and NGOs, which have often cushioned past declines, are themselves facing funding constraints. While non-traditional donors, such as China and the Gulf States, have grown their aid presence in the region, the magnitudes are not able to cover the reduction in traditional donors.

The cuts are also difficult to manage because they follow six years of successive shocks—including the pandemic, tighter global financial conditions, and food and energy crises—that have already eroded fiscal space.

Delivering on AI’s promise

Two priorities for AI adoption stand out.

First, countries must build the foundations for broad adoption.

AI depends on reliable electricity, affordable broadband and data infrastructure, and workers with digital skills. That means investing in power and connectivity, supporting regional data infrastructure where viable, and strengthening digital and AI literacy through education and training. Countries in Africa do not need to develop the world’s most powerful AI models. But they do need the capacity to adopt, adapt, and scale AI quickly.

Second, build trust—and scale.

AI can widen inequality if its benefits are concentrated among large firms, skilled workers, and urban hubs. It also creates risks around privacy, cybersecurity, misinformation, and dependence on foreign providers. Governments need clear and practical rules on data, competition, consumer protection, cybersecurity, and the public sector’s use of AI. Regional cooperation will also be essential. Many African economies are too small to build AI ecosystems alone. But together they can create the scale needed for infrastructure, data standards, regulation, and markets.

AI in Africa is not just a technology policy issue—it is central to the region’s growth strategy. Africa does not need to win the race to build cutting-edge AI models, but it must find ways to use AI widely, cheaply, and safely. The window is narrow. Over the next debate, Africa’s young and growing workforce will either find more productive jobs, or watch the global productivity gap widen further. The outcome will not be shaped in Silicon Valley, but in the choices made across governments, schools, farms, and firms from Dakar to Dar es Salaam.

Martin Schindler is an advisor, Nikola Spatafora is a senior economist, and Andrew Tiffin is a deputy division chief, all in the IMF’s African Department.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

 
CIVICUS discusses land grabs and environmental damage linked to a luxury coastal resort project with Eva Kushova, Director of Destination Management Organisation Albania, a civil society organisation that supports sustainable tourism in Albanian destinations, seeking to preserve culture and nature while maximising benefits for communities.

Eva Kushova

What are the impacts of Albania’s foreign investment laws?

The Law on Strategic Investments was passed in 2015 to attract foreign investment and boost Albania’s economy. Its deadline has since been extended several times, most recently to 2027. In practice, it has become a vehicle for serious abuses. Unlike ordinary investment laws, it gives the state the power to expropriate private property on investors’ behalf, often at compensation well below market value. Some residents say they were forced off their land after refusing this compensation.

Despite the law’s stated purpose, only two of around 44 projects approved so far are genuinely foreign investments. Most are owned by domestic investors with close connections to the government. The system gives selected companies access to public land, beaches, forests and national assets, and grants them tax exemptions for up to 10 years. The state also pays for all the necessary infrastructure, including electricity, roads, telecommunications and water, effectively subsidising private profit. In some cases, water meant for villages has been diverted to supply resort swimming pools. Meanwhile, local communities lose beach access and remain economically marginalised.

What does the Zvërnec case reveal about how these deals are made?

The Zvërnec project, a luxury resort planned on the coast near Vlorë, in southern Albania, comprising around 10,000 accommodation units, drew international attention because of its Trump family ties, but it exposed broader governance failures. It includes a large property allegedly acquired by an internationally wanted drug trafficker under highly questionable circumstances, and there are also allegations that officials manipulated property records at the regional land registry. Many local residents claim ownership of the property, yet it was suddenly recognised as belonging to the trafficker, who then sold it to Arab investors.

This fits a wider pattern in Albania’s land governance. After communism collapsed in 1991, the law mandated redistribution of agricultural land to rural families in small parcels. Thirty-five years on, most Albanians own only limited land, while strategic investors obtain vast coastal properties through questionable transactions, controversial expropriations and alleged manipulation of property records. Property rights have remained unresolved for over 30 years, forcing people into costly court proceedings.

The secrecy around the Zvërnec deal is typical too. The public only learns about the projects once construction machinery arrives on site. News of Zvërnec, and of Sazan Island, an island off Albania’s Adriatic coast earmarked for luxury development, broke via international media in March 2024. Even now, the identity and ownership of the investors behind several of these projects remain unclear, and sites are fenced off with barbed wire. Authorities say this is in preparation for infrastructure works, fuelling further distrust.

What environmental damage have these developments caused?

The Zvërnec coastline is home to the Narta Lagoon, one of Albania’s most biodiverse areas and a critical stopover for thousands of migratory birds travelling between Africa and Europe. It was first threatened by the construction of Vlora International Airport and now by the Zvërnec resort.

