The demand for critical energy transition materials such as copper, lithium and cobalt is on the rise due to the expansion of clean energy technologies. Credit: Unsplash/Lj. Filipović

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2026 (IPS)

Demand for critical energy transition minerals (CETMs) is expected to surge over the coming decades as countries expand clean technology capacity, develop electric vehicles, create battery storage, implement renewable energy systems, and introduce digital infrastructure according to UNCTADs latest report, The Shifting Dynamics of Critical Minerals Trade.

CETMs include lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth elements, making them vital to producing low carbon clean energy alternatives and renewable technologies used for electricity production and battery storage. These elements are also commonly found within datacenters, semiconductors, consumer electronics, and any field requiring digitalization.

According to the report, demand for lithium is projected to increase by 353 percent by 2040, followed by graphite (131 percent), nickel (69 percent), magnet rare earths (65 percent), cobalt (49 percent), and copper (28 percent).

Naturally this surge in CETM demand also has changed the composition of where CETMs are being used, with clean technologies absorbing a growing share in the industry of CETMs.

Share of Critical Mineral Demand for Clean Technologies. Credit: Maximilian Malawista / IPS

Although these CETMs are experiencing a surge in demand, from mining to processing or refining, the entire value chain is geographically concentrated between a few countries, dominating the entire global output. This same pattern also follows for reserves of key minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements which are unevenly distributed among a few states.

According to UNCTAD, China accounts for 69 percent of rare earth element production, and produces 78 percent of natural graphite capacity. Indonesia accounts for 67 percent of global nickel production, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) accounts for 50 percent of global cobalt reserves and 47 percent of global cobalt mine production.

“Reserves” refer to mineral deposits which can be economically extracted using available technology, differing from total geological resources, which include deposits not yet commercially viable or known. Due to the situation of current reserves and mining output, only a few nations produce the majority of the capacity of critical minerals. The concentration of production and reserves leaves global supply chains highly vulnerable to geopolitical disruptions, and trade restrictions, among other shocks.

Represented is how much of the global reserves/mining output of CETMs is within just the top three countries. Credit: Maximilian Malawista / IPS

Notably, mining output is slightly more concentrated than reserves for every mineral shown, indicating that mining production is controlled by an even smaller group of countries than the resource base itself.

This means that an overwhelming amount of these materials needed for some of the most critical functions for today and for our future rely on three countries for the entire global trade to function.

UNCTAD states: “Mining is capital-intensive and characterized by long lead times, limiting short-term supply responsiveness and leaving concentrated supply chains exposed to geopolitical risks, governance challenges, and environmental and social pressures.”

While the mining process receives much of the attention, UNCTAD argues in their report that refining represents an even larger vulnerability due to processing capacity being concentrated within a even smaller number of countries.

Refining and other downstream stages are even more concentrated” than that of mining, “creating critical bottlenecks in CETM supply chains,” An UNCTAD spokesperson told Inter Press Service. “A country may possess abundant mineral reserves yet remain dependent on a small number of foreign suppliers for refining, separation, precursor materials or advanced components.” They added explaining how there are “technical know-how, industrial capabilities, infrastructure and market power”, which means that “access to mineral resources alone does not necessarily translate into secure access to supply.”

UNCTAD also highlights that the concentration is also within only a few firms, in “several critical mineral markets” where a relatively small number of companies control “significant shares of mining, processing, trading, refining and technology.”

The issue as UNCTAD points out is that refining requires substantial long-term capital investment, access to advanced technologies, significant energy inputs, and specialized infrastructure, along with being an economy of scale to be cost competitive, which creates massive barriers to entry for new players.

Because global supply is concentrated, naturally international trade is the primary mechanism through which these minerals move between countries. The UNCTAD spokesperson remarked that “Cross-border trade in ores, concentrates, refined materials, and downstream components enables access to geographically dispersed stages of production across complex global value chains, particularly in high-technology sectors.”

What this means is that most countries depend on imports of CETMs at some point of their value chain for their manufacturing or developmental needs.

While diversification of processes would be necessary to alleviate risk associated with CETMs, since 2020 restrictive export measures on CETMs have been on the rise.

Mineral-rich economies like China, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are seeking to capture higher value stages of production, rather than just exporting raw materials alone. Restrictive export measures are increasingly being introduced to capture more of the downstream value, encouraging domestic refining, industrial development, and manufacturing, rather than solely relying on commodity exports.

Of these measures, licensing requirements, export taxes, and exports bans make the most common measures.

Since 2020, 37 licensing requirements, 31 export tax measures, 29 export bans, and 1 export quota have been recorded. 18 of these export measures were implemented by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with China introducing 16 followed by Indonesia at 12. Other countries such as Burundi and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela have introduced 8 measures each, while Zimbabwe has 7.

While at the moment supply chains are extremely concentrated and are becoming even further concentrated creating higher risk for importers, UNCTAD notes that major CETM importers such as the European Union, Japan, and the United States are adopting strategies to alleviate risk by diversifying import sources, increasing domestic capacity development, recycling, and developing strategic partnerships. In a three-year period, since 2022 such agreements in developmental stages have grown from just 15, to an addition of 58 new agreements targeting a diversification across value chains, and securing mineral access and production in a safe and future proof manner through policy.

As demand for CETMs accelerates, governments are increasingly looking at supply chains with scrutiny, seeing them as a strategic asset. While producing CETM high-capacity nations are seeking to control more value through domestic production of other stages and create more industry, major importers are moving aggressively to diversify supply sources to build more resilient supply chains. The outcome could not only decide the speed at which the global energy transition occurs, but also shape which countries will emerge as the key trading hubs and industrial powerhouses of the clean-energy economy.

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The report - Military Escalation in the Middle East: Cushioning the Global Shock – reveals that low- and middle-income countries have partially protected their populations from soaring oil prices through fossil fuel subsidies, price caps, tax rebates and demand-management measures. Credit: UNDP

By UN Development Programme
NEW YORK, Jul 1 2026 (IPS)

Developing countries’ efforts to tackle the ongoing effects of conflict in the Middle East carry a high price that leaves little room for critical investments in education, health and other development priorities, according to a new report by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) released today.

The report – Military Escalation in the Middle East: Cushioning the Global Shock – reveals that low- and middle-income countries have partially protected their populations from soaring oil prices through fossil fuel subsidies, price caps, tax rebates and demand-management measures.

Fossil fuel subsidies, which had been on a downward trend globally, are on track to reach US$1.1 trillion in 2026 – US$ 410 billion more than in 2025, assuming the current average oil price settles at US$88.6 per barrel.

This projection climbs to as much as US$1.43 trillion in a ‘severe’ scenario where oil prices climb to an average of US$110 per barrel.

The UNDP report warns that while fossil fuel subsidies provide temporary relief, they ultimately undermine climate and development goals, locking countries into high-carbon pathways and limiting future investment.

“The global spillover of the Middle East conflict is profound and potentially long-lasting. Developing countries, many already struggling with debt, have temporarily managed to protect people from the worst of the energy shock,” said UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo. “These countries are doing everything they can, but there is a hidden cost. To deal with today’s crisis, governments are postponing tomorrow’s investments. Money that should be building schools, hospitals, and clean energy systems is being used simply to keep economies afloat. Without international support, these countries won’t escape the shock. They are absorbing it at the expense of future growth.”

Close to half of the world’s poorest countries are already either ‘in’ or at ‘high risk’ of debt distress, and debt continues to crowd out development spending at an increasing rate, according to the report.

This year, it is estimated that the median developing economy will spend 9.53 percent of total government revenue on interest payments alone – double the share of a decade ago and the highest level seen in 25 years.

Averaged over the three-year period 2024 to 2026, 55 developing economies are estimated to pay more than 10 percent of revenue in interest payments, compared to 32 countries a decade ago.

“No country should have to sacrifice its future development to manage a crisis it did not create,” said De Croo. “First, we must unlock multilateral liquidity in ways that are easy to access for low and middle-income countries. Second, we must accelerate investment in renewable energy. Every clean energy investment reduces exposure to future shocks. The crisis has made one thing clear: energy security and the energy transition are no longer separate agendas. They are one and the same.”

The report is being launched in the context of the Hamburg Sustainability Conference (HSC) taking place this week. The HSC is an annual high-level meeting that aims to foster new partnerships and collective action by global policymakers, private sector leaders, academia experts, and civil society representatives. The annual event is a joint initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the Michael Otto Foundation.

Full report
The full report is available online at https://www.undp.org/publications/military-escalation-middle-east-cushioning-global-shock

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Excerpt:

The UN Peacebuilding Commission Celebrates 20 Years of UN Peacebuilding Architecture. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 1 2026 (IPS)

From June 22 to 26, the United Nations (UN) commemorated its first annual Peacebuilding Week, marking the 20th anniversary of the UN Peacebuilding Commission’s inaugural session. Featuring discussions among world leaders, policymakers, civil society, and advocates, the event explored how collaboration among governments, international organizations, and the private sector can enhance the visibility and effectiveness of peacebuilding efforts worldwide.

The goals of the Peacebuilding Week are particularly critical today, as increasing geopolitical tensions fracture international cooperation and severe financing shortfalls deplete resources, hindering relief efforts for civilians trapped in conflict. Despite a historic surge in active armed conflicts worldwide recorded over the past two years, peacebuilding and relief funding suffered a severe 40 percent decline between 2024 and 2025, leaving millions of people around the globe in a state of extreme insecurity.

“Peace does not occur automatically. It is built through persistent diplomacy, collective action and political will,” said Annalena Baerbock, President of the UN General Assembly. “Wars that never happen because of peacebuilding, conflict-prevention or sustainable-development efforts rarely make headlines. Yet, like everything else, peacebuilding is only possible when properly resourced.”

On June 26, the Peacebuilding Impact Hub—part of the Peacebuilding and Peace Support Office (PBPSO) within the UN Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations (DPPA-DPO)—launched its inaugural Peacebuilding Overview, titled Investing in Peace When the World Pays for War. This report analyzes data gathered from governments, civil society, scholars, and UN field operations across numerous, diverse contexts.

By addressing the root causes of conflict and encouraging the implementation of digital technologies—alongside active participation from youth and the private sector—the report aims to forge new paths for peacebuilding that are resilient, inclusive, and globally supported. Aiming to identify structural gaps in data sharing that prevent vital information from being shared internationally and from being fully utilized by policymakers and the public, the report was launched alongside a side event titled Building Peace in a Changing World.

At the event, Paul Fargues, one of the report’s authors and a Political Affairs Officer for the UN Department for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), told reporters that the world is currently at a “crossroads, where conflict is on the rise, good governance is declining, and civic space is shrinking.” He noted that this is compounded by severe budget cuts and disproportionate investment in military expenditure rather than civilian protection and prevention efforts, making humanitarian relief operations increasingly difficult.

According to the report, over the last two decades, the world has invested only one dollar in peacebuilding efforts for every 100 dollars spent on military expenditure. Fargues added that the world’s most vulnerable populations are projected to suffer the most, particularly in dire contexts where aid constitutes more than 60 percent of all external funding and acts as a vital lifeline. Additionally, the DDPA found that roughly two-thirds of the countries whose economies are most dependent on UN aid are also the ones most adversely affected by the funding cuts.

Fargues argued that some of the central obstacles in advancing peacebuilding efforts today are the persistent structural gaps in the dissemination of evidence and data, which is critically underdeveloped when compared to the development and humanitarian sectors.

“Peacebuilding has no underlying framework to create shared data practices, to generate insights at the global level to enhance evidence-based decision-making, or simply to communicate its value to broader non-technical audiences,” Fargues said. “Peacebuilders and those who support them must do a better job at measuring, proving, and communicating this. Given the incredibly challenging contexts, producing more robust data and evidence of impact is a bare minimum.”

Katherina Ahrendts, the Director-General for Global Order, United Nations and Humanitarian Assistance of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, stated that although the case for investing in protection and prevention efforts is clear, political and financial contributions lag significantly behind. According to figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for every dollar invested in preventive macroeconomic policies, up to 103 dollars could be generated in returns. DPPA also estimated that with adequate investment in prevention and protection measures, humanitarian needs could be reduced by approximately USD 3.6 billion annually.

Despite these potential gains, the economic case for peacebuilding efforts has not sufficiently influenced global investment priorities.“We are indeed at a critical moment when violent conflict is increasing while budgets are under strain and multilateralism as a whole is increasingly challenged,” said Ahrendts. “From a domestic policy standpoint, we need a much stronger business case, more compelling narratives, and better evidence. We need to showcase that peacebuilding is a smart, strategic, and cost-effective instrument that prevents much higher costs later on.”

“This means framing peacebuilding not only as a moral imperative, but as a matter of security, stability, mutual interests and sound investments. In particular, we need to make clear that peacebuilding and investment are an integral component of an effective security strategy,” she added.

Ana Escobar, the UN Representative for Peace Direct, an organization that empowers local peacebuilding efforts and supports community-driven approaches, remarked that peacebuilding must be grounded in a community-based approach and tailored to match the specific needs of vulnerable communities. Peace Direct defines meaningful impact as seeing communities become safer and more resilient long after external support has ceased.

Rather than implementing a pre-established peacebuilding agenda, Peace Direct works with local peacebuilders and community leaders to define what success looks like to them and identify the changes that they want to see. “That means asking different questions,” Escobar said. “Are communities resolving disputes without violence, and how do we measure that? Do women, youth, and marginalized groups have greater influence in decision-making? Is trust increasing between communities and institutions?”

“Peacebuilding is most effective when power, resources, and evidence flow in the same direction, towards the communities that live with conflict every day…. For local peacebuilders, prevention means that children go to school instead of joining armed groups, farmers return to their lands, markets reopen, women move safely, families remain together. Those are the returns communities measure every day,” added Escobar.

Dr. Cedric De Coning, a Senior Researcher in the Peace, Conflict and Development Research Group at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), underscored the importance of adaptive peacebuilding. This approach calls for the continuous monitoring of data and updating of peacebuilding measures, acknowledging that a community’s dynamics are constantly shifting. Rather than framing peacebuilding as a rigid structure being “built”, Dr. De Coning argues that it is more of a continuous process that is “nurtured”.

“What adaptive peacebuilding says is that we cannot know that beforehand; it has to emerge from people affected by conflict or people in societies struggling to achieve peace themselves,” said Dr. De Coning.

“As peacebuilders, we have to accompany these societies, and we have to learn together with them constantly and adapt our understanding of what it is that we can support. But we should be careful not to measure peace as something that only makes sense for donor-funded projects…. Peace is something much broader, and we need to measure that broader social transformation: how societies are experiencing peace, how they are living the things they look at, is what we need to look at rather than measuring projects to please donors.”

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India’s new education policy asks a great deal of its teachers. The National Education Policy of 2020 and its NISHTHA (National Initiative for School Heads’ and Teachers’ Holistic Advancement) training scheme, want teachers to be more than deliverers of syllabus. They are to be empowered professionals, agents of change who shape the future of children and, the policy says, of the nation itself. It is a generous and welcome ambition.

Vani S. Kulkarni

For two decades, the dominant approach to teacher quality in India, as in much of the world, has run in the opposite direction. It judges teachers by individual performance and accountability, by what they deliver and how their classrooms score. Under that logic, a teacher’s agency quietly shrinks until it means doing well what someone else has already decided. The teacher becomes an executor of other people’s choices. This is the very habit NISHTHA hopes to break, and it will not break easily, because a system built to measure compliance tends to produce it.

The real question, then, is not whether we wish teachers to have agency because we do. It is where agency actually comes from.

I spent a year, between 2023 and 2025, looking for an answer in an unlikely place: a small, non-governmental teacher-preparation programme in Gurugram, north India called I Am A Teacher (IAAT), which has spent a decade training teachers in a humanistic tradition that cuts against the accountability grain. What I found there was a claim that sounds almost too soft to matter, until you watch what it does. Agency, in this programme’s account, does not begin with autonomy handed down from above. It begins with self-knowledge. A teacher who has examined her own assumptions, her own fears and habits of judgment, is a teacher who can finally exercise judgment of her own.

That self-knowledge expressed itself, in the teachers I met, in three widening circles.

The first was the classroom. Teachers spoke of designing their own curricula and lesson plans, and of sharing in decisions about assessment, as the very substance of their professional dignity. To be handed instructions to execute, one teacher said, is to have your voice taken away. And teacher autonomy, several insisted, is not for the teacher’s sake alone. When a teacher can read her own classroom and meet children where they are, the children begin to experience an agency of their own, becoming creative and imaginative rather than merely obedient.

The second circle was the inner life of the student. These teachers refused to see their work as the transmission of knowledge and content alone. A child’s social and emotional wellbeing, one told me, matters as much as the subject on the board. They understood it as part of their agency to steady a struggling child, inside the classroom and beyond it, on the conviction that learning and wellbeing cannot be pulled apart.

The third and widest circle was the world the school is embedded in. The most striking thing about these teachers was that their sense of agency did not stop at the classroom door. They spoke about how political and economic forces shape what gets taught and what gets funded, and about the inequality that public education is meant to counter and too often deepens. Education can never be equal, one teacher said plainly, naming the way wealth sorts children into schools and teachers into salaries. Some met that knowledge not with resignation but with initiative, volunteering in underserved areas or starting small independent learning centres of their own. That is agency in its fullest sense, a teacher who sees the system she is part of and acts to make it fairer.

A training module alone can produce none of this, and that is exactly the point. The NEP is right that teachers should be agents of change. But agency is not a permission a policy grants. It is a capacity, and capacities have to be formed, through self-reflection, mentoring, time, and the experience of being trusted to decide. These are precisely the things an accountability-driven system finds hardest to fund, because they do not show up on a dashboard, and their results appear years later, in a classroom run by someone who knows her own mind.

A teacher who has been told only what to do can comply. A teacher who has come to know herself can decide. India’s classrooms, and the children in them, need far more of the second kind. No policy can issue that teacher by order. But a country that understood where her/his agency begins could choose, at last, to help make her/his.

If NISHTHA is to be more than a circular, its success will be measured on the ground, in whether teachers actually come to exercise the agency the policy promises them. And one concrete step is within reach now. The country need not invent this formation from nothing. Small programmes such as IAAT, quietly and against the current, already practise it and have done so for years. Recognising them, learning from them, and resourcing them would cost little and teach a great deal.

Vani S. Kulkarni is a sociologist affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, and has held research and teaching appointments at Harvard and Yale universities. Her research navigates the intricate crossroads of Global Health, Education, Race and Caste, Gender, Sociology of Trust, Development, and Democracy.

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A protester holds up a placard thar reads ‘Resist, don’t compromise’ at a mass march held under the slogan ‘The people are hungry, the prisons are full’ through popular neighborhoods in Tunis, Tunisia, on 16 May 2026. Credit: Chedly Ben Ibrahim/NurPhoto via AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jul 1 2026 (IPS)

In May, Tunisian lawyer and journalist Sonia Dahmani was handed her second conviction of the year. Her latest sentence, a two-year jail term, came in reaction to her criticism of poor prison conditions. She previously received an 18-month sentence for calling out the government’s anti-migrant policies. Dahmani faces five more charges under a 2022 cybercrime law that criminalises the spreading of what it calls ‘false information’.

Dahmani is one of many victims of President Kais Saied, who continues to steer Tunisia in an ever more repressive direction. Saied won a free and fair election in 2019, but in 2021 he removed the prime minister and parliament, ruling by decree instead. The following year, he rewrote the constitution to give himself near-absolute power, approved in a low-turnout referendum held after key opposing voices had been jailed. When he won his second term in 2024, credible opponents had been criminalised and barred from running. It’s all a long way from the democracy that sprang into life after the 2011 Jasmine Revolution.

Growing criminalisation

Saied’s repression operates behind a facade of legality, with the criminal justice system serving as a tool of presidential control. In 2022, Saied sacked judges who disagreed with him and gave himself the power to control judicial appointments. Courts now do his bidding and jail opponents. At least nine staff of civil society organisations have received prison sentences so far this year.

Journalists Borhen Bssais and Mourad Zeghidi received three-and-a-half-year sentences on trumped-up money laundering and tax evasion charges in January. In 2025, 37 journalists, lawyers, opposition politicians and other dissidents were found guilty of terrorism and plotting to destabilise Tunisia. Following a mass trial, some were given decades-long jail terms. A November 2025 appeal court hearing that defendants weren’t allowed to attend upheld almost all convictions and increased some sentences.

The latest phase of the crackdown is targeting anti-racism campaigners. Since 2023, Saied has deployed the populist strategy of attacking Black African migrants to distract from the economic problems he’s failed to address. He’s repeatedly accused migrants of being responsible for crime and disorder, fuelling violence against them from security forces and the public.

Saied has branded organisations that stand up for migrants’ rights as traitors and foreign agents. Vilification prepares the ground for incarceration. In March, Saadia Mosbah, president of Mnemty, a Tunisian association that fights against racism, received a staggering eight-year sentence on bogus illicit enrichment and money laundering charges. Five of her colleagues were convicted alongside her.

Mnemty faces the threat of being closed down, part of an assault on associational freedoms that has seen dozens of other civil society organisations suspended. Hundreds more could face the same treatment. In 2024, courts ordered the closure of the Tunisian Council for Refugees. Last November, two of its leaders, Mustapha Djemali and Abderrazek Krimi, received two-year sentences for offences under a 1975 law on passports and travel documents.