The legal groundwork was laid in 2022, when the government removed thousands of hectares from protected areas, cutting total coverage by 20 per cent. In 2024, another law opened the door to construction inside protected areas, allowing for the transformation of one of Albania’s last wild coastal lagoons into a heavily urbanised area. A further law passed in 2025 extended the threat to forests and pastures elsewhere in the country.

This runs counter to Albania’s European Union (EU) membership bid, targeted for 2030. All candidate states must align their laws with EU standards across 33 negotiating chapters before joining, and chapter 27 covers environmental protection. The European Commission’s 2025 Enlargement Report raised serious concerns on this front, criticising recent legal changes for weakening environmental standards. The Bern Convention’s Standing Committee, an international body that protects European wildlife and habitats, has repeatedly asked Albania to suspend construction of Vlora International Airport inside the Pishë Poro–Narta Protected Area, which includes the lagoon, pending proper environmental assessment. So far these requests have gone unheeded. But sustained EU pressure could still force a repeal of regressive laws and the introduction of stronger protection for natural areas.

What has driven recent protests, and how has the government responded?

Protests began on 23 May in Zvërnec after the developer fenced off part of the beach with barbed wire. They intensified after footage emerged on 30 May showing private security guards beating a protester while police stood by without intervening. The movement spread to the capital, Tirana, the next day, then to other Albanian cities, Kosovo and diaspora communities abroad, becoming known as the ‘Flamingo Revolution’. Protesters have marched nightly since under the slogan ‘Albania is not for sale’, demanding the project’s cancellation and Prime Minister Edi Rama’s resignation.

What began as opposition to a single resort has broadened into a wider anti-corruption movement, with protesters citing grievances such as poor public healthcare. A nationwide protest on 10 June deliberately coincided with a national historic commemoration, joined by Albanians from the diaspora on five continents. Yet Rama has stayed defiant, arguing that the backlash has more to do with the Trump links than with the project itself.

There are encouraging signs of accountability, though. The Special Structure against Corruption and Organised Crime, an independent judicial body created in 2016, has opened an investigation into the 2024 legal changes that enabled the Zvërnec deal. Arrest warrants have been issued against around 20 businesspeople suspected of illegally obtaining land or permits linked to various projects. People hope public pressure will keep judicial investigations alive, ensuring accountability for abuses of power, environmental damage and property rights violations.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

GET IN TOUCH
Website
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Twitter

SEE ALSO
Albania: protesters and police clash at anti-corruption demonstrations; amendments partially decriminalising defamation criticised CIVICUS Monitor 22.Apr.2026
Albania: ‘Corruption is a serious problem, but no political force commands enough public trust to unite demands’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Gresa Hasa 13.Feb.2026
Albania: ‘Diaspora voting ensured every citizen, regardless of location, could exercise their right to vote’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Erida Skëndaj 01.Jun.2025

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 21 2026 (IPS)

Despite rising geopolitical tensions, trade restrictions and calls to bring production back to domestic shores, the global economy remains more interconnected than it may appear. Trade through global value chains (GVCs) reached historic levels in 2024, according to a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

GVCs, the cross-border production networks through which countries exchange materials, services and intermediate inputs used to produce goods and services, accounted for roughly 17 percent of global GDP in real terms between 2022 and 2024. This is up from approximately 16 percent before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

The findings stand to challenge expectations that the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions would have on the campaign of de-globalization. GVC trade expanded rapidly before the Global Financial Crisis and later stabilized at historically high levels. Nevertheless, in 2024 inflation-adjusted GVC trade remained close to its 2022 peak, even as total global trade declined slightly from its 2022 level.

The distinction between real and nominal figures is particularly important following years of elevated inflation and volatile commodity prices. Rising prices can inflate the apparent value of international trade without representing an actual increase in the volume of goods and services exchanged. The OECD’s inflation-adjusted figures indicate that cross-border production itself has remained historically high.

Beneath that overall stability, however, industries have moved in markedly different directions. Manufacturing and transportation remain among the sectors most dependent on internationally sourced inputs.

Coke – a carbon-rich fuel produced from coal and primarily used in steelmaking – refined petroleum products, water and air transport, information and communication technology, electronics, rubber, plastics, chemicals, basic metals and motor vehicles all recorded GVC trade exceeding 35 percent of their gross output in 2024, indicating their heavy reliance on cross-border production networks.

While gains were recorded in those sectors, the motor vehicle industry became less internationally integrated over the period examined, falling from the sixth-most internationalized sector in 2011 to tenth in 2024, being overtaken by chemicals, air transport and electronic equipment.

Pharmaceuticals moved in the opposite direction. Despite increased policy attention toward strengthening domestic medical supply chains following the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmaceutical production became more dependent on internationally sourced inputs between 2011 and 2024.

GVC participation also increased notably in air transport and warehousing, highlighting the continued importance of globally connected logistics networks in supporting production.

The differences illustrate the uneven nature of supply-chain reconfiguration: while some industries have reduced their reliance on foreign inputs, others have become increasingly integrated into cross-border production networks.