No one appears to be beyond the state’s reach. In March, a judge ordered the pretrial detention of seven people on money laundering charges for their involvement in the first Global Sumud Flotilla, which last October attempted to take humanitarian aid to Gaza’s besieged population. Meanwhile being one of the organisations that won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize offered no protection for the Tunisian League for Human Rights. The group was slapped with a one-month suspension in April.

For civil society organisations, suspension marks the start of a process that can lead to dissolution. Civil society organisations also face asset freezes, lawsuits and tax investigations. The combination of criminalisation, legal harassment and top-down vilification results in a pervasive chilling effect.

Judges that don’t do Saied’s bidding are also at risk. Anas Hmedi, President of the Association of Tunisian Magistrates, has been subjected to criminal proceedings since 2022, with a summons on fresh charges issued in January.

Europe says little

Tunisians continue to protest. Hundreds marched in the capital, Tunis, on 6 June to demand media freedoms and the release of political prisoners. Protesters in May also called out Saied’s failure to address the economic crisis. But they need international support.

Last October, Saber Ben Chouchane was handed a death sentence for criticising Saied on Facebook. Authorities interpreted his posts as constituting crimes of attempting to change the form of government, insulting the president and spreading false information. But this time the repression backfired. The severity of the sentence caused such an international outcry that Saied was forced to pardon and release him. This shows that international criticism can make a difference.

The European Parliament spoke up last November, passing a resolution calling for the release of political prisoners and the repeal of the false information provisions. But such gestures have limits, as shown by Saied’s dismissal of the resolution as ‘blatant interference’.

Resistance to autocratisation takes more than words, but the EU isn’t acting. It’s in a weak position towards Saied because it pays the Tunisian government to help prevent migrants crossing into Europe, and in April 2025, it classified Tunisia as a safe country of origin. This means it believes migrants can be deported there on the basis that they won’t be at risk of persecution, a claim that rings hollow for the many from civil society now in jail.

EU policies have contributed to the rising number of migrants in Tunisia, since people can make it there but no further. This makes them a ready target for Saied’s scapegoating. The EU must acknowledge its responsibility and change course. It must recognise that migrants’ rights in Tunisia aren’t being protected and that, in the current situation, only civil society can do that. In its dealings with Tunisia, it must insist that civil society freedoms are respected and people are free both to defend migrants’ rights and criticise the government’s decisions. Continuing silence will make it complicit in the consolidation of a dictatorship.

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

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On the night of 29 June 1976, just before midnight, I stood among my fellow Seychellois at the heart of a moment that would change our history forever.

James Alix Michel

The air was heavy with expectation, pride, and a certain quiet anxiety: we were stepping into the unknown.

That night was emotional for me in a very personal way. After the new president had delivered his address, the president of my party – who would become Prime Minister at Independence – took the podium. At the end of his speech, he recited a poem I had written for our newspaper, entitled “Il est Minuit” – “It is midnight”. Hearing my own words spoken at that exact moment, when one era was ending and another beginning, was unforgettable. It felt as if the poem had become part of the birth certificate of our nation.

Fifty years later, as Seychelles celebrates its golden jubilee of Independence, I look back not only as a witness of that first midnight, but as someone who has walked alongside the country through many of its trials and transformations: from minister, to vice president, to president, and now as an advocate for the Blue Economy and for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) on the global stage.

From struggle to nationhood:

The struggle for Independence was our first great challenge. As a small colony in the Indian Ocean, it could have been easy to remain permanently on the periphery of history. Instead, the Seychellois chose to take responsibility for their own destiny. The transition from colonial rule to self government forged a strong sense of identity and duty. It taught us that freedom is not a one time event, but a continuous effort.

In the years after Independence, Seychelles experimented with different political paths, including one party rule and later a return to multi party democracy. These choices were often contentious, but they were part of our process of political maturation. As institutions evolved and multi party politics took root, we learned the value of dialogue, compromise and the rule of law. A young state was becoming a more confident republic.

2008: A turning point born of crisis:

One of the most defining moments in my own journey came in 2008. By then I was president, and Seychelles was facing a deep economic crisis. The global financial turmoil, combined with soaring oil and food prices, had almost exhausted our foreign reserves. The rupee was heavily overvalued, deficits were spiralling, and eventually the country missed a payment on its external debt.

In such moments, leadership is tested in very practical ways. On 31 October 2008, I took the decision to launch a comprehensive macroeconomic reform programme, supported by the International Monetary Fund. We floated the rupee, restructured the national debt, and imposed strict fiscal discipline. These were not popular measures; they required real sacrifice from the Seychellois people.

Yet that programme became a turning point. It stabilised our economy, restored credibility, and moved Seychelles towards a more modern, private sector led market system.

Looking back, I consider those reforms one of the most important achievements of my leadership. Without that foundation, many of the subsequent steps we took – in education, innovation and environmental policy – would have been far more difficult, if not impossible.

Pirates at sea, pressure on land:

Just as those economic reforms were taking root, a new and very different threat emerged. Somali pirates, heavily armed, began operating deep inside our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), hijacking local vessels, taking Seychellois fishermen hostage and frightening away cruise ships and fishing fleets. Our two main economic pillars – tourism and tuna fishing – were suddenly at risk.

For a small island state with 1.3 million square kilometres of ocean, this was an existential security challenge. We knew we could not police such a vast space alone. We therefore mounted an intense diplomatic effort to convince regional and global partners that securing the Western Indian Ocean was in everyone’s interest. Seychelles became a hub for anti piracy operations; our Coast Guard cooperated closely with foreign navies; and we adapted our domestic laws to prosecute and imprison pirates.

These were difficult years, but they showed that a small nation, if it acts with courage and clarity, can punch above its weight. We helped to restore security to our waters and protect the livelihoods of our people.

Meanwhile, a quieter but more permanent threat was taking shape: climate change. Coral bleaching, coastal erosion and rising sea levels were affecting our islands directly. Seychelles was facing an environmental crisis it had done little to create, while international climate finance for SIDS was still limited and slow.

From vulnerability to vision: the Blue Economy:

It was in this context that the idea of the Blue Economy began to crystallise. For years, I had been convinced that our future would be decided not only on land, but in the ocean that surrounds us. Seychelles has a small landmass but a vast maritime zone. If we could rethink the ocean as a space for sustainable development – not just for exploitation – we could turn vulnerability into opportunity.

When I began advocating publicly for the Blue Economy, there was scepticism at home and abroad. Some considered it too abstract, others thought it was merely a new label for old ideas. But we persisted in giving the concept substance: through marine spatial planning, through the designation of large marine protected areas, and through innovative mechanisms such as the debt for nature swap we concluded in 2014 with the Paris Club and The Nature Conservancy.

That agreement restructured part of our national debt in exchange for robust commitments to ocean conservation. It helped to fund protection for 30% of our waters and became a model for other countries. Seychelles, once seen only as a vulnerable small island state, was now recognised as a pioneer of the Blue Economy and of nature based solutions.

Investing in people

Economic and environmental reforms are only part of the story. I have always believed that the most important investment a country can make is in its people. That is why I supported the creation of the University of Seychelles, at a time when some argued that our nation was too small to have its own university. The aim was simple: to give Seychellois youth the chance to pursue tertiary education at home and build their future on their own soil.

We complemented this with initiatives like the Young Leaders Programme, designed to prepare promising young Seychellois for positions of responsibility, including through postgraduate studies.

For me, these efforts are as central to our Independence story as any economic reform or diplomatic achievement. Independence is not only about sovereignty; it is about giving every generation the tools to shape its own destiny.

Looking ahead: Seychelles in 2076:

Today, as Seychelles celebrates 50 years of Independence, I am often asked what I see when I look ahead to the next half century. My vision is of a nation that has completed the journey from perceived vulnerability to respected ocean leadership: a country that manages its maritime space wisely, that uses its natural resources sustainably, and that shares its experience with other island and coastal states.

But my greatest pride is not in the policies we have already put in place. It lies in the potential I see in our people, especially our young people. They are better educated, more connected and more globally aware than my generation was in 1976. If they remain united, keep faith with our values and dare to innovate, I believe the Seychelles of tomorrow can be even more remarkable than the Seychelles of today.

At midnight on that first Independence Day, the poem “Il est Minuit” captured a sense of ending and beginning. Fifty years on, I feel we are once again at such a threshold. The first chapter of an independent Seychelles has been written. The next will be authored by a new generation.

My hope is that they will write it with courage, imagination and love for these islands and the ocean that surrounds them.

IPS UN Bureau

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CIVICUS discusses Ghana’s anti-LGBTQI+ law with Leila Lariba, Executive Director of One Love Sisters Ghana, a community-driven organisation that advances human rights, social inclusion and wellbeing for Muslim LGBTQI+ people in Ghana.

On 29 May, Ghana’s parliament approved the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, which imposes prison terms of up to three years for people who identify as LGBTQI+ and three to five years for anyone deemed to promote, sponsor or support LGBTQI+ activities. With it, Ghana joins a growing group of West African states, including Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Senegal, that have recently passed anti-LGBTQI+ laws.

What does the new bill do, and how different is it from the version parliament approved in 2024?

Parliament approved the new anti-LGBTQI+ bill on 29 May and it now awaits President John Dramani Mahama’s signature. The bill criminalises LGBTQI+ people and anyone perceived to support, advocate for or provide services to them. It reaches far beyond identity and relationships into the freedoms of association, education, expression, healthcare and human rights advocacy. I have worked directly with LGBTQI+ communities across Ghana for years and I see this not as a legal document but as a tool that legitimises discrimination.

The version parliament approved in 2024, which former president Nana Akufo-Addo left office without signing, was already one of the continent’s most restrictive. The new text keeps most of its harmful provisions. It comes at a moment when LGBTQI+ people already face heightened fear, insecurity and stigma, and it makes simply existing, seeking support or speaking about human rights a potential crime.

Why is the bill being pushed now, and who’s behind it?

The bill is being pushed by anti-rights groups that have increasingly turned LGBTQI+ people into a political target. As many Ghanaians struggle with economic hardship, unemployment and governance concerns, public attention is being redirected towards a small and already excluded community.

Behind it stands a coalition of political figures, conservative religious groups and traditional leaders who frame LGBTQI+ rights as a threat to culture and family values. This narrative ignores Ghana’s long history of diversity and the fact that LGBTQI+ people belong to every family, community and faith group in the country and the world.

Do you expect President Dramani to sign the bill, and what would the consequences be?

It’s uncertain whether President Dramani will sign. But the damage is already done. The prolonged public debate has fuelled fear, encouraged discrimination and left many people feeling less safe. Even before it becomes law, the bill has emboldened hostility.

At One Love Sisters Ghana, we have documented rising reports of blackmail, evictions, family rejection, mental health crises, online harassment and workplace discrimination. People are now afraid to seek healthcare, legal help and psychosocial support in case they are exposed or targeted. When fear becomes institutionalised, people stop seeking help precisely when they need it most.

The law would threaten fundamental rights and deepen the stigma, isolation and vulnerability of people who already face daily barriers. As a queer Muslim activist, I know what it means to navigate many layers of exclusion. Many LGBTQI+ people are balancing identity, faith, family and safety. This law would make that even harder.

The impact would reach beyond individual people. Community organisations, healthcare providers, human rights defenders and support networks would also face risk, making it harder for vulnerable people to reach essential services and protection.

How are LGBTQI+ groups, including your organisation, responding?

Ghana’s LGBTQI+ communities are remarkably resilient. Across the country, people are supporting one another, sharing information, strengthening their safety and keeping community ties alive.

At One Love Sisters Ghana, we focus on community care, protection and wellbeing. We have tightened safety and security measures, expanded psychosocial support, documented rights violations and kept referring people in crisis to the help they need.

We work closely with activists, community leaders, health professionals, lawyers and regional partners to track developments and keep people informed and supported. Through our national support systems, we keep hearing from people worried about their safety, livelihoods and future.

We also hold on to hope. Our communities have survived hard times before, and we keep building solidarity, caring for one another and advocating for dignity and human rights.

What further restrictions could follow, and what support do you need to prevent them?

Our greatest fear is that this law lays the groundwork for broader restrictions on civil society, free expression and human rights work. Organisations could face tighter scrutiny, activists greater risk and excluded groups even harder access to services.

To prevent further harm, we need sustained support from national, regional and international allies for community safety initiatives, emergency response, legal assistance, mental health services and the protection of human rights defenders.

International solidarity should be led by local communities and grounded in human rights. Allies should amplify local voices, back grassroots organisations and keep advocating for fundamental freedoms.

This is bigger than LGBTQI+ rights. It’s about the kind of society we want to be. Respect for human rights can’t be selective. When the rights of one group are restricted, it creates a precedent that can affect everyone.

As a queer Muslim feminist and human rights defender, I believe that dignity, freedom and safety belong to all people. The conversations happening today will shape the future of our democracy. I hope Ghana chooses compassion over fear, inclusion over exclusion and human dignity over discrimination.

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.

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SEE ALSO
Gender rights: rollback and resistance CIVICUS | State of Civil Society Report 2026
Senegal: ‘The new law criminalises not only LGBTQI+ people but also anyone offering support’ CIVICUS Lens | Anonymous interview 21.May.2026
Ghana: ‘The anti-LGBTQI+ law enshrines prejudice and discrimination and perpetuates inequalities’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Solomon Atsuvia | 01.May.2024

With elections likely to be held in August, the young people in Haiti are moving ahead, creating opportunities in music and digitalization and agricultural cooperatives, which are reinventing food self-sufficiency. Credit: Shutterstock

By Xavier Michon
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Jun 29 2026 (IPS)

There is a question that is never asked plainly enough in reports on Haiti: why, despite decades of analysis, billions in international aid, and an abundance of national strategies, does the potential of Haitian youth remain so consistently underutilized? This report, The Silent Transformation, is an attempt at an honest answer.

And that answer begins with an admission: for too long, we have viewed this generation as a problem to manage rather than a solution to mobilize.

Haiti is one of the youngest countries in the Western Hemisphere. More than one in two Haitians is under the age of 25. This reality should be at the heart of every policy decision, every investment strategy, every dialogue with international partners. It is not yet. And it is precisely to change this that this report exists.

We are at a turning point unlike any in the country’s recent history. For the first time since 2016, general elections are on the horizon. What may appear as an institutional milestone is, in fact, a deeply human one: an entire generation is preparing to vote for the first time. Citizens who were between 8 and 17 years old during the last general election. Since then, they have built businesses, lived through an earthquake, a pandemic, a presidential assassination and an unprecedented security crisis—and at no point during all of this were they consulted about the future of their own country.

Ten years without elections. Ten years of shaping their own lives without their institutions recognizing them as full actors. This paradox lies at the heart of this report.

Because this generation has not waited for permission to begin its transformation. It has done so on its own, in adversity, with whatever tools were within reach. And this is where the central thesis of this document lies: Haitian youth are not waiting for development. They are already producing it.

Mannitòks are inventing fintech without waiting for banks to modernize. Agricultural cooperatives are reinventing food self-sufficiency in secure areas. Coding clubs in Cap-Haïtien and Carrefour are training the next generation of developers without formal computer science schools. Designers in Pétion-Ville, musicians exporting kompa and Kreyòl rap to global platforms, DJs connecting Port-au-Prince to the diaspora, and artisans in Noailles are sustaining a cultural economy still absent from official economic radars.

These are not isolated success stories. They are signs of a structural transformation unfolding before our eyes—quietly, because we have not yet learned how to see it with the right tools.

This report is an attempt to develop those tools. It documents, analyzes, and recommends. But it also does something rarer in development literature: it shifts the perspective. It starts from the creative genius of Haitian youth and works upward toward public policy, rather than moving from policy down to beneficiaries.

This inversion is not rhetorical—it is methodological. And it changes what we see.

What it reveals is demanding for all of us. It shows that the main barrier to youth development in Haiti is not a lack of potential, but a lack of recognition of that potential. It shows that the most effective policies will not be those designed for young people, but those designed with them. And it shows, finally, that the international community—including UNDP—must embrace a new kind of humility: sometimes, to support means to step back, to remove obstacles rather than impose solutions.

UNDP supports these dynamics: we promote digital skills, access to finance and innovation ecosystems. Our initiatives—from supporting Fab Labs to advancing regulatory reforms—aim to create an environment in which youth-led enterprises can thrive. But we also know that our most valuable role is the one we build on the ground, alongside those who are already taking action. This report calls on us to listen as much as we act.

I warmly thank Group Croissance and CEDEL Haiti, whose field expertise and unwavering commitment have shaped every page of this document. Above all, I thank the young Haitians who shared their experiences, their vision and their clarity—because this is their report before it is ours.

To them, I want to say this: your determination is not only your strength—it is, objectively, the most valuable resource Haiti possesses. The upcoming election will be your first meeting with the ballot box. It will not be your last. And if this report helps ensure that this moment lives up to what you have already built without itin adversity, without permission, with unwavering ambition, then it will have achieved its essential purpose.

None of this happens in isolation. Canada has been a trusted partner in Haiti’s development journey, and its continued support for initiatives that invest in people, ideas and long-term possibilities reflects exactly the kind of partnership Haiti needs. To the Government of Canada and Global Affairs Canada: thank you. Your commitment to a Haiti defined by its potential—not only its challenges—helps make initiatives like this one possible.

The path ahead requires courage, collaboration and clear-eyed reflection on what has not worked—but above all, renewed faith in what is possible. Because while the past teaches us caution, it is the future this generation is already shaping that must guide our choices.

Let us take this path together—by letting you show the way.

XAVIER MICHON IS Resident Representative, UNDP Haiti

Source: UNDP

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

Exactly 15 years ago today rinderpest, or “cattle plague", was declared eradicated. Credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann/Unsplash

By Armin Wiesler
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Jun 27 2026 (IPS)

Animal disease is no longer a distant concern for farmers and veterinarians alone. It is increasingly visible in household budgets: global egg prices surged more than 60% during recent bird flu outbreaks. In South Africa, foot-and-mouth disease pushed beef prices up by 34%. These are not isolated fluctuations in price. They are reminders that when prevention falls short, families, farmers and food systems all pay the price.

Exactly 15 years ago today, the world proved there is another way. On June 28, 2011, the United Nations (UN) declared rinderpest, or “cattle plague,” eradicated. It remains the only animal disease ever wiped from the planet. For centuries, the virus had killed millions of livestock animals, devastated herds and triggered famines across continents.

The eradication campaign succeeded because science, logistics and political commitment all came together. A global prevention effort was supported by surveillance, international coordination, and an effective, heat-stable vaccine that could reach remote, tropical areas without the need for refrigeration. This turned an ancient threat into a preventable one – and then into a disease of the past.

The lesson was not only scientific. It was economic. According to estimates by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, rinderpest control cost around $610 million while the annual benefits for Africa alone amounted to $1 billion. In other words, prevention did not just save animals. It protected livelihoods, strengthened food security and paid for itself many times over.

Yet, in the past 15 years, the world has not applied that lesson more broadly or consistently enough. When outbreaks occur, the response still too often defaults to emergency measures such as culling, movement restrictions and trade disruption. Rather than rapid deployment of preventive tools like surveillance, biosecurity measures, vaccination and close international cooperation.

Lumpy skin disease is a current case in point: diagnostics, biosecurity practices and effective vaccines exist, yet many countries struggle to use them quickly enough to stop spread and limit damage. The barriers are structural. International trade rules with potential economic risk impact decision-making, even when it is a necessity. Countries may face an impossible choice: protect their animals and farmers or protect access to export markets. The result is a system that remains perpetually reactive.

Meanwhile, these diseases continue to spread. Lumpy skin disease and peste des petits ruminants (PPR) reached new regions for the first time last year, disrupting trade, harming rural communities and undermining food security. For the more than one billion people who rely on livestock for food, income and livelihoods, these are not abstract events. They have a real economic and social impact.

That is why the rinderpest eradication anniversary should be more than a moment of reflection. It should be a reminder that prevention only works when it is planned before the next emergency, not improvised during it. National preparedness remains essential, but diseases respect no borders. No country can fully control animal health threats alone.

Global collaboration is needed to improve surveillance, align incentives for vaccination, and remove the trade and policy barriers that discourage prevention. This is the role initiatives such as the World Organisation for Animal Health’s PREVENT Forum can play: bringing governments, international organizations and the private sector together to help remove the barriers that individual countries cannot on their own.

But collaboration must move beyond discussion. It should lead to practical changes: stronger investment in surveillance and diagnostics, clearer pathways for the use and recognition of vaccination, and faster access to these tools during outbreaks. The goal should not be to respond better to every crisis. It should be to prevent more crises from happening.

The past three years alone have brought outbreaks of avian influenza, bluetongue virus, foot-and-mouth disease and Newcastle disease across continents. We do not yet know which animal disease will cause the next major shock, or where it will emerge.

But rinderpest proved that the world knows how to act when science, political will and global coordination are aligned. The question is not whether prevention is possible. The question is whether we will choose to make it a priority before the next crisis strikes.

Dr Armin Wiesler is President of HealthforAnimals

IPS UN Bureau

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AI job exposure and risk of human jobs lost to AI. Image generated by IA

By Isabel Ortiz and Bill Shoulder
NEW YORK, Jun 26 2026 (IPS)

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises remarkable gains in productivity, science, medicine and education. But it is also poised to wipe out millions of jobs, hollow out the middle class, and drain the tax revenues that pay for hospitals, schools and pensions. The process has already begun, and the time to act is running out.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that AI will affect almost 40% of jobs worldwide. In advanced economies, around 60% of jobs are exposed and as many as one in three (33%) human jobs are at high risk of being replaced by AI. In emerging markets, about 40% are exposed, with roughly one in four (24%) at high displacement risk; and in low-income countries, an estimated 26%, with close to one in five (18%) human jobs lost to AI.