The same pattern is visible across national economies. Of the 80 economies examined by the OECD, 49 had a higher share of foreign value added embedded in their exports in 2024 than in 2011.

Across the economies examined, countries generally relied more heavily on foreign inputs to produce their exports than they contributed inputs to exports produced elsewhere. For example, a country importing foreign-made components to manufacture and export a car is participating backward in a GVC. A country supplying steel that is then used to manufacture and export that car elsewhere is participating forward.

These patterns vary depending on the structure of each economy. Large economies such as the United States, China and Brazil are generally less reliant on foreign inputs because more of their production can be sourced domestically. Major commodity exporters such as Norway and Kazakhstan, meanwhile, rank highly in forward participation because their domestically-produced energy and raw materials become inputs in production and exports elsewhere.

Yet, increased GVC participation does not necessarily mean companies are simply buying more supplies from abroad.

Between 2019 and 2024, China, Japan, the United States and the European Union all became more reliant on foreign value in their exports. However, the OECD found that this was not primarily because companies shifted toward foreign suppliers. Instead, these economies increasingly produced and exported goods and services that themselves relied more heavily on international supply chains.

For example, an economy could begin sourcing more car parts domestically but simultaneously increase its exports of cars, which depend heavily on globally connected production networks. Its individual supply chains may become more domestic, while its overall economy becomes more integrated into global production.

The findings suggest that efforts to bring parts of production closer to home can therefore occur alongside deeper global economic integration.

Trade flows – the movement of goods and services across borders – only captures part of that interconnectedness. Multinational companies (MNCs) also operate and produce directly in foreign markets through foreign affiliates — companies they own or control outside their home country.

If a German MNC owns a factory in the United States, that American operation is a foreign affiliate. Products it manufactures and sells within the United States would not count as international trade, as they never crossed a border, yet the factory remains part of the German company’s global production network.

In 2023, foreign affiliates generated approximately USD 25.6 trillion in output, equivalent to one-quarter of global GDP and only slightly below the USD 26.6 trillion value of total world trade in goods and cross-border services.Together, MNCs and their foreign affiliates accounted for roughly 35 percent of world gross output in 2023 but only 60 percent of world exports, demonstrating their outsized role in international trade.

The geography of MNC production is also gradually broadening. While companies headquartered in OECD economies still controlled nearly 85 percent of foreign-affiliate output in 2023, the share of production involving non-OECD companies operating in non-OECD markets, nearly doubled from 4.9 percent in 2011 to 9.3 percent.

The report’s findings suggest that globalization is not simply retreating in the face of geopolitical fragmentation, rather global production is being reorganized across industries, companies and countries. Supply chains may be shifting, diversifying and adapting to new risks, but the networks connecting the global economy remain deeply entrenched and central to the production of goods and services.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the opening session of the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, Geneva, Switzerland. Credit: UN Photo/Irina Popa

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 20 2026 (IPS)

Throughout July 2026, various United Nations (UN) bodies and global experts have underscored the need for increased comprehensive artificial intelligence (AI) governance. Although AI yields significant potential gains for global development, persistent structural barriers continue to impede equitable access and deepen the digital divide.

From July 6 to 7, the UN convened the first session of the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, featuring a presentation of the inaugural report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. The conference included testimonies from global experts and leaders who emphasized the rapidly accelerating nature of AI, warning that without adequate guardrails and transparency measures, entire communities risk falling behind.

“Artificial intelligence is advancing at runaway speed. A technology that can reshape economies, transform the world of work, sway elections and tilt the balance of security is being deployed faster than anyone— including the people building it— can keep up,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the Opening Session of the dialogue on July 6th.

“The technologies we trust most— in aviation, in medicine, in nuclear energy and beyond— earned that trust because we acted to hold their makers to account. If AI is to be powerful, it must be governed. If AI is to be trusted, those who build it must be accountable. If AI is to be global, it must be fair. And if AI is to serve the future, it must not consume the future,” he added.

According to Guterres, AI holds immense potential to accelerate medical advancements, revolutionize educational systems, strengthen food production, and revitalize local economies, all of which would drive progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite this, widening gaps in development have been recorded across communities in lower-income countries, particularly in the Global South.

On July 17, Guterres spoke at the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, urging governments and stakeholders to invest in international cooperation and monitoring efforts to ensure equitable access to AI’s benefits. Guterres noted that an alarming “one-third of humanity” remains offline, with the vast majority of technical expertise and investment disproportionately concentrated in only a few countries and companies

“Hundreds of billions of dollars of private investment flood into artificial intelligence – while many developing countries receive just a trickle,” said Guterres. “AI risks pushing the world towards even greater inequalities … greater divides in income, in opportunity, in security … greater gaps between North and South.”