Isabel Ortiz

New jobs will appear but, according to the IMF, far more are likely to vanish. The effects spread beyond the workers who lose their jobs. Wages fall, insecure work multiplies, and bargaining power collapses once employers can credibly threaten to swap workers for AI. More income flows to those who own the technology and to a handful of dominant firms, while the share reaching ordinary employees and workers shrinks.

Middle-class households are the economy’s main consumers. If their incomes fall, shops and small businesses sell less, investment slows, and closures rise. The economy can then slip into a low-growth trap of weak demand, low wages and chronic underemployment.

Falling tax revenues weaken the welfare state
The pressure then moves to public finances. Much of governments’ funding depends on the middle class: income taxes, consumption taxes and social security contributions. If wage income falls and stable employment shrinks, public revenues shrink with it. At the same time, more people need unemployment support, retraining, healthcare and income assistance. Governments then face the fiscal vise of lower revenue and higher need, a risk highlighted in the IMF’s 2026 analysis of AI, labor markets and public policy.

Bill Shoulder

Public services and democracy come under strain
History suggests what often comes next: austerity policies. Governments under pressure raise consumption taxes, increase user fees, tighten eligibility rules and cut public spending. When revenues weaken, education, health, care services and social protection are often treated as budget lines to be “rationalized,” even though they are human rights and indispensable public services that hold societies together. The result is a two-tier world: quality private services for the wealthy few and failing public provision for everyone else.

Economic insecurity erodes democratic trust. If people feel that work no longer provides stability, that public institutions no longer protect them, and that the gains from technology flow upward to a small elite, resentment grows. Polarization intensifies. Scapegoating becomes easier, as does the appeal of surveillance, manipulation and more authoritarian forms of control, especially when AI itself can be used to shape information and public debate.

The future is ours to shape
None of this is inevitable. As Nobel laureates Acemoglu and Johnson argue, the impact of AI depends far less on the technology than on the political and economic choices we make about how to use it. Governments can tax the windfall profits and concentrated power AI creates. With these funds, they can protect demand and guarantee income security through the transition. Governments can and should expand public services and social security as fundamental human rights. States should also give workers and citizens a real say in how AI is deployed, and regulate AI to strengthen democracy, prevent disinformation and surveillance from eroding civic trust before it is damaged beyond repair.

AI is already transforming society. The decisive question is whether democracies can ensure that its enormous gains are shared widely enough to foster prosperity for all, preserving the social contract on which stable, dignified societies depend. That choice is still ours, but not for much longer.

Isabel Ortiz, Director, Global Social Justice, was Director at the International Labor Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, and a senior official at the UN and the Asian Development Bank.

Bill Shoulder is an AI software engineer and a researcher, with a background in artificial intelligence and international project management.

IPS UN Bureau

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(L-R) Horacio (Luis) Carvalho, CEO of Climate Change Ventures, and Faraz Khan, MBE, at London Climate Action Week. Carvalho's firm advises on carbon mitigation and green investment projects. They signed an MOU to develop markets with Brazilian CPR Verde (green rural product certificate), a Brazilian financial credit instrument used to fund environmental preservation, forestry conservation, and carbon sequestration. The markets they are eyeing will be Saudi Arabia, Africa and Pakistan. Credit: Faraz Khan

By Zofeen Ebrahim
LONDON & KARACHI, Pakistan, Jun 26 2026 (IPS)

The 30 COP gatherings may not have done what three months of US-Israeli war against Iran did: expose the world’s vulnerability to fossil fuels.

As the world faced its biggest energy shock in a decade, the case for investing in clean energy suddenly became far more compelling.

As an intense heatwave grips Europe, with London’s Met Office issuing a “risk to life” warning and the closure of shops, offices and schools alongside disruptions to transport during the London Climate Action Week (LCAW), calls for this shift are gaining even greater momentum.

New Sense of Urgency

“The sentiment is palpable among policymakers, investors and business leaders,” conceded Faraz Khan, MBE.

A Pakistani entrepreneur and co-founder and partner of Pakistan-based Sustainadility, a technology, data and advisory firm, with over 25 years of experience in multi-stakeholder investments and in drafting environmental, sustainability and governance frameworks, is among those gathered to discuss the future of climate finance and the energy transition.

Speaking to IPS by phone on the sidelines of LCAW which closes on June 28, Khan stressed the urgency of transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy, saying the shift would not be possible without investors and businesses.

Khan described the mood at LCAW, as “optimistic” tempered by caution. He also welcomed the attention Pakistan was getting. “Our country was lauded for its efforts in brokering the peace deal,” referring to the Islamabad Memorandum between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

From Rule-Making to Seeking Investment

Comparing the two events, he said the annual Bonn climate talks, held from June 8 to 18, focused on diplomatic negotiations and climate rule-making, while LCAW, also an annual event held since 2019, centres on mobilising private investment in sustainability and ESG and scaling these initiatives commercially.

“LCAW is more business- and private sector-orientated,” said Khan, who is also the founder and director of  SeedVentures, a Pakistan-based social impact organisation and impact investor.

Still, he said: “There are two sides to the coin. On the one hand, the US-Iran peace deal and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz have shown the world that oil remains crucial for the world to exist; but, on the other, many countries recognise that dependence on fossil fuels is not in their national interest and even poses a national security risk.”

Geopolitical conflicts have exposed the vulnerabilities associated with oil production, trade and transportation, which is why investment in alternative energy is expected to accelerate.

At a COP31 presidential meeting with the private sector at LCAW, which Khan attended, the conversation revolved around the circular economy, electrification and climate finance with some of the biggest names in the global climate community, including BlackRock, the World Bank, UNIDO, the IFC and several trade organisations.

“It was a gathering of the who’s who of the climate world,” Khan said with a laugh. “Even we made the cut.”

What was missing, however, Khan said, were women in decision-making roles. He was, however, impressed by those in the Turkish COP team, praising their intellectual rigour and commanding presence in the room, which he found to be “truly impressive”.

Beyond the composition of the meetings, Khan said the discussions themselves reflected a growing determination to move beyond rhetoric.

There was a strong sense in the room that a new precedent was about to be set by shifting the focus from negotiations to implementation, investment and action.

“Governments can create an enabling environment and UN frameworks can provide the rules, but ultimately it is investors, bankable projects and big businesses that will drive change,” he said.

While the Bonn climate talks focused on regulatory frameworks, LCAW’s focus is on climate finance and transactions, he noted. “And at Antalya, where the COP31 will be held this November, it will be about putting money where our mouths are—deploying capital into bankable projects and creating collaborative investment vehicles to scale climate action,” said Khan.

Private Sector Takes Centre Stage

He also observed that China was frequently cited as a global leader in clean energy investment.

“Across the various meetings, I sensed a strong and growing appetite for investment in renewable energy, and I believe this momentum will only accelerate,” he said.

Large businesses and institutions, he added, would be critical to delivering a just transition because their extensive operations and community links give them the reach needed to drive meaningful change.

The emphasis on electrification and reducing dependence on fossil fuels was echoed by Türkiye’s COP31 leadership.

Earlier this month, speaking to The Guardian on the sidelines of the climate talks in Bonn, Murat Kurum, Türkiye’s environment minister, said the 35% target would be “one of the defining priorities” of the COP31 presidency.

“By electrifying daily life, from transport to buildings and industry, we can protect families and businesses from volatile energy markets,” he told the media outlet.

Khan believed Pakistan has an opportunity to position itself at the forefront of this transition.

While Pakistan is frequently showcased as a victim of climate disasters, despite contributing less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Khan said the global focus on solar should also shine a light on the country’s “silent solar revolution”, which has transformed its investment landscape.

“Pakistan has become a global example of how solar adoption can evolve rapidly, opening up substantial investment opportunities in solar manufacturing and battery production,” he said, adding that modernising the grid and scaling up utility-scale energy storage have become increasingly urgent.

Investing in Nature

Beyond renewable energy, Khan saw significant opportunities in nature-based investments.

Khan said Pakistan’s rich biodiversity—from mangroves and forests to wetlands, rangelands and mountain ecosystems—offers enormous investment potential, with private capital capable of both restoring and protecting these natural assets.

Agriculture accounts for a large share of Pakistan’s economy and is a major driver of biodiversity loss. He said private businesses could invest in regenerative agriculture, agroforestry and sustainable rice and cotton production, either to meet sustainability goals or as part of emerging biodiversity credit markets.

“Just as there are carbon credits, there are biodiversity credits, and these are directly linked to food security and agriculture,” Khan said. Given agriculture’s central role in Pakistan’s economy, he argued that the country holds enormous potential for biodiversity credits. “I think this is going to be truly phenomenal because it presents enormous investment opportunities,” he said.

But realising this potential will depend on Pakistan’s ability to attract sustained private investment.

Investment Challenges

Sadly, there are few takers.

Khan said Pakistan’s high sovereign risk remains the biggest obstacle to attracting international climate investment at scale, although recent policy reforms, including the Pakistan Green Taxonomy, green banking guidelines and ESG standards, have improved investor confidence.

He also pointed to a shortage of bankable projects, with many failing to attract global investors despite their strong fundamentals. Still, he said, the investment potential remains enormous.

Yet time may be of the essence.

If the recent turmoil in the Middle East exposed the world’s vulnerability to fossil fuels, Khan believes it also underscored the urgency of accelerating the clean energy transition. For Pakistan, he said, the opportunity is immense—but only if the country can create the conditions needed to attract the investment required to realise it.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/IMF Photo

By Chie Aoyagi, Maurizio Leonardi, Athene Laws and Hamza Mighri
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 26 2026 (IPS)

For decades, official development assistance has been a central pillar of financing in sub-Saharan Africa. That pillar is now weakening—quickly and broadly.

In 2025, bilateral aid to the region fell sharply, with early estimates pointing to cuts of about 26 percent in a single year. Multilateral support is also under pressure, with major institutions projecting sizeable budget reductions. More cuts may follow as donors reset priorities in a shifting geopolitical environment.

As we explain in chapter 2 of the IMF’s recent Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, this is not a routine fluctuation. It is hitting countries that have limited room to adjust and few alternative sources of financing.

Why aid matters

Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest aid dependency globally in 2024. On average, aid accounted for 3 percent of GDP at the regional level. But that average hid sharp differences. In low-income countries and fragile states, aid often reached the equivalent of 6 percent of GDP or more, and in some cases far higher.

Over half of that aid was used to finance essential services such as health, education, and humanitarian assistance. And because development partners and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) often deliver services directly to people in need, aid cuts can also curtail the very systems that people rely on. Effective responses to crises such as the Ebola emergency in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, the high and rising needs of people forcibly displaced by conflict, and the ongoing drought in the Horn of Africa rely heavily on the health and humanitarian infrastructure that aid has consistently helped to build.

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.

Tough trade-offs

Governments now face difficult choices. Many have limited fiscal space, rising debt, and low reserves.

IMF-administered surveys covering 28 African countries suggest four broad policy responses:

o Some governments are not replacing lost aid, allowing programs to lapse. This limits immediate fiscal strain but carries high social costs.
o Many are reprioritizing spending, often cutting public investment—easier politically, but damaging to future growth.
o Others are borrowing more, including domestically, increasing debt risks.
o Some are stepping up revenue mobilization, though results take time.

Each option comes with trade-offs. Replacing lost aid can protect services and growth, but at the cost of wider deficits and external imbalances. Not replacing it stabilizes budgets and protects debt sustainability, but risks lasting damage to human capital and development.

There are no easy choices.

How to respond

The policy challenge is to manage the adjustment while preserving core development gains. Three priorities stand out.

First, protect and target high-impact aid.
With resources scarce, allocation matters more. Aid should be directed toward the countries and sectors where it has the greatest effect—especially low-income countries and fragile states, and essential humanitarian needs. Stronger coordination can reduce fragmentation and avoid duplication.

Second, broaden the financing toolkit.
Grant financing will remain essential, particularly in humanitarian contexts. But other instruments can play a larger role. Blended finance—using public funds to mobilize private investment—can help expand financing for infrastructure, energy, and agriculture. It is not a substitute for aid: it is harder to scale, more complex, and can add to debt if poorly designed. Managing these trade-offs will be critical.

Third, strengthen domestic capacity.
With aid less predictable, resilience increasingly depends on domestic institutions. This means mobilizing more revenue, improving spending efficiency, and strengthening policy design and service delivery. Aid has often provided both funding and implementation; replacing that capacity will take time and sustained investment.

A turning point

The shift that began in 2025 is unlikely to be temporary. It reflects a broader reconfiguration of development finance, shaped by tighter donor budgets and changing priorities.

The implications will vary by country, depending on exposure, initial buffers, and policy choices. But the direction is clear: reliance on external aid will become more uncertain, and domestic policy will matter more.

The immediate task is to manage the decline in aid without backsliding on the significant human development achievements of the past decades. The longer-term challenge is to adapt to a world where aid is less abundant and less predictable. How countries navigate both will shape growth and development outcomes for years to come.

Chie Aoyagi, Maurizio Leonardi, and Athene Laws are economists in the IMF’s African Department, where Hamza Mighri is a research analyst.

IPS UN Bureau

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Smallholder farmers in Africa and Asia are likely to still be reeling from the fuel and fertilizer crisis caused by conflict in the Middle East when what forecasters expect to be a “super” El Niño arrives later this year.

Appolinaire Djikeng

Consensus is increasingly clear that tackling climate change to avert such crises is a legal duty under international law. Bringing down emissions requires both short-term and long-term action. And yet one of the most effective levers available — sustainable livestock farming — receives just 1 to 2 per cent of climate finance dedicated to agriculture. That is a vanishingly small share for a sector that, in many low- and middle-income countries, accounts for as much as 80 per cent of agricultural GDP.

This funding gap matters because livestock offer something relatively rare in climate policy: the chance to cut emissions fast while also building resilience. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over the short term, which means reducing it delivers quicker climate benefits.

Cattle and other livestock are among the primary sources of methane emissions. But crucially, both direct and indirect methane emissions from livestock production are often higher than necessary because of the same factors that hold back productivity. Poor animal health, low quality feed and nutrition, and climate stress all undermine production and increase both direct emissions and emission intensity. Tackling these fundamental factors solves both challenges.

In Ethiopia, for example, poor animal health has been found to increase livestock emissions by 50 per cent while also resulting in lower meat, milk and egg yields. Parasites and other vector-borne diseases increase the methane produced in animals’ guts while stunting growth and development.

Simply by applying existing tools to improve animal health, such as vaccines, drugs that kill parasites and good nutrition, research suggests that emissions could be conservatively reduced by at least 15 per cent per unit of output. The same interventions also increase productivity and improve livelihoods.

New research is also uncovering new opportunities to reduce methane from livestock while also boosting productivity and resilience.

Scientists from CGIAR research centres and partners have analysed nearly 300 forage samples and found that varieties of African clover, cowpea and lablab could reduce methane emissions by up to 90 per cent. These plants contain compounds that alter the microbes in cows’ stomachs and block the process that generates methane.

Testing is now under way to identify varieties that could be grown as low-methane feed, which not only helps reduce emissions but also supports local seed systems.

Restoring rangelands adds another layer: it helps improve forage availability to support better animal nutrition, lower methane emissions and build stronger ecosystems. Last year, for example, participatory rangeland management (PRM) was strengthened across 340,000 hectares in Ethiopia and 50,000 hectares in Tanzania, improving rangeland health and supporting livestock production.

Many more solutions exist to improve livestock sustainability for short-term and long-term gains, including those developed by the Livestock and Climate Solutions Hub. But despite growing evidence of impact from livestock interventions, climate finance continues to flow elsewhere, away from the agricultural systems that hundreds of millions of people depend on most directly.

In a post-aid world, directing more climate finance towards sustainable livestock farming in low- and middle-income countries is an investment in global stability.

Investing in more sustainable livestock production has a ripple effect that improves food security, livelihoods, and economic growth and contributes to greater stability and resilience in the face of shocks like the “super” El Niño.

Climate vulnerability is costly. Building resilience through the primary sectors of low- and middle-income countries is an insurance against future crises.

Prof. Appolinaire Djikeng is Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute

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Leadership of the Global South has gradually declined since the 1980s. Many hope BRICS+ will fill the vacuum, but its purpose and membership suggest such hopes may be misplaced. A repurposed Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) offers the best way forward.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

In 1964, developing countries formed the G77 caucus and created the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) within the UN system.

In 1974, the UN General Assembly called for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) after President Nixon ended the 1944 Bretton Woods international monetary system in 1971.

In 1979, the US Fed responded to Western stagflation by sharply raising interest rates. This triggered fiscal and sovereign debt crises in Latin America and Africa, forcing many to seek IMF emergency funds to cope.

Meanwhile, the Thatcher-Reagan-inspired counter-revolution against Keynesian and development economics led to ‘neoliberal’ Washington Consensus policy reforms, deepening economic contraction.

At New York’s Plaza Hotel, the US got its G7 caucus of the world’s 7 largest allied economies to address its overvalued dollar by requiring the currencies of Japan and Germany to appreciate sharply.

Nurina Malek

With its legitimacy at stake following the East Asian, Russian, and other financial crises of 1997-99, G7 finance ministers agreed in 1999 to create a more inclusive G20 grouping of finance ministers of the world’s 20 largest economies.

Soon after the 2008 global (actually Western) financial crisis began, the first G20 leaders’ summit convened in the White House in November 2008.

Making BRICS
‘BRICs’ was coined in late 2001 by then-Goldman Sachs Global Economic Research head Jim O’Neill, referring to Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

Ostensibly to include Africa, the BRICs invited South Africa to join, creating BRICS as a coalition of the five more independent large ‘emerging market’ economies.

Also serving as a caucus within the G20, BRICS has tried to improve international monetary and financial relations. It has since admitted more nations into an expanded BRICS+ with two tiers of affiliation.

To be sure, neither BRICS nor BRICS+ was ever intended to represent the even more diverse interests of the entire Global South. Understandably, it serves its ‘financially significant’ developing economy members.

BRICS and the South
The BRICS promise a world less dominated by the rich and powerful nations of the Global North, mainly in the West.

The world has been dominated by the US since the end of WW2, and especially after the first Cold War. Despite occasional dissent, the US’s European NATO allies seem happy playing second fiddle.

Many developing countries have long felt that existing arrangements do not serve their best interests. The BRICS seem to offer some ‘voice’ and alternative bases for international economic cooperation.

BRICS has undoubtedly strengthened the Global South’s voice and developed new arrangements to support developing country interests, especially to finance development.

The BRICS have also advocated on specific international issues for the Global South. All five BRICS countries have also led developing-country groupings on specific issues with varying degrees of success.

Unsurprisingly, many developing countries appreciate the BRICS role in such matters, with some choosing to publicly align with and even affiliate with it.

However, the BRICS expansion into BRICS+ is unlikely to resolve many problems faced by developing nations due to international power asymmetries and imbalances.

Potential and problems
The diversity of the Global South complicates any grouping’s claim to represent it.

BRICS+ brings together countries with very different political and economic systems, priorities and aspirations, including development goals and interests.

This diversity enhances BRICS’ broad appeal but also makes it difficult to ensure it becomes an effective platform consistently advocating all developing nations’ interests.

This challenge becomes more apparent when the interests and ambitions of weaker developing countries are compared with those of the major BRICS+ powers.

Many vulnerable nations are preoccupied with food security, structural change, deindustrialisation, environmental sustainability, planetary heating, and financialization.

Meanwhile, BRICS members seek to pursue their own strategic interests, garner finance and investments, boost their exports and increase their influence internationally.

Such objectives are not inherently contradictory, but rarely fully aligned. This makes it more difficult to pursue shared interests, advocate collectively, and sustain cooperation.

BRICS+ membership by invitation also limits its effective accountability to the Global South. It is unrealistic to expect BRICS+ to consistently advocate for the full range of concerns of all developing countries, especially the poorest and least influential.

The Global South should undoubtedly try to benefit from the economic weight and voice of BRICS+. But it can best advance its shared interests with its own voice and organised strength via a revived NAM, repurposed for peace, development and justice.

IPS UN Bureau

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As of now, geopolitics overtook trade policy uncertainty as the primary concern for countries. Credit: Unsplash / Sajimon Sahadevan

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

Amidst increased geopolitical tensions, the risk of volatile energy markets, trade corridors, and regional stability in the Middle East has garnered more attention than trade policy in terms of its power to alter the global economy, according to new findings from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

In their report on trade and development, “Global Economy Faces a Geopolitical Challenge”, UNCTAD says that a protracted escalation “raises the likelihood of deeper disruptions in global trade and finance, potentially, foreshadowing a cascading crisis”.

Credit: UN Conference on Trade and Development (Trade and Development Foresights 2026)

Daily crude oil prices in the Middle East since the beginning of the conflict have risen from around USD 60-70, to a fluctuating rate between a high of over USD 110-. With oil prices surging more than 60 percent, and gas doubling in price, many markets have been left in an inflating scenario as higher energy prices increase macroeconomic pressure and overall slow and contract the economy.

The increase per barrel is largely due to a constriction of supply, where most Gulf economies can barely output oil due to a lack of transport ability through the strait of Hormuz. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) records a spike in the price of Brent crude rising over USD 100 per barrel and remaining at elevated levels, with European gas also jumping roughly “60 percent amid disruptions to LNG exports”.