At WAIC, Guterres outlined three main priorities that are to be taken in advancing global AI governance: making AI more environmentally sustainable, establishing critical safety guardrails, and expanding capacity across developing countries. Underscoring the need for AI testing and risk management to be firmly based in the principles of international law, he confirmed that over 20 countries, including China, have agreed to contribute to a UN-supported Global Network for Exchange and Cooperation on AI Capacity Building to assist developing countries navigate this transition.

Throughout the conference, many UN experts emphasized that human rights must remain the cornerstone of all AI decision-making processes, ensuring that final judgments are always made by human beings. Guterres also called for major AI companies to disclose their environmental footprints and commit to a full transition to renewable energy by 2030.

AI has the potential to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy by optimizing power efficiency and significantly reducing waste. Several nations, including China, are already leveraging these technologies to increase their annual reliance on renewable energy.

Several developing countries in the Pacific have taken steps to reclaim agency over AI, implementing frameworks that prioritize sustainability and ensure that they remain in control regarding the technology’s development and use. For example, the Kingdom of Tonga has expanded commercial 5G access and conducted a Digital Readiness Assessment to examine risks and potential gains when coordinating governance strategies. Similar assessments have been undertaken across Samoa, Vanuatu, and Fiji.

The Kingdom of Tonga is reshaping its government services around a digital-first model by implementing AI tools that will assist citizens in interacting with the state in their own language. In Kiribati, AI monitoring technologies in fisheries have helped in recovering approximately US$2 million in illegal fishing fines.

“These are real wins, but they are wins within a system the Pacific did not design. The region already knows what it means to be on the wrong side of a divergence, in climate, in trade, in debt vulnerability,” said Kanni Wignaraja, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific.

“AI follows the same logic at greater speed. The difference is that the rules of AI are still being written, which means the divergence is not yet locked in. That window will not stay open for long. The time for the Pacific to shape the outcome is now, not once the frameworks are agreed, and the tools are already being deployed.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Population ageing, including the point at which older adults outnumber younger people, is a global demographic phenomenon. Credit: Shutterstock

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Jul 20 2026 (IPS)

In many countries, older adults (aged 65 and above) now outnumber younger individuals (under the age of 18), reflecting a significant demographic transformation known as demographic ageing.

The shift in a population’s age structure is becoming increasingly common around the world and is primarily driven by declining fertility rates and rising life expectancy. As populations age, societies face a range of economic, political, and social challenges.

Economically, an ageing population can lead to labor shortages, slower economic growth, and a shrinking tax base. These changes can make it more difficult for governments to finance pensions, healthcare systems, and other public services.

At the same time, the growing number of older adults increases demand for specialized healthcare services, including geriatric care, assisted living, and the treatment of chronic illnesses, placing additional strain on healthcare systems.

To promote sustainable growth and social equity, governments should seek to balance the needs of older adults with those of younger generations, ensuring that public resources support both present well-being and future development

Politically, as people live longer and represent a larger share of the electorate, older adults may gain greater political influence. Their increased voting power can shape government spending priorities, potentially leading to a larger share of public funding being allocated to pensions, healthcare, and retirement benefits, while comparatively less is invested in education, childcare, and programs that support younger generations.

Overall, demographic ageing is reshaping societies worldwide, creating both opportunities and challenges. These developments require governments to adopt balanced policies to ensure economic sustainability and intergenerational equity.

In the middle of the 20th century, older adults accounted for 5% of the world’s population of approximately 2.5 billion, while young people comprised 41%. At that time, the median age of the global population was 22 years. By the end of the 20th century, the world’s population had grown to 6.2 billion, although the age distribution changed only modestly.

In 2000, older adults represented 7% of the global population, while young people represented 36%. Meanwhile, the median age increased to 25 years, indicating a gradual ageing of the global population.

Despite the rapid growth of the world’s population during the second half of the 20th century, the proportion of older adults increased at a much slower pace. These changes mark the early stages of global demographic ageing, characterized by a gradual increase in the share of older adults and a corresponding decline in the proportion of younger people (Table 1).

Source: United Nations.

By 2026, the world’s population had reached approximately 8.3 billion. At the same time, young people accounted for an estimated 29% of the global population, while older adults represented about 11%, and the median age had risen to 31 years. By 2078, these two age groups are projected to account for equal shares of the global population, which is expected to reach 10.3 billion, with each group accounting for approximately 22% of the total population (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations.

In 2026, approximately 50 countries and territories have a higher proportion of older adults (aged 65 and above) than young people (under the age of 18). This demographic pattern is most common in the more developed countries, which tend to have lower fertility rates and longer life expectancies.

In Italy and Japan, for example, the proportion of older adults (aged 65 and above) is roughly twice that of young people (under the age of 18). Similarly, European countries such as France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland also have substantially larger shares of older adults than young people (Figure 2).

Source: United Nations.

Demographic ageing, together with the changing proportions of older and younger populations, has significant economic, social, and political consequences.

Among the most important effects of demographic ageing are shrinking workforces, a growing proportion of retirees, rising dependency ratios, increasing pension expenditures, mounting healthcare costs, shifting political and budgetary priorities, and adapting institutions to the needs of ageing populations.

As populations age, more retirees receive pension benefits for longer periods, while a relatively smaller workforce contributes to the pension systems. Consequently, fewer workers are required to support a much larger non-working population, placing substantial pressure on public finances and social security systems. In response to labor shortages associated with shrinking workforces, many governments have introduced policies that encourage older adults to remain in the labor market for longer.

Healthcare expenditures also rise as populations age. Older adults typically require more medical care than younger people because they are more likely to experience chronic diseases, multiple health conditions, and complex healthcare needs.

As a result, demand for healthcare services such as rehabilitation, dialysis, dementia care, and long-term care continues to increase. In many countries experiencing rapid demographic ageing, governments and families face growing financial and caregiving responsibilities to support an expanding older population.

Meeting the care needs of an ageing population often creates tension over responsibility between governments and families. Governments may expect family members to assume primary responsibility for caring for older adults, while families frequently believe that governments should provide greater support and resources to meet the needs of their ageing relatives.

Some conservative and authoritarian governments argue that extensive public spending on elder care generates limited economic returns because older adults are viewed primarily as recipients of care rather than contributors to economic productivity. As a result, these governments often contend that rising healthcare and long-term care expenditures for older adults may constrain economic growth and advocate limiting public investment in these services.

Similarly, many conservatives and some policymakers often believe that caring for older adults should be the responsibility of individuals and their families, with the private sector playing a greater role rather than government in delivering care and support.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), common health conditions associated with older age include hearing loss, cataracts, back and neck pain, osteoarthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, depression, loneliness, dementia, and mobility limitations. Many older adults experience several of these health conditions at the same time, making their healthcare needs more complex and requiring coordinated, long-term management.

Older adults who require long-term care are disproportionately women aged 80 years and older who live alone. This group is particularly vulnerable to social isolation which is associated with poorer mental and physical health outcomes, including increased risks of depression, cognitive decline, chronic illness, and reduced quality of life.

In contrast, young people are more likely to face health issues such as injuries from road traffic accidents, falls, drowning, violence, self-harm, depression, anxiety, substance use disorders, asthma, and maternal health conditions.

Population ageing, particularly the increasing prevalence of chronic health conditions and the growing demand for long-term care, has significant implications for government policies and public programs that affect people of all ages. As these trends intensify, they place growing pressures on public resources and influence electoral priorities, shaping decisions about healthcare, social services, education, and public spending.

As older adults make up a larger share of the voting population, governments often place greater emphasis on policies that address the needs of these older adults, particularly pensions and healthcare. As policy priorities shift, investment in areas that primarily benefit younger generations – such as education, infrastructure, and long-term economic development – may decline.

To promote sustainable growth and social equity, governments should seek to balance the needs of older adults with those of younger generations, ensuring that public resources support both present well-being and future development.

Demographic ageing also presents difficult fiscal and political challenges. Governments may need to consider measures such as raising taxes, reducing pension benefits, increasing the retirement age, or implementing other fiscal reforms to ensure the long-term sustainability of public finances.

However, governments often delay implementing these reforms because they are politically unpopular. As a result, financial pressures on pension and healthcare systems continue to grow, increasing the risk of substantial funding shortfalls, or, in some cases, insolvency if reforms are postponed for too long.

Population ageing, including the point at which older adults outnumber younger people, is a global demographic phenomenon. As this demographic transformation continues across countries, governments face the ongoing challenge of adapting their economic, political, and social institutions to meet the needs of different age groups – particularly younger and older generations – while maintaining fiscal sustainability and promoting intergenerational equity.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division, and author of numerous publications on population issues.

People collect signatures against the construction of a massive Mitsui Fudosan datacentre in Hino City, Tokyo, 19 April 2026. Credit: Yasushi Wada/The Yomiuri Shimbun via AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jul 20 2026 (IPS)

Few things unite Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters with the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, but datacentres are one of them. Across the USA, communities are joining forces across the political divide to oppose developments few want but governments seem determined to impose.

Michigan residents are among those who’ve come together across party lines to oppose plans for over a dozen datacentres. Polling shows just 28 per cent of the state’s population support the proposals. Local communities are fighting back, and similar struggles are unfolding across the world.

Datacentre impacts

Datacentre construction is booming, driven by AI use, demanding increasing computing power that requires huge amounts of electricity and water for cooling.

A single question to an AI chatbot can use 10 times more energy than a conventional search. Generating an AI image takes around a thousand times more energy than generating text. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that datacentre electricity demand will double by 2030.

In Utah, despite thousands of objections, authorities recently approved one of the world’s largest datacentres. It will need more power than the entire state currently uses. The development will construct a gas-fired plant.