The numbers are impacted by an estimated loss of capacity of 10 million barrels per day of oil and “about 500 million cubic meters per day of natural gas”. This is roughly 10 percent of global oil production, and roughly 5 percent of global natural gas production for every single day.

The IMF records the following:

Daily Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz (in number of vessels) between 26 February and 6 April 2026. Credit: IMF

Oil being an inelastic good means that consumers won’t be able to curb their spending. Rather, they have to pay more for as long as the conflict lasts as fuels are needed for many essential routine tasks, from driving your car, to taking your vitamins, to growing your food, and having your Amazon packages shipped.

In their April 2026 Regional Economic Outlook Update for the Middle East and Central Asia, the IMF details that a continued conflict will likely for every 10 percent rise in the average oil price lead to a loss of about 0.5 percent of GDP and an inflation increase of around 1 percent in Gulf economies, ultimately affecting global markets heavily.

As the report notes, “Longer trade disruptions or greater damage to oil production capacity raises the possibility of higher and more sustained oil prices and a larger risk premium than is currently embedded in oil futures prices”.

However, for developing countries higher energy prices hit a lot harder to consumers in developing countries, which in this case don’t have the same money to spare. The IMF warns that “Low-income countries and other fragile and conflict-affected states in the MENAP region are especially vulnerable to higher energy, fertilizer, and food prices”.

Due to the conflict, estimates stand that vulnerable economies, mostly least developed countries (16.1 billion) and small island developing states (4.3 billion), could incur a USD 20 billion a year increase in spending, representing a huge composition of their GDP expenditure.

Among least-developed nations, Mauritania is recorded to have their bill increase by 7.3 percent, The Gambia 6.3 percent, Burkina Faso 5.0 percent, Liberia and Zambia 4.3 percent, with 17 other least developed countries also estimating to increase their spending by at least 0.5 percent in terms of GDP points.

Similarly for small-island developing states, Vanuatu is recorded to have an increase of 5.8 percent, Maldives 5.2 percent, Tonga 4.4 percent, Mauritius 4.2 percent, and Fiji 3.2 percent, with 18 other small developing states recording an increase of at least 0.6%.

UNCTAD also expects this conflict to take away capital investment into developing nations, as these assets are perceived as riskier. The UNCTAD report states that “the start of the Middle East conflict triggered a sell-off of developing countries’ assets, with equity markets of emerging markets sliding by more than 12 per cent between 28 February and 29 March.” Likely such effects will trigger a compacting of issues, contributing to an economic downturn that could take years to recover from depending on the length of the conflict.

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Shifra Ainomugisha from Uganda receives the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year award from the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shirley Botchwey. Credit: Commonwealth

By Kizito Makoye
LONDON & DAR ES SALAAM, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

Before anyone called her an innovator, before artificial intelligence entered the conversation, before solar-powered cold rooms, before the language of sustainable development, Shifra Ainomugisha knew food loss in its painful form.

At dawn, she would grab a bucket and walk into rows of tomato plants on her family’s farm in Western Uganda to collect what had already been lost.

The tomatoes looked healthy from a distance. But many had softened, burst, or spoilt before reaching the market – the true meaning of food loss.

“I used to wake up every morning to collect rotten tomatoes and throw them away while trying to save whatever remained,” she recalled.

Almost half the family’s harvest disappeared this way.

Yet the labour never stopped.

Her parents worked relentlessly. Seasons came and went. Fields produced food. But income remained painfully uncertain.

“Meanwhile, we struggled to pay school fees,” she said. “Some children dropped out of school even though we worked very hard during holidays on the farm. We were producing food but could not earn enough money to support our education.”

Shifra Ainomugisha poses beside a solar-powered irrigation system in Uganda. She was named the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year. Her contribution includes combining renewable energy and AI-enabled agricultural support to help smallholder farmers increase productivity and reduce post-harvest losses. Credit: Solafam, Uganda

Mission Accomplished

Those childhood memories – of abundance turning into loss and hard work failing to translate into opportunity – would eventually shape a mission that has now earned Ainomugisha recognition as the regional winner for Africa under SDG 2: Zero Hunger in the 2026 Commonwealth Youth Awards.

Selected from almost 1,000 applicants across the Commonwealth’s 56 member states after a two-stage adjudication process involving 57 judges, Ainomugisha joined 19 finalists recognised for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals through innovation and community impact.

But the award was not her only accolade.

Today, the Ugandan farmer and innovator earned the prestigious title of 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year at the 2026 Commonwealth Youth Awards ceremony in London.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shirley Botchwey, presented the award to Ainomugisha.

In her remarks Botchwey congratulated all the finalists.

“You are already winners. To be selected from across 56 nations is a testament to your courage and your creativity. You embody the very best of our family. You have shown resilience in the face of challenge and innovation in the face of constraint.”

She continued, “Today is not about recognition alone – it is about momentum. It is not about isolated excellence — it is about collective advancement. Together, we will continue to strengthen the Commonwealth Youth Programme as a flagship vehicle for youth development in the Commonwealth.”

A Journey That Began With a Big Question

For the young Ugandan entrepreneur, however, the journey did not begin with awards.

It began with a question she carried since childhood:

How can people who grow food still remain hungry?

“Nobody should die of hunger,” she tells IPS.

“Because we are here to help. Farmers are doing agriculture, and we are solving food waste, which means we are fighting hunger. That is one of the SDGs we are working on.”

Today, Ainomugisha serves as co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of  Solafam, Uganda Ltd, a social enterprise using solar-powered technologies and artificial intelligence to help smallholder farmers reduce food losses, improve yields and increase incomes.

Her work combines three interconnected interventions: solar-powered cold storage, solar irrigation systems and an AI-enabled advisory platform known as Lean AI – a WhatsApp chatbot designed to guide farmers on planting decisions, irrigation timing, pest management, post-harvest handling and market access.

Together, the technologies aim to solve one of Africa’s challenging agricultural paradoxes: producing food but losing too much of it before it reaches consumers.

According to regional agricultural estimates, post-harvest losses continue to absorb a huge share of food production across sub-Saharan Africa, undermining incomes, nutrition and rural resilience. Smallholder farmers – who form the backbone of food systems – are particularly vulnerable because many lack access to storage, irrigation and agricultural extension services.

For Ainomugisha, those statistics have faces.

Her mother’s face.

Her father’s.

Her neighbours’.

And her own.

“I come from a tomato-growing family,” she said.

“Growing up, we experienced food wastage and low returns despite all the hard labour we invested in farming.”

Her father became one of her earliest inspirations.

Although he never had the opportunity to pursue formal education, he constantly experimented with solutions.

“He tried solving it by buying a diesel irrigation pump to increase yields because we only have one major farming season,” she explained.

“If you don’t make enough money during that season, the whole year becomes difficult.”

He attempted to preserve produce in improvised storage spaces.

But tomatoes continued spoiling.

Years later, after gaining access to education and exposure to technology, Ainomugisha began thinking differently.

“First of all, it wasn’t simply my decision alone,” she reflected.

“It began with my father. My father did not get the opportunity to go to school, but I did. I felt I had a better chance to solve the problem than he did.”

That conviction followed her into university.

Shifra Ainomugisha (centre, in reflective vest), co-founder and CEO of Solafam, Uganda Ltd, stands with farmers and community members beside a solar panel installation that supports climate-smart agriculture initiatives. Through renewable energy and farmer-centred innovation, the project seeks to reduce food loss and improve rural incomes. Credit: Solafam, Uganda

Solar to AI to Filling Knowledge Gaps

Together with colleagues, she founded Solar Farm while still studying.

Initially, the concept was straightforward: cold-chain storage.

Support from entrepreneurship initiatives – including LEAP Africa – helped transform the idea into a functioning enterprise.

But customers quickly changed the direction.

People arriving at the cold rooms often revealed a deeper challenge.

Some had little produce to preserve.

Storage alone was not enough.

The team expanded.

Solar irrigation came next.

The goal was to help farmers reduce dependence on expensive diesel fuel and enable year-round production.

Farmers could access irrigation systems through a flexible financing model – paying 20 percent upfront and then making weekly payments of approximately USD 1.60 until ownership.

“We wanted to create a solution that farmers could actually afford,” she said.

Then came the next leap: artificial intelligence.

Ainomugisha says the AI component emerged from another observation.

Many farmers lacked access to agricultural training.

Knowledge gaps were driving losses.

“Many people are farming, but they are not always doing it the right way,” she explained.

“You might find a tomato farmer irrigating in the morning, yet tomatoes are better irrigated in the afternoon or evening.”

The team launched Lean AI – a chatbot accessible through WhatsApp that provides real-time agricultural guidance.

Farmers can ask questions and receive recommendations on farming practices, pest control, irrigation and post-harvest management.

The system is now being adapted to work via real-time messaging protocol known as USSD to reach users with basic mobile phones.

“We use AI to continue training farmers even when we are not physically present,” she said.

“We believe this will improve yields, increase incomes and eventually change the narrative that farming is only for the poor.”

Shifra Ainomugisha poses beside a solar-powered irrigation system in Uganda. She is combining renewable energy and AI-enabled agricultural support to help smallholder farmers increase productivity and reduce post-harvest losses. Credit: Solafam, Uganda

Changing the Narrative

That narrative matters deeply to her.

“In Uganda, there is a narrative that agriculture is for poor people,” she said.

“That is sad.”

She pauses.

“People believe that because despite hard work, they cannot escape poverty.”

One of the defining moments came in 2023.

After struggling to convince local markets to host their first cold room, the team installed it at her family home.

Her mother became the first customer.

Then came neighbours.

Then more farmers.

Initially, usage was free.

People needed proof.

One woman – a friend of Ainomugisha’s mother who traded fruits and vegetables – became an unexpected validation.

She stored produce for a month.

Fresh vegetables that once spoilt within days remained viable for nearly two weeks.

That extra time allowed her to wait for better prices instead of selling under pressure.

“She later realised how much it was helping her,” Ainomugisha said.

“Now she earns more from farming than she did before.”

Solafam eventually introduced a pay-per-use model.

The impact, Ainomugisha says, became measurable.

“What makes us proud is that we have increased farmers’ incomes by 28 percent.”

“We have also reduced post-harvest losses by about 30 percent.”

Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General (Programmes), Tanmaya Lal, Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shirley Botchwey, and Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General (Corporate), Tania Baumann, pose with the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year and Africa Regional Winner, Shifra Ainomugisha, at the Commonwealth Youth Awards ceremony in London. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

Winning Reaction

Those outcomes helped propel Solafam onto the Commonwealth stage. The Commonwealth Youth Awards are an initiative of the Commonwealth Youth Programme, which has supported youth development work in member countries for over 50 years.

“I am honoured to be named the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year.  This recognition is not only personal but also represents the farmers and communities in Uganda whom we serve.  It also affirms that solutions built from lived experience can create real impact. I cannot wait to continue this journey with the support of the Commonwealth and its remarkable network of partners.”

The Awards recognise young leaders advancing development solutions across member states.

For more than a decade, the programme has provided visibility, networks and funding opportunities to support youth-led initiatives.

This year’s finalists span sectors ranging from climate action and health innovation to entrepreneurship and communications.

For Ainomugisha, being selected is an honour.

“I’m glad to be a finalist for the Commonwealth Youth Award and a regional winner for Africa,” she said.

She believes three things contributed most to the selection.

Sustainability.

Impact.

Accessibility.

“First of all, our project is sustainable. We have maintained it from 2022 until now.”

“Secondly, we are creating meaningful impact.”

“Also, our technology is affordable for smallholder farmers.”

But perhaps what distinguishes her work most is who it centres.

Women.

“Because this problem is personal to me,” she said.

“I did not hear someone else’s story and decide to solve it.”

“I am a woman, and I saw how my mother worked every day on the farm, yet our lives were not improving.”

Across much of Africa, women form a large share of the agricultural workforce while often facing unequal access to land, financing, technologies and extension services.

Ainomugisha says designing with women in mind is not a strategy.

It is lived experience.

“Of course, we also work with men, but the majority of our beneficiaries are women.”

As global conversations increasingly focus on artificial intelligence, her message is clear.

Technology alone is not enough.

It must be accessible.

Affordable.

And designed around people’s realities.

Her next ambition is expansion—making agricultural intelligence available even to farmers without smartphones.

The larger vision is not simply digitising agriculture.

It is restoring dignity to farming.

The memory of rotten tomatoes remains.

So does the memory of school fees that almost went unpaid.

But today, those memories no longer represent failure.

They represent the beginning of a different harvest.

One where innovation is measured not only in algorithms or solar panels but also in whether families who grow food can finally afford to eat, learn and dream.

And for Ainomugisha, that future has already started.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Excerpt:

Cécile Koffi and her colleagues collect salt from concrete pans on the beach in rural Benin. Credit: Neha Banka/IPS

By Neha Banka
OUIDAH, Benin, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

It is barely noon, and a group of women sit near the beach on the outskirts of Djégbadji village, in West Africa’s Benin, sifting through mounds of salt harvested from the Gulf of Guinea’s ocean.

Large concrete vats covered with black tarpaulin show traces of white salt sediment as the seawater slowly evaporates under Benin’s midday sun – except that instead of using fire, the group uses solar energy.

The women have been working as part of a grassroots project called ProSEL Benin, a collaborative effort of the governments of Benin along with India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that focuses on strengthening local salt-producing communities to access sustainable energy sources and create medium-sized enterprises for the production and marketing of local iodised salt.

Salt production is one of the main income-generating activities for the populations living in and around southern Benin.

Generations-Old Traditions

“In Benin’s coastal areas, women skim the salt from the coastal marshes… they put up their little huts and boil salt water in massive vats over an open fire inside the hut. They then sell the ‘cooked’ salt at the markets and on the roadsides. It’s an unhealthy practice for various reasons,” says Robina Marks, who served as South Africa’s ambassador to Benin and Togo from 2021 to 2024 and was closely involved in the implementation of the IBSA-backed project.

The traditional method of collecting and cooking the salt has been practised in Benin since at least the 15th century, primarily by women, and involves collecting saline soil, evaporating the water and filtering brine by burning chopped mangrove wood to produce salt.

The practice harms women’s health due to how they collect the salt and the conditions in which it is prepared.

“It takes a very long time and is very labour-intensive,” Marks says.

The ProSEL Benin project attempts to change this traditional practice and make the process of collecting salt healthier and cleaner.

Salt-making is an important source of income for communities here, relying heavily on the cutting down of mangroves.

ProSEL Benin’s research estimates that approximately 20,000 cubic metres of mangrove wood are cut down annually in coastal Benin for use as firewood in Indigenous salt-making.

The UNDP and the Benin government discussed the new method about five years ago.

“But the idea came from the people on the ground, who had the needs. The Benin government came up with the project and wanted to work with UNDP,” says Aoualé Mohamed Abchir, who served as the UNDP Resident Representative in Benin from 2020 to 2024 and was instrumental in its development.

ProSEL Benin, Abchir says, is an attempt to advance three out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: gender equality; decent work and economic growth; and responsible consumption and production. This project aims to help rural women in Benin make and sell clean salt and become self-reliant.

In 2021, the Board of Directors of the India, Brazil and South Africa Facility for Poverty and Hunger Alleviation Fund awarded USD 1 million to the UNDP to implement the salt project.

IBSA is an example of collaborative efforts between the three developing countries, as well as a South-South cooperation initiative within the United Nations that focuses on development cooperation among developing countries in the Global South.

When 60-year-old Cécile Koffi was first introduced to the salt project, it took some time to convince her to switch from the traditional method of making salt.

“There are a lot of things the salt does. Salt is intrinsic to the community’s women,” Koffi says, examining the day’s salt collection.

Salt is culturally important to Benin, and its uses go beyond culinary applications.

“It is not only used as food, but it also has a cultural aspect to it. It is regarded as sacred and is used in many of the vodoun practices,” says Marks.

“When we go to the market to sell our produce, we sprinkle salt on the ground and sweep it up before setting up our spot. It is believed that every bad spirit will go away if we do that. Salt is very important. We use it in a lot of rituals,” says Koffi.

Julienne Dekon collects saline water using the traditional method to make salt in rural Benin. Credit: Neha Banka/IPS

These deep-rooted cultural beliefs were one reason why it was difficult to get the women to change and adapt to the ProSEL Benin project, even though it was backed by the Benin government, explains Abchir.

Traditionally salt production is a cultural activity carried out by the Xwla populations of the coastal zone in Benin. The traditional production of salt by the salt farmers in the villages is subject to many prohibitions related to working days, village deities, and so on.

“The name Xwlajè is also intimately linked to the Xwla ethnic group,” says Luc Obale, national project director of ProSEL Benin. The Benin government has been working to certify the salt so that it can be sold with the label ‘Xwlajè’ to identify its cultural origin.

“The old method is their ancestral way of producing salt, so it has significance. Sometimes when you change the way you produce something, some people believe it may have negative implications. The women could have got the salt directly from the sea, but there is a reason why they weren’t doing that before the project,” says Abchir.

The ProSEL Benin project targeted five areas in coastal Benin where people have traditionally harvested salt: Sèmè Kpodji, Grand Popo, Ouidah, Kpomasse, Comè and Lokossa.

“In those other areas, people have been more open to using sea water to make salt, but Ouidah is Ouidah. It is very special. They believe that the best salt can only be cooked, not dried. They believe that they have to cook it,” explains Abchir.

Ground-Level Interventions

The ProSEL Benin project is not the first intervention programme that has attempted to make local salt cleaner and more environmentally sustainable, but it has been successful because caseworkers managed to get it off the ground, says Cessi Marlene Capo-Chichi, who works with UNDP as a project coordinator.

“Organisations have struggled to convince the local community to change their ways,” she says.

Some 500 metres from where the ProSEL project is ongoing by the beach, within the limits of Djégbadji village, is a coastal lagoon where women work inside a network of thatched huts, making salt in the traditional way.

“The traditional way of making salt is more laborious,” says 45-year-old Julienne Dekon, lifting a cane basket heavy with saline soil collected from the marshy land that surrounds her.

These days, the Benin government prevents the chopping down of mangroves for wood, and women are encouraged to use dried palm leaves and coconut shells for fuel instead.

Dekon says that she wants to continue working using the traditional method, although many of her friends have now switched to the modern method of salt making using seawater after joining the ProSEL project.

As she begins boiling the saline water inside her hut, smoke fills the small space.

“When I have to work a lot, I do get tired. But I don’t know much about how this affects my health,” says Dekon.

Dekon doesn’t remember when she started making salt, but it has been a very long time, and she is now accustomed to preparing using the traditional methods.

“The method on the beach (ProSEL project) is easy to do. But when it is raining, it is not possible to do it outside. But I can continue to make salt even in the rain, because I collect the soil and start cooking indoors. The two systems are too different,” says Dekon, referring to the open-air concrete salt vats by the sea that are susceptible to the vagaries of the weather.

However, the wet weather also affects the women using traditional methods.

From April to August, Benin experiences its rainy season, with short spells of rain between September and November, and the low-lying marshes near the lagoons are prone to flooding.

“We are pushing them to switch to the ProSEL system because during the rainy season the area where the salt is produced traditionally is inaccessible. It is completely flooded, and so for more than half the year, there is no production of salt. We needed to give them alternatives,” says Abchir.

While it is easier for the women to avoid the rains by tracking the weather, it is harder to bypass the persistent floods, he says.

Abchir says the project focused on giving the women access to seawater to make sure they could make salt and have steady income through the year.

“Using the seawater to make salt is less painful. You just get the water and let the sun evaporate it. You don’t have to cook it, and it is safer. You can also make more money,” says Abchir.

Just down the unpaved road from where Dekon works, a woman stands by the highway selling salt.

The difference between the salt produced by women like Dekon, who have been working using traditional methods and those engaged with ProSEL Benin is clear: the traditional salt is visibly yellow-brown with streaks of grey, colours that come due to the lack of a filtration process. The ProSEL Benin salt is clean and white, fortified with iodine that the women mix into the salt just before filling it into bags.

A one-kilogram bag of salt produced by women using the traditional method, sold in local marketplaces and by the road, would cost approximately 800 West African CFA franc (approx. USD 2), while the same amount produced by ProSEL Benin would sell for 1,000 CFA.

For Public Consumption

ProSEL research indicates there are about 4,000 women harvesting salt in Benin. The country imports most of its salt from countries like Ghana, Senegal and India because its Indigenous salt farming covers only a small fraction of the country’s actual needs.

Stakeholders realised that it was not enough to teach the women how to make cleaner salt; they also had to be given access to markets to sell it. One market that the project aims to tap into is the World Food Programme (WFP) under the UN’s Benin office, which helps feed over 1 million children annually with daily school meals. The WFP has been undertaking research to understand the feasibility of purchasing and using salt through these cooperatives led by women under ProSEL.

The Benin government has ambitious plans for the harvested salt.

In December 2025, Benin’s food safety agency, ABSSA, the Agence Béninoise de Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments, certified the salt for public consumption, after which the salt was prepared to be sold under the label Xwlajè.

Presently, the Xwlajè salt is sold in seven different supermarket chains across Cotonou, as well as in standalone shops located in the municipalities of Porto-Novo, Cotonou and Comè.

“In addition, steps are underway to market Xwlajè salt in the duty-free shops at Cotonou International Airport,” says Obale.

Abchir adds that a process that would take the women six hours now takes them two. Bringing about change has been difficult, he says, because it involved convincing people who were accustomed to working in a specific way for generations.

He admits that they wouldn’t have been able to do much without winning the trust of the women, their husbands who still oversee their lives, the mayor and the local community leaders.