AI growth is driving the construction of such gas-powered plants, meaning that more datacentres cause more greenhouse gas emissions. According to the IEA, coal is currently the top energy source for datacentres and over half of all current datacentre power comes from fossil fuels. The agency expects renewables to eventually provide a bigger share of growing needs, but warns that datacentre demand is driving growth for fossil fuel-generated electricity.

Tech companies once pledged to be climate leaders, but that no longer rings true. Google promised to become net zero by 2030, but its greenhouse gas emissions leapt 48 per cent from 2019 to 2023 as it embraced gas-fired electricity for datacentres. In Mumbai, India, two coal plants due to close in 2024 have had their operational life extended to meet demand from Amazon datacentres. Last December, Irish authorities decided that datacentres can keep using fossil fuel electricity for six more years. The UK intends to burn gas to power over 100 planned new datacentres.

Fossil fuel corporations lobby for datacentres almost as hard as tech companies, because they help perpetuate a destructive business model otherwise threatened by the shift to renewables. Fossil fuel corporations were among Donald Trump’s top campaign backers, and they’re benefiting from his administration’s rollback of regulations and ambition to achieve ‘unchallenged global technological dominance’.

Water supplies are coming under greater strain. One large datacentre can use as much daily water as a town of 50,000 people, yet datacentres are being built in some of the world’s driest regions. Amazon plans to open new datacentres in Aragon, Spain, even as the regional government seeks European Union help for drought. Similar concerns surround plans for one of the world’s biggest datacentres in the United Arab Emirates.

Civil society resistance

The struggle against tech companies and their lobbying riches is an unequal one, but civil society is mounting an increasingly credible response.

Climate litigation is an established civil society tactic, and recent research indicates that lawsuits are an emerging response to datacentre developments, with recent examples in Ireland, the UK and the USA. Civil society groups are also filing objections in planning processes, including one recently lodged against a huge proposed datacentre in Cape Town, South Africa.

Legal action by two UK organisations forced the developer of a huge new datacentre in Buckinghamshire to commit to binding environmental impact mitigation measures. Lawsuits are also exposing how datacentre impacts are often understated and inadequately measured. A 2022 case forced Google to publish accurate water consumption figures for an Oregon datacentre.

Protests and campaigning are bringing successes. In 2023, protests driven by a recent drought forced Google to change plans for a datacentre to reduce water use in Uruguay. Similar protests in Chile caused Google to pause its plans. As of last year, public pressure had led to over US$42 billion worth of datacentre projects being changed, delayed or cancelled in Europe, and US$77 billion worth in the USA.

In the USA, civil society groups have forged alliances with sub-national administrations to develop stronger local environmental and accountability standards. While established politicians aren’t listening, there are signs that US local politics are shifting. Some candidates opposed to datacentres have won, and several local administrations have introduced bans or moratoriums.

Campaign successes are bringing new threats. US industry lobbyists have smeared activists as agents of foreign influence determined to sabotage the country’s technological supremacy. US government documents show a growing focus on what they call ‘anti-technological extremism’, suggesting that security forces may be gathering intelligence on campaigners, and peaceful protesters could be targeted for surveillance on national security grounds.

Tech companies that are driving datacentre development often present themselves as free speech champions. They should prove it by ensuring that wherever they develop, people are able to protest, and hold them to environmental standards. There’s widespread public opposition and no shortage of people bearing the climate and environmental costs of the datacentre boom. Their voices must be heard.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit: liujunrong/iStock by Getty Images - Source: IMF

By Jean-Marc Natal and Azim Sadikov
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 17 2026 (IPS)

The largest disruption to the global oil market in decades should have sent prices soaring. But after spiking at the start of the war in the Middle East, crude prices soon settled in a range of $90 to $100 per barrel, much lower than many had feared. Why didn’t prices climb higher? The answer is that a combination of factors helped cushion the initial blow. But much of that room has now been used up.

There are plenty of reasons why oil should have become cripplingly expensive. The war effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off some 20 million barrels a day of crude oil and refined products, a fifth of global consumption. Gulf producers redirected what they could. Saudi Arabia sent oil through its pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. The United Arab Emirates pushed its Fujairah port, outside the strait, close to capacity. Even so, these workarounds offset only a fraction of lost Hormuz volumes.

Beyond crude, refined product output in the gulf region dropped significantly, hitting diesel and jet fuel hardest—products in which the region accounts for about 10 percent of global supply.

By the end of May, more than 1.1 billion barrels of crude—equivalent to about 10 days of typical global consumption—had not reached the market. At the same stage of the disruption, the shortfall exceeded those of the 1973 oil shock, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Gulf War.