“The local team went down to the women and understood their needs so that sensibilities could be understood and it would be accepted. It is very difficult in Benin when outsiders come in and tell them what to do.”

Abchir says that there is a high risk of undoing all that work if there is mistrust in the community towards the project.

“They are accepting the changes. Now we are trying to build construction for storage, keeping machines, etc. It is a sensitive phase, but we are hopeful that it will work.”

Benin’s government has prioritised tourism over the last few years, and its Indigenous salt farming practices are a key part of its plans to introduce tourists to Beninese culture.

The ProSEL project does not aim to fully remove the traditional method of salt farming, says Obale.

“The modern salt production unit is located not far from the traditional production site to allow tourists to see the difference between the two production methods,” he says.

Mireille Adjovi, a new mother in her 20s, has come to work at the ProSEL site with her infant sleeping on her back.

“With the money I get, I am able to take care of my children. I will be able to send them to school. I think about myself last: my husband and children come first. Maybe the men give money for the household, but women still suffer a lot. If women need something, husbands give the amount of money they want to give you, not what you need. The men don’t think about the women. So the project helps me earn my own money,” says Adjovi.

For women like Adjovi, making salt is not just about following the jobs women before her have done for generations.

She doesn’t know what the UN’s SDGs are or even what IBSA means, but the work at ProSEL Benin allows her to prioritise her own health and well-being while working collectively in a women-led cooperative.

When she talks to other women working at the site, she also thinks about the hard-earned independence and self-reliance she now has.

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

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June 27-28 is the 16th Social Business Day, observed in Savar (Dhaka) Bangladesh. In June 2024 at the Western Sydney University’s graduation ceremony where I was conferred Emeritus Professor status, I urged the new business graduates to:

• purge the world of the… obnoxious Friedmanite idea that is destroying our planet and tearing our communities apart;
• look instead to the “Social Business Model” of Bangladesh’s Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus; and
• work on the right side of history; stand up for justice and liberation; spread the “moral violence” for peace; and put people and the planet before profit.

Anis Chowdhury

In his 1970 article for The New York Times, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman wrote, “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”. He further argued, “There are no ‘social’ values, no ‘social’ responsibilities in any sense other than the shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a collection of individuals and of the various groups they voluntarily form”.

This Friedmanite world view has been at the core of the neo-liberal counter revolution led by Ronald Reagan and Margarette Thatcher in the 1980s. In his inaugural speech, Reagan famously declared, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”, and ushered in an era driven by unrestrained individual pursuits of profit.

Promoting unrestrained individualism, Thatcher questioned, “who is society?” Then she dismissed, “There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families…”.

“Greed” became the all-consuming passion at the height of unrestrained individual pursuit of profit as captured famously in the 1987 movie, Wall Street. The lead character, Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) addressing the shareholders said:

“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed – for lack of a better word – is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind”.

Has it?

Has greed, in all forms, marked the upward surge of mankind?

Yes, global income and wealth increased manifold since the 1980s; but so did global inequality. The wealth and income gaps between the wealthiest and the poorest have widened. The richest 1.5% own almost 48% of the world’s wealth, according to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2025, while the poorest 40% own only 0.5%.

The World Inequality Report 2026 reveals an even starker wealth gap. The wealthiest 0.001%, comprising around 56,000 multi-millionaires, now hold three times more wealth than the bottom half of the world population. Their share has grown steadily from 3.7% in 1995 to 6.1% in 2025. According to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2025, as of 2023, the world’s 26 richest billionaires owned a shocking US$2.872 trillion in wealth, which is greater than many nations’ total goods and services (GDP).

Cheerleaders of unrestrained greed may dismiss these facts and say “so what? Global abject poverty has also declined”. In fact, economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey, the author of Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economists Can’t Explain the Modern World, floated the idea of “Great Enrichment” asserting that real per capita incomes in the developed world have surged by a factor of 10 to 30 (or roughly 2,900%) since 1800. She argues this historic explosion of wealth fundamentally benefited the poor and working classes. For her, the concerns about inequality are a result of insatiable envy.

Some others have described the phenomenon of rising inequality amidst the wealth boom as “inclusive” because the process has lifted millions from abject poverty. According to them, rapid globalization has given rise to a new global wealth middle class. They see this as progress!

They also decry “the perception that billionaires make money for themselves at the expense of the wider population”, and attribute billionaires’ fortunes to successful investments, while highlight philanthropy and patronage of the arts, culture and sports by billionaires.

But the cheerleaders ignore billionaires’ tax evasion and tax avoidance, and the fact that societies should not rely on the generosity of the rich.

The cheerleaders are also climate deniers. They ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence linking rising inequality and the climate crisis. The world’s wealthiest 10% has caused two thirds of global warming since 1990, according to a new study published in Nature. It also reports that the top 1% of the wealthiest individuals globally contributed 26 times the global average to increases in monthly 1-in-100-year heat extremes globally and 17 times more to Amazon droughts.

It’s time for change

It is time for a paradigm shift from profit to people and the planet. Social business, a concept first introduced by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, offers a path forward. In his 2009 book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, Professor Yunus defines a social business as “A business:

• Created and designed to address social problems
• A non-loss, non-dividend company, i.e.
1. It is financially self-sustainable and
2. Profits realised by the business are reinvested in the business itself (or used to start other social businesses), with the aim of increasing social impact, for example expanding the company’s reach, improving the products or services or subsidising the social mission.”

In short, a social business is oriented to social value creation. It is designed to address specific social or environmental problems such as hunger, poverty, unemployment, pollution, and climate adaptation and mitigation. In many ways, it is a hybrid between a traditional business and a non-profit organisation. Like a traditional business, a social business generates revenue and is financially self-sufficient rather than relying on philanthropy. However, like a non-profit organisation, the primary goal of a social business is NOT profit, but social or environmental impacts.

But, not a magic bullet

Social business is not a panacea for all evils or social-environmental problems. More fundamentally, systemic or structural social and environmental issues should not be treated as market opportunities. The framing of social problems as technical or managerial issues that can be solved with “business” solutions can obscure underlying structural causes like systemic discrimination and power imbalances which must be addressed through deep reforms, backed by political will.

There also is a risk of “impact-washing”, much like “greenwashing”. That is, weak regulatory standards can allow companies to cherry-pick metrics, exaggerate their societal benefits, or use their social status as “moral licensing” to justify otherwise dubious business practices.

Therefore, the “euphoria” of celebration must not distract us from the urgent need to develop proper monitoring and accountability frameworks for social business so that “greed” does not infest it.

Anis Chowdhury, Emeritus Professor, Western Sydney University (Australia). He held senior UN positions in Bangkok and New York and served as Special Assistant to the Chief Advisor for Finance (with the status and rank of State Minister) in the Professor Yunus-led Interim Government. Anis has written extensively on macroeconomic issues, sustainable development, international financial architecture and political economy. E-mail: anis.z.chowdhury@gmail.com; a.chowdhury@westernsydney.edu.au

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Farmer-turned-fishermen from the local indigenous community are fishing in the Dumboor lake in north-eastern India. At the Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly, a project was approved involving three communities across India, including Dumboor Lake. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
DUMBOORNAGAR, India and SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, Jun 24 2026 (IPS)

At dawn, when the waters of Dumboor Lake lie still under a pale grey sky, Santo Chakma, 63, nudges his narrow wooden boat into a reservoir that swallowed his childhood.

The lake is a growing attraction for tourists who come here in search of beauty and tranquillity, with dozens of islands scattered across a vast expanse of water. But for Chakma, the lake reflects a past erased.

“Once, these were rice fields. My father and my grandfather cultivated rice,” he says quietly. “But now we catch fish because there is no land.”

Spread across 41 square kilometres in Tripura’s Gomati basin, Dumboor Lake is now known for its 48 small islands and a growing tourism economy. But beneath its surface lies the submerged Raima–Saima valley – once a fertile agricultural landscape that sustained indigenous communities for generations.

That landscape disappeared in 1974, when the Gumti Hydroelectric Dam transformed the Gomati River into a reservoir, displacing thousands of people, mostly from indigenous tribes such as the Chakma, Reang, and Tripuri.

From Farmers to Fishers

In villages like West Gandecherra – a lakeside village – elderly people carry the memories of their old days in their hearts.

“The Gumti (Gomati) River was our lifeline,” recalls Phulorani Tripura, an elderly resident. “We used to sail bamboo rafts.”

Across the region, communities tie bamboo in large bundles and throw them upstream. The river carries the bundles down and people travel on them using these bundles as their rafts. For days, they live on these bamboo rafts, sleeping on them and selling produce from their farms, such as homemade butter and peppers, until they reach a market where the bamboo is sold.

“Water was not our livelihood – it wasn’t our way of living,” Chakma reminisces.

That world collapsed after the dam was built as farmland, homes, and markets were submerged. Families were relocated to uplands, where agriculture proved unreliable. Many eventually returned to the lake – not as traders or farmers, but as fishers.

Today, nearly 5,000 families depend on the lake’s fisheries, navigating livelihoods born out of displacement rather than choice.

An Increasingly Fragile Livelihood

Every morning, lines of small boats move out across Dumboor. By afternoon, they return with their catch, which is often smaller than in previous years. Fish diversity has declined due to overfishing, reduced stocking, and ecological stress.

“Earlier, fish were plentiful. We caught big fish like rahu (Labeo rohita), katla (South Asian carp) and gojal (channa marulius). If we sold one fish weighing 4-5 kg, it would be enough money for a whole week. Now we catch more small fish, which sell for less and also don’t stay fresh for long, which brings even less. So, now we work harder for less,” says Sushil Chakma, a fisherman, untangling his net.

Economic pressures add another layer of strain. Fishing licences cost up to ₹10,000, while government-fixed prices can be lower than 1 dime (US) per kilogram, leaving fishers dependent on middlemen.

“The government charges us, but the benefits don’t reach us,” Chakma says.

There are also constant safety risks due to erratic weather, fluctuating water levels, and fragile bamboo fishing platforms – known locally as ‘mancha’ – which have led to repeated fatalities.

“We call these platforms ‘mancha’, and we often hear that one has broken and fishermen have drowned,” says Bryn Tiprasa, a youth originally from East Gandecherra village near the lake, now living in Agartala, about 120 kilometres away.

“In fact, only last month, a fisherman died like that. Two years ago, four fishermen died in a single incident. Will this project consider addressing these kinds of problems? We don’t know yet.”

Tourism Grows, but Locals Miss Inclusion

Dumboor has increasingly been promoted as a tourism destination, with sites like Coconut Island attracting visitors for boating and festivals.

The Government of India has invested significantly in developing tourism infrastructure around the lake. But locals say these efforts prioritise visitors over indigenous communities whose livelihoods depend on the lake.

“The big businesses are not ours,” says a local boat operator. “We build boats ourselves, take loans, and earn only during the season.”

Some residents also report losing access to land and resources because private aquaculture or tourism ventures lease parts of the reservoir.

For communities already displaced once, these developments revive a familiar fear: marginalisation in the name of development.

Environmental pressures are also compounding these challenges. Invasive species such as Mikania micrantha (locally referred to as ‘Pichash’) due to erratic rainfall and changing water levels have disrupted fish breeding cycles and degraded ecosystems around the lake.

Despite supporting thousands of livelihoods, Dumboor Lake still lacks a comprehensive management plan.

“We depend on the lake, but no one manages it properly,” says a cooperative member. “How long can this continue?”

A New GEF-Backed Project Enters the Picture

Amid these overlapping pressures, a new biodiversity initiative supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) is drawing cautious attention.

The project – Conservation of Biodiversity, its Sustainable Use, and Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits in India (CONSERVE) – was approved at the 6th Global Biodiversity Framework Fund Council meeting, held under the framework of the Eighth GEF Assembly.

Backed by USD 13.8 million and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank, the project aims to strengthen community-led conservation while ensuring fair sharing of benefits.

At its core is a shift toward recognising Indigenous communities as key custodians of ecosystems – a long-standing demand in regions like Dumboor.

However, details of how the project will work on the ground and what it will specifically deliver for Dumboor’s fishers are not yet clear.

This uncertainty shapes local reactions: hopeful, but cautious.

Potential – and Unanswered – Questions

The initiative is expected to involve at least 25,000 people across project areas in governance and decision-making, including women.

For communities in Dumboor, this could mean,

• recognition of traditional knowledge
• participation in resource management
• access to financial support and new livelihood models
• improved ecosystem sustainability.

It also reflects the GEF’s growing emphasis on blended finance approaches – combining public and multilateral funds with other sources – to support environmental outcomes alongside community development.

Some, however, say the project needs greater transparency.

“How will local women be integrated into this project? What will be the means and level of women’s access to finance and opportunities to play a leadership role? These are some of the questions,” says a member of the CBD Woman’s Caucus who participated in the GEF global council.

According to the GEF, several gender-specific targets are included in the project design, ensuring that women will make up 50% of the estimated 25,000 beneficiaries and at least 40% of the beneficiaries of an Access and Benefit-Sharing financial mechanism that will be implemented as part of the project.

For residents, the real test lies in implementation.

“Most of this money might just go into big pockets and not to the locals,” says Tiprasa. “A lot of projects are launched in the region, but few bring actual benefit.”

He adds that many interventions fail because they do not account for local realities.

“The projects do not always consider the local challenges, so not all solutions help improve their conditions.”

Despite scepticism, some residents see promise in the project’s stated focus on community participation.

“We have always lived with this lake,” says Santo Reang, a local resident. “But no one asked us how to manage it.”

“This time, if they involve us properly, things can change,” adds Niranjan Debbarma, a fisher cooperative member. “We understand this lake better than anyone.”

The GEF noted that the GBFF recently developed one of the most stringent and progressive guidelines to ensure that Tribal Peoples and local communities are in the driver’s seat when designing and implementing every project and will act as bona fide partners in identifying priorities and implementing the project.

A Fragile Turning Point

For decades, Dumboor’s indigenous communities have adjusted to realities imposed from the outside – shifting from land to water and from stable agriculture to precarious fishing.

Now, with a new GEF-backed project on the horizon, change is possible – one that could finally recognise both the lake’s ecological importance and the people who depend on it.

But in Dumboor, hope is never uncomplicated.

For those who have lost land once before, the question is not just whether change will come but whether it will finally include them.

Note: This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

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A local farmer harvests sorghum produced from seeds donated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) through the “Improving Seeds” project. Credit: FAO/Fred Noy

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

Armed conflict, economic shocks, and climate pressures are driving worsening food insecurity across many of the world’s most vulnerable regions, according to the latest Hunger Hotspots report outlook for June-November 2026, jointly released by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The report analyzes 13 hunger hotspots where acute food insecurity is expected to worsen through 2026, with Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria and Haiti among the areas of highest concern. Conflict remains the primary driver of food insecurity in 12 of the 13 hotspots identified in the report.

The report found that in the past five years conflict levels have doubled, with one in six people worldwide being exposed to armed violence in 2025. It identified 117.3 million people as being forcibly displaced as of 2025, severely overwhelming host communities and deepening food insecurity.

The report also warns that famine risks are persisting in multiple locations. Sudan was identified as facing one of the world’s most severe food crises, while famine risks were also identified in Yemen, Gaza, South Sudan, and Somalia. The report also elevated Nigeria and Somalia to the highest point of concern due to deterioration of projections that large parts of their populations could face catastrophic levels of food insecurity through the outlook period. Nigeria is projected to have the largest number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity among all the identified hotspots, at approximately 34.8 million people affected.

Beyond conflict the main driver of food insecurity, economic and supply chain pressures are compounding, developing new vulnerabilities. At the report’s launch on June 18, representatives from WFP and FAO warned that disruptions to global trade routes can further worsen food insecurity. According to FAO officials, nearly one-quarter of global oil supplies and one-third of the global fertilizer trade pass through the Strait of Hormuz, meaning disruptions can hike fuel prices, transportation and insurance costs, and fertilizer. The FAO says these cascading effects can increase cost of humanitarian operations, raise food prices, and delay delivery of assistance to those who are already undergoing acute food insecurity. For households with already extremely low purchasing power, and humanitarian organizations with a continuously stressed budget, an increase in these factors can have severe consequences.

WFP and FAO warn the climate risks are also mounting, mentioning El Nino’s capabilities of producing uneven rainfall patterns, which could disrupt local agricultural production across multiple vulnerable regions.

While this happens, humanitarian organizations are being further constricted with fewer resources to respond with. According to WFP and FAO, funding to humanitarian groups declined by an estimated 59 percent between 2022 and 2025, which are levels seen last in 2016-2017. During the same period, the share of the population facing high levels of acute food insecurity has doubled, meaning with less than half the funding, humanitarian groups have to deal with double the amount of people in need, as compared to funding and food insecurity levels in 2016-2017. This combination of shrinking aid and rising food insecurity forces humanitarian groups to scale back assistance, despite growing needs.

Responding to a question from Inter Press Service regarding supply chain disruptions, and risk prevention, Rein Paulsen, FAO Director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience argued that strengthening local food production is part of the solution, also adding that an investment of USD 17.7 million resulted in “the production of some 515 million US dollars’ worth of food in Sudan.” He added that in some contexts, millet production has helped hundreds of thousands of households, despite conflict and disruptions to supply chains. “Greater emphasis on local production is part of the answer,” Paulsen said.

According to FAO figures cited by Paulsen, the millet production program generated roughly USD 29 worth of food production for every dollar invested. The WFP and FAO have stressed that many modern famines are preventable and foreseeable, warning that sustained funding, humanitarian access and early intervention remain critical to preventing food insecurity from escalating into catastrophe.

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« James Alix Michel warns that without real finance and precaution, ocean pledges risk remaining only on paper. »

Now that the lights have dimmed in Mombasa and the delegations have gone home, a simple but necessary question remains: did the first Our Ocean Conference on African soil truly move the world from promises to protection? The conference was indeed the first held in Africa, under the theme “Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future,” with a stated focus on culture, communities, livelihoods, marine protection, climate resilience and sustainable blue economies.

James Alix Michel

For African coastal states and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) – or, as they are better understood, Large Ocean States – this is not an academic debate. It is about the future of economies, food security, cultures and dignity, because the ocean underpins trade, tourism, livelihoods and resilience across the continent and among island nations.

Seychelles has long argued that prosperity depends on a healthy ocean. That conviction helped shape the blue economy approach in Seychelles and the South-West Indian Ocean, and it has been expressed in practical policy through marine spatial planning and the legal protection of 30 percent of Seychelles’ Exclusive Economic Zone, roughly 410,000 square kilometres.

Mombasa offered a chance to bring that blue economy vision onto the African and global stage in a new way. The conference theme captured what is at stake: Africa’s seas and coasts are central to its history and hopes, and they stand on the frontline of climate change, overfishing and pollution.

During OOC11, leaders and ocean champions repeatedly called for the world to “make 30×30 real” – to ensure that the pledge to protect at least 30 percent of the ocean by 2030 translates into real outcomes for biodiversity and for coastal communities, not just new lines on a map. That shift from declarations to implementation is welcome, because paper protection alone will not restore fish stocks, strengthen reefs or secure coastal livelihoods.

But leadership is measured not only in the strength of statements. It is measured in the courage to say no when the risks are too great, and in the willingness to share fairly the costs of global stewardship.

On deep-sea mining, the precautionary voice is louder than ever. A growing number of governments support a moratorium, ban or precautionary pause, and one widely cited 2026 account linked to the earlier Seychelles-led call said more than 40 countries now support a pause. Other sources show the coalition has grown steadily over time, with additional countries publicly backing precautionary approaches as scientific concern has deepened.

That trend matters because the scientific and governance uncertainties remain profound. Advocates for caution argue that opening the deep ocean to industrial mining before its ecosystems are properly understood risks damage that could be widespread, long-lasting and irreversible, which is why calls for a pause remain central to responsible ocean policy.

Mombasa added to the political pressure for caution, but it did not resolve the issue. There is still no clear, binding global decision to pause exploitation in the deep ocean, and that leaves a shadow over the very blue economy future that African states and SIDS are being encouraged to build.

On 30×30, declarations and new marine protected areas continue to multiply. Yet too often, protection remains on paper: boundaries are drawn, but boats and budgets are not; management plans exist, but monitoring and enforcement are weak or absent. The gap between legal designation and effective protection remains one of the defining weaknesses of current ocean policy.

For SIDS that have already placed vast areas of their Exclusive Economic Zones under protection, the reality is stark. Seychelles has already legally protected 30 percent of its EEZ and exceeded earlier global marine protection benchmarks, but the long-term cost of managing such large areas is high and continuing. This is precisely where global ambition begins to collide with unequal capacity.

That is why the current architecture for financing ocean protection is not fit for purpose. SIDS are repeatedly asked to safeguard globally significant marine spaces, yet access to international funding often remains constrained by income classifications that do not reflect vulnerability, exposure, or the global value of these protected waters. Without predictable financing for science, surveillance, enforcement and community engagement, even the most celebrated MPA announcements risk remaining partial victories.

It is neither fair nor sustainable to expect a few small nations, with limited populations and fiscal space, to carry the long-term costs of managing huge marine areas largely for the world’s benefit. If the international community wants 30×30 to succeed, it must match moral expectation with material support.

So what should be the message after Mombasa? What would it mean, in practice, to make 30×30 real and to honour the theme “Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future”?

First, every new square kilometre of protected ocean must be backed by the means to protect it. That means clear objectives, robust management plans, trained personnel, and the technologies and partnerships needed for effective monitoring and enforcement.

Second, a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining must be secured. This is not anti-development; it is responsible leadership in a time of profound uncertainty, and it reflects the growing international view that exploitation should not proceed before science and governance can guarantee protection from irreversible harm.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, a new compact of fairness in the ocean is needed. If SIDS and African coastal states are being asked to safeguard a disproportionate share of the world’s blue heritage, then the international community must share proportionately in the responsibility to finance and sustain that protection.

From Victoria to Mombasa, from Seychelles to the African mainland and beyond, the message remains unchanged: the ocean is not for sacrifice. It is for stewardship. It is for people. And it is for a common future.

OOC11 helped shift the conversation. It amplified Africa’s voice, elevated the concerns of SIDS, and underlined the need to move from promises to protection. But the journey is far from over. History will not judge the world by the elegance of its communiqués. It will judge by the state of the seas, the resilience of coastal communities, and the legacy left to those who will inherit this blue planet.

James Alix Michel is the former President of the Republic of Seychelles and founder of the James Michel Foundation.

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A two-year-old girl suffering from malnutrition is fed by her mother at their shelter in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Credit: UNICEF/Ilvy Njiokiktjien

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 22 2026 (IPS)

Nearly nine years after the violent persecution of the Rohingya minority population in Myanmar and the following mass exodus of refugees, over 1.2 million Rohingya currently reside in neighbouring Bangladesh, where they face immense challenges. With the United Nations (UN) recording significant shortfalls in global humanitarian funding, alongside Bangladesh’s diminishing ability to support these populations, experts warn of a deepening humanitarian crisis.

Described by the UN as “the most persecuted minority in the world,” Rohingya refugees experience a state of statelessness, where they are not legally recognized as citizens by any country and lack legal rights. The vast majority of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh reside in the densely populated camps of Cox’s Bazar, where they face widespread insecurity and systemic gaps in access to basic services, such as healthcare, education, food, and clean water.

Since early 2024, the UN has recorded an influx of over 150,000 Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, placing immense pressure on the already overcrowded camps. Domestic resources in Bangladesh are also severely strained as the nation struggles to support these displaced populations while simultaneously sustaining its own citizens.

“Bangladesh has shown extraordinary generosity in hosting this highly vulnerable population, and we are deeply grateful to our donors who have continued to stay the course. Their sustained support remains a lifeline for refugees,” said Rania Dagash-Kamara, Assistant Executive Director for Partnerships and Innovation at the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

“But humanitarian assistance is not the end goal. Rohingya refugees want to return home to Myanmar when they can do so safely, voluntarily, and with dignity. We must continue to help create these conditions; we cannot let this crisis be forgotten,” she added.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), from 2017 to the end of 2025, the international community has contributed approximately USD 5.42 billion to humanitarian responses to the Rohingya crisis, allowing Bangladesh to sustain its refugee camps and expand access to education, health, and protection services. In May this year, UNHCR, in collaboration with the Government of Bangladesh, launched an appeal for USD 710.5 million to address the most urgent needs of Rohingya refugees and host communities.

Despite the vast and increasing scale of needs, this appeal marks a 26 percent decline compared to 2025, reflecting the UN’s strategy of prioritizing response efforts for the most vulnerable populations and acute needs. Humanitarian funds have largely been exhausted—a direct result of rampant insecurity, further displacement from conflict within Myanmar, and major budget cuts from historically large donors like the U.S.

These shortfalls have significantly compromised humanitarian responses, leaving thousands out of reach of essential services. This is particularly dire for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, as the vast majority are largely dependent on shrinking humanitarian aid for survival. According to UNHCR, in 2025 roughly 35 percent of households relied entirely on humanitarian food assistance, 42 percent earned income through temporary and unstable means, and 23 percent earned income through cash-for-work-based humanitarian programs.

With Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh lacking any form of sustainable income, UN experts project that they could lose “precious gains” in the coming months and years if a safe, voluntary, and dignified return to Myanmar is not established. Limited economic opportunities and reduced humanitarian aid have devastated Rohingya households, leaving many to embark on dangerous voyages in search of better conditions in the region.

2025 marked the deadliest year on record for these voyages, with UNHCR recording nearly 900 Rohingya refugees missing or dead in the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal. Over 6,500 Rohingya refugees attempted these voyages that year, with roughly one in seven reported missing or dead–the highest mortality rate for any refugee or migrant sea journeys in the world. The first half of 2026 marked a continuation of this trend, with over 2,800 Rohingya undertaking these dangerous voyages, with over half of them being women and children.

Additionally, persistent cuts to humanitarian funding have significantly strained food rations across the camps in Bangladesh, leaving hundreds of thousands facing acute food insecurity. In April, WFP introduced a tiered, needs-based food assistance approach for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, distributing as much as UD 12 per person per month for extremely food-insecure households in Cox’s Bazar, with less insecure households receiving anywhere from $7 to $10.

WFP stated that even at the lowest transfer value, the minimum allotment is sufficient to meet basic food needs. Additionally, the agency cited that this approach was not driven by declining funding but rather by the need for prioritization and equity.

“This alignment reflects our continued commitment to the entire Rohingya community. We will still provide food assistance for everyone in the camps but will target the highest levels of support for those who need it most,” said Simone Parchment, WFP Country Director.

Local representatives and the Rohingya community in Bangladesh have expressed dissatisfaction with this tiered approach, expressing concern that lowered rations at this pivotal time could have deadly consequences for the population and spur further insecurity. Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, told reporters in April that “law and order will be deteriorated”, as the Rohingya attempt to flee the camps in search of food and work opportunities.

Additionally, UNHCR states that reduced humanitarian funding will disproportionately affect women and girls, disabled persons, and older refugees in the Cox’s Bazar camps. An overwhelming lack of critical protection services has led to a rise in rates of gender-based violence, armed group violence, exploitation, and kidnappings.

Furthermore, due to the collapse of healthcare responses for refugees in Cox’s Bazar, alongside persistent overcrowding and a lack of access to clean water, these populations are at a heightened risk of contracting infectious diseases. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), as of April 28, there has been a major measles outbreak, which has devastated Rohingya refugee camps and spread across 58 of Bangladesh’s 64 districts.

The IRC has reported over 34,600 suspected cases, including 200 confirmed deaths. Strained health systems and shrinking aid have left thousands of refugee children in the camps without access to routine vaccinations and urgent medical interventions.

“This outbreak is a direct consequence of years of strain on the health system in Bangladesh and caused by lack of resources to meet the needs of local communities and a growing refugee population,” said Hasina Rahman, IRC Bangladesh Director and Asia Deputy Director.

“It is critical that the international community scales up funding for the humanitarian response in Bangladesh to enable the sustained investment in primary healthcare, immunization infrastructure and community health workers.”

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Credit: Coalition of Governments on Global Public Investment

By Ben Phillips
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 22 2026 (IPS)

The fallout from the sudden collapse of the old system of financing international cooperation has been disastrous, unleashing a wave of harm and leaving the world more vulnerable to shocks and less able to respond to them. The wreckage is plain to see. The issue is what to do next.

Calling attention to the damage done, several commentators in the Global North have made the case for putting back up what had been pulled down. That will not happen, however. The crisis of financing for international cooperation was a reflection of a crisis of support for the model, and for the narrative of paternalism it embodied. The structure collapsed so fast because it was unsound.

Another set of commentators in the Global North, calling themselves “realists”, have advanced two low-hope ideas for the future international cooperation.

One idea put forward is to accept and find ways to cope with ever shrinking resources for shared global challenges, trying to “do more with less”. This approach would fail. The real-world consequence of attempting it would be failing to adequately resource collective responses to global threats – including pandemics, energy insecurity, natural disasters, and more. This would be existentially dangerous, and orders-of-magnitude more costly for every country than tackling shared threats upstream.

Another idea put forward is to ask the private sector to take over responsibilities which have previously been intergovernmental. This approach would fail too. The real-world consequence of pursuing it would not only be desperately inadequate resourcing of shared threats, and the supercharging of extreme inequality, but also the surrender of accountability and power to oligarchy.

This triptych of unworkable ideas – keep trying to restore the old order, accept managed decline or hand over to the private sector – dominates much of the attention in the Global North.

Thankfully, however, a growing group of Global South governments have been hard at work shaping a solution for the financing of shared global challenges.

Co-convened by the Foreign Ministers of Senegal and Colombia, more than 30 countries have come together in the Coalition of Governments on Global Public Investment, to transform the current global inflection point into a moment of renewal.

“Our challenges are shared; our risks are shared; and increasingly, our solutions must also be shared,” observes Martín Clavijo, Director of Uruguay’s Agency for International Cooperation. “We need an evolution in how we understand cooperation towards a framework in which all countries contribute according to their capacities, all benefit according to their needs, and all participate as equals in decisions about the use of resources.”

“Global public investment is the smart, 21st-century answer to how governments can work together to overcome the challenges and crises that affect us all,” remarks Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio Mapy, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia and co-chair of the coalition. “A significant increase in public financing is essential — and crucially, these resources must be governed under more representative and effective frameworks.”

“We are moving beyond traditional donor-recipient paradigms, towards a more horizontal, inclusive, and partnership-based approach,” shares Cheikh Niang, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Senegal and co-chair of the coalition. “All countries, regardless of their level of development, have both contributions to make and legitimate expectations to express. To solve our national, regional, and global problems, we can’t rely on philanthropy alone, and we can’t just look to the private sector to save us. We need more and better public money to solve our collective challenges.”

Launched in July 2025 at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, the coalition held its inaugural planning meeting in September 2025 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. This year the governments have gathered in Bogota in March, and in Nairobi in May, and will gather again in New York in September.

Anchored in the Global South, the coalition is also reaching out to countries in the Global North. “We are not looking for sympathy. What we want is an equal partnership,” emphasises Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ghana.

“The future of international cooperation must evolve toward approaches that better reflect shared responsibility and collective interest,” points out Limpho Tau, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lesotho.

The governments are working closely with civil society. “The leaders coming together are pioneers renewing and remaking multilateralism,” says María Elena Agüero, Secretary General of Club de Madrid. “The approach they’re developing together will be fairer than approaches inherited from the last century, by ensuring all countries have a voice and a stake. It will also be much more effective, helping to improve lives across the world.”

The leaders insist on the need to go beyond simply cushioning the present disruption. They are clear that past approaches will not and should not return. Instead, they are working to turn breakdown into breakthrough by bringing countries together as equals to redesign international finance for an interdependent world.

“There is an urgent need for a renewed international financial architecture that is more inclusive, more representative and better aligned with contemporary global realities,” observes Korir Singoei, Principal Secretary, Department for Foreign Affairs of Kenya.

“Do we want to be the generation that managed a crisis — or the generation that transformed the course of global cooperation?” asks Javier Eduardo Martínez-Acha Vásquez, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Panama. “Global public investment can enable us not only to transform international cooperation but to transform the future of humanity.”

The leaders have put together a roadmap for transforming international cooperation by 2030: “A great deal of intellectual effort has been made over years to ensure that an appropriate model was brought forward,” remarks Alva Baptiste, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saint Lucia. “Now”, he concludes, “we are mandated to get airborne.”

Ben Phillips is the author of How to Fight Inequality, and Public Good: Building a Winning Narrative to Bring the World Together.

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Sephora*, an 18-year-old mother of two, holds her baby girl at the Karibuni wa Mama Clinic supported by SOFEPADI in Bunia, Ituri province, DR Congo, on 25 November 2025. Originally from a remote village, she fled when armed clashes erupted in 2023. Credit: UNICEF / Mirindi Johnson

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 22 2026 (IPS)

A record number of children were subject to grave violations by parties to armed conflicts, the highest since the UN mandate for children and armed conflict (CAAC) was established in 1996.

In the Secretary-General’s annual report, UN-verified sources confirmed 35,558 violations committed against children during armed conflicts. This is the fourth year in a row that incidents have increased from years.

The data in the report is based on instances occurring in and verified in 2025. At least 24,174 children were directly affected or had their rights violated, through killing and maiming, forced recruitment, abduction, sexual violence, and denial of humanitarian assistance. At least 1 in 3 victims were girls. The killing of children increased by 34 percent compared to incidents from 2024, totaling to 14,224 children killed or maimed. 5129 children were abducted, and there were at least 8322 instances of denial of humanitarian assistance. 6607 children were recruited or used by armed groups, and a total of 1667 children were detained for their actual or alleged connection to armed groups.

For the first time since the CAAC mandate was created, government forces were responsible for the highest number of grave violations. In addition to the killing and maiming of children, government forces were largely responsible for the destruction or military use of schools and hospitals, and the denial of humanitarian access. This sense of impunity is further amplified by hostilities, and in the increasing use of wide-area explosive weapons and in densely populated areas, resulting in more civilian casualties. The use of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons systems has also transformed.

The states responsible for the highest number of violations included Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, Myanmar, Somalia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Israeli forces were responsible for nearly one-third of the grave violations in the report — 12,455. In the DRC, 4,114 grave violations against children were committed, including 519 deaths and 1067 abductions.

Vanessa Frazier, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, at the release of the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict in 2025. Credit: IPS / Naureen Hossain

Under-Secretary-General Vanessa Frazier, the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, warned that the frequency — and intensity — of violations against children reflect a growing disdain for international law and the protected rights of children.

“2025 was without a doubt one of the darkest chapters for child protection since monitoring began,” said Frazier. “When States, on whom the obligation to protect children falls, instead contribute to their suffering, it signals the deeper erosion of respect for international law. The principles of humanity, distinction, proportionality, and necessity must be restored — without exception.”

Frazier told reporters on June 18 that the report is meant to be a “tool of accountability”. It should be used by member states to inform their own actions to take the appropriate steps needed to protect children in armed conflict. In the case of countries named in the report with ongoing situations, this is also an opportunity for them to enter into agreements to reduce and prevent further violations during conflict between now and the following year.

Frazier confirmed that early drafts of the report were shared with these countries back in March, and the countries had at least one month to present their own evidence to be corroborated with the UN-verified data. She added that open dialogue between her office and the countries is encouraged, if those countries choose to engage in the first place.

The report calls on member states to uphold international law to protect civilians, especially children, during times of conflict, through upholding their commitments to existing peace and security agreements. Parties to conflicts are also called on to develop and implement action plans with the UN, and to grant the UN access to conduct thorough monitoring and reporting of grave violations against children.

The report also calls on technology and social media companies to take concrete measures to prevent their platforms from being used by armed groups to recruit and exploit children, and to cooperate with accountability and child protection mechanisms. The misuse of digital technology can have adverse effects on children’s wellbeing even in peaceful contexts. Without sufficient legal guardrails and proper monitoring, children are more likely to be exposed to misinformation and recruitment content.

A senior UN official told Inter Press Service that online recruitment is a pervasive issue across multiple conflict areas, and that more resources need to be mobilized to create responsibility. The official confirmed that Frazier and her office were in contact with lawmakers from the European Union to determine how existing frameworks like the Digital Services Act could protect children. The office is also working with TikTok in Colombia to implement strategies to prevent the recruitment and use of children during conflict.

Frazier called on the state actors to adopt action plans to protect and reintegrate children formerly associated with armed groups. In 2025, 13,112 children received protection and reintegration support with the help of other UN agencies like UNICEF and its partners. This requires funding support from donors and state parties as much as it requires political will. Further investments into accountability and prevention measures among parties in conflicts are also needed, through partnerships with the UN, governments and parties to conflicts.

Before she was the Secretary-General’s Special Representative (SRSG) for Children and Armed Conflict, Frazier was the Permanent Representative of Malta to the UN during its term in the Security Council from 2023-2024. Both in her capacity as SRSG and as a member of the Security Council, Frazier has visited conflict sites and spoken with children directly impacted. She reflected that it was particularly aggravating to see state actors in the list of perpetrators in the report, given that state actors, who are also UN member states, are supposed to be the ones abiding by the rule of law and protecting children. “It’s not acceptable that there are nine state actors listed, irrespective of who they are and how bad they are,” said Frazier.

What was most striking to her is that many of these incidents that resulted in so many child casualties could have been avoided. State actors seem to make the conscious, operational decision to target factories manufacturing weapons or enemy strongholds, regardless of whether civilian infrastructures like schools are nearby and would get caught in the radius. Even if those infrastructures are not the intended target, state actors will follow through with the attacks, which show a disregard for international humanitarian law and a lack of concern for the consequences of civilian casualties. It is children who are suffering the consequences of state actors’ decisions, Frazier said.

“I think for state actors it is worse than non-state actors, because this mandate was originally created to target armed groups and non-state actors; ones who work outside of the law. We cannot have state actors who are supposed to work within the reams of the law, now working outside the reams of the law. That should not be something that is acceptable.”

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Women farmers using a thresher; they are beneficiaries of a UNDP project to bring agritech to smallholder farmers. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe , Jun 19 2026 (IPS)

Long burdened by the labour-intensive nature of agriculture, Zimbabwe’s female farmers are finding relief in new agritechnologies that significantly reduce the time they spend in the field.

With assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), female farmers are adopting technologies such as earth augers, multi-crop threshers and grinder-choppers to help them navigate climate resilience and boost production at a time when African countries are facing funding cuts in the agriculture sector, further threatening food security.

As global food prices soar because of the ongoing geopolitical tensions that have disrupted global trade and commerce, female farmers find themselves bearing the high costs of food, but new technologies such as those being introduced for Zimbabwe’s farmers are expected to ease these challenges.

Women in Zimbabwe make up the bulk of small-scale farmers, providing a backbone for the country’s food security efforts, but they have been shut out of agricultural finance, limiting their access to farming inputs and equipment.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, “approximately 80% of women live in communal areas, where they constitute 61% of farmers and provide 70% of the labour.”

Despite Zimbabwe’s farm mechanisation drive, there are concerns that the collateral demanded by banks has made it impossible for women to fully participate in the country’s agricultural economy.

According to the UNDP, the Green Climate Fund finances the project to support rural female farmers through labour-saving agri-tech under the Climate Resilient Livelihoods Project, which aims to strengthen climate resilience.

“The initiative is supporting 230 Farmer Field Schools with earth augers, multi-crop threshers and grinder-choppers designed to reduce the physical burden of agricultural labour, improve productivity and strengthen resilience to climate change,” the UNDP said in its June media brief.

“The introduction of labour-saving technologies is helping women reclaim valuable time, reduce physical strain and participate more actively in income-generating activities, community leadership and climate-resilient farming practices,” the agency added.

Across Zimbabwe, rural women face the same challenges: field work overload and taking care of their families, creating both physical and mental strain, experts say.

However, with the introduction of earth auger machines, which are hand-operated and drill the earth to prepare for planting, beneficiaries say they are experiencing significant ease in farming labour practices.

“Digging basins manually was exhausting. The auger brought real relief. We now finish plots fast and plant on time,” said Christine Mudzingwa, a farmer and housewife in Buhera, in the country’s east.

“There’s balance now. I can tend my garden and spend time with my family,” she said, painting a picture of how female farmers have struggled to juggle their multi-tasking routines.

Rural farmers have traditionally literally beat grain to produce livestock feed, and the physically taxing practice has led to poor health, with fatigue being an integral part of the occupational hazards women have to endure.

“Preparing feed for livestock used to take us the whole day,” says Precious Hobane, another smallholder and beneficiary in Gwanda, a  low rainfall district in the country’s west. “We chopped stover manually, and it was very tiring work. During harvest time, threshing grain was another difficult task for women.”

The planting season has been difficult for female farmers because they know the work ahead will be exhausting, but simple technologies are providing relief, the farmers say.

“Digging planting basins manually was one of the most exhausting jobs,” says Christine Mudzingwa, from the Manicaland province in the country’s eastern highlands. “You would spend the whole day bent over with a hoe in hard soil. By evening, you were completely worn out, but the work would still not be finished.”

The UNDP intervention has been a great help for the 230 women, who say they can now invest their energy in other, more productive farming endeavours.

“Preparing feed used to take a whole day. Now the grinder-chopper does the heavy work. The machines help us care for livestock during droughts, and women are no longer exhausted,” explains Hobane.

The UNDP partnership with the government of Zimbabwe is part of a broader Green Climate Fund initiative expected to promote climate resilience and boost food production as countries in the Global South continue to seek ways to cushion their populations against climate uncertainty.

“Through this Green Climate Fund Readiness support, Zimbabwe is strengthening the systems, partnerships and investment pathways required to translate its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ambitions into climate-resilient and low-emission development outcomes,” said Constance Pepukai, the UNDP Nature, Energy and Climate Team Leader, at the launch of the initiative.

The government has welcomed the climate-proofing support as Zimbabwe seeks to boost household food security amid a series of droughts and floods that have further complicated how smallholders navigate the climate crisis.

“The project provides an important platform for aligning climate technology, private sector engagement and project pipeline development with Zimbabwe’s national climate priorities,” says Washington Zhakata, acting Secretary for Environment, Climate and Wildlife.

For now, the beneficiaries of the small agritech remain confident that their working hours are being invested wisely and that if the technology is to spread further to the bulk of the country’s female farmers, taking to the fields could be less daunting.

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US President Trump’s policies are supposed to make America great again (MAGA), which means different things to various parties. Some of its consequences are inadvertent, including undermining dollar dominance and inducing stagflation worldwide.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The US held 70% of the world’s gold reserves at the time, with gold priced at $35 per ounce. Other central banks bought and held US Treasury bonds and similar dollar assets as liquidity reserves.

This effectively made the US dollar the primary means of payment in the post-war international monetary system. The exchange rates of other national currencies were all set against the dollar.