Three shock absorbers

How did the global system absorb a disruption of this scale? In the days before the war, supply was running about 2 million barrels a day above demand, providing a head start. In the March-May period, three factors helped close the gap:

• Demand compression did the heavy lifting, especially in Asia, as higher prices reduced consumption and economies turned to alternatives such as coal and renewables. Transportation demand proved stickier though, in part because of fuel price caps, subsidies, and tax rebates that contained the impact—but at a fiscal cost.
• Production outside the Gulf rose more than expected, by nearly 2 million barrels a day above 2025 levels. The United States led the way, with Venezuela, Guyana, and Russia also raising production.
• Inventories did the rest. The estimated market deficit of about 4.0 million barrels a day in March–May was met almost entirely by drawing down global stocks, including commercial inventories in China and strategic reserves.

Recovery won’t be instant

Before the most recent escalation of tensions, the US-Iran framework agreement to reopen the strait sent prices sharply lower, in large part because stranded oil on tankers in the Gulf could rapidly return to the market. Still, much remains uncertain—including when freedom of navigation through the world’s most critical oil chokepoint will be effectively restored, and how quickly shipping, insurance, and operator confidence will follow.

Industry estimates suggest it will take two to three months before a significant share of oil flows can resume following a full reopening of the waterway. A longer-term concern is that prolonged production halts could cause permanent output losses, especially where financing to restart wells is scarce.

Whenever supply begins to recover, the oil deficit will close only gradually, drawing inventories closer to operational minimums—the level below which the physical system itself begins to bind.

Lessons for policymakers

Energy shocks still bite. What cushioned the initial blow this time is that energy markets had room to maneuver and absorb it. As tensions flare again in the Strait of Hormuz, that room is now smaller and shrinking further as spare capacity has been deployed, demand has compressed, and inventories have been drawn down. Unless inventories are replenished, the world will start from a weaker position when the next shock comes.

For policymakers, three lessons stand out:

• Inventories matter. Rebuilding them is essential to prepare for future shocks.
• A single chokepoint leaves the global economy heavily exposed. Diversifying energy sources—including renewables—is as important as diversifying routes.
• Support to consumers should be targeted to the most vulnerable and temporary to protect government budgets and the price signals that encourage energy saving and efficiency.

Energy markets’ flexibility and prompt policy actions bought the global economy time. An enduring US-Iran agreement would create an opening to restore supply. But significant efforts are still critically needed to increase the resilience and diversification of energy supply and prevent oil shocks from destabilizing the global economy.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

An Indigenous community leader, Jackeline Mendoza Díaz, addresses participants during the webinar “Gold’s Dark Web: The Hidden Price of a Booming Market” on June 25, speaking about the devastating impacts of illegal and poorly regulated gold mining on Indigenous lands, forests and local communities. The webinar brought together community leaders, investigators, civil society organisations, financial experts and policymakers to discuss how soaring gold prices are accelerating environmental destruction, organised crime and human rights abuses. Credit: FERN

By Kizito Makoye
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Jul 17 2026 (IPS)

The sweltering heat inside a London conference hall did not deter Indigenous leader Jackeline Mendoza Díaz from condemning the sheer destruction of the Peruvian Amazon. Her voice occasionally trembled with emotion but delivered a strong message — painting a picture far removed from the glittering gold bars traded in the world’s financial capitals.

Behind the rising price of gold, she said, lie poisoned rivers, razed forests and Indigenous communities jostling to defend their ancestral lands from the rising wave of illegal mining.

In her Asháninka community, she said, rivers that once sustained life no longer provide edible fish. Women trek for hours searching for clean water, while community leaders who speak out against encroachment increasingly do so at personal risk.

“Our rivers are being contaminated with mercury. When the rivers are contaminated, the fish become contaminated as well, and we indigenous people depend on these rivers for our survival,” Díaz told participants during a webinar that brought together Indigenous leaders, environmental advocates, investigators, bankers and policymakers to discuss the growing crisis of illicit gold.

Her testimony offered a glimpse into a global phenomenon that experts say is accelerating, as gold prices fuel environmental destruction, organized crime and corruption across continents

Behind the soaring value of gold lies a darker reality, visible in remote forests, fragile river systems and marginalised communities globally.

A recent report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) warns that illicit gold has become one of the world’s most consequential criminal markets, functioning as an “accelerant economy” that fuels conflict, corruption, environmental crime and organised criminal networks worldwide.

The report says rising gold prices have enabled criminals to control entire supply chains.

For nearby communities, the consequences are dire.

“We are defenders of the forests and defenders of life. Yet because of this, Indigenous defenders are often attacked, and many of us are even killed for protecting our people, our territories and our way of life,” said Diaz.

Forests Falling, Rivers Dying

In Ghana, where illegal mining has become a national crisis, environmental campaigner Daryl Bosu described a country caught up in a moral dilemma to balance the worth of the precious metal with environmental woes.

“Ghana is Africa’s largest gold producer, and gold remains one of the most important pillars of our economy,” Bosu said. “However, alongside these economic benefits, we have witnessed an alarming increase in illegal and poorly regulated mining activities.”

The environmental consequences, he warned, have been severe.

“Many of our forest reserves have suffered extensive degradation. Rivers and water bodies that serve millions of people have become heavily polluted.”