As other economies recovered post-war, the US current account and trade surplus declined. Until 1971, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) occasionally adjusted fixed exchange rates for ‘structural’ balance-of-payments deficits or surpluses.

Exorbitant privilege
This dollar-based international monetary system gave the US what France’s Gaullist leadership called an ‘exorbitant [economic] privilege’.

Under the Bretton Woods arrangements, the US would never face balance-of-payments problems, as it paid for imports with its own currency, which it could print at will.

Nurina Malek

Foreign central banks soon became accustomed to holding US Treasury bonds as official reserves, effectively funding the large and growing federal debt.

Such foreign central bank demand kept the dollar strong in foreign exchange markets. Persistent capital inflows into the US have kept the dollar overvalued.

The strong dollar has boosted domestic consumption of imports, depressed exports, widened trade deficits, and kept consumer price inflation in check.

In 1960, Robert Triffin warned the US Congress about the inevitable problems that arise when a national currency is also used as an international reserve currency.

He urged the US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) to consider the dollar’s international role when making domestic monetary policy.

In August 1971, President Richard Nixon unilaterally ended the US Bretton Woods commitment to redeem dollars with gold. Thus, the dollar clearly became a fiat currency, with exchange rates shaped by market confidence.

Protection through diversification
After the 2009 Great Recession, Western central banks kept nominal interest rates low for over a decade through coordinated ‘quantitative easing’ (QE).

Low interest rates were maintained for over a decade through the 2020-21 Covid-19 recession before the Fed raised interest rates from 2022, ostensibly to address inflationary pressures.

Borrowers worldwide were thus induced to take on more debt. Governments, corporations, and households borrowed more, increasing accumulated debt.

International payment obligations are increasingly being settled by other means. Gradually, dollar-based arrangements are co-existing with euro- and renminbi-based arrangements and BRICS-initiated alternatives.

Thus, US indebtedness and stagnation have been growing with inflationary pressures. Unsurprisingly, other monetary authorities’ previous preference for holding US Treasury bills as official reserves has declined.

Instead, official reserves have been increasingly diversified to include more gold holdings ostensibly to help hedge against inflation and currency debasement.

About 36,200 tonnes, a fifth of all gold holdings, are now held by central banks, up from 15% at the end of 2023. By 2025, non-US central bank gold holdings exceeded their US Treasury bonds for the first time this century!

Trump 2.0
Criticism of the dollar system has resurfaced from time to time, especially as Washington weaponises more financial instruments and arrangements.

The second Trump administration has threatened major US federal government creditors, including China and longtime allies such as Japan and the Gulf monarchies.

As loyal allies are bullied, many are quietly moving away from prevailing dollar-based international monetary and financial arrangements, which have long been preferred for convenience.

After bombing ten nations in the first year of Trump 2.0, US military spending has been rising rapidly, especially with the Iran war and many of its consequences likely to be protracted despite the promise of a ceasefire.

With international confidence in the US consistently undermined by unexpected unilateral White House initiatives, governments are trying to reduce their vulnerabilities, especially by diversifying their reserve assets.

But unlike early in his first term, Trump now welcomes a weaker dollar as “great”. His ongoing efforts to lower Fed interest rates also reflect successive US presidents’ refusal to address ever-larger federal fiscal deficits over the decades.

With inflation rising, market premiums over Fed interest rates are pushing up commercial rates. These hurt the real economy, employment, and banks, many struggling with rising defaults.

All this exacerbates financial ‘market corrections’ in the US and beyond. Trump-induced international disruptions are worsening instability and slowing economies worldwide.

Trump’s policies have slowed the world economy, including the US. With efforts to address the Hormuz crisis undermined by Israel, his legacy will now surely include having induced the first major stagflation in almost half a century.

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Security Council. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 18 2026 (IPS)

As the campaign for a new UN secretary-general gathers momentum, will the US exercise the decisive vote — or the veto– in the final selection?

The US has publicly declared its opposition to some of the basic goals in the UN’s socio-economic agenda, including gender empowerment and policies relating to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), while dismissing climate change as “a hoax” and a “giant scam.”

The Trump administration has also downplayed human rights and adherence to international laws—two concepts ingrained in the UN system.

When NASA announced last week that the astronauts who would fly on Artemis III, the next return-to-the-moon mission, the New York Times pointed out the crew consisted of four men and no women, triggering a question from the Times: “Was this part of the push by the Trump administration against DEI policies?”

If the US administration continues to take a hard line against DEI, what are the chances of the US administration supporting a female candidature for the next Secretary-General?

In an interview with the Times last January, President Trump said he does not “need international law” to guide his actions, arguing that only his own “morality” and “mind” will constrain his global powers.

So, what would be the fate of any candidate— male or female—who vociferously advocates these UN goals?

James E. Jennings, President, Conscience International, told Inter Press Service, the reason the United States has been disproportionately influential at the UN since the founding of the organization is because of its global leadership position and its long-term financial support for many of its programs.

However, he said, things have greatly changed in the last two years, with the US Administration abolishing the United States’ massive aid programs and trying to sideline or replace the UN with Republican-branded regressive policies.

“President Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms dovetailed with the ideals of the UN Charter, but Washington’s atavistic regime is determined to dominate the globe, not through equality but intimidation”.

“Such actions will be a disaster for both the UN and the US, whose soft power has been a major contributor to its strength through attraction of immigrants, investment, and generous aid programs. No more”.

It is difficult to reconcile Trump’s policies, Jennings argued, based on fear with those of the UN’s charter and goals of mutual respect among nations. Strong and unified pushback from the majority of UN member states with explicit support for independent, visionary global leadership will advance peace and protect vulnerable people everywhere.

“It is unimaginable that the US under the current MAGA Republican leadership would NOT try to select the next US Secretary-General outright, or if unable to do that would not try to block anyone considered unfit from Mr. Trump’s point of view. Personal leadership qualities and policy beliefs will matter less than whether the next head of the UN body kowtows to the US President”.

That fact alone makes it difficult to select a courageous and principled person. At a time of critical challenges for the world body, installation of UN leadership that would be intimidated by or under the thumb of Washington might well be the death knell for what is indubitably one of history’s grandest and most visionary efforts at peace and prosperity for all, he pointed out.

Meanwhile, come election time, will there be a battle of the vetoes – as it happened in a bygone era?

In 1981, Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania was backed by the Organisation of African Unity, the Non-Aligned Movement and China. But his bid was blocked by a US veto.

In 1996, a second five-year term for Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt was vetoed by the US—even though he received the support of 14 of 15 members in the Security Council.

In 1981, China cast a record 16 vetoes against Kurt Waldheim to prevent a third term, leading to his withdrawal and the selection of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar.

Asked for his perspective, Mandeep Tiwana, Secretary-General, CIVICUS told IPS “The veto power wielded by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council is the most anti-people feature of the UN system. Civil Society groups have for years been calling for its voluntary relinquishment but to little or no avail”.

It is time, he said, for a fundamental reconsideration of the veto power. No process can be considered fair or transparent if any one state, however populous, has the power to block it.”

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and Program Director for Middle Eastern Studies, University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on the politics of the UN, told IPS under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States has blocked the election of candidates for Secretary General, even when they had the support of the fourteen other members of the Security Council.

“Given how Trump has been even more prone to attack the United Nations and bully member states, including ostensible U.S. allies, it is likely that the United States will make it even more difficult this round for the UN to choose its next administrator,” he said.

So far, the list of candidates for the post of Secretary-General include: Michelle Bachelet Jeria (Chile): former President of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés (Ecuador): former President of the UN General Assembly. Rafael Mariano Grossi (Argentina): Current Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Rebeca Grynspan Mayufis (Costa Rica): Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Macky Sall (Senegal): former President of Senegal and Maria Fernandez Espinosa Garces, former President of the UN General Assembly and former Foreign Minister of Ecuador.

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A rare glimpse of a snow leopard prowling through the high-altitude wilderness of Kangchendzonga National Park, captured by a trail camera. Credit: WWF/Sikkim

By Diwash Gahatraj
SIKKIM, India, Jun 17 2026 (IPS)

The tea arrives before the conversation starts. Jayanta Mukhia sets two cups on the wooden table and pulls up a chair across from the couple who arrived that afternoon with trekking poles and rucksacks. They have come to walk the Goechala trail into the heart of Khangchendzonga National Park in India. They will leave in two days. Before they go, she has something to tell them.

Jayanta asks if they know what happens to the garbage they carry in. Some of it comes back out. Some of it does not. In the high pastures above Yuksom, a town in West Sikkim, the trail climbs toward the glaciers, and plastic bags caught in the rocks stay there through winter. Army camps, tourists, and trekking groups – they all leave something behind. That waste feeds dogs that follow the trails running through the same corridors where snow leopards move at night.

Jayanta Mukhia outside the Chungda Hidden Family Homestay in Yuksom, West Sikkim. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

Her husband, Chungda Sherpa, started the Chungda Hidden Family Homestay in Yuksom in 2012, when he was still a trekking guide who knew every switchback on the Goechala route. Today he handles the bookings, the outreach, and the digital presence that brings guests from cities they have never visited. Jayanta runs everything else, the kitchen, the guests, the conversations at the wooden table, and the quiet insistence that every person who sleeps under her roof leaves the park cleaner than they found it.

“The homestay earns between eight and ten lakhs (about USD 8,400 to 10,500) a year. That income exists because the park exists,” she says.

According to Tshering Uden of the Khangchendzonga Conservation Committee, Yuksom has 15 hotels, 25 homestays and more than 21 travel agencies registered under the local Panchayat, all of whose income depends directly on Khangchendzonga’s ecological health. Their collective livelihood runs on the same high-altitude corridors where Sikkim’s 21 snow leopards live.

A hiker admires the view in the Khangchendzonga National Park. Credit: Tshering Uden, KCC.

Guardian of the High-Altitude

Known locally as Saagey, the snow leopard is revered as a sacred guardian of the high-altitude ecosystem in Sikkimese Buddhist tradition, its conservation inseparable from the beliefs and pastoral lifestyles of the communities that share its landscape. Khangchendzonga National Park, inscribed as India’s first mixed natural and cultural UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016, sits at the heart of this landscape.

India’s first national snow leopard population assessment surveyed the Trans-Himalayan region between 2019 and 2023, deploying camera traps at nearly 2,000 locations across about 120,000 square kilometres and counting 718 snow leopards across six Himalayan states and union territories. Sikkim recorded 21, a modest figure in a rugged landscape where the cats share space with herders, trekkers and Dzo transporters. The SECURE Himalaya project, supported by the Global Environment Facility, helped make that count possible by building community-based monitoring capacity across the high mountains, demonstrating that conservation works best when local communities are invested in it.

This is a hyperlocal account of what that investment built in one corner of a much larger effort.

Buddhist stupas covered in flags serve as a spiritual landmark on high-altitude trekking trails, such as those leading to Mount Kanchenjunga. Credit: Tshering Uden, KCC

SECURE Himalaya ran for nearly seven years across four Himalayan states: Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and the Union Territory of Ladakh. In Sikkim, it focused on the Khangchendzonga-Upper Teesta landscape – roughly 4,000 square kilometres from Khangchendzonga National Park down to the upper catchment of the Teesta River. Backed by a GEF grant of USD 11.5 million and over USD 60 million in co-financing from the Government of India, the funding went into four interconnected areas: conserving key biodiversity zones, securing sustainable community livelihoods, reducing human-wildlife conflict, and building knowledge systems for long-term landscape management.

In Sikkim, this translated into camera trap networks, community patrol volunteers, women’s handicraft enterprises, and waste management systems all designed around a single argument: that communities with an economic stake in a healthy landscape will protect it.

The project received a Highly Satisfactory rating from independent evaluators for results, relevance and efficiency. Khangchendzonga National Park recorded one of the largest improvements in management effectiveness across all project sites.

One of the project’s most practical interventions targeted feral dogs, which had become a dominant predator in North Sikkim, chasing snow leopards from their kills and hunting the blue sheep and pika the cats depend on. “The project worked with army establishments in Sikkim to set up biodigester facilities in strategic locations to manage food waste from army camps, which helped directly address the feral dog problem,” says Ruchi Pant, who oversaw SECURE Himalaya’s reporting at UNDP India. “The army subsequently scaled up these biodigesters using their own resources.” The initiative has continued independently, one of several project interventions that continues even though the project’s funding has ended.

Young volunteers were trained as Himal Rakshaks, protectors of the Himalaya, to set camera traps, patrol Khangchendzonga National Park and report sightings. The Sikkim Forest Department has since integrated them into its regular operations, with volunteers supporting fire line management and routine monitoring alongside forest guards. The State Biodiversity Board has constituted 196 Biodiversity Management Committees across Sikkim, many of them women-led, operating under the Biological Diversity Act 2002.

Nedup Bhutia’s dzo loaded with trekking supplies at the Yuksom trailhead, West Sikkim, ready for the Goechala trek into Khangchendzonga National Park. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

In Yuksom, the results were visible in ways the community could measure. The KCC trained trekking guides, porters and tourism operators to monitor trails, manage waste and report wildlife sightings. The project’s midterm review cited its zero-waste management model as a national best practice. In 2022, the programme was formally handed over to the Yuksam Gram Panchayat Unit and now runs under the Block Administrative Centre, according to Tshering Uden — a concrete example of the institutional transition the project was designed to achieve. Blue sheep, rarely seen in the national park before the project, are now a regular presence on the slopes. More blue sheep means a more reliable prey base for snow leopards, and fewer reasons for the cats to come down and take livestock.

“Before the project we only heard about snow leopards in our area,” says Tshering Uden. “Now we have picture evidence.”

Tents in the valley of the Khangchendzonga National Park. The zero-waste aspect of its zero-waste management model, including from visitors to the park, has been cited as a national best practice. Credit: Tshering Uden, KCC

A Shift in Mindset

Udai Gurung of the Sikkim Forest Department says the project changed the department’s fundamental orientation. “The biggest shift was conceptual,” he says. “The forest department moved from a protection-centric model to a landscape-level, coexistence-based approach.”

The project ended in 2024. GEF funding was always designed to be temporary and not a permanent handhold but a spark for something that continues under its own momentum. By that measure, the terminal evaluation rated the project highly satisfactory for results, relevance and efficiency, while assessing sustainability as moderately likely, noting that targets were met in full and, in some instances, exceeded.

The long-term expectation, consistent with how all GEF projects are designed, is that technical capacity and systems developed under the project are handed over to the government to carry forward.

In Sikkim, that transition is underway. Gurung identifies the slow release of funds as the single biggest structural challenge throughout implementation, not a shortage of money, but a bureaucratic delay in releasing funds already allocated. In high-altitude Sikkim, where the working season is a matter of weeks, entire field seasons were lost waiting for approvals. “Capacity exists,” he says, “but long-term sustainability will require consistent financial and institutional support.”

That support now rests primarily with local and state authorities. The Himal Rakshaks operate within the Sikkim Forest Department. The BMCs sit under the State Biodiversity Board. The zero-waste programme runs under the Yuksam Block Administrative Centre.

Jayanta Mukhia outside the Chungda Hidden Family Homestay in Yuksom, West Sikkim. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

Women in North Sikkim continue weaving nettle fibre and accessing premium markets independently.

In May 2023, Sikkim announced its first biodiversity heritage site – Tunkyong Dho – a sacred lake in Dzongu supported by the local biodiversity management committee. UNDP remains involved at a smaller scale through the German IKI ICCA programme, a portion of which continues to support the Himalayan landscape.

The most concrete unfinished work is the compensation system for herders. Pema Yangden Lepcha, a researcher and project associate at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment’s Himalaya Initiative in Gangtok, has spent months talking to yak herders in North Sikkim.

Herders there recently told her they had lost five yaks to snow leopard predation. An adult yak costs between 80,000 and 100,000 rupees. Government compensation is a fraction of that, and most predation happens on Forest Department land where herders are often told the department cannot help.

“They have a very negative attitude toward snow leopards,” Pema says, “and often feel a strong urge to retaliate.” Closing that gap so that herders who bear the cost of coexistence are fairly compensated is the single most urgent task for the local authorities now responsible for this landscape.

Nedup Bhutia’s dzo loaded with trekking supplies at the Yuksom trailhead, West Sikkim, ready for the Goechala trek into Khangchendzonga National Park. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

Carrying it Forward

On the trail, Nedup Bhutia has walked the Goechala route for twenty years with his eleven dzo. He earns between one and one and a half lakhs each trekking season, porting visitors into the park. He has never seen a snow leopard. But three years ago, a two-year-old ox was found dead in the open in Jhamtong village on the park’s periphery, killed by a snow leopard overnight. For Nedup, it is proof of a landscape still alive.

In Yuksom, at the wooden table in Chungda Hidden Family Homestay, Jayanta Mukhia is refilling two cups of tea. Her guests leave tomorrow. They will carry their garbage out. She has made sure of it.

The 21 snow leopards are still there. The communities are still working. The project succeeded by every measure the evaluators applied. What happens next depends not on outside funding but on whether the institutions and communities that inherited this work choose to build on it. That is where the responsibility now sits and where the real test of SECURE Himalaya’s legacy begins.

Note: This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.
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Credit: HuyNguyenSG/iStock by Getty Images. Source: IMF

By Kristalina Georgieva
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 17 2026 (IPS)

More than three months into the war in the Middle East, the global economy appears to be holding up. Commodity prices, inflation and expectations for it, and financial conditions have all been impacted—but not yet in ways that signal a global slowdown. And we have seen strong economic momentum in the world’s biggest economies, the United States and China.

But an overall resilient global picture masks significant disparities. Even among advanced economies, some countries and communities have been harder hit. And in Africa, the negative impacts are more conspicuous. Meanwhile, with the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz and infrastructure in the Middle East damaged by the fighting, uncertainty and risks remain high.

We will provide an updated analysis of this global picture on July 8, in our next World Economic Outlook Update.

Drivers of global resilience so far

At the conflict’s outset, our immediate concern was the impact on energy prices and knock-on effects on inflation. And they have been considerable. Oil prices are 30 percent higher than pre-war levels. Yet that is lower than was seen earlier in the conflict, despite the straits’ prolonged closure.

Some countries, such as China, have been able—for now—to cushion the disruption by tapping deep oil reserves. This has also helped with demand pressures in otherwise hard-hit Asia. Increased production and refinery utilization outside the Gulf, although not sufficient to offset the shock, have also contained the increase in oil prices. In addition, actions to dampen demand or limit the price passthrough have mitigated the impact so far. But, here too, there are limits to how long countries can manage the higher budgetary costs and higher external financing requirements.

In many economies, higher oil prices are nonetheless contributing to a pickup in headline inflation. That is concerning—but not the full story. It is also important to consider whether people and businesses expect a more persistent erosion of their purchasing power. And these medium-term expectations generally remain well anchored. That’s an encouraging sign of confidence in central banks’ commitment to price stability.

Financial markets have also proven resilient. Government bond yields have climbed significantly since the war began, but risk assets have rallied on strong earnings, and we see little evidence of a broader flight to safety. By historical standards, financial conditions remain accommodative.

Technology is another bright spot. Strong technology-related investment—particularly in artificial intelligence and data centers—has been a driving force in the countries where economic momentum is holding up. The United States is benefiting from this global technology cycle, as are economies in Asia that have seen stronger technology exports. Most countries, however, are yet to feel the productivity and growth impact of technology, leading to concerns about further economic divergence.

To sum up, the combination of economic resilience and technological advancements have helped to cushion the impact of the energy supply shock on growth at the global level and there have been bright spots within regions. But there are countries that are harder hit, largely depending on geography, degree of energy dependence, and available policy space.

Hardest hit

For war impacts, proximity matters. Oil exporters around the Gulf that are directly affected by the war face steep downward revisions to growth this year, with five out of eight countries seeing outright contractions.

For Europe, which is heavily dependent on imported oil and gas, higher energy prices are weighing on growth and putting upward pressure on inflation, with the ECB recently raising interest rates.

Emerging market economies in Asia are also bearing the brunt—with the relatively higher oil and gas intensity of the economies in the region. They face retail gasoline prices that have increased 40 percent since the war began, while rising government bond yields and currency depreciation and capital outflow pressures have amplified the costs of the shock.

Yet, it is the countries that combine heavy reliance on energy imports with limited policy space that are especially hard-hit.

The strain is especially visible in Africa, where many of these factors are at play. For countries in the region that rely heavily on imports, rising costs are worsening external balances and increasing budgetary pressures—and financing needs.

Several African countries have been managing fuel shortages—including Ethiopia, Malawi, and Zambia—and most are feeling the pain of sharp fuel price increases. In countries such as Lesotho, Rwanda, and Tanzania, gasoline prices have increased by about half since the onset of the war.

Higher energy prices have also driven up fertilizer and food costs, increasing the risk of food insecurity. If disruptions persist, farmers in many low-income countries may struggle. That in turn may further fuel inflation for months to come.

Needed: policy discipline and agility

As we have said before, much depends on the duration and intensity of the energy supply shock. The sooner it is resolved, the better—especially as supply will take time to recover given the significant infrastructure damage—and Sunday’s ceasefire announcement is welcome. But should the conflict or disruptions intensify, this is a clear risk to global growth.

This continued high uncertainty underscores the need for all policymakers to be agile and disciplined. Maintaining price stability is essential. Already, some central banks have begun to tighten to keep inflation expectations anchored.

With borrowing costs rising, fiscal discipline is equally important. Price caps, subsidies and similar interventions may be popular, but they are costly. Fiscal responses should be targeted, temporary, preserve price signals, and well-sequenced to protect the vulnerable without undermining public finances.

This is even more important given the need to make room for the fiscal costs of ensuring that AI-driven growth translates into shared prosperity. That includes both the fiscal costs to address new vulnerabilities, as well as investing in technology and people to ensure that emerging and developing economies are not left behind.

Supporting affected members

While there is much our members can do to cushion the impact of the war, they shouldn’t have to go it alone. The Fund remains as committed as ever to helping our member countries navigate this period of heightened uncertainty. Just as the effects vary across countries and regions, our support is tailored to meet the differentiated needs of our members.

For now, most member countries are asking for clear, candid policy guidance rather than financial support. And we have duly responded—providing tailored policy advice and capacity development. While the risks have not yet receded, embracing the right policies will help provide some relief.

For those countries that need financial support, we are stepping up. We are working with several countries and will soon present to our Executive Board proposals to adjust existing programs in response to the shock. The Gambia has requested an augmentation and program extension. Burkina Faso has reached staff-level agreement on a funding increase to address higher external financing needs. In Ethiopia, we aim to bring forward financing to this year, while we have initiated discussions on a new program with Malawi. Bangladesh also has requested a new program.

That the global economy is so far weathering the shock is cause for reassurance—but not complacency. The IMF remains on high alert. We are also deeply mindful of the economic damage some of our members are already suffering. We will work with them to manage the shock and limit its negative impacts, especially on the vulnerable. Our commitment to our membership is unwavering.

Kristalina Georgieva has been serving as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund since October 1, 2019. She began her second term on October 1, 2024.

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CIVICUS discusses a proposed United Nations (UN) tax treaty with Jenny Ricks, General Secretary of Fight Inequality Alliance, a global movement that organises to counter the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a small elite.

Jenny Ricks

Why do we need a global tax treaty, and what would an ambitious one look like?

Every year, trillions of dollars are drained from public services through tax avoidance, tax havens and sweetheart deals negotiated by and for the wealthiest corporations and people on the planet. This is a system designed by a powerful few, and it’s working exactly as intended. Countries across the global majority are losing money they urgently need for climate adaptation, hospitals and schools while billionaires park fortunes in jurisdictions that ask no questions.

An ambitious treaty must set minimum effective tax rates on corporate profits and extreme wealth, make automatic information sharing a baseline rather than an aspiration, and put in place binding commitments rather than voluntary frameworks that elites can walk away from when the political heat rises. The goal has to be redistribution at scale. Anything less is rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.

How does the UN Convention compare to the OECD’s approach, and where might it fall short?

The OECD process was built by rich countries, for rich countries. The global majority had only observer status in negotiations that fundamentally shaped their economic futures. That’s the original sin of the existing framework and no amount of technical refinement changes the underlying power imbalance baked into it.

The UN Convention changes the venue and potentially changes the power balance. When every country has a voice and a vote, the interests of the majority of the world’s people have at least a fighting chance of being reflected in the outcome.

The shortcomings are real, though. Ambition gets negotiated down. Large economies drag their feet, threaten opt-outs or simply refuse to ratify. The convention’s potential is significant, but potential and outcome are very different things, and we have seen promising processes hollowed out before. Without a fundamental rethinking of the international system, including the UN itself, to put power firmly in the hands of the global majority, enforcement will remain elusive.

Who’s pushing the treaty forward, and who’s standing in the way?

States with the most to gain have shown the most political courage, while those that have profited most from the existing architecture are throwing sand in the gears. This pattern is not coincidental. Governments protecting the interests of their wealthiest people and most powerful corporations are the obstacle. The barriers are political, rooted in elite self-interest, and naming that clearly matters.

The negotiations are ongoing and fast-moving. For the latest developments, the Tax Justice Network database is the best place to look.

How is civil society influencing the treaty process?

The movement to tax the super-rich has to be built from the national to the global level. Movements shape what’s considered possible before politicians decide what’s acceptable. When we mobilise people in Kenya, Malaysia and Peru, in the streets and in people’s assemblies, we change the political cost calculation for decision-makers domestically and internationally. We demonstrate that there’s a constituency demanding this change, that it’s a matter of survival for millions of families, not an abstraction debated in Geneva conference rooms.

Fight Inequality Alliance and our allies have worked to surface frontline voices and lived experience in spaces that tend to run on position papers and spreadsheets. We have supported national alliances to bring their governments to the table with clear demands. We have made visible who benefits from the status quo, and that visibility increases accountability. Civil society doesn’t win these fights alone, but without sustained pressure from organised movements, the political space to win them simply doesn’t open.

What do civil society and states need to do to ensure equitable global taxation?

States that have pushed hardest for an ambitious convention must hold firm. Dilution always comes in the final stages, when powerful interests feel threatened. They should ratify promptly, implement genuinely and resist pressure from wealthier governments to hollow out enforcement mechanisms.

For civil society, the task is sustained pressure and political education. People need to understand the connection between tax justice and the hospital that closed, the school that’s crumbling, the debt that their governments cannot escape. That connection is real and it’s political, and once people see it, they don’t unsee it. That’s how movements grow and how the terms of debate shift. We need more of that, faster and bigger, and we need organisations with resources and reach to invest in building those connections alongside us, rather than commenting on the process from a distance.

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SEE ALSO
Global governance: power politics tests global rules CIVICUS | State of Civil Society Report 2026
UN at 80: a struggle for renewal in a time of crises CIVICUS Lens 19.Sep.2025
Trillions at stake in quest for tax justice CIVICUS Lens 31.Mar.2025

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In the human body, connective tissue rarely gets the attention given to the heart, lungs or brain. But without it, even the strongest organs cannot function as a system. It binds, supports and connects a healthy body.

Fiscal systems work in a similar way.

Warren Krafchik

But they are not enough.

The fiscal crisis is already here, and so is the crisis of trust around it. As governments face harder choices over debt, climate costs, slower growth, inequality and public investment, the challenge is no longer simply to balance the books. It is to make fiscal choices more accountable, equitable and trusted by the public.

That cannot be achieved by strengthening finance ministries or other individual institutions one by one. It requires investing in the connective tissue between these institutions: the relationships among legislatures, auditors, courts, civil society, journalists, reformers inside government and citizens that support legitimacy and effective scrutiny.

Case in point: Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa have all strengthened public finance institutions in important ways, yet still face deep challenges around oversight, legitimacy and equity, according to the synthesis paper, Strengthening Fiscal Ecosystems for Accountability and Equity. In each country, formal systems may look strong on paper, but fiscal decisions can still be shaped by political capture, weak scrutiny and unequal access to power.

The reason is that public finance is not simply a technical exercise. It is a political one. Budgets determine who gets health care, education, infrastructure, climate protection and social support. Tax systems determine who contributes and who is spared. Debt decisions can bind future generations. Fiscal choices are among the clearest expressions of a government’s priorities.

Paolo de Renzio

Accountability happens when those institutions are connected to one another and are able to collaborate. It happens when civic actors can engage them, when media can investigate, when courts can intervene where necessary, when legislatures can scrutinize executive decisions, and when public pressure can turn information into consequences.

Such a “fiscal ecosystem” includes ministries of finance, legislatures, supreme audit institutions, courts, civil society organizations, journalists, reformers inside government, social movements, citizens and the relationships among them. It also includes the informal realities that shape how power actually operates, such as party bargains, patronage networks, institutional rivalries, elite coalitions and unequal access to decision-makers.

This gap between formal rules and real power is where many fiscal reforms fall short. A country may have a budget law that clearly defines the role of parliament, but legislators may lack the independence or capacity to challenge executive choices. A supreme audit institution may produce strong reports, but those findings may go nowhere if the executive does not act on them. Civil society organizations may uncover misuse of public funds, but struggle to get a response from those with the power to impose sanctions.

Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa each followed different reform paths. But across all three cases, especially during crises, accountability often depended not on a single institution performing perfectly, but on formal and informal collaborations forming across the fiscal ecosystem. Auditors worked with communities. Media investigations collected evidence and amplified public pressure. Courts intervened when other institutions fell short. Reformers inside and outside the state found ways to connect scrutiny with action.

These efforts are often fragile. They are also essential.

The global public finance community should draw a clear conclusion. The next phase of fiscal reform must move beyond an institution-by-institution approach, and invest in the relationships, coalitions and channels that connect oversight actors and allow accountability to take root.

For international financial institutions, development agencies and technical assistance providers, this means recognizing that fiscal legitimacy cannot be built through executive capacity alone. Supporting ministries of finance remains important, but it should be matched by greater attention to the institutions, inside and outside government, and the connections between them that balance fiscal power.

For ministries of finance, it means supporting connected oversight systems by responding in a timely way to legislature and audit processes and recommendations and creating additional formal spaces for civil society organizations and communities to contribute to policy choices and implementation. Oversight bodies need pathways for their actions to matter.

For civil society and media, it means ensuring that transparency is not treated as the end goal but as a starting point. Public access to fiscal information is only powerful when citizens, journalists and civic actors have the resources, protections and channels needed to use it.

For philanthropy, the implication is especially urgent. Too much support for accountability work remains fragmented by institution, sector or issue area. Funders have a critical opportunity to invest in the connective tissue executive, oversight, and civic actors that makes fiscal accountability possible. That means supporting civic actors who can follow public money, connect budget decisions to lived experience, work with the ministries of finance and oversight institutions and help communities demand answers when public resources are at risk.

Fiscal reform must therefore be understood as a democratic project, not simply a managerial one. Strong finance ministries are necessary. But they cannot carry the burden of legitimacy alone. If governments want citizens to accept difficult trade-offs, they must build systems where people can see how decisions are made, contribute to those decisions, challenge abuses of power and trust that public resources are being used in the public interest.

The future of fiscal reform will not be won by strengthening one institution at a time. It will depend on building fiscal accountability ecosystems strong enough to keep public finance connected to the public good.

Warren Krafchik is a Public Finance Consultant at the Trust, Accountability and Inclusion Collaborative and Co-lead of the Strengthening Fiscal Ecosystems project.

Paolo de Renzio is a Senior Lecturer at the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration of Fundação Getúlio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro, and Co-lead of the Strengthening Fiscal Ecosystems project.

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A group of children sit near a garden in Tamasgo Primary, in Burkina Faso, which is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. Credit: UNICEF Office in Burkina Faso

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 16 2026 (IPS)

A new report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) highlights the vast, overlapping climate threats affecting children worldwide, which is leaving them increasingly vulnerable to escalating risks across health, security, and education.

The report, Children’s Climate Risk Report, emphasizes that while these risks are most pronounced in heavily vulnerable regions in the Global South—such as South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa—nearly half of the world’s children are exposed to at least three climate hazards, with some exposed to as many as six at once.

“Across the globe, millions of children are now facing multiple climate threats without the necessary services to cope,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “They are experiencing extreme heat that causes heatstroke and dehydration. Their homes and schools are being destroyed by storms and floods. Devastating droughts are limiting their access to food and water. And in many cases, the intensity of these hazards is increasing with each passing year.”

“We must invest more in adapting essential services to the impact of climate change,” Russell added. “Through political will, partnerships, and collaboration with young people, the case studies in this report prove that progress is possible. But the scale and ambition of action must be rapidly accelerated to ensure that every child is protected from climate impacts.”

According to UNICEF’s findings, nearly every child globally is now affected by air pollution. Additionally, over 296 million children live in areas that are exposed to a dangerous combination of prolonged drought, extreme heat, and heatwaves, while another 115 million simultaneously face droughts, extreme heat, and tropical storms.

The agency stresses that these risks often overlap across multiple regions, noting that riverine and coastal floods, fires, and sand and dust storms have caused widespread displacement, disruptions to livelihoods and schooling, the spread of infectious diseases, or various forms of health and food insecurity.

Nowhere are the consequences of these overlapping threats more evident than in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, which have been described by climate experts as the two most climate-vulnerable regions in the world. These regions are at a heightened risk primarily due to high environmental exposure and a limited capacity to respond. The resulting shocks overwhelm local health systems, cripple fragile infrastructure, and leave entire communities deprived of basic, lifesaving services.

The report notes that over 4 million children in the Sahel region are exposed to heatwaves, extreme heat, and sand and dust storms. Meanwhile, South Asian countries like Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan, face more hazards at once and at higher intensities than anywhere else in the world.

“While some countries may face a single devastating event, such as a tropical storm that can wipe out an entire island, many countries in Asia are dealing with a combination of threats, from floods and storms to extreme heat,” Rohini Sampoornam Swaminathan, UNICEF Statistics and Monitoring Manager, tells Inter Press Service. “Children may cope with one or two shocks, but after three, four or five, families’ ability to respond becomes severely strained. Moreover, risk is not only about exposure to hazards, but it is also about the availability and accessibility of essential services. For children without reliable access to health care, nutrition, or water and sanitation, even a moderate flood or heatwave can become life‑threatening.”

On 20 January 2026, an aerial view of the flooded Xai Xai village after extreme rainfall in Gaza Province, Mozambique. Credit: UNICEF/Guy Taylor

According to the report, in 2024, approximately 634 million children lacked access to safe drinking water, over 1 billion lacked access to sanitation services, and 489 million lacked access to basic hygiene services. Currently, nearly 160 million children live in areas where water systems are severely strained, and droughts are extremely pronounced, while another 270 million children live in flood-prone zones where less than half of the population has access to adequate sanitation.

As a result, the World Health Organization (WHO) projects that there could be over 250,000 additional yearly deaths by the 2030s from malaria, diarrhoea, heat stress, and undernutrition. These consequences are dire for children, particularly those living in fragile contexts where health systems and local infrastructures are strained.

In Pakistan, children face extreme vulnerability due to glacial melt and erratic rainfall patterns, which frequently trigger large-scale flooding. The historic 2022 floods affected over 33 million people—roughly half of whom were children—and stripped more than 5.4 million people of access to clean water, leaving them at a heightened risk of contracting infectious diseases and waterborne illnesses. This has been compounded by frequent heatwaves and prolonged droughts, with temperatures routinely exceeding 48 degrees Celsius, or 118.4 degrees Fahrenheit, which have caused high rates of severe dehydration and acute malnutrition, as a result of decimated crop yields.

Without urgent intervention, UNICEF projects that an additional 28 million children globally could experience acute malnutrition and stunted growth by 2050. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, approximately 10 million more children are expected to suffer from stunted growth by 2050. Over the last few years, increasingly frequent and destructive climate shocks have devastated food systems around the world, leaving roughly 66 percent of children under five—approximately 440 million—to live in severe food poverty.

Additionally, climate shocks are increasingly stripping children of their education, with UNICEF recording nearly 242 million students across 85 countries and territories who have their education disrupted by climate-induced hazards in 2024 alone. The agency has also recorded rising rates of school closures, absenteeism, and worsened school performance. Swaminathan noted that when classrooms become too hot, children struggle to concentrate, learn and stay engaged.

“Heat increases dehydration, fatigue and absenteeism, especially in schools without cooling, shade or reliable water,” she added. “As temperatures rise, schools are also closing more often. While closures protect children’s health, they expose how unprepared many education systems are for a hotter world. When children lose learning, societies lose potential. Repeated disruptions affect education outcomes, future earnings and economic growth, while deepening inequalities.”

It is estimated that disrupted education across low- and middle-income countries could yield future economic losses of up to USD 11 trillion in lifetime earnings. The report further notes that establishing climate-resilient education systems is crucial in preventing these losses and protecting children from facing adverse mental health impacts and deepened social and economic inequalities.

Furthermore, volatile climate shocks around the world continue to displace entire communities and push millions of children into insecurity. Between 2016 and 2023, UNICEF recorded over 62 million internal displacements of children as a result of climate-induced hazards—or roughly 21,000 child displacements per day.

“When families are forced to move because of climate shocks, children face heightened risks of violence, exploitation and family separation, both during the journey and in temporary settlements. These risks increase when displacement is sudden, support networks collapse, and protection systems are overwhelmed,” said Swaminathan. “Climate-related displacement acts as a threat multiplier. It weakens livelihoods, strains fragile services and deepens existing tensions.”

Child protection services around the world have been pushed to the brink of collapse as a result of the vast scale of needs triggered by climate-induced displacement. This strain has been linked to a significant rise in violence, exploitation, abuse, and childhood trauma, with many families resorting to negative coping mechanisms such as child labour and child marriage.

According to UNICEF estimates, rates of child labour have surged in recent years, particularly in areas with agriculture-dependent economies, where roughly 70 percent of this exploitation can be found. Additionally, communities frequently turn to child marriage to secure short-term financial stability following severe climate shocks. The consequences are particularly dire for girls who are married before the age of 18, who face a significantly higher risk of domestic violence, alongside severely compromised health and economic outcomes compared to those who marry later in life.

To accelerate climate action and protect millions of children from these escalating risks, UNICEF is urging global leaders and the private sector to prioritize investments in renewable energy, underscoring that this is a critical first step in reducing the intensity of climate shocks. Additionally, the agency stresses the importance of integrating climate-resilient schools, water systems, and healthcare facilities into national emergency plans and expanding climate education to ensure that the next generation has a voice in decisions that affect their lives.

“UNICEF’s message is clear: invest in children’s resilience, especially the most vulnerable. Invest in the communities they live in and the social services they depend on, and ensure these services continue to function during and after climate shocks,” said Swaminathan. “The climate crisis is a child rights crisis. We know where children are at risk and what they face. Now we must act.”

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Tomorrow, Africa hosts the Our Ocean Conference on its own shores for the first time, in Mombasa.

This is more than a diplomatic milestone. It is a test of whether we, as Africans, are prepared to safeguard our ocean as a shared heritage and a pillar of our future prosperity.

James Alix Michel

As former President of Seychelles, I had the privilege to help pioneer the blue economy concept in Seychelles and the South West Indian Ocean. That vision, born from our own lived reality, was simple but profound: our economic future depends on a healthy ocean. We must build prosperity not by exhausting marine wealth, but by restoring and protecting it.

Today, as the world gathers in Kenya under the theme “Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future”, that same blue economy vision must guide Africa’s choices. The theme is not a slogan to open a conference; it is a call to re imagine the relationship between our societies and the sea. It demands that we treat the ocean as a living heritage we hold in trust, not a frontier for short term extraction.

Earlier this year, together with Dona Bertarelli, we called for a moratorium on deep sea mining and for stronger protection of Africa’s ocean. We did so in anticipation of the Mombasa conference, knowing that the decisions taken there – or avoided there – will echo across our continent and far beyond. Africa’s voice on the ocean has to be heard clearly, and our commitments will be judged not by the elegance of our words, but by the protections that reach people and nature.

Deep sea mining crystallises what is at stake. The deep ocean is one of the last largely unknown frontiers on our planet. It supports ecosystems that have taken millennia to form and that play roles in global processes we are only beginning to understand. To open this fragile realm to industrial mining without robust, independent science and effective governance would be to gamble with consequences we cannot foresee and cannot reverse.

For Africa, the risks are even more acute. Many of our states are still building their scientific and regulatory capacities. Many of our coastal communities and small scale fishers already face pressure from climate change, pollution and overfishing. To layer the uncertain impacts of deep sea mining on top of these existing stresses would be reckless.

This is why I support a precautionary pause on deep sea mining. Precaution is not anti development. It is responsible leadership in a time of profound uncertainty. It says: we will not mortgage the ocean that sustains us for promises of quick gain, especially when those gains may flow elsewhere while the damage remains with us.

Africa’s seas underpin our food security, our climate resilience, our blue economies, our cultures and our identities as ocean peoples. They are the living foundation for millions of coastal and island communities across the continent, from the Western Indian Ocean to the Atlantic and Mediterranean shores. To treat them as mere repositories of minerals is to ignore their true value and the rights of those who depend on them.

As leaders, negotiators and experts gather in Mombasa, I believe Africa should speak with one clear, principled message.

First, our ocean is not a frontier for unchecked extraction, but a heritage we hold in trust. Decisions taken in Mombasa must respect the ocean’s ecological limits and recognise the special vulnerabilities and rights of small island developing states and coastal nations.

Second, any activity in the deep sea must proceed only when independent science shows it will not cause irreversible harm. That means investing in African and global scientific capacity and listening to evidence, not to pressure for rapid exploitation.

Third, ocean decisions must prioritise coastal communities, small scale fishers, women and youth, and the countries that depend on the sea every day. The benefits of a blue economy must be shared fairly, and its governance must be inclusive. Communities on the frontlines of change must be at the centre of decision making, not at the margins.

From Seychelles, we know that it is possible to chart a different course. Through marine spatial planning, marine protected areas, innovative financing and a strong commitment to conservation, we have shown that protecting the ocean can go hand in hand with creating opportunities for our people. The blue economy is not a theory for us. It is a lived pathway, built through hard choices and long term vision.

From Mombasa, Africa now has a chance to lead. True ocean leadership requires more than ambitious speeches. It requires restraint as well as innovation, protection as well as investment. It demands that we say “not yet” when the science is uncertain and the risks are too great. It asks us to measure success not only in money raised, but in coral reefs saved, fish stocks rebuilt and communities strengthened.

The Our Ocean Conference was created to move the world from promises to action. Let us ensure that the action that emerges from Mombasa honours its theme: “Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future.” Let us ensure that the legacy of this conference is a safer ocean for Africa and for the world, not new risks passed on to our children.

From Victoria to Mombasa, from Seychelles to the African mainland, our message should be united and firm: Africa’s ocean is not for sacrifice. It is for stewardship. It is for our people. And it is for our future.

James Alix Michel is the former President of the Republic of Seychelles and founder of the James Michel Foundation.

IPS UN Bureau

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