Across gold-producing regions, forests are rapidly being cleared to dig mining pits, roads and processing kilns. Once mining begins, toxic substances often contaminate rivers and groundwater aquifers.

According to the GI-TOC report, illicit gold mining frequently paves the way for illegal logging, wildlife trafficking and land grabbing. Dirty money is increasingly being invested in cattle ranching that destroys critical forest ecosystems.

Mercury’s Silent Toll

While deforestation often captures public attention, experts say mercury pollution remains one of the most devastating but least visible consequences of artisanal and small-scale gold mining.

Speaking exclusively to IPS during the recent Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Monika Stankiewicz, Executive Secretary of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, warned that mercury contamination continues to threaten millions of people living in mining communities.

“Mercury contamination does not stop at the mining site,” Stankiewicz told IPS.

“It enters rivers and ecosystems, affecting fish, soil and water sources locally.”

For families dependent on fishing and farming, the consequences can be profound.

“Reduced food safety and food security, loss of income from contaminated natural resources, and long-term degradation of ecosystems they depend on,” she explained.

Mercury exposure can trigger neurological damage, memory loss, tremors, respiratory illnesses and reproductive health complications. Children are particularly vulnerable.

The impacts extend far beyond mining sites themselves.

Mercury released into the environment can travel vast distances through atmospheric circulation. Indigenous communities in the Arctic, for example, are experiencing mercury contamination despite having no mercury-intensive mining activities in their territories.

Following the Money

Yet environmental damage represents only one side of the illicit gold equation.

Several participants stressed that illicit gold is fundamentally a financial crime issue.

Julia Yansura, programme director, Environmental Crime & Illicit Finance, FACT Coalition, said billions of dollars earned through environmentally damaging mining activities continue to enter legitimate financial systems without scrutiny.

“What we are discussing today is not merely an environmental issue,” she said. “It is also a financial crime issue.”

Traditional responses have focused heavily on police raids and military operations targeting miners.

But according to Yansura, such interventions often fail because they focus on low-level actors while leaving intact the financial networks that sustain illegal mining.

“A more effective approach would focus on following the money,” she said.

The GI-TOC report supports that assessment, warning that criminals increasingly control entire gold supply chains.

The report also identifies growing use of cryptocurrencies and gold-backed stablecoins as emerging mechanisms for laundering illicit proceeds outside traditional anti-money laundering frameworks.

London’s Hidden Role

Much of the webinar focused on the responsibilities of major financial centres.

A coalition of 35 civil society organisations has urged governments gathering at the UK Illicit Finance Summit to recognise that gold has evolved beyond a commodity into what they describe as a strategic vehicle for organised crime, sanctions evasion and corruption.

The coalition notes that London remains the world’s largest over-the-counter gold trading hub, handling approximately 70 percent of global OTC gold trading volumes.

Because illicit gold frequently passes through multiple countries and refineries before reaching financial markets, campaigners argue that financial centres can no longer treat illegal mining as a problem confined to producer countries.

“The solution cannot come only from mining countries,” Yansura said. “It must also come from the financial centres where profits are ultimately laundered and legitimated.”

The coalition is calling for mandatory due diligence requirements, stronger beneficial ownership transparency, enhanced scrutiny of gold traders and robust anti-money laundering obligations across the entire gold supply chain.

A Crisis Outpacing Regulation

Sophia Pickles of the GI-TOC warned that existing international frameworks have failed to contain the evolving nature of illicit gold markets.

“There has undoubtedly been progress,” she acknowledged. “However, our recent research shows that criminal activity linked to gold mining is expanding.”

According to the GI-TOC report, voluntary responsible sourcing standards are insufficient against increasingly sophisticated criminal networks. Information gaps, weak customs oversight and opaque financial transactions continue to provide opportunities for illicit gold to enter legitimate markets.

Researchers argue that current approaches remain too narrowly focused on artisanal mining and conflict zones while overlooking broader vulnerabilities embedded throughout global supply chains.

Among the report’s key recommendations are legally binding due diligence requirements, stronger oversight of international bullion centres, mandatory transparency measures and enhanced scrutiny of financial institutions.

Searching for Solutions

Despite the scale of the challenge, Stankiewicz believes progress is possible.

Under the Minamata Convention, countries with significant artisanal and small-scale gold mining sectors are required to develop national action plans aimed at reducing mercury use and protecting communities.

The results, she says, are encouraging.

Countries are increasingly adopting mercury-free technologies, strengthening regulations and formalising parts of the mining sector.

Beyond the Gold Rush

As the webinar drew to an end, panellists emphasised that illicit gold is not just a mining issue but an environmental, health, governance, human rights and financial crime crisis.

For Mendoza Díaz and communities living on the edge of gold extraction, the message was crystal clear.

“We are not just defending our land and our territories; we are defending life itself and our ecosystem.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau