Trump 2.0 has been marked by the blatantly aggressive exercise of power to secure US interests as defined by him. While many recent trends even predate his first term, his reduced use of ‘soft power’ has exposed his bullying, extortionary use of US power.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The US has illegally weaponised more laws and policies, especially by unilaterally imposing sanctions and tariffs, especially on dissenting regimes.

Often, such threats are not ends in themselves but actually weapons to strengthen the US bargaining position to secure more advantageous deals.

Under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, members are obliged to extend ‘most favoured nation’ status to all other member nations.

On April 2, 2025, President Trump announced supposedly ‘reciprocal tariffs’, ostensibly responding to others having trade surpluses with the US.

Appealing to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is futile, as the US has blocked the appointment of Appellate Body members since the Obama presidency.

Trump 2.0 has also been trying to get rich investors and governments – mainly from Europe, Japan, and the oil-rich Gulf states – to invest in the US.

Most such investments are in financial markets, rather than the real economy. Such portfolio investments have propped up asset prices, even bubbles.

Trump’s bullying is resented but has not been very effective vis-à-vis strong adversaries. Consequently, allies have been most affected and resentful.

Deepening stagflation
Meanwhile, much of the world economy has never really recovered from the COVID-19 slowdown, while Western sanctions and tariffs have raised production costs, worsening inflation.

Recent trends have also deepened the stagnation since 2009. Many governments and the IMF have made things worse by cutting spending when most needed.

Impacts have varied, generally worse in poorer countries, where the IMF limits policy options and credit rating agencies raise borrowing costs.

US Fed chair Powell’s interest rate hikes, ostensibly to address inflation, also reversed ‘quantitative easing’, which had lowered interest rates from 2009.

Trump’s aggression has reduced economic engagement with the US, inadvertently accelerating de-dollarisation, thus undermining the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’.

Central banks worldwide have responded predictably, refusing to be counter-cyclical in the face of economic slowdown, citing inflationary pressures.

Transactional?
Trump’s transactional approach has meant bilateral, one-on-one dealings, further advantaging the world’s dominant power.

Involving one-time asymmetric ‘zero-sum games’, such transactions ensure the US gains, necessarily at the expense of the ‘other’. Transactionalism also enables ‘buying influence’, or corruption.

The resulting uncertainty reduces investments, not only in the US, but everywhere, due to greater perceived risks, exacerbating the stagnation. Thus, Trump 2.0 policies have reduced investment and growth.

The whole world, including the US, has suffered much ‘collateral damage’, but the White House seems content as long as others lose more.

Unipolar sovereigntism
The transitions to unipolar sovereigntism and then to a multipolar world have been much debated.

Three decades ago, the influential US Council on Foreign Relations’ journal, Foreign Affairs, argued that the post-Cold War unipolar world was actually ‘sovereigntist’.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s ‘Daddy’ reference to Trump suggests that the sovereigntist moment is not quite over, as the US ‘No Kings’ mobilisation suggests.

Trump’s ‘America First’ clearly opposes multilateralism, generating broader concerns. He has withdrawn the US from many, but not all, multilateral bodies.

On January 7, the US withdrew from 66 international organisations deemed “wasteful, ineffective, or harmful”, addressing issues it claimed were “contrary” to national interests.

Trump’s continued, selective use of multilateral bodies has served him well, retaining privileges, e.g., permanent membership of the UN Security Council with veto power.

The UN Security Council’s Gaza ceasefire resolution was used to create and legitimise his Board of Peace, now touted by some as an alternative to the UN!

Trump will not withdraw from the WTO as its Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement is key to US tech bros’ trillions from transnational IP.

End of soft power
Some of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January 20th remarks at Davos are telling:

“More recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

“You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination… If we are not at the table, we are on the menu.”

Besides exercising overwhelming military superiority, Trump 2.0 has increasingly weaponised rules, agreements and economic relations to its advantage.

The abandonment of ‘soft power’ – accelerated by Elon Musk’s DOGE – has ripped the velvet glove off US ‘hegemony’, exposing the mailed fist beneath.

USAID and other US government-funded agencies and programmes have been crucial for soft power, fostering the illusion of domination with consent. Abandoning soft power may well increase the costs of achieving America First.

IPS UN Bureau

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While media coverage of Iran’s restrictions on passage through the Hormuz Straits focuses on fuel prices, partial closure is also disrupting crucial fertiliser and other supplies, risking catastrophe for billions worldwide.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Hormuz is not just a chokepoint on a shipping lane for oil and gas; it has strategic implications for fertiliser, helium, and other energy-intensive exports as well as for food and other imports to the region.

Higher energy costs affect most transportation and farming requirements, such as tilling and harvesting, as well as fertiliser supplies.

Wars, especially protracted ones, have lasting effects, including for agrifood systems. Without earlier investments, output elsewhere cannot be easily increased.

Alternative fertiliser supply sources are not readily available, especially as agro-ecological options have rarely been seriously pursued despite their proven viability.

As with renewable energy generation to reduce the need for petroleum imports, it is unclear whether the looming food crisis will accelerate the needed and feasible agro-ecological transition for enhanced food security.

Disrupted food supplies
Shipping delays and port congestion disrupt food supplies, trade and availability.

K Kuhaneetha Bai

Many states have recently tried to improve their food security, expanding strategic reserves, investing in food agriculture and alternative supply routes.

Such measures have improved resilience but cannot address a prolonged blockade of the Persian Gulf. About 70% of the food for Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf emirates passes through Hormuz.

Replacing disrupted food imports for about 100 million people would require moving almost 100 million kilograms (kg) of food into the region daily by other means.

Supplying food to the Gulf region under blockade would require an unprecedented operation, possibly through contested airspace.

In 2024, the UN World Food Programme delivered about 7 million kg of food daily to 81 million people in 71 countries.

Weather-driven food shortages and price spikes triggered political instability in 2008 and 2010-11. With food systems worldwide increasingly vulnerable to climate shocks, food insecurity threatens regimes everywhere.

Fertilisers
Farmers worldwide need stable supplies of fertilisers and fuel.

The Iran war threatens to disrupt these supplies, so crucial to agricultural production. Staple crops like wheat, rice and maize rely heavily on fertilisers.

Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Bahrain all ship petroleum products through Hormuz, including a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG).

As LNG is key to producing many fertilisers, Gulf exports have become more significant, especially after the war cut Ukraine’s exports, and China and Russia reduced theirs as well.

In 2024, the Middle East accounted for almost 30% of major fertiliser exports, including nitrogen, phosphate and potash.

The Gulf alone exported 23% of the world’s ammonia and 34% of its urea, while 30-40% of the world’s nitrogen fertiliser exports pass through Hormuz!

In mid-2025, Kpler estimated that a Hormuz closure could reduce fertiliser supplies by 33%, with sulphur-based ones falling by 44% and urea by 30%.

Reduced nitrogen-based fertiliser exports would hurt major food exporters such as Brazil, the US, Thailand, and India, all heavily reliant on fertiliser imports. However, the impact of shortages may be delayed until imported stocks run out.

As the war drags on, farmers may cut fertiliser use by planting less or switching to crops requiring less. Poorer harvests would, in turn, adversely affect later investment, planting and fertiliser use.

Who suffers most?
The economic consequences of the unprovoked US-Israeli assault on Iran and Tehran’s responses are spreading fast and catastrophically, especially for the most vulnerable.

Iran’s new leadership mistrusts Washington and will keep Hormuz closed – choking fuel, food, and fertiliser flows through it – to secure the guarantees it needs to reduce its vulnerability.

As attacks on Iran continued, Tehran stepped up targeted attacks on infrastructure in the Gulf kingdoms hosting US military facilities. US-led efforts have provided little relief to its allies.

The worldwide impact is uneven, with the poorest taking the brunt. Asia and Africa have been hard hit by heavy reliance on oil, gas, and fertiliser imports.

Rich nations’ aid cuts to increase military spending have worsened poverty and hunger for millions, many of whom are also victims of war and aggression.

Unlike the rich, many migrant workers in the Gulf who cannot leave will struggle to make ends meet and send money home to their families.

And as the world’s attention has turned to the Gulf, Israel has worsened conditions in Gaza while taking over southern Lebanon and increasing Yemen’s pain.

Concerned about retribution in November’s mid-term elections, the White House is keen on a ceasefire.

But it has not offered terms acceptable to Iran, which remains suspicious of the US commitment to its own promises, let alone the rule of law.

Hence, the Iranian leadership is unlikely to agree to a ceasefire without credible guarantees for its future security from renewed Israeli and US aggression.

The Iran war has highlighted, yet again, the collateral damage of war and the food system’s vulnerability. Meanwhile, the suffering of the more vulnerable is ignored by the greater powers, who pay little heed to their plight.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Sanjit Pariyar/NurPhoto via AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Mar 25 2026 (IPS)

Less than six months after Nepal’s Generation Z rose up in protest, the country has a new prime minister. A 35-year-old former rapper who soundtracked the protests swept to power in a landslide in the 5 March election.

Balendra Shah defeated former prime minister KP Sharma Oli, whose third stint as prime minister was cut short by the protests, beating him in his own turf. After years of fragile coalition governments, in which Sharma Oli and two other men of advancing age repeatedly swapped the role of prime minister, Nepal has chosen to change direction.

Gen Z-led protests

The September 2025 protests were triggered by the government’s banning of 26 social media platforms in an evident response to the ‘nepokids’ trend, in which people used social media to satirise the ostentatiously wealthy lifestyles of politicians’ family members, while most young people experienced daily economic struggles amid high inflation and youth unemployment. In a country where the median age is just 25, the ban was the final straw, activating long-simmering anger about corruption, poor public services and a political system that refused to listen to young people.

When young people took to the streets, the state unleashed violence. The deadliest day was 8 September, when some protesters broke into the parliamentary complex and police fired live military-grade ammunition, shooting many victims in the head. Nineteen people died that day, and overall at least 76 people died in the protests.

Rather than silence the protests, the state’s lethal crackdown swelled them, making clear this was about more than the social media ban; it was a struggle for Nepal’s future. Even more people took to the streets. On 9 September, Sharma Oli resigned. Some protesters turned to violence, while the army took over security and imposed a nationwide curfew. But events soon took a decisive turn. Chief Justice Sushila Karki was sworn in as interim prime minister on 12 September, kickstarting a process that led to the election. The interim government agreed to establish a Gen Z Council, a formal body designed to bridge the gap between the government and young people and enable them to hold it accountable and monitor implementation of reforms.

As the latest State of Civil Society Report sets out, Nepal’s movement inspired many of the year’s other Gen Z-led mobilisations. Nepali activists used the gaming platform Discord, including for a radical exercise in democracy that saw 10,000 people take part in online discussions that put forward Karki as interim prime minister. Morocco’s protesters also used Discord to coordinate their actions, while the Gen Z movement in Madagascar, where the army ultimately forced the government to quit, connected with Nepal’s Discord communities to learn from their organising. Movements in several countries adopted Nepal’s protest symbol, the skull-and-straw-hat flag from the One Piece manga, identifying themselves as part of the same global movement.

Around the world, Gen Z-led protests have commonly faced violent state repression but have forced real concessions: Bulgaria’s government quit, while politicians dropped unpopular policies in Indonesia and Timor-Leste. In Bangladesh, where a Gen Z-led protest movement ousted an authoritarian government in 2024, the country recently held its first credible election in almost two decades.

Time for change

The new energy unleashed by Nepal’s Gen Z-led protests was reflected in the registration of over 800,000 new voters, more parties standing than ever before, a profusion of younger candidates and an election campaign focused on corruption and good governance.

The result was a shock. Coalition governments are the norm in Nepal, but the centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) won an outright majority, taking 182 of 275 House of Representatives seats after a campaign that made intensive use of social media. The three established parties all sustained heavy losses.

Shah used his music to attack corruption and inequality, resonating with the Gen Z movement during the protests, when one of his songs was viewed over 10 million times on YouTube. But he isn’t a completely new political figure, having become mayor of the capital, Kathmandu, in a surprise result when he ran as an independent in 2022. His track record there suggests grounds for concern. He’s rarely made himself available for media questioning, preferring to communicate directly via social media, where he’s known for making controversial outbursts. He also received criticism for deploying police against street vendors and launching ‘demolition drives’ to clear illegally built structures with minimal notice, leading to clashes between police and locals.

Shah now has a mandate to deliver change, and expectations are high. But he faces the challenge of reforming a typically resistant bureaucracy while delivering on his economic promises amid difficult global conditions worsened by the Israeli-US war on Iran, which threatens the remittances sent by the many Nepali workers based in Gulf countries, which constitute one quarter of the country’s GDP. He’ll need to navigate the difficult foreign policy balance between Nepal’s two powerful and often antagonistic neighbours, China and India. The new government must also ensure accountability for human rights violations during the 2025 protests, starting with releasing the report of a commission set up to investigate protest deaths, which hasn’t yet been made public.

The obvious danger, given these challenges and an outsized mandate, is that the government will adopt a heavy-handed approach, pushing through change while failing to listen. This is precisely when civil society is needed, to step in to hold the new government to account and ensure it respects human rights, including the right to keep expressing dissent.

Nepal’s Gen Z movement must guard against co-option by the new administration. The new government must acknowledge the vital role of Nepal’s outspoken young generation by moving quickly to form and resource the Gen Z Council and fully respecting its autonomy. The movement that helped bring Shah to power must stay engaged.

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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In mid-1971, US President Nixon ended the dollar’s gold peg at $35 per ounce, triggering de-dollarisation. The 2025 gold and silver rush followed private speculators trying to profit from central banks hedging against perceived new risks.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Many believe OPEC was allowed to raise oil prices from 1972, on condition petroleum purchases would be settled in dollars. ‘Petrodollars’ were thus believed to be the ‘black gold’ underlying the dollar system’s survival after 1971.

Although still the dominant world reserve currency, the dollar’s role has gradually declined over the decades. Trump 2.0’s rhetoric and actions appear to have accelerated de-dollarisation.

Trump’s 2 April 2025 ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs announcement triggered even greater uncertainty and volatility in foreign exchange and other markets worldwide.

Greater policy unpredictability has caused governments and investors to explore new options. Authorities worldwide are considering and developing alternatives to the dollar system.

Besides higher inflation, Trump’s threats and actions, particularly his tariffs, sanctions and wars, have pushed investors to sell dollar assets and seek alternatives.

Various factors have significantly accelerated de-dollarisation. In the first half of 2025, the dollar fell by over 10%, its sharpest fall since the 1973 oil crisis.

K Kuhaneetha Bai

Geopolitical economy commentator Ben Norton highlighted an April 2025 note by the Deutsche Bank foreign exchange research head, noting:

“We are witnessing a simultaneous collapse in the price of all US assets [including stocks, foreign exchange, and bonds] … we are entering uncharted territory in the global financial system…

“The market is rapidly de-dollarising. In a typical crisis environment, the market would be hoarding dollar liquidity…The market has lost faith in US assets. They are actively selling down their US assets.

“US administration policy is encouraging a trend toward de-dollarisation to safeguard international investors from a weaponisation of dollar liquidity.”

Western confiscations
The weaponisation of central banks by the US, Europe, and their allies has caused other central banks to seek ‘safety’ by switching from dollar assets to gold.

Increased weaponisation of the dollar and Western confiscation of others’ assets under various pretexts have accelerated this trend.

Billions of dollars’ worth of Venezuelan central bank gold, held at the Bank of England, was confiscated by the UK government during the 2019 Washington-instigated Caracas coup attempt.

After the coup failed, the Bank of England refused to return the gold to Venezuela. Trust in Western governments and central banks thus continued to erode.

Similarly, the US Fed and European Central Bank confiscated over $300 billion worth of Russian dollar-, euro- and sterling-denominated assets after it invaded Ukraine.

European authorities have since pledged to transfer these Russian assets to Ukraine rather than return them to their owners.

Western confiscations of the central bank reserves of Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Russia and others have alarmed authorities and publics worldwide.

Central banks’ reserve managers have increasingly viewed gold as safe despite greater volatility. Besides serving as a hedge, the precious metal also offered lucrative speculative gains.

Mitigating risk
Many monetary authorities have reversed their earlier accumulation of dollar-denominated US Treasury bills and bonds in their official reserves.

While US government debt has continued growing, inflationary pressures have mounted, albeit episodically. Gold and silver holdings are believed to help hedge against inflation and fiat currency debasement.

Gold holdings in central bank reserves increased significantly after the 2008-09 global, actually Western, financial crisis, followed by the Western turn to ‘quantitative easing’.

For the first time in three decades, central banks’ total gold holdings in their international reserves exceeded their US Treasury bond holdings in 2025.

About 36,200 tons, or a fifth of all gold holdings, is now held by central banks, rising rapidly over two years from 15% at the end of 2023!

Meanwhile, rising gold prices drew more speculative investments for profit. But such price spikes are not sustainable indefinitely.

Once gold was seen as overpriced, investors turned to other precious metals, notably silver, and other financial assets.

BRICS’ golden hedge?
After Lord Jim O’Neill identified Brazil, Russia, India and China as significant new financial powers outside the Western sphere of influence, BRICS was formed in 2009 by adding South Africa.

BRICS now has ten members and ten partners. Together, they account for 44% of world income, measured by purchasing power parity, and 56% of its people.

Russia, China, and India have been among the largest recent buyers of gold. Other major purchasers include Uzbekistan and Thailand, both BRICS partners.

Trump 2.0 has generated significant apprehension internationally. Without BRICS’ help, his weaponisation of economic policies and agreements has accelerated de-dollarisation.

Although Trump accuses the BRICS of conspiring to accelerate de-dollarisation, their precious metal purchases make sense as a hedge for their reserves.

IPS UN Bureau

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The Sindh government has started distributing solar home systems to 200,000 low-income households under the Sindh Solar Energy Project to improve electricity access. Credit: Sindh People’s Housing for Flood Affectees

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Mar 20 2026 (IPS)

Energy expert Vaqar Zakaria believes solar power makes “excellent economic sense” – and he lives by it. For over five years, his rooftop panels have slashed his bills, sometimes to zero, even allowing him to sell surplus electricity back through net metering.

Last month, he took it further. After buying two electric vehicles, he has almost “declared independence” from the national grid. With more panels and doubled batteries, even his cars run on sunshine. “I am moving away from their fuel, and I don’t need their power,” said the CEO of Hagler Bailly, Pakistan, an Islamabad-based environmental consultancy firm, over the phone from Islamabad.

“I call it the hand of God driving my car,” Zakaria said.

He is already seeing economic gains from his investment. “The electricity I generate, including battery costs, comes to about Rs 12 (USD 0.043) per unit, while it can be sold to the Islamabad Electric Supply Company at around Rs 26 (USD 0.092) per unit.” However, he adds that he does not currently claim this benefit, as it requires considerable follow-up.

Doing some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, he compared the petrol-run vehicles he used until a few months back to the EV he purchased a month ago. “The total cost of operating the EV comes to about Rs 2 (USD 0.0071) per km using power generated at home, compared to the Rs 27 (USD 0.096) per km I was paying earlier for running vehicles on the fossil fuel.”

This figure does not include the regular maintenance costs his earlier cars required—lubricating oils, oil and air filters, and brakes.

“An EV requires near-zero maintenance,” he added.

Vaqar Zakaria’s white EV charges under rooftop solar panels at his home — powered by the sun. Credit: Vaqar Zakaria

While Zakaria can afford a full shift off the grid, most households cannot.

“The solar landscape will remain unchanged unless power companies introduce profit-sharing models that turn consumers into ‘prosumers’ – both producers and users of energy – supported by microfinance to help cover upfront costs,” he said. Achieving this would require the privatisation of utilities.”

For now, with or without batteries, solar energy has become a popular alternative for many households. “What’s happening in Pakistan is quite significant, as electricity consumers’ dependence on the national grid is falling,” explained Rabia Babar, data manager at Renewables First, an Islamabad-based think-and-do tank for energy and environment.

Grid-based electricity demand, she pointed out, dropped 11 percent in FY25 compared to FY22 levels, largely because more people and businesses are switching to solar.

“During the day, far less electricity is being drawn from the grid, which means gas-fired power plants are being used much less than before.”

More than 100 young Pakistani women from across the country have been trained in and certified in solar roof installation by LADIESFUND Energy Pvt Ltd through Dawood Global Foundation’s Educate a Girl programme. They have solarised a women’s shelter, a church and an orphanage. Credit: LADIESFUND Energy (Pvt.) Ltd

The Turning Point

Haneea Isaad, an energy finance specialist at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, recalled the time in 2022, as the turning point when people realised they needed a cheaper alternative. “The prices of liquefied natural gas shot up after Russian forces entered Ukraine and the country faced a gas shortage, resulting in widespread power outages. Electricity prices almost tripled in just a couple of years.”

Those who could afford to, Isaad said, opted for a one-time investment in installing solar panels instead of paying for expensive and unreliable electricity.

According to EMBER,  an independent clean energy think tank, solar’s share in the energy mix has risen from 2.9 percent in 2020 to 32.3 percent by the end of 2025.

It is this quiet solar revolution that may help ride out the current energy crisis triggered by the United States-Israel war on Iran, which led to the shutting of the Strait of Hormuz, according to a report by Renewables First and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, published earlier this week.

“Pakistan’s solar revolution is quietly redrawing the country’s energy map, cutting grid dependence, reducing LNG exposure, and building a buffer against global market shocks that most of its neighbours are yet to find,” said Babar, one of the co-authors of the report.

A house in rural Gilgit with solar panels. Credit: SHAMA Solar.

In fact, the report says that Pakistan has avoided over USD 12 billion in oil and gas imports since 2020 due to its rapid solar growth – and could save another USD 6.3 billion in 2026 alone at current prices.

Lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of CREA, said the solar boom has cut import bills and now acts “like an insurance policy” against oil and LNG shocks from the Gulf.

Industries are also turning to solar, significantly reducing their need for LNG significantly.

“This shift has had a direct impact on government policy. Pakistan has gone back to its LNG suppliers to renegotiate long-term contracts for the diversion of surplus cargoes to international markets, which are now oversupplied due to the sharp reduction in gas consumption,” said Babar.

Pakistan has been importing LNG since 2015, after domestic reserves declined. It has been mainly used in the power sector – accounting for nearly a quarter of Pakistan’s electricity supply – followed by the industrial sector.

Supplied from Qatar via the Strait of Hormuz, LNG has become less attractive due to high prices for industry and the growing shift to solar in homes. With some LNG landing in Pakistan before the conflict began and domestic gas filling the gap from affected cargoes, supplies may be enough to last until mid-April.

“Pakistan has historically been vulnerable to volatile global LNG prices, which strain on foreign exchange reserves when prices spike,” Babar said.

Isaad agreed. “Solar has provided a buffer. With the power sector also relying on coal imports from Indonesia and South Africa, supply pressures are unlikely to pose a problem in the near term. Seasonal hydropower and mild weather are also likely to prevent an immediate spike in LNG based power demand. For now, Pakistan has been spared – unlike Bangladesh and India, which have been hit the hardest in South Asia.”

Not Out of the Woods Yet

But the solar panels have not shielded Pakistanis from the rising oil prices. The country saw a 20 percent jump – the highest in its history – with petrol and diesel costing USD 1.15 and USD 1.20 per litre, respectively. As transport drives the economy, higher oil prices quickly pushed up fares and the cost of groceries.

In response, Zakaria said the crisis highlights a clear path forward: embrace EVs, reduce diesel dependence, and expand renewables. “Begin with two-wheelers,” he suggested, though a full EV mass transit system would be ideal for Pakistan. He added that shifting freight from trucks to rail could significantly cut fuel costs.

He said he supports the oil rationing and austerity measures taken by the government.

Last week, addressing the nation, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced these measures on television.

“The entire region is currently in a state of war,” he said, outlining steps, including a four-day workweek for government employees and spring holidays for schools from March 16 to the end of the month. He also said 50 percent of government staff would work from home on a rotating basis and recommended similar arrangements for the private sector.

Higher education institutions have shifted to online classes to save fuel, as have meetings across federal and provincial governments. Fuel allowances for government offices have also been reduced.

Under the government’s austerity measures, federal and provincial cabinet members will forgo two months’ salaries and allowances, while lawmakers’ pay will be reduced by 25 percent. Ministers, parliamentarians, and officials may travel abroad only when essential — and must fly economy. Weddings will be capped at 200 guests, served with a single-dish meal.

The Human Cost

But these measures have brought little relief to Saba Nasreen’s household finances. The 52-year-old mother of two, who works as a domestic help, said, “Rising fuel prices have literally crippled us; when fuel costs go up, food prices follow. We hardly buy fruit or meat; now even milk and vegetables are beyond our range,” she said.

With Eid ul-Fitr—the Muslim festival marking the end of Ramadan—just days away, she said, “This will be the first Eid in as long as I can remember that I won’t be making sheer khurma for my daughters,” referring to the traditional sweet vermicelli dish prepared in many Muslim households across the subcontinent. “The price of a box of vermicelli has doubled this year, from Rs 150 (USD 0.53) to Rs 300 (USD 1.07),” she said, adding, “In any case, the attack on Iran has already dimmed our festivities; I’m not happy inside, my heart feels heavy.”

For many, the solar revolution offers hope — but for households like Nasreen’s, the struggle continues.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Credit: Marcelo Del Pozo/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Mar 16 2026 (IPS)

Once again, global oil prices are spiking, driven by the Israeli-US war against Iran. With Iran retaliating by attacking infrastructure and transport hubs and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, oil supplies from the region are being choked, pushing up prices. The cost of a barrel of Brent crude – the international benchmark for oil prices – stood at US$73 before the conflict but has surged beyond US$100 since. It could go higher still as war continues.

The impacts are already being felt when drivers fill up their petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles. But they go much wider. Bigger household energy bills will likely result, while businesses will pass on their increased costs in the form of higher prices. Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine sent oil prices soaring and sparked a global cost-of-living crisis, and now, as many economies seemed to be recovering, the war in the Gulf has brought another shock. Impacts could be political as well as financial: in numerous countries, the cost-of-living crisis helped drive voters towards right-wing populist and nationalist politicians. Recent years have seen Gen Z-led protests erupt in countries around the world, fuelled in part by young people’s anger at failing economies.

In a world increasingly characterised by conflict and with powerful states tearing up the international rulebook in pursuit of material interests, more oil shocks and big economic and political impacts seem inevitable. Governments typically react with economic policies that fail to protect those with the least, and by meeting political unrest with repression. They should consider another way.

The world will remain vulnerable to oil price shocks only for as long as it stays dependent on oil. The climate crisis compels a rapid move away from fossil fuel dependency to abate the worst impacts of global heating. Increasingly, this should also be seen as a matter of economic and political security.

Some steps have been taken in the right direction. Renewables now provide over 30 per cent of global electricity. Investments in renewables more than double those in fossil fuels. But fossil fuel companies have immense power and are determined not to give it up. That was reflected in the fact that 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists attended the latest global climate summit, COP30 in Brazil, and succeeded in preventing any new commitment to end fossil fuel extraction. Their power is shown in the lawsuit an oil company brought against Greenpeace, leading to a widely criticised trial in North Dakota, USA, with the campaigning organisation facing a punitive US$345 million damages bill. Their influence was reaffirmed by Donald Trump’s election win, after a campaign in which fossil fuel companies gave US$450 million in donations to Trump and his allies – and they were rewarded by US intervention in Venezuela.

Fossil fuel companies are determined to hold back the tide of renewables for as long as possible, because every day of delay is another day of profit, even though every fraction of a degree of temperature rise means avoidable suffering for millions of people. Delay is the new climate denial.

As the latest State of Civil Society Report points out, civil society’s working to make the difference, urging governments to hasten the transition and calling on global north states to make funding available for global south states to decarbonise and adapt to climate impacts. Civil society is exposing the environmental devastation caused by extraction and the complicity of fossil fuel companies in human rights abuses. Its strategies include advocacy, public campaigning, protests, direct action and, increasingly, litigation.

In 2025, climate litigation scored some big successes. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an unprecedented advisory opinion, ruling that states have a legal duty to prevent environmental harm, which requires them to mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change. This victory originated in civil society: in 2019, student groups from eight countries formed the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change network to persuade their governments to seek an ICJ ruling.

Following extensive civil society engagement, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a similar ruling. The African Court for Human and Peoples’ Rights is set to issue its advisory opinion following a petition brought by the African Climate Platform, a civil society coalition.

These rulings can seem symbolic, but they strengthen national-level efforts to hold states and corporations accountable. These have paid off recently too. In 2025, two South African groups stopped an offshore oil project after a court found its environmental assessments were deeply flawed. More litigation is coming, including in New Zealand, where civil society has filed a lawsuit after the government weakened its emissions reduction plan.

But civil society faces a backlash. Around the world, climate and environmental activists and their allies, Indigenous and land rights defenders, experience severe state and corporate repression.

Last year in Uganda, authorities arrested 11 activists for protesting against the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. In Peru, police used teargas and non-lethal weapons against people blocking a road to protest against a mine. In Cambodia, five young activists from the Mother Nature environmental group have been in jail since July 2024.

The French government has repeatedly vilified environmental campaigners and deployed police violence against protests, while last year the German government launched an inquiry into public funding of environmental groups and the Dutch parliament adopted a motion condemning Extinction Rebellion and urging the removal of its tax-exempt status.

As the latest oil price shocks reverberate around the global economy, governments should learn the lessons. As economies deteriorate, the temptation will be to say that transition is a luxury, something that can be put off even further. This is the wrong lesson: recent research in the UK suggests that the cost of achieving net zero will be about the same as the cost of another oil price crisis. Economic and political security lies in ending fossil fuel dependency as quickly as possible. To learn the right lessons, governments should stop repressing climate activism and instead listen to and work with civil society.

Andrew Firmin isCIVICUS 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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As US President Donald Trump pushes the world to war, arms spending has been rising worldwide. Wars secure more budgetary allocations, mainly benefiting the US-dominated military-industrial complex.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

In 2024, the US accounted for over 36% of the world’s military spending of $2.7 trillion! This exceeded the total expenditure of the next nine biggest spenders – China, Russia, Germany, India, UK, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, France, and Japan!

China’s military budget for 2025 was $250-300 billion. Most others are US allies who have pledged to increase war spending from under 2% of GDP to 5%!

The US and its allies will be even further ahead despite pushing friends and foes to spend more. Fortune magazine projects that US spending will exceed that of the next 35 highest-spending countries combined!

Despite its huge economic costs, the hike is being justified as helping to achieve ‘peace through strength’. After all, bombing ten nations in Trump 2.0’s first year did not incur any significant American military casualties.

Borrowing for war
Early this year, Dean Baker warned that President Trump was planning to increase annual military spending by $600 billion. Just under 2% of GDP, the spending increase would be massive.

K Kuhaneetha Bai

As Trump is more committed to cutting taxes than the US federal public debt, the “$600 billion increase in annual taxes would come to $6 trillion, roughly $45,000 per household” over the next decade.

The independent Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects federal debt for military spending will increase by $5.8 trillion over the next decade!

Trump has long promised to cut US public debt, which is already equivalent to 120% of annual output, and not to increase the deficit! But this would require massive tax increases, impossible to raise with tariffs alone.

Worse, federal government debt, which Trump promised to cut, will rise. Meanwhile, 94% of his Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) tax cuts benefit the top 60%, with only 1% trickling down to the poorest fifth.

The top fifth nominally gets 69%, but only the top 5% will actually pay less! The bottom 95% will pay more tax, with low-income households paying relatively more for tariffs!

Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, was supposed to cut federal government fraud, waste, and debt, but instead cut US growth in 2025’s last quarter.

While the BBB cut $186 billion of food aid for poorer Americans, rising war spending will mainly benefit US military-industrial complex cronies.

US consumers will pay more
Increased tariff rates would have to be impossibly high. And these would need to be even higher if exemptions are granted. Imports would fall sharply with such high tariffs.

Trump claimed additional tariff revenue would cover half a trillion dollars of additional military spending. He has long claimed other countries pay for tariffs.

With deindustrialisation over the past half-century, consumers have been buying more imports, paying for most tariff revenue.

Imports would fall sharply with such high tariffs. As many imports are intermediate goods used in manufacturing, high tariffs would hurt the industries Trump is claiming to promote.

High tariffs will raise consumer prices sharply. Cost-of-living increases would be unaffordable to many, including in Trump’s political base.

Before the 20 February Supreme Court decision declaring them unconstitutional, the tariffs were only expected to raise $300 billion in the first year.

Revenue was expected to fall as consumers bought more domestically produced goods instead of imports.

As many intermediate goods for manufacturing are imported, higher tariffs would hurt the very industries Trump claims to be helping. Thus, high tariffs will sharply raise consumer prices for both imports and US-made substitutes.

Also, massively increasing military spending will divert resources, including labour, away from more productive uses.

Military industrial cronies
US military contracts mainly went to five corporate groups even before Trump 2.0. While projects are worth more, beneficiaries are fewer, reflecting lobbying efforts.

More government military spending is unlikely to increase jobs in the long run, as jobs have decreased drastically since the 1980s due to greater automation.

Military contractors pass the costs of R&D and capital expenditures onto taxpayers, freeing revenue to pay for cash dividends and stock buybacks.

In 2024, the Pentagon’s leading contractor, Lockheed Martin paid out $7 billion for stock buybacks and dividends.

Although Trump once offered to work with China and Russia to cut the trio’s military spending by half, it was difficult to take his offer seriously given his other pronouncements and actions.

US military spending will continue to rise, driven by the same interests and impulses behind the recent massive hikes.

Military expenditure needs wars to secure yet more allocations for buying more military equipment, to the beat of war drums.

The actual political and business relationships are complex and ever-changing. As Walter Scott observed in 1808:

Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive

IPS UN Bureau

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President Donald Trump has shaken up the world economy and the rule of international law in the first year of his second term – ostensibly to make America great again, particularly by reviving US manufacturing jobs.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Tariffs
Trump’s 2nd April 2025 Liberation Day tariffs were ostensibly his primary means for generating manufacturing employment.

When the US Supreme Court overruled him on 20 February, he responded by imposing a 10% tariff on all imports, raised to 15% the next day!

The tariffs are a blunt means for reviving US manufacturing jobs. The policy assumes US manufacturing jobs have been mainly lost due to what the White House deems ‘unfair’ competition from cheap imports.

Undoubtedly, US and other transnational corporations have relocated production and generally sourced imports from abroad to reduce import costs.

Imposing tariffs on imported goods to raise their prices is supposed to induce manufacturers to relocate production and jobs to the US.

Higher tariffs were imposed on countries with larger goods trade surpluses with the US. This ignores the services trade balance, generally more favourable to the US.

Tariff threats are now among the Trump administration’s choice weapons or means of economic coercion, including sanctions, to advance and secure its interests.

K Kuhaneetha Bai

But only $264 billion was collected during Trump 2.0’s first year, much higher than before, but still less than 1% of US federal debt.

Tariff revenue peaked in October 2025 at $31.35 billion, well below expectations, months before the Supreme Court decision.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy found only 4% of tariffs ‘absorbed’ by foreign exporters losing some export earnings. US importers paid the 96% balance of $264 billion in tariffs, weakening the impact of Trump’s business tax cuts.

But Trump’s tariffs have not reduced the US trade deficit, not even for manufactures; this rose to $1 trillion in 2025, as $3.15 trillion in imports exceeded $2.15 trillion in exports.

Although mortgage and loan interest rates have not fallen, inflation continues. The additional tariff revenue would not even have covered the extra military budget Trump has promised.

Congress could have reclaimed its tariff authority, though the current Trump-dominated House of Representatives has not tried.

But with the November midterm elections looming, Forbes reported that the president’s disapproval rating rose to 55% in mid-February, as fewer are confident his administration prioritises curbing inflation.

Financialisation
The US federal debt, around $39 trillion, now requires over $1 trillion in annual debt servicing from the $7 trillion annual budget.

Growing by $1.5-2.0 trillion annually, this unrepayable debt is being ‘rolled over’ for ever-shorter maturities. Hedge funds now hold 27% of US Treasuries, while foreigners, who held half in 2015, now have only 30%.

Treasury bond repurchase – or repo – agreements provide about $4 trillion in financing daily for derivatives speculation. Another financial crash can wipe out many more trillions of often dubious ‘value’.

While the US economy, productive employment, and research funding diminish, various bubbles of unrepayable debt are growing rapidly. Worse, so-called stablecoins and cryptocurrencies have infiltrated financial markets.

Meanwhile, some US mortgage delinquency rates have reached levels worse than in 2007-08. By the end of 2025, financial news agencies were publishing ominous reports of financial vulnerabilities.

Hundreds of billions of promised investments, coerced from other nations using tariff and other threats, will be invested in US financial asset markets but little of this will create manufacturing jobs.

Manufacturing comeback
Trump has promised to make the US a manufacturing superpower once again, leading the world in technology, computing power and military weaponry. But China leads in many – if not most – areas of recent technological advancement.

Dean Baker found the US labour market weakening over Trump 2.0’s first year. Overall, and manufacturing jobs growth both declined from Biden’s last year.

US manufacturing jobs have long been threatened by transnational corporate globalisation and labour-saving technical change, especially automation.

US policy in recent decades has left the private sector responsible for ensuring US industrial technology leadership and progress. Meanwhile, problems, such as poor infrastructure, remain unaddressed.

Trump’s tariffs may also inadvertently reduce US jobs. Many industrial processes require imported parts, with the tariffs proving disruptive.

Trump’s policies have not created enough manufacturing jobs. The president fired his Labor Department’s statistics head in mid-2025 for not reporting enough job growth.

Nonetheless, it reported only 584,000 net new jobs for all of 2025, compared to 1.6 million in 2024, for the US labour force of 165 million!

The Wall Street Journal noted, “The manufacturing boom President Trump promised … is going in reverse”.

The Trump administration could still use the Supreme Court’s ruling to change its strategy to make America great again by drawing better lessons from US economic history and adopting a more pragmatic approach. But so far, it seems unlikely to do so.

IPS UN Bureau

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Despite lacking both evidence and theory, many economists claim trade liberalisation accelerates development. But only a few economies have gained many jobs from external market access.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Multilateral trade liberalisation
In conventional trade theory, gains from trade liberalisation are mainly one-time increases in output and exports due to static comparative advantage.

Post-World War Two (WWII) US foreign policy transformed multilateral relations and transnational institutions, including international economic governance.

With the growing power of transnational corporations, many multilateral institutions, including the United Nations system, have been reconfigured or marginalised.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was a ‘second-best’ compromise after the US Congress vetoed the creation of the International Trade Organisation, despite widespread international enthusiasm for the 1948 Havana Charter.

Almost half a century later, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was established in 1995, following the 1994 Marrakesh Declaration concluding the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations.

Trade mahaguru Jagdish Bhagwati argued that multilateral trade has been undermined by plurilateral and bilateral arrangements favouring dominant partners.

With the era of trade liberalisation essentially over since the 2008-09 global financial crisis (GFC), free trade advocacy has received a new lease of life from mythmaking about the ‘pre-Trump’ era.

Uneven, mixed effects
Mainstream trade theory does not entertain the possibility of ‘unequal exchange’, however defined.

Nor does it even incorporate Bhagwati’s notion of ‘immiserising growth’ when productivity gains reduce prices for consumers, rather than increase producers’ earnings.

The three decades of trade liberalisation from the 1980s saw slower, but more volatile growth than the post-WWII quarter-century termed the ‘Golden Age’. More recently, stagnationist tendencies have dominated since the GFC.

With trade liberalisation, many developing countries have experienced greater food insecurity and deindustrialisation, as the manufacturing shares of their national income shrank.

Much import-substituting industrialisation after WWII or independence has since collapsed. Besides resource processing, very few new industries have emerged in Africa.

‘Aid for Trade’ for poorer developing countries implicitly acknowledges trade liberalisation’s adverse effects by mitigating some of them. Why then should they abandon protectionism if they need to be compensated for doing so?

Wealthy nations have also insisted that developing countries end manufacturing tariffs. But as Dani Rodrik has quipped, why rich nations “need to be bribed by poor countries to do what is good for them is an enduring mystery”.

African nations and Caribbean and Pacific small island developing states enjoyed preferential access to European markets, which full multilateral trade liberalisation would eliminate.

Such preferences for Sub-Saharan Africa have pitted African against Asian least developed countries, undermining the collective negotiating strengths of both.

Many countries had expected the current Doha Round to eliminate rich nations’ producer subsidies, tariffs, and non-tariff barriers, but that has not happened.

Cutting farm support in the North could make food agriculture in developing countries more viable, but would also raise food import prices in the interim.

World Bank ‘structural adjustment’ programmes and IMF fiscal discipline requirements have undermined rural infrastructure and productivity, setting back smallholder agriculture in most developing countries.

Setbacks, not gains
Trade liberalisation also reduces tariff revenue. Such losses have hurt developing nations, especially the poorest, for whom tariffs often accounted for up to half of all tax revenue.

Such revenue cuts severely undermined the fiscal means of developing nations, crucial for government spending and investment, including for development and welfare.

Most governments are unable to replace lost tariff revenue with new or higher taxes. Meanwhile, more borrowing to offset lost tariff revenue has worsened indebtedness.

Trade liberalisation advocates are typically vague about how it is supposed to raise exports, incomes, and tax revenue, besides compensating for lost tariff revenue.

Instead, tax burdens typically become more regressive as overall tax revenue declines. Real consumption is supposed to rise as import prices fall with lower tariffs, but could also decline due to increasing consumption taxes.

Less policy space
Trade liberalisation has also reduced available development policy tools, especially those relating to trade, investment, and industrialisation.

The constraints imposed by trade liberalisation and investment agreements have generally limited the scope for and potential of development policy initiatives.

The actual role and impact of trade policy for growth and employment remain moot. But there are no analytical reasons or robust empirical evidence that trade liberalisation per se ensures sustainable development.

World Bank and most other studies acknowledged modest, if not negative, net gains for most developing countries from any realistically achievable outcome.

It is often ignored that realistic expectations of gains from trade liberalisation rely crucially on a strong positive export supply response.

However, such a response is unlikely when internationally competitive, productive and export capacities do not already exist, as in most developing countries, especially the poorest.

Hence, most of the Global South has not been able to overcome the worst consequences of trade liberalisation to achieve sustainable development.

In any case, the WTO Doha Round talks were ended by rich nations in 2015.

With the increasingly blatant self-interested contravention of WTO rules by the US, European and other wealthy nations, developing countries may best enhance their development prospects by reverting to GATT rules.

This would allow them to opt in, as appropriate, rather than resign themselves to the uniform ‘one size fits all’ WTO rules and regulations, regardless of context, circumstances, capacities and capabilities.

IPS UN Bureau

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After condemning pragmatic responses to the 1997-98 Asian financial crises, the West pursued similar policies in response to the 2008 global financial crisis without acknowledging its own mistakes.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

US exports could barely compete internationally, particularly with Germany and Japan. During his first term, Trump initially pursued a strong dollar policy, which undermined exports and encouraged imports.

The September 1985 ‘Plaza Accord’ among the G7 grouping of the world’s largest economies, held at New York’s Plaza Hotel, agreed that the Japanese yen and the Deutsche mark must both appreciate sharply against the US dollar.

The ‘strong yen’ period, or endaka in Japanese, ensued for a decade until mid-1995. This made Japanese imports less competitive, enabling the Reagan era boom.

By accelerating reunification with the East and the new euro currency, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl prevented the mark strengthening as much as the yen.

Thus, Germany avoided the Japanese catastrophe after its decades-long post-war miracle ended abruptly with the disastrous 1989 Big Bang financial reforms.

Liberalising capital flows
As the IMF urged national authorities to abandon capital controls, East Asians borrowed dollars, expecting to repay later on better terms.

Meanwhile, the dollar only stopped weakening after the US allowed Japan to reverse yen appreciation in mid-1995.

Under Managing Director Michel Camdessus, the IMF began pushing capital account liberalisation. This contradicted the intent of the Fund’s sixth Article of Agreement, affirming national authorities’ right to manage their capital accounts.

Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, Camdessus’ IMF preached the ostensible virtues of capital account liberalisation.

East Asian emerging financial markets were initially delighted by the significant capital inflows before mid-1997. After the strong yen decade, the US dollar appreciated from mid-1995.

When financial inflows reversed after mid-1997, some East Asian monetary authorities were unable to cope and turned to the IMF for emergency funding .

Many paths to crises
The Asian financial crisis is typically dated from 2 July 1997, when the Thai baht was ‘floated’ and its value quickly fell without central bank support. The ensuing panic quickly spread like contagion across national boundaries via financial markets.

Financial investors – in Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, London and New York – hastily withdrew their funds, often mindlessly following perceived ‘market leaders’ without knowing why, like animal herds in panic.

Funds fled economies in the region, like frightened audiences in a dark theatre hearing a fire alarm. Capital even fled the Philippines, which had received little finance, because it was in Southeast Asia, the ‘wrong neighbourhood’.

After earlier celebrating Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand as ‘East Asian miracle’ economies, confidence in Southeast Asian investments fell suddenly.

Central banks in the region were sceptical of IMF prescriptions but believed they had little choice but to comply.

Press photographs showed Camdessus standing sternly, with arms folded like a displeased schoolmaster, over the Indonesian President bowing deeply to sign the IMF agreement.

This humiliating image probably expedited Soeharto’s shock resignation soon after, in mid-1998, over three decades after he seized power in a brutal military putsch in September 1965.

Following an earlier financial crisis, a 1989 Malaysian law had prohibited some risky banking and financial practices, but the authorities sought to attract foreign investments into its stock market.

Thailand had become vulnerable by allowing borrowers direct access to foreign banks through the Bangkok International Banking Facility and its provincial counterpart.

Debtors could thus bypass central bank regulation and supervision. The Thai currency float prompted massive funds outflows from the country.

As market confidence waned, funds fled Malaysia’s bourse, triggering a massive collapse in the currency’s value against the dollar, which had steadily weakened against the yen between 1985 and 1995.

Following massive capital outflows, Malaysia finally introduced capital controls on outflows from September 1998, fourteen months after the crisis began!

The controls enabled Malaysia to stabilise its currency and the economy temporarily, but also ended the earlier decade of accelerated industrialisation and growth.

Learning from experience
Rather than acknowledge and address the worsening problem due to earlier capital account liberalisation, the Fund made things worse with its prescriptions.

It insisted on keeping capital accounts open and raising interest rates to reverse outflows. This slowed economic growth as borrowing – and hence, both spending and investing – became more costly.

As investment and spending are necessary for economic growth, IMF prescriptions exacerbated the problems instead of providing a solution.

The East Asian financial crisis was undoubtedly avoidable. Experience has shown that financial markets and capital flows do not function as mainstream theories claim.

Thus, financial dogma and its influence on economic theory and policy obscured more realistic understanding of how markets actually operate and the ability to develop more pragmatic and appropriate policy alternatives.

History never fully repeats itself. But better policymaking for financial crisis avoidance and recovery will only emerge from more informed, historically grounded analysis.

IPS UN Bureau

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While US President Donald Trump has blamed the BRICS and foreign investors for de-dollarisation, his rhetoric, actions and policy measures are mainly responsible for the trend’s recent acceleration.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Despite some temporary reversals, the dollar’s post-World War II role as world reserve currency has gradually declined over the decades, especially since the 1970s. Ben Norton has argued that several Trump measures have accelerated this trend.

Trump claims his supposedly ‘reciprocal tariffs’ will reduce the US trade or current account deficit with the rest of the world. But if countries cannot export to the US, they cannot earn dollars to meet their trade and investment needs.

Many believe Trump’s tariffs and other threats are enhancing US leverage vis-à-vis others, but their reactions, including defensive countermeasures, are accelerating de-dollarisation.

Trump’s measures, such as his insistence on bilateral negotiations, have alarmed most nations, including long-time allies. As nations, including allies, rethink their economic relations with and vulnerability to the US, de-dollarisation inadvertently accelerates.

Trump vs the Fed
The US Federal Reserve Bank’s overnight lending or funds rate has been higher since 2022, responding to higher consumer price inflation following the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As the Fed raised interest rates, yields on US government debt rose. But Trump now wants the Fed to cut interest rates to reduce the high debt servicing costs of both the government and private corporations.

In 2024, the US federal government paid about 3% of GDP in debt interest alone. Although such debt exceeds 120% of GDP, debt service costs are deemed manageable as long as interest rates remain low.

Trump’s pressures on the Fed to cut interest rates have inadvertently undermined investor confidence and prompted ‘flights [from dollar assets] to safety’.

Trump’s recent campaign against his earlier Fed chair appointee, Jerome Powell, has inadvertently raised investor concerns about his espoused monetary policy priorities.

Inflation fears persist
Investors now worry that Trump is pressuring the Fed to cut interest rates. They believe this will stoke inflation and cause the dollar to fall against other major currencies. As Trump is seen forcing down interest rates, he risks being blamed for persistent inflation.

If the Fed buys US Treasuries to reduce yields, for a new round of ‘quantitative easing’ (QE), dollar asset investments will realise lower, if not negative, real yields.

Although inflation hawks’ worst fears of higher inflation have not materialised so far, few believe tariffs will not raise inflation.

Expecting Trump 2.0 to impose more tariffs, many US companies stockpiled imports before April 2. As tariffs took effect and stocks declined, prices rose.

Many investors have sold their dollar assets as monetary authorities worldwide seek alternatives to the greenback. Such sell-offs lower the dollar’s value, further spurring de-dollarisation.

Trump now wants to lower US Treasury bond yields as foreign governments and investors seek alternatives to holding dollar assets.

Many are considering switching to non-dollar assets despite stagnation tendencies elsewhere in the Global North, especially in Europe and Japan. If investors stop buying dollar assets or sell them to purchase non-dollar assets, de-dollarisation will gain momentum.

Foreign demand falling
Washington is understandably worried that foreign investors will dump Treasury securities. In 2015, a third was held by foreigners, but this has since fallen to under a quarter.

The ‘Mar-A-Lago Accord’ proposal, which requires foreign governments to hold US Treasury ‘century bonds’ for 100 years despite assured losses, will compound resentment.

Lowering Treasury bond yields is both risky and difficult due to the highly financialised US economy. Past bond market turmoil has triggered stock market selloffs, lowering Treasury yields, share prices and tax revenue.

Government and corporate borrowing costs rise together. As trillions of dollars’ worth of corporate bonds mature over the next two years, high interest rates will raise corporations’ borrowing costs. Many want to refinance at lower interest rates.

These efforts to bring down interest rates are apparent to all. But lower interest rates and negative ‘actual yields’ for Treasury securities will ensure high inflation persists.

De-dollarisation accelerating?
Trump’s actions, especially threats of tariffs and sanctions, have elicited diverse reactions, often undermining dollar hegemony and accelerating de-dollarisation.

Many recent developments have undermined public confidence in the US government and the rule of law, accelerating de-dollarisation.

As investors sold US assets in mid-2025, the dollar saw its biggest fall since the 1973 oil price hike. It fell by over 10% against other major currencies, triggering temporary falls in the prices of many financial assets, including equities and bonds.

Since then, there has been increased capital market uncertainty and volatility, as in the US bond market, although a strong rally followed the ensuing stock market crash.

In many recent episodes of financial volatility, dollar liquidity was considered the safe option. But in 2025, confidence in dollar assets fell, prompting selloffs and de-dollarisation.

Thus far, Trump has been adept at managing short-term volatility, but his style implies no one knows when the music will stop.

IPS UN Bureau

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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the high-level pledging event on the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) 2026. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 16 2025 (IPS)

2025 has been an especially turbulent year for humanitarian aid operations as global aid budgets have experienced record declines in funding. As conflicts, environmental disasters, and economic crises intensify and disproportionately impact the world’s most vulnerable communities, the resources available in global emergency funds are falling far short of rapidly growing needs.

For 2026, humanitarian agencies project that even more people may be left without critical support if funding gaps continue to widen. In response, the United Nations (UN) and its partners are urgently calling on the international community to mobilize increased support for its Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) at an annual pledging event to commemorate the fund’s 20th anniversary on December 12.

“The humanitarian system’s tank is running on empty – with millions of lives hanging in the balance,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “This is a moment when we are asked to do more and more, with less and less. This is simply unsustainable.”

According to figures from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA ), the UN aims to save 87 million lives next year, which will require approximately USD 23 billion in funding. In addition, the agency seeks to raise about USD 33 billion to support 135 million people across 50 countries through 23 national aid operations, along with six additional operations dedicated to refugees and migrants.

Despite the urgent global need for increased support, funding for humanitarian appeals has faltered more steeply than ever before, with contributions for budgets at the lowest levels recorded in decades. The appeal for 2025, which called for USD 12 billion, reached roughly 25 million less people than the previous year.

OCHA recorded a multitude of immediate consequences around the world– including an exacerbation of the global hunger crisis, increasingly strained health systems to the point of near collapse, the erosion of critical education programs, and a considerable blow to protection services for vulnerable displaced communities facing protracted armed conflicts. In some contexts, it has been increasingly dangerous for aid workers, with more than 320 killed this year amid what officials describe as an “utter disregard for the laws of war”.

“So when we’re needed at full strength, the warning lights are flashing,” said Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. “It’s not just a funding gap – it’s an operational emergency. And if the CERF falters, then the world’s emergency service will falter. And the people who rely on us will suffer.”

With resources in desperately short supply, the UN and its partners have been forced to scale back certain lifesaving services to prioritize others, leaving urgent humanitarian crises critically underfunded. Due to these strategic allocations, the UN has been largely unable to assist numerous displaced communities fleeing from conflict in Darfur, Sudan– which has been described as “the epicenter of human suffering.”

“As you’ve heard and as you know, the brutal cuts that we’re experiencing have forced us to make brutal choices, a ruthless triage of human survival,” Fletcher added. “This is what it means when we put power before solidarity and compassion.”

UN officials also underscored the extreme importance of CERF, as the fund has acted as a lifeline for vulnerable communities around the world for decades, delivering over USD 10 billion worth of aid in more than 110 countries since 2006. Through these efforts, CERF has acted as a “rapid and strategic” source of financing that reached struggling civilians before other sources, saving countless lives.

According to Guterres, “in many places, CERF has made the difference between life-saving help and no help at all.” Earlier this year, when humanitarian operations were allowed to resume in the Gaza Strip, CERF helped deliver vital fuel supplies to hospitals, restore water and sanitation systems, and reinforce other essential lifesaving services.

In 2025, CERF invested nearly USD 212 million to sustain relief efforts across underfunded crises. The UN also announced an additional allocation of USD 100 million to meet critical needs—including those of women and girls—in severe crises in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Haiti, Myanmar, Mozambique, Syria, among others.

To date, CERF has supported millions of people across 30 countries and territories through a total allocation of USD 435 million. These funds have ensured the scale-up of humanitarian efforts in Gaza following the implementation of the ceasefire, and provided critical assistance to those fleeing armed conflict in Darfur.

These efforts by CERF solidify the center of the “humanitarian reset” that the UN foresees for 2026. “And that’s why the Humanitarian Reset matters: not a slogan, but a challenge to us all,” added Fletcher. “A mission, but also a survival strategy for the work we do and for so many people. It’s about being smarter, faster, closer to the communities we serve, more honest about the difficult trade-offs that we face. Making every dollar count for those we serve.”

The UN’s largest individual humanitarian response plan in 2026 will focus on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which requires roughly USD 4.1 billion to assist roughly 3 million people who have experienced catastrophic levels of violence and destruction. Other response efforts will target Sudan—the world’s largest displacement crisis—which requires USD 2.9 billion to assist 20 million people, and Syria, which requires USD 2.8 billion to help 8.6 million people.

With funding for CERF at its lowest projected levels in over a decade, the UN seeks a funding target of USD 1 billion, and will begin appealing to its member states for support. Countries are also being urged to use their influence to bolster protection measures for civilians and humanitarian workers, as well as to reinforce accountability mechanisms for perpetrators of armed violence.

“We have to imagine, even now, in this tough moment for humanitarian funding, what the next 20 years could look like with a fully funded CERF,” said Fletcher. “A fund that makes the UN faster, smarter, more cost-effective, greener, more anticipatory, more inclusive. A fund that amplifies the voices of communities and proves that solidarity still works. Backed by a movement of citizens who believe in that solidarity.”

IPS UN Bureau

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By Rabab Fatima
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1 2025 (IPS)

As we gather in Doha for the High-Level Meeting on “Forging Ambitious Global Partnerships for Sustainable and Resilient Graduation of Least Developed Countries,” the stakes could not be higher. A record number of fourteen countries-equally divided between Asia and Africa are now on graduation track. Graduation from the Least Developed Country (LDC) category is a landmark national achievement—a recognition of hard-won gains in income, human development, and resilience. Yet, for too many countries, this milestone comes with new vulnerabilities that risk undermining the very gains that enabled graduation.

Since the establishment of the LDC category in 1971, only eight countries have graduated. Today, 44 countries remain in the group, representing 14% of the world’s population, but contributing less than 1.3% to global GDP. The Doha Programme of Action (DPoA) charts an ambitious yet achievable target: enabling at least 15 additional countries to graduate by 2031. But as the DPoA underscores graduation must be sustainable, resilient and irreversible. It must serve as a springboard for transformation— not a moment of exposure to new risks.

USG Rabab Fatima

Yet within these challenges also lie opportunities. With the right policies, partnerships, and incentives, graduation can catalyse deeper structural transformation, expand access to new financing windows, strengthen institutions, and unlock pathways to diversified, resilient, and inclusive growth. The task before us is to manage risks while harnessing these opportunities—ensuring that no country graduates without momentum.

Smooth Transition Strategies: A National Imperative
The DPoA calls for every graduating country to develop inclusive, nationally owned Smooth Transition Strategies (STS) well-ahead of the graduation date. These strategies must be fully integrated into national development plans and SDG frameworks, ensuring coherence and resilience. They should prioritize diversification, human capital investment, and adaptive governance, while placing women, youth, and local actors at the center of design and oversight. STS must be living documents—flexible, participatory, and backed by robust monitoring and financing.

Reinvigorated Global Partnerships: The essential Pillar
No country can navigate this transition alone. The Doha Programme of Action calls for an incentive-based international support structure that extends beyond graduation. For LDCs with high utilization of trade preferences – the withdrawal of preferential market access must be carefully sequenced to avoid abrupt disruptions. For climate-vulnerable SIDS and LLDCs, enhanced access to climate finance, debt solutions, and resilience support are key elements in their efforts to tackle post-graduation challenges.

Deepened South-South and triangular cooperation, innovative financing instruments, blended finance, and strengthened private-sector engagement will be essential to building productive capacities and unlocking opportunities in digital transformation, green and blue economies, and regional market integration.

iGRAD: A Transformative Tool
The operationalization of the Sustainable Graduation Support Facility—iGRAD—is a concrete step forward. By providing tailored advisory services, capacity-building, and peer learning, iGRAD can serve as a critical tool to help countries anticipate risks, manage transitions, and sustain development momentum. Its success, however, hinges on strong political support and adequate, predictable resourcing from development partners.

Graduation as a Catalyst for Transformation
Graduation should not be the end of the story—it should be the beginning of a new chapter of resilience and opportunity. With integrated national strategies and reinvigorated global partnerships, we can turn graduation into a catalyst for inclusive, sustainable development. Let us seize this moment in Doha to reaffirm our collective commitment: no country should graduate into vulnerability. Together, we can ensure that graduation delivers on its promise—for communities, for economies, and for future generations.

Rabab Fatima is UN Under Secretary General and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States

IPS UN Bureau

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US President Trump’s economic strategy for his second term aims to get the rest of the world, especially its wealthy allies with greater means, to pay more to help strengthen the US economy.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

De-dollarisation distraction
Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff recently observed, “We are absolutely at the biggest inflection point in the global currency system since the Nixon shock to end the last vestige of the gold standard.”

After the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the gold price was set at $35 per ounce. In August 1971, US President Richard Nixon ended this gold-dollar parity.

De-dollarisation has gradually continued since, with occasional brief spurts and reversals. For example, capital flows abroad rose following the 2008-09 global financial crisis.

Growing weaponisation of economic relations has probably accelerated de-dollarisation. Rogoff observed, “this was happening for a decade before Trump. Trump is an accelerant.”

Governments, central banks and BRICS countries have been de-dollarising. Even US dollar hegemony advocates no longer deny alternatives to the dollar’s role as global reserve currency.

Meanwhile, private foreign investors, including foreign asset managers, investment banks and pension funds, do not want to be left behind.

Investment fund managers are increasingly ‘de-risking’ by cutting exposure to dollar-denominated assets.

Mar-a-Lago plan
Economist Stephen Miran has proposed a new Trump initiative to require other governments to pay the US for services purportedly rendered.

First appointed chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, Miran has since been appointed to the US Federal Reserve Board.

A few days after Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs on April 2, Miran articulated five expectations. These expect other nations to pay the US for ‘public goods’ services it ostensibly provides the world.

Allies will be expected to pay the US more for the ‘security umbrella’ it provides to NATO and other allies. The US also expects those buying Treasury bonds to pay more for the ‘privilege’

In November 2024, Miran’s A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System proposed the Mar-A-Lago accord, named for Trump’s exclusive Florida island resort and residence.

He also referred to the Plaza Accord, which the Reagan administration imposed on its G5 allies in September 1985. Then, the US forced Japan and Germany to appreciate their currencies against the dollar.

The yen’s appreciation fuelled a massive Japanese asset price bubble that burst with devastating consequences in 1989, ending its post-war boom.

Trump now seeks the appreciation of other major currencies. Already, he has succeeded in getting his European allies to agree.

However, it seems unlikely that Trump will get China and other BRICS economies to do so, as they are aware of how the Plaza Accord affected Japan.

Century bonds
Other national monetary authorities buying US Treasury bonds to stabilise their own currencies have long caused dollar appreciation.

They are now expected to help depreciate the dollar. Miran has proposed that the US issue century, i.e., 100-year bonds, at very low interest rates, well below the current rates for US Treasury securities.

Miran wants foreign central bank reserve currency managers to sell off their dollar-denominated assets. They should “term out” their “remaining reserve holdings” and refinance short-term debt with long-term borrowings.

Miran is explicit: “The US Treasury can effectively buy duration back from the market and replace that borrowing with century bonds sold to the foreign official sector.”

His plan thus intends to force foreign holders of US government debt (‘Treasuries’) to extend the duration of their loans.

Very low interest rates for century bonds will ensure that foreign bondholders effectively pay the US more for the ‘privilege’ of borrowing dollars.

For Miran, the appreciation of other currencies against the dollar will also strengthen the American economy. US manufacturing will strengthen as its exports become more competitive.

Thus, his Mar-A-Lago accord plan expects other nations to pay more to strengthen the world’s largest and richest economy.

Miran’s Mar-A-Lago plan is not yet official US policy. However, this can change with Miran’s likely appointment as the next Fed chair, replacing Trump 1.0 appointee Jerome Powell.

BRICS de-dollarisation?
However, Miran’s declared plan to strengthen the US economy by depreciating the dollar against other major currencies has also accelerated de-dollarisation.

In recent years, the BRICS have been accused of conspiring to accelerate de-dollarisation worldwide, but this is certainly not a shared ambition.

Lacking significant trade surpluses, Brazil and South Africa have long advocated de-dollarisation. But Russia’s complaints have more to do with recent NATO weaponisation of financial instruments against it.

There is no comparable enthusiasm among other BRICS member states, which have much healthier trade surpluses and more dollar assets.

Its recent membership expansion will make an official BRICS de-dollarisation stance even more unlikely.

Nevertheless, Trump’s leadership relies on the American public believing the rest of the world is conspiring against them.

IPS UN Bureau

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Mwavita Rohomoya sits with her four children in front of her drink stall in Minova, Kalehe territory, South Kivu province, DR Congo, on 23 April 2025. Minova is one of the first areas in South Kivu to be affected by the resurgence of violence, one of the immediate consequences was the rise in prices of staple foods and essential goods. UNICEF’s cash transfer programme helped families meet their urgent needs—buying food, finding shelter, and accessing healthcare—while also enabling some, like Mwavita, to invest in small-scale income-generating activities. Credit: UNICEF/Christian Mirindi Johnson

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20 2025 (IPS)

In 2025, unprecedented cuts to foreign aid and humanitarian funding have exacerbated global hunger crises, leaving millions without access to food or basic services. Funding shortfalls have forced aid agencies to scale back or suspend lifesaving programs in some of the world’s most food-insecure regions, particularly across the Global South—exacerbating already dire conditions caused by conflict, displacement, economic instability, and climate shocks.

On October 15, the World Food Programme (WFP) released a report, A Lifeline At Risk: Food Assistance At A Breaking Point, which illustrated the impact of funding shortfalls to their programs in the context of six countries: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan,and Sudan. In these nations, funding cuts have had devastating consequences, with entire communities being pushed to the brink of starvation.

“We see significant reductions in our operations and the operations of our partners,” said Ross Smith, WFP’s Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response. “That goes from cutting people completely off of assistance, reducing rations, and reducing the duration of assistance. Many vulnerable people are completely without a safety net or a landing pad at this point in time.”

The report highlighted that the number of people in urgent need of food and livelihood assistance has surged to a record high of 295 million in 2025—coinciding with major reductions in foreign aid and humanitarian funding from key donors, including the United States. As a result, WFP has been forced to drastically scale back its operations, grappling with an estimated 40 percent cut in funding that has severely limited its ability to deliver lifesaving support to the world’s hungriest populations.

WFP warns that recent funding cuts could “severely undermine global food security”. It is estimated that roughly 13.7 million people who are dependent on food assistance from WFP could be pushed into emergency levels of hunger, with children, women, refugees, and internally displaced people being disproportionately affected.

“These cuts are triggering additional food insecurity that in itself could have impacts at both national and regional levels,” said Jean-Martin Bauer, Director of WFP’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Service.

WFP notes that the full extent of the impact of these funding cuts to food assistance will not be immediate, but will unfold in the coming months. “This is why we call it a ‘slow burn’ in the report,” said Bauer. “Because the cuts haven’t fully fed through the system yet to all countries and communities.”

Bauer warned that escalating hunger amid dwindling aid could have far-reaching implications that could exacerbate existing crises, citing rising rates of child marriage, increased school dropouts, heightened social instability, increased displacement, and growing economic and political turmoil. Furthermore, WFP has recorded increased rates of malnutrition among children in refugee communities, with many of these children experiencing lifelong health challenges as a result.

One of WFP’s most pressing challenges has been the reduction of disaster preparedness programs for some of the world’s most crisis-prone countries, as resources are redirected to sustain emergency food assistance for the most affected populations. In Haiti, WFP has been forced to suspend its hot meals program for displaced families and cut monthly rations in half, as the nation continues to struggle with record levels of hunger.

Bauer noted that Haiti’s contingency stock of humanitarian aid has been fully depleted and, for the first time since Hurricane Matthew in 2016, WFP has been unable to replenish it. The agency continues to closely monitor Haiti’s food security situation.

Similarly, Smith reported that conditions in Afghanistan have worsened considerably over the course of the year, with fewer than 10 percent of the country’s 10 million food-insecure people now receiving humanitarian aid. “We expect pipeline breaks as early as November and can currently only provide (limited) winter assistance,” said Smith, noting that less than 8 percent of those in need of winterization support will receive it.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), WFP has been forced to cut its operations from targeting 2.3 million people to just 600,000 and warns that its resources could be entirely depleted by February of next year without additional funding. In Somalia, WFP’s reach has also been drastically reduced, with the agency now able to assist less than 25 percent of the people it supported last year.

In Sudan, WFP has managed to assist roughly 4 million people in August—half of them in hard-to-reach areas such as Darfur and South Kordofan. “We are shifting away from what used to be a very large program, in the absence of significant government support for many people, to one now that is famine prevention that is moving from hotspot to hotspot,” said Smith. In neighboring South Sudan, WFP has redirected its limited resources to prioritize civilians experiencing the most extreme levels of hunger.

According to the report, WFP has recalibrated its food assistance priorities in the face of dwindling aid budgets and shrinking staff, choosing to focus on famine prevention efforts and distributing food rations that reach fewer people but cover basic needs. Bauer added that it is imperative for humanitarian aid groups to align with local actors and continue to closely monitor levels of hunger. “The data and analytics – they’re the humanitarian community’s GPS,” Bauer said. “We’re taking the risk of losing our way without the data. So the data must flow.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Global South cooperation arrangements must evolve to better respond to pressing contemporary and imminent challenges, rather than risk being irrelevant straitjackets stuck in the past.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The creation of Malaysia had led to problems with the Philippines and Indonesia, while Singapore had seceded from the new confederation in August 1965.

ASEAN was not a Cold War creation in the same sense as the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), one of several regional security arrangements established by the Americans in the early 1950s, the only significant one remaining being NATO.

ASEAN’s most significant initiative was to declare Southeast Asia a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) in 1973, two years before the end of the Indochina wars.

Regional economic cooperation
The region has since seen four major economic initiatives, with the first being the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA).

AFTA was established at the height of the trade liberalisation zeal in the early 1990s. Beyond the initial ‘one-time’ trade liberalisation effects, there has been little actual economic transformation since then.

Trade liberalisation mahaguru Jagdish Bhagwati’s last (2008) book, Termites in the Trading System, saw preferential plurilateral and bilateral FTAs as ‘termites’ undermining the WTO promise of multilateral trade liberalisation.

While seemingly mutually beneficial, such FTAs are akin to termites that surreptitiously erode the foundations of the multilateral trading system by encouraging discrimination, thereby undermining the principle of non-discrimination.

Naive enthusiasm for all FTAs has thus actually undermined multilateralism, also triggering pushback since the late 20th century.

Following the 2008-09 global financial crisis, the G20’s developed economies all raised protectionist barriers, confirming their dubious commitment to free trade.

Meanwhile, US trade policies since the Obama presidency, and especially this year, have made a mockery of the WTO’s commitment to the multilateralism of the 1994 Marrakech Declaration.

Asymmetric financialization
The 1997-98 Asian financial crisis should have served as a wake-up call about the dangers of financialization, but the West dismissed it as simply due to Asian hubris.

Under Managing Director Michel Camdessus, IMF promotion of capital account liberalisation even contravened the Fund’s own Articles of Agreement.

When Japanese Finance Minister Miyazawa and Vice Minister Sakakibara proposed an East Asian financial rescue plan, which was soon killed by then US Treasury Deputy Secretary Larry Summers.

Eventually, the Chiang Mai Initiative was developed by ASEAN+3, including Japan, South Korea, and China as the additional three. Ensuring bilateral swap facilities for financial emergencies have since been multi-lateralised.

ASEAN+3 later led the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), still conceived mainly in terms of regional trade liberalisation.

Non-alignment for our times
Developing relevant institutions and arrangements in our times requires us to pragmatically consider history, rather than abstract, ahistorical principles.

2025 marks several significant anniversaries, most notably the end of World War II in 1945 and the 1955 Bandung Asia-Africa solidarity conference, which anticipated the formation of the non-aligned movement.

The world seems to have lost its commitment to creating the conditions for enduring peace. Despite much rhetoric, the post-World War II commitment to freedom and neutrality in the Global North has largely gone.

The world was deemed unipolar after the end of the Cold War. However, for most, it has been multipolar, with the majority of the Global South remaining non-aligned.

As for peace-making, the US’s NATO allies have increasingly marginalised the United Nations and multilateralism with it. Already, the number of military interventions since the end of the Cold War exceeds those of that era.

While ASEAN cannot realistically lead international peace-making, it can be a much stronger voice for multilateralism, peace, freedom, neutrality, development, and international cooperation.

East Asian potential
The world economy is now stagnating due to Western policies. Hence, ASEAN+3 has become more relevant.

Just before President Trump made his April 2nd Liberation Day unilateral tariffs announcement, the governments of Japan, China, and South Korea met in late March without ASEAN to coordinate responses despite their long history of tensions.

ASEAN risks becoming increasingly irrelevant, due to the limited progress since the Chiang Mai Agreement a quarter of a century ago. Worse, ASEAN’s regional leadership has rarely gone beyond trade liberalisation, now sadly irrelevant in ‘post-normal’ times.

Rather than risk growing irrelevance, regional cooperation needs to rise to contemporary challenges. Working closely with partners accounting for two-fifths of the world economy, ASEAN countries only stand to gain from broader regional cooperation.

President Trump’s ‘shock and awe’ tariffs and Mar-a-Lago ambitions clearly signal that ‘business as usual’ is over, and Washington intends to remake the world. Will East Asia rise to this challenge of our times?

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Ramil Sitdikov/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Oct 9 2025 (IPS)

Democracy was the winner and Russia the loser in Moldova’s 28 September election. The incumbent pro-Europe Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) won a parliamentary majority on just over half of the vote, while support for a pro-Russia coalition collapsed to a record low. The result came in the face of Russia’s most intense attempt yet to influence an election, with a propaganda and disinformation operation allegedly orchestrated by Ilan Shor, a disgraced Moldovan oligarch who fled to Russia to escape jail time for his role in a massive fraud.

Moldova, a landlocked country with a population of under 2.4 million, rarely commands headlines. But its location, sandwiched between EU member Romania and war-torn Ukraine, makes it prime territory for an ongoing tussle over the future of former communist states.

Since 2009, every Moldovan prime minister has been committed to European integration, and Moldova formally applied to join the EU following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As support for pro-Russia parties has declined at the ballot box, Russia has increasingly turned to covert influence operations, with Shor the reported lynchpin.

Shor is believed to have been a key figure in Moldova’s biggest scandal: in November 2014, around US$1 billion was fraudulently transferred from three banks in fake loans. The banks went bankrupt, forcing the government to provide a bailout equivalent to one eighth of GDP.

Shor, chair of one of the banks, was accused of being among the masterminds. In 2017, he was convicted of money laundering, fraud and breach of trust and sentenced to seven and a half years in jail. But in 2019, while under house arrest pending appeal, he fled the country, first to Israel and then Russia, where he now has citizenship. Shor’s only hope of returning without going to jail is a pro-Russia government, and he’s able to use his riches to promote his cause.

Shor was accused of paying people to take part in protests triggered by high energy prices when Russia used gas supplies as a weapon, slashing them in the winter of 2022-2023. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election and a referendum on the EU, he promised to pay people to register for his campaign to oppose the referendum or publish anti-EU posts; the government said he’d paid close to US$16 million to 130,000 people, sharing instructions on how spread disinformation on the messaging app Telegram. The 2024 campaign was awash with disinformation, including deepfake videos and false claims about President Maia Sandu. Fake social media accounts proliferated, opposing the EU and Sandu and promoting pro-Russia views.

The 2025 campaign saw a further intensification of these influence efforts. A secret network, again coordinated via Telegram, offered to pay people for posting pro-Russia propaganda and anti-PAS disinformation on Facebook and TikTok, and to help carry out selective polling that would overstate pro-Russia support, potentially as part of a plan to dispute the results should they be close. A BBC investigation found links between this network, Shor and one of his organisations, Evrazia, with money sent via a Russian state-owned bank used by its defence ministry.

The network ran online training sessions on how to use ChatGPT to produce social media posts, including those making ludicrous claims that Sandu is involved in child trafficking and the EU would force people to change sexual orientation. At least 90 TikTok accounts receiving over 23 million views since the start of the year were involved. The investigation found no comparable disinformation campaign in support of PAS.

Russia also evidently tried to target Moldova’s million-strong diaspora, who tend to favour pro-EU parties. People in diaspora communities were offered cash, evidently from Russian sources, to serve as election observers, with large bonuses for providing any evidence of fraud. This seemed to be an attempt to promote doubt about the integrity of the diaspora vote.

The influence campaign extended to the Orthodox Church: last year, Moldovan clergy were treated to an all-expenses-paid trip to holy sites in Russia, then promised money if they took to social media to warn their followers about the dangers of EU integration. They duly established over 90 Telegram channels pushing out almost identical content positioning the EU as a threat to traditional family values.

A few days before the vote, Moldovan authorities detained 74 people suspected of planning post-election violence. Authorities claimed they’d travelled to Serbia, under the guise of an Orthodox pilgrimage, to be trained in how to resist security forces, break through cordons and use weapons. On election day, officials reported attempted cyberattacks and bomb scares at polling stations in Moldova and abroad.

Challenges ahead

Moldova’s democratic institutions have survived a crucial test, repaying efforts to strengthen the country’s defences against Russian interference made since the 2024 votes. But the struggle for Moldova’s future is far from over. As it moves closer to the EU, Russia isn’t simply going to walk away. Even dirtier tricks may come.

Meanwhile the government faces many other problems. In one of Europe’s poorest countries, people are struggling with the high cost of living. Public services have come under strain as Moldova hosts proportionately more Ukrainian refugees than anywhere else. Corruption concerns haven’t been adequately addressed. Many young people are seeking better lives abroad.

In combating future Russian influence attempts, the government faces the challenge of striking the right balance on regulating social media and political financing, strengthening its intelligence services and building stronger social media literacy and awareness of disinformation. It will need help from EU countries, as it will to further modernise its energy infrastructure, including through more investments in renewable energy to disarm one of Russia’s most potent tools.

Moldova’s hopes of EU membership will rest on its progress in addressing these challenges. Even then, as the experience of Hungary shows, becoming an EU member doesn’t guarantee protection against the dangers of authoritarianism. But there’s no hope for democracy and human rights should Moldova fall under Russia’s grip.

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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CIVICUS discusses recent protests that led to a change of government in Nepal with Dikpal Khatri Chhetri, co-founder of Youth in Federal Discourse (YFD). YFD is a youth-led organisation that advocates for democracy, civic engagement and young people’s empowerment.

Dikpal Khatri Chhetri

What triggered the protests?

When the government asked social media companies to register and they failed to comply, it blocked 26 platforms, including Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Signal, WhatsApp, X/Twitter and YouTube. A similar situation happened in 2023, when TikTok was banned and later reinstated once the company registered.

The government said the goal was to create a legal point of contact for content moderation and ensure platforms complied with national regulations. For them, the ban was just a matter of enforcing rules. But people saw it differently, and for Gen Z this was an attempt to silence them. Young people don’t just use social media for entertainment; it’s also where they discuss politics, expose corruption and organise themselves. By banning these platforms, the government was cutting them off from one of the few spaces where they felt they could hold leaders accountable.

However, the ban was the final factor after years of frustration with corruption, lack of accountability and a political elite that seems out of touch with ordinary people. Young people see politicians’ children living in luxury while they struggle to get by. On TikTok, this anger became visible in the ‘NepoKids’ trend that exposed the privileges of political families and tied them directly to corruption.

That’s why the response was so strong and immediate. What began as anger over a restriction on freedom of expression grew into a nationwide call for transparency, accountability and an end to the culture of corruption. Protests became a way for young people who refuse to accept the status quo to show their voices can’t be silenced.

How did the government react to the protests?

Instead of dialogue, the government chose repression. Police used rubber bullets, teargas and water cannon to try to disperse crowds. In many places they also fired live ammunition. By the end of the first day, 19 people had been killed.

The use of live ammunition against unarmed protesters is a serious violation of human rights. Authorities claimed protesters had entered restricted zones around key government buildings, including Parliament House, and argued this justified their response. But evidence tells a different story: footage and post-mortem reports show many of the victims were shot in the head, indicating an intent to inflict severe harm rather than simply disperse crowds. Police also failed to fully use non-lethal methods before turning to live bullets.

Rather than containing the protests, this violence further fuelled public anger. Protests, now focused on corruption and the killings, continued even after the government lifted the social media ban. Many realised the government was both corrupt and willing to kill its own people to stay in power. In response, authorities imposed strict curfews in big cities.

The political fallout was immediate. Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak resigned the next day, taking responsibility for the bloodshed. Within a day, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli also stepped down. An interim government led by former Chief Justice Sushila Karki took over, parliament was dissolved and a new election is scheduled to take place in the next six months.

What changes do protesters demand and what comes next?

We are demanding systemic change. Corruption has spread through every level of government and we are tired of politicians who have ruled for decades without improving our lives. While they grow richer, everyday people face unemployment, rising living costs and no real opportunities. We refuse to accept this any longer.

We want a government that works transparently and efficiently, free from bribery, favouritism and political interference. Leaders must understand that sovereignty belongs to the people and their duty is to serve citizens, not themselves.

We need more than just some small reforms. Nepal needs serious discussions about holding to the essence of its constitution, finding ways to amend it when dissatisfaction occurs instead of uprooting it entirely. Its implementation has to be strengthened to truly include diverse voices, reflect our history and be able to respond to future challenges. We are calling for new, younger and more competent leaders who can break the cycle of past failures.

The upcoming election will be a crucial test. Gen Z must turn out in numbers, articulate clear demands to the wider public and ensure the changes we strive for in the streets are carried into parliament.

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SEE ALSO
Nepal: Anti-corruption protests force political change despite violent crackdown CIVICUS Monitor 23.Sep.2025
Nepal: ‘The Social Network Bill is part of a broader strategy to tighten control over digital communication’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Dikshya Khadgi 28.Feb.2025
Nepal: ‘The TikTok ban signals efforts to control the digital space in the name of national sovereignty’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Anisha 11.Dec.2023

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The World Bank’s 1981 Berg Report provided the blueprint for structural adjustment, including economic liberalisation in Africa. Urging trade liberalisation, it promised growth from its supposed comparative advantage in agriculture.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Removing ‘distortions’ caused by marketing boards and other state interventions and institutions was supposed to unleash export-led growth for Sub-Saharan African (SSA) producers.

However, despite the supposed comparative advantage and trade preferences, African agricultural exports have not grown significantly due to protection by wealthy nations.

By the turn of the century, Africa’s share of worldwide non-oil exports had declined to less than half of what it was in the early 1980s.

African agricultural output and export capacities have been undermined by decades of low investment, economic stagnation and neglect.

Significant public spending cuts accelerated the deterioration of existing infrastructure (roads, water supply, etc.), undermining potential ‘supply responses’.

K Kuhaneetha Bai

Even the primary commodity price collapse from 2014 did not prevent Africa’s share of world exports from increasing.

Promises, promises
The 1994 Marrakech declaration, concluding the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, created the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995.

The new Doha Development Round of trade negotiations began in 2001, following the dramatic walkout by African trade ministers at the WTO Seattle ministerial conference in 1999.

The Public Health Exception to the WTO’s onerous new intellectual property rules alleviated this concern but was ignored during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

Developing countries were projected to gain US$16 billion in the most likely scenario, according to a 2005 World Bank study led by Kym Anderson, which estimated the likely effects of a Doha Round trade agreement.

However, various studies estimating the welfare effects of multilateral agricultural trade liberalisation – including Anderson et al. – suggest significant net losses, not gains, for SSA.

Gains from agricultural trade liberalisation would largely accrue to existing major agricultural exporters – mainly from the Cairns Group – not SSA.

Nevertheless, the World Bank and others continued to insist that trade liberalisation would benefit all developing countries, including SSA, although most studies indicated otherwise.

WTO trade rules have reduced the policy space for developing countries – especially in industrial, trade, or investment policy – although some claim that room for industrial policy remains.

African governments were told that a Doha Round deal would reduce agricultural subsidies, import tariffs and non-tariff barriers by rich nations, especially in Europe.

But the neglect of both physical and economic infrastructure over two decades of structural adjustment programmes left little effective capacity to respond to new export opportunities.

Worse still, trade liberalisation of manufactured goods also undermined nascent African industrialisation.

African market access to rich, mainly European, markets was secured through negotiated preferential agreements, rather than trade liberalisation. Hence, further multilateral trade liberalisation would erode these modest gains.

Additionally, most African governments – particularly those of poorer economies with limited government capacities – were unable to replace lost tariff revenues with new taxes.

African losses foretold
What was Africa expected to gain from a Doha Round deal?

Thandika Mkandawire warned the WTO trade regime would make Africa worse off, especially without preferential treatment from the European Union under the Lomé Convention.

Anderson et al. claimed SSA would gain substantially as “farm employment, the real value of agricultural output and exports, the real returns to farm land and unskilled labor, and real net farm incomes would all rise substantially in capital scarce SSA countries with a move to free merchandise trade”.

To be sure, the modest gains from trade liberalisation would be ‘one-time’ improvements projected by the models used.

Anderson et al. claimed that SSA, excluding South Africa, would gain US$3.5 billion, compared to roughly US$550 billion worldwide.

These projected gains of less than one per cent of its 2007 output were nonetheless much more than the tenth of one per cent for all developing countries!

World Bank structural adjustment programmes undermined the limited competitiveness of African smallholder agriculture. However, their projections ignored the reasons why African food agriculture declined after the 1970s.

Meanwhile, the agricultural exports of wealthy nations have benefited from higher production subsidies, which more than offset lower export subsidies. However, reducing agricultural subsidies would likely lead to higher prices of imported food.

Uneven effects
Uneven and partial trade liberalisation and subsidy reduction will have mixed implications. These effects vary with national conditions, including food imports and share of consumer spending.

Earlier estimates for all developing countries obscured the likely impacts of trade liberalisation on Africa. The one-time welfare improvement for SSA, excluding most of Southern Africa, would be three-fifths of one per cent by 2015!

With deindustrialisation accelerated by structural adjustment, Sandra Polaski estimated that SSA, excluding South Africa, would lose US$122 billion from Doha Round trade liberalisation.

Although former World Bank economists agreed the lost decades were due to Bank structural adjustment programmes, these were reimposed a decade ago.

SSA, excluding South Africa, would lose US$106 billion to agricultural trade liberalisation. Poor infrastructure, export capacities and competitiveness in both SSA industry and agriculture were responsible.

Most of the poorest and least developed SSA countries were likely to be worse off in all ‘realistic’ Doha Round outcome scenarios.

With more realistic model assumptions – e.g., allowing for unemployment – Lance Taylor and Rudiger von Arnim found SSA would not gain, on balance, from trade liberalisation.

Mainstream international trade theory cannot justify trade liberalisation for SSA. Worse, ‘new trade theories’ and evolutionary studies of technological development suggest trade liberalisation would permanently slow growth.

Export growth?
As economic growth typically precedes export expansion, trade can foster a virtuous circle but cannot trigger it.

Specifically, a weak investment-export nexus hinders export expansion and diversification, as rapid resource reallocation is unlikely without high investment and sustained growth.

Citing the World Bank, Mkandawire noted Africa’s export collapse in the 1980s and 1990s meant “a staggering annual income loss of US$68 billion – or 21 per cent of regional GDP”!

For Dani Rodrik, Africa’s ‘marginalisation’ was not due to its trade performance, although poor by international standards. Gerald Helleiner has emphasised, “Africa’s failures have been developmental, not export failure per se”.

With its geography and income, Africa probably trades as much as can be expected. Indeed, “Africa overtrades compared with other developing regions in the sense that its trade is higher than would be expected from the various determinants of bilateral trade”!

Vulnerable Africa
The Doha Round of WTO negotiations effectively ended over a decade ago as the backlash in wealthy nations – against globalisation and its consequences – gained momentum.

Meanwhile, trade liberalisation – as part of structural adjustment programmes – deepened SSA deindustrialisation and food insecurity.

With Africa unevenly integrated by economic globalisation, most of the continent exports little to the USA, making it less of a target of Trump’s tariffs.

Nevertheless, trade liberalisation has made developing economies more vulnerable to and unprotected from the recent weaponisation of tariffs and other economic measures.

Last month’s expiration of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) prompted some African leaders to scramble for an extension.

US AGOA imports in 2023 totalled US$10 billion, accounting for high shares of some countries’ exports. Tariff imposition will exacerbate problems due to AGOA’s demise.

Meanwhile, there have been great expectations for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Still, regional trade integration may not be very beneficial, as SSA exports are more competitive than complementary.

K. Kuhaneetha Bai studied at the University of Malaya and does policy research at Khazanah Research Institute.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Forus - UN High-Level Political Forum 2025

By Sarah Strack and Christelle Kalhoulé
NEW YORK, Sep 26 2025 (IPS)

This September the UN turns 80, but the lessons of peace, justice, and cooperation are still unfinished. The world today faces the flames of inequality, conflict, ecological collapse and growing digital threats. In short, the very problems the UN was created to solve are once again staring us in the face.

That’s why the UN’s latest reform push, “UN80,” matters. Launched this spring, it promises to make the multilateral system more inclusive and accountable. But here’s the real question: can it align with 21st century’s needs? Will it be remembered as a budget drill or the start of a renewal that truly delivers for people where they live?

If this moment is going to count, three things must happen.

First, reforms must put people at the center, and we must avoid a reform by spreadsheet.

The UN is under financial strain. Geopolitical tensions are sky-high, negotiations are gridlocked, Member States are late on dues and membership fees, arrears run into the billions, and the UN’s mandate, efficiency, and effectiveness are under question.

“In a polycrisis world, shrinking the UN’s capacity is like cutting the fire brigade during wildfire season,” warns Christelle Kalhoulé, Forus Chair and civil society leader in Burkina Faso. “Reform cannot be about cutting corners. It must be about giving people the protection, rights, and solidarity they are being denied today.”

The UN80 Initiative marks the most sweeping reform effort in decades, with three tracks: streamlining services and consolidating IT and HR systems, reviewing outdated mandates, and exploring the consolidation of UN agencies into seven thematic “clusters.”

On paper, these reforms could bring overdue coherence. But the process has too often felt opaque, with key documents surfacing via leaks and staff unions flagging limited transparency and consultation.

Increasing the use of tools like AI is among the “solutions” being floated to “flag potential duplication” and shorten resolutions — yet without clear guardrails, there’s a risk of automating cuts and reinforcing bias rather than empowering people-first innovation. And the debate has too often been framed around cash flow, back payments, and cuts. The United States alone owes $1.5 billion in dues. Major donors are cutting ODA, and several UN humanitarian agencies are planning double-digit reductions in 2025 in their budgets.

As Arjun Bhattarai, Executive Director of the NGO Federation of Nepal warns: “Reform cannot be a synonym for austerity. Cutting budgets may make spreadsheets look tidy in New York, but it leaves communities in Kathmandu, Kampala, Khartoum, or Kyiv without support when they need it most.”

The danger is a reform focused on management efficiencies instead of reimagining what the UN must be to meet today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.

Second, a better compass exists.

Despite its flaws, multilateralism remains indispensable. Without the UN, the world would be poorer when it comes to peace, cooperation, and collective problem-solving.

What makes the UN matter most, however, are not the halls of New York or Geneva, but the people and communities it exists to serve.

The UN was created “for the people and by the people”. Protecting, safeguarding and promoting healthy sustainable lives for communities must remain the core priority.

Our measure for reform is simple: a transformed UN must reduce inequalities, ensure fairer and more inclusive representation across its governance structures, deliver public goods fairly with accountability, and protect people better, faster, while safeguarding rights.

As Moses Isooba, Executive Director of the Uganda National NGO Forum, puts it: “A reformed UN must stand closer to the people than to the corridors of power. It must be measured not by the length of resolutions, but by the depth of hope it restores and the changes it makes for communities worldwide.”

If UN80 becomes a technocratic exercise in “doing less with less,” we will emerge with a smaller, weaker UN at precisely the moment we need it most.

If instead it becomes a justice-driven reimagining — linking architecture and finance to a clear vision of protection, equity, participation, and decentralization — it could renew the UN’s capacity to act as a backbone of international cooperation.

As Justina Kaluinaite, Policy and advocacy expert at the Lithuanian NGDO Platform, stresses: “The UN will survive another 80 years only if it learns to listen. True reform is not about doing more with less, but about doing better with those who have been left out.”

Third, put reforms through three simple tests.

When leaders meet in New York, we challenge them to have every reform proposal answering three questions:

1. The Inequality Question: Does this reform measurably narrow gaps — by income, gender, geography, or status — in who is protected and who benefits?

2. The Localisation Question: Does it move money, decisions, and accountability closer to communities, with transparent targets and timelines?

3. The Rights Question: Does it strengthen — not dilute — protection, gender equality, and human rights?

As Christelle Kalhoulé, sums it up: “The measure of UN80 should not be how much paper it saves, but how many lives it protects. History and the legacy we leave to future generations will not ask whether the UN balanced its budget in 2025; it will ask whether it stood with people.”

If leaders embrace this moment, the UN can emerge sharper, stronger, and more inclusive, with a justice-driven renewal of multilateralism, reclaiming its place as the backbone of global cooperation. If not, UN80 may go down in history as the moment when multilateralism chose retreat over renewal.

If UN80 is going to matter, it must prevent crises before they explode, deliver for both people and planet, give underrepresented countries and communities a real voice, keep civil society free and strong, and fix financing so money reaches those on the frontlines. The real test isn’t how tidy the org chart looks, it’s whether lives are saved, trust is rebuilt, and the UN proves it can still rise to the moment and be fit to serve this 21st century world.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

A view of the podium and the United Nations emblem in the General Assembly Hall. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Sep 26 2025 (IPS)

As the high-level opening week of the UN General Assembly unfolds, with heads of states delivering often self-serving speeches from the UN’s podium, the organisation is undergoing one of its worst set of crises since its founding 80 years ago. This year’s General Assembly – ostensibly focused on development, human rights and peace – comes as wars are raging across multiple continents, climate targets are dangerously being missed and the institution designed to address these global challenges is being hollowed out by funding cuts and political withdrawals.

A UN Commission has just determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, while the Israeli state recently escalated its campaign of violence by bombing Qatar. Meanwhile, Russia’s war on Ukraine threatens to spill over with its recent launch of drones against Poland and incursion into Estonia’s airspace. Conflicts continue in Myanmar, Sudan and many other countries, despite the UN’s foundational hopes of ensuring peace, security and respect for human rights.

The Trump administration has abandoned multilateralism in favour of transactional bilateral dealmaking while spearheading a donor funding withdrawal that is hitting both the UN and civil society hard. The US government has also repudiated the Sustainable Development Goals, the ambitious and progressive targets all states agreed in 2015, but which are now badly off track.

Today’s multiple and growing crises demand an effective and powerful UN – but at the same time they make this less likely to happen.

Cutbacks loom large

As state leaders meet, one of the items on the agenda is the UN80 initiative. Launched in March, this is presented as a reform process to mark the UN’s 80th anniversary. But reflecting the impacts of the funding crisis, it’s first and foremost a cost-cutting drive. The slashing of donor aid – not only by the USA, but also by other established donor states such as France, Germany and the UK, often in favour of military spending – is having a global impact. The UN is being hit both by states failing to pay their mandatory assessed contributions, or delaying them for long spells, and by underfunding of initiatives that rely on additional voluntary support.

When it comes to mandatory contributions, the most powerful states are those that owe the most, with the USA in the lead with a circa US$1.5 billion debt, followed by China on close to US$600 million. Meanwhile voluntary funding shortfalls are particularly hitting human rights work, always the most underfunded part of the UN’s work. In June, UN human rights chief Volker Türk announced that 18 activities mandated by Human Rights Council resolutions wouldn’t be implemented because of resource constraints. In a world riven by sickening conflicts, human rights investigations on Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine aren’t able to operate at anywhere near full capacity.

Funding shortfalls, intensified by the Trump administration pulling out of key UN bodies and agreements, have forced the UN to plan for a 20 per cent budget cut in 2026. That may involve shedding some 7,000 jobs from its 35,000-person workforce, merging some agencies, shutting offices and relocating functions to cheaper locations.

The UN is undoubtedly an unwieldy and over-bureaucratic set of institutions, and it would be surprising if there weren’t some efficiency savings to be made. If staff are relocated from expensive global north hubs to cheaper global south locations, it could help UN bodies and staff better understand global south realities and improve access for civil society groups that struggle to travel to the key locations of Geneva and New York, particularly given the Trump administration’s new travel restrictions – although that wouldn’t be the rationale behind relocation.

But the proposed cuts mean the UN is effectively planning to do less than it has done before, at a time when the problems are bigger than they’ve been in decades. Given this, decisions about UN priorities mustn’t be left to its officials or states alone. Civil society must be enabled to have a say.

Civil society already has far too little access to UN processes. At the high-level week, even civil society organisations normally accredited for UN access are locked out of events. Reform processes such as last year’s Summit of the Future have also fallen far short of the access needed. Civil society’s proposals to improve the situation – starting with the creation of a civil society envoy, a low-cost innovation to help coordinate civil society participation across the UN – haven’t been taken up.

Now even civil society’s limited access could be further curtailed. Already the Human Rights Council is shortening sessions, reducing the opportunities available for civil society. The proposed cuts would impact disproportionately on the UN’s human rights work. In the name of efficiency, the UN could end up becoming less effective, if it grows even more state-centric and less prepared to uphold international human rights law. States that systematically violate human rights can only benefit from the ensuing lower levels of scrutiny.

Civil society is an essential voice in any conversation about what kind of UN the world needs and how to make it fit for purpose. It urgently must be included if the UN is to have any hope of fulfilling its founding promise to serve ‘we the peoples’.

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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US President Trump’s snide barbs against his appointee, US Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Jerome Powell, have revived support for central bank independence – long abused by powerful finance interests against growth and equity.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Independent of whom?
Central banks were established to determine monetary policy to shape financial conditions to achieve national economic objectives.

In recent decades, the new conventional policy wisdom has been that independent central banks should set monetary policy. Thus, they have been influenced by powerful financial interests, typically foreign, in smaller, open developing countries.

In the last half-century, many governments have changed laws under the influence of international finance to legislate central bank independence from governments of the day, especially the executive and legislative branches.

Meanwhile, most central banks have come to equate financial stability with price stability as ‘inflation targeting’ became the leading policy fetish.

When inflation rises, central banks raise interest rates, which reduces economic activity. However, some central banks of open economies, especially those pegging to major international currencies, target the exchange rate.

Thus, reducing inflation by conventional means worsens contractionary pressures. Many governments now face the threat of ‘stagflation’, i.e., recession with inflation. Central banks recognise this trade-off regarding how much growth has to decline for inflation to fall.

With interest rate management as their primary policy tool, central banks may raise interest rates in anticipation of inflation, despite its adverse consequences for growth, income and employment.

Such contractionary effects have reduced wages and jobs worldwide. Only a few, mainly large developed economies, have had other priorities, such as growth or employment.

Ironically, the end of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rates regime and the counter-revolution against Keynesian economics from the late 1970s ensured the irrelevance of Milton Friedman’s monetarist emphasis on central banks’ money supply targeting.

Worsening inequity
Central banks worldwide respond to and anticipate inflation by raising interest rates to curb inflation.

‘Inflation targeting’ causes significant collateral damage, typically reducing growth, income and employment. Poor households’ incomes are likelier to fall, especially with labour-displacing technological change, such as mechanisation, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

As unemployment increases, poor workers are more likely to lose jobs, especially hurting poorer families. Banks have typically profited handsomely from such situations, although most people are worse off.

With lending rates rising, banks get even more interest as borrowing rates lag, not increasing as much. Max Lawson cites an IMF study finding that the adverse effects of higher interest rates are “not counterbalanced by the positive effects of lower interest rates.”

The US Fed strongly influences central banks worldwide. Higher Fed interest rates from 2023, in response to minor inflationary pressures, have hurt developing countries, especially the poorest.

As most Global South companies and governments have incurred dollar-denominated debt, countries’ central banks raised interest rates to deter capital outflows.

Quantitative easing
‘Quantitative easing’ (QE) refers to central bank interventions buying financial assets. Such interventions were sought as it is difficult for central banks to cut interest rates below zero to revive economies. QE seemed to fit the bill.

Commercial banks typically get more for their deposits with the central bank when it raises interest rates. Thus, they receive considerable additional windfall interest payments from the central bank risk-free.

QE programmes seek to raise asset prices. Central banks buy assets such as government debt, inducing private investors to acquire riskier assets. US government debt is still the most important financial asset in the international monetary system.

Thus, QE tries to induce growth, presuming earlier contractionary policies will continue to curb or ‘moderate’ inflation. This has even been justified as prudent, as inflation rates were below target despite interest rates near zero.

Major Western central banks adopted QE following the 2008-09 global financial crisis. Many governments spent even more in response to the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020.

Such efforts sought to counter the downward spiral of falling financial asset prices. The US Fed’s QE intervention involved ‘portfolio rebalancing’. It bought over $600 billion in US Treasury bonds and almost $300 billion in mortgage-backed securities.

Wealth is concentrated in relatively few hands in most societies. Jordi Bosch showed the top ten per cent holding 11 times more wealth than the bottom half in the euro zone, while the bottom fifth had more debt than assets.

QE interventions increase financial asset prices, enriching owners, especially the rich, who have more assets. As prices rise, their worth generally increases. Hence, such central bank interventions further enrich the already wealthy.

As the world struggles to cope with challenges posed by the current conjuncture, we must not jump out of the frying pan back into the fire kindled by central bank independence.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Nacho Doce/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Aug 21 2025 (IPS)

It’s peak holiday season across Europe and North America, and people are hitting the beaches and crowding into city centres in ever-increasing numbers. They’re part of a huge industry: last year, travel and tourism’s share of the global economy stood at US$10.9 trillion, around 10 per cent of the world’s GDP.

But residents in tourist destinations are keenly aware of the downsides: overwhelming visitor numbers, permanent changes in their neighbourhoods, antisocial behaviour, strained local services, environmental impacts including litter and pollution, and soaring housing costs.

Overtourism occurs when the industry systematically impacts on residents’ quality of life. It’s a growing problem, reflected in recent protests in several countries, with grassroots civil society groups demanding more sustainable approaches.

Residents’ protests

June brought coordinated protests across Europe. In Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million people that receives 32 million visitors a year, the Neighbourhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth organised a protest that saw people tape off hotel entrances, set off smoke bombs and fire water pistols. In Genoa, protesters dragged a replica cruise ship through the medieval centre’s maze of alleys to highlight the impacts of cruise tourism. Actions had been coordinated at a meeting in April between representatives from France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, who formed the Southern European Network Against Touristification.

These weren’t the first protests. Thousands took to the streets in Spain’s Canary Islands in May, while last year people protested in several European cities. Most recently, residents of Montmartre in Paris hung banners outside their houses pointing out how overtourism is changing their neighbourhood.

Civil society groups are taking action beyond protests. In the Netherlands, residents’ group Amsterdam Has a Choice is threatening legal action against the city council. In 2021, following a civil society-led petition, the council set a limit of 20 million overnight tourist stays a year. But research shows this limit has consistently been exceeded. Now the group could take the city to court to enforce it.

People are protesting across multiple countries because they face the same problem: overtourism is changing their communities and, increasingly, driving them away.

Overtourism impacts

Tourism may create jobs, but these are often low-paid or seasonal jobs with few labour rights or opportunities for career progression. In places with intensive tourism, everyday businesses that residents rely on are often replaced by those oriented towards tourists, with established firms squeezed out by high rents.

Environmental impacts may hit residents while tourists are protected from them: campaigners in Ibiza complain that water shortages mean they’re subject to restrictions, but hotels face no such limitations. Common areas residents once relied on, such as beaches and parks, can become overcrowded and degraded. Ultimately, communities can be turned into stage sets and sites of extraction, impacting on crucial matters of identity and belonging. That’s why one movement in Spain calls itself ‘Less Tourism, More Life’.

Housing costs are a major concern in overtourism protests. In many countries, the costs of buying or renting somewhere to live are soaring, far outstripping wages. Young people are particularly hard hit, forced to hand over ever-higher proportions of their income in rent. Tourism is driving the increasing use of properties for short-term holiday rentals instead of permanent residences. People who live in tourist hotspots have seen once-viable homes bought as investments for short-term lets, causing a loss of available housing and driving up the price of what’s left.

People who live in apartment blocks that have largely become used for short-term rentals complain of their communities being hollowed out: they lack neighbours but frequently have to put up with antisocial behaviour. The sector is often underregulated, and landlords may find regulations easy to ignore and taxes easy to avoid. Spain alone has an estimated 66,000 illegal tourist apartments.

Action needed

Overtourism protests hit the headlines last year when a group sprayed water at tourists in Barcelona. But in the main, protesters are making clear they don’t want to target tourists and aren’t motivated by xenophobia. They want a fair balance between tourists enjoying their holidays and locals being able to live their lives. They want those who reap tourism’s profits to pay their fair share to fix the problems.

Protests are having an impact, with authorities taking steps to rein in holiday rentals. Last year a Spanish court ordered the removal of almost 5,000 Airbnb listings following a complaint that they breached tourism regulations. The mayor of Barcelona has announced plans to eliminate short-term tourist rentals within five years by refusing to renew licences as they expire. Authorities in Lisbon have paused the issuing of short-term rental licences, and those in Athens have introduced a one-year ban on new registrations. That still leaves plenty of regulatory gaps across many countries, and national and local governments should engage with campaigners to further develop regulations.

Many local authorities have also implemented tourist taxes, while Venice has started to charge a peak-season access fee for non-residents and Athens now assigns time slots as a way of managing numbers at the Parthenon. It’s important that taxes and charges aren’t used simply to extract more cash from tourists or dampen demand; money generated must directly help affected communities and mitigate the harm caused by overtourism.

Authorities also need to be more careful about the marketing choices they make and consider whether they’re promoting tourism too widely. Marketing campaigns should try to sensitise visitors about the impacts they can have, and to make choices that minimise them.

Movements campaigning against overtourism are sure to grow, connecting groups concerned about environmental, housing and labour issues as the problem worsens, and as climate change places even greater strain on scarce resources. Overtourism concerns are ultimately an expression of frustration with a bigger problem – that economies don’t work for the benefit of most people. States and the international community must urgently grapple with the question of how to make economies fairer, more sustainable and less extractive – and they must listen to the movements against overtourism that are helping sound the alarm.

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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The accumulation of still growing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in an increasingly unequal world is accelerating planetary heating. It is also worsening disparities, especially between the rich and others, both nationally and internationally.

Unequal emissions
In our grossly unequal world, international disparities account for two-thirds of overall income inequalities. National income aggregates and averages can mislead by obscuring significant disparities within countries.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The World Inequality Report argues that GHG emission disparities are mainly due to inequalities within countries. Meanwhile, GHG emissions continue to grow as their accumulation accelerates planetary heating.

Emissions disparities within nations now account for almost two-thirds of worldwide emissions inequality, nearly doubling from slightly over a third in 1990.

The bottom halves of rich country populations are already at – or close to – the 2030 per capita carbon dioxide equivalent emission targets set by their governments. Yet North America’s wealthiest 10% or decile are the world’s biggest GHG emitters.

Their average emissions are 73 times those of the bottom half of the South and Southeast Asian populations! The East Asian rich also emit high GHGs, but much less than in North America.

The bottom halves of their populations emit nearly ten tons per capita yearly in North America, around five tons in Europe, and about three tons in East Asia.

The much smaller carbon footprints of most of the Global South contrast with the GHG emissions of the top deciles in their own countries and those of the wealthiest 10% in poorer regions.

The top deciles in South and Southeast Asia emit more than double the GHG emissions of Europe’s lower half. Even sub-Saharan Africa’s top decile emits more than Europe’s lower half on average.

Inequality drives emissions
Jayati Ghosh, Shouvik Chakraborty and Debamanyu Das argue that inequality has been driving increases in GHG emissions. While the bottom halves in the US and Europe reduced per capita emissions by 15-20% between 1990 and 2019, the top 1% increased theirs.

The world’s top decile alone accounts for almost half of GHG emissions. As the wealthy become even richer, their adverse environmental impacts increase.

Despite misleading rhetoric, most carbon taxation is not progressive, typically burdening middle- and low-income groups much more than those most responsible, the rich.

Policies to cut GHG emissions must curb excessive consumption by the rich as well as ‘extractivist’ production worldwide to meet their demands.

Profits trump public interest
Meanwhile, transnational corporations and Western governments have refused to honour the public health exception (PHE) to the World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property (IP) rights agreement, TRIPS.

The PHE compromise was agreed to in 2001 to resume WTO trade negotiations at its Doha inter-ministerial meeting after the aborted Seattle conference in 1999.

But then, rich nation governments blocked developing countries’ requests for a PHE waiver to urgently produce enough affordable tests, treatments, equipment and vaccines for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hence, it is unlikely significant IP concessions will be forthcoming to boost developing countries’ efforts to mitigate and adapt to effectively address planetary heating.

The sources of global warming are local, while planetary heating is worldwide, albeit uneven. Effective coping policies and measures are costly and generally more burdensome to the poor and middle classes.

Alternative arrangements can enable greater equity and sustainability. However, mobilising more concerted and effective resistance to planetary heating has proved very difficult.

Climate injustice
Historical accumulation of GHG emissions is the leading cause of planetary warming. Developed countries were responsible for almost four-fifths of cumulative GHG emissions from 1850 to 2011.

Meanwhile, their adverse impacts on developing countries in the tropics are worse. The Global South is also less able to cope due to limited policy space and means.

‘Net-zero’ commitments by countries do not acknowledge the huge climate burden imposed by past GHG accumulation, thus undermining prospects for a just transition.

In international negotiations, wealthy economies have evaded historical responsibility for ‘climate debt’ by focusing on contemporary emissions and ignoring their accumulation over the last two centuries.

Ignoring this historical climate debt also serves to legitimise ignoring compensation for those most adversely impacted in low- and lower-middle-income countries, who have already suffered extensive damage and losses.

This pretence is not only unfair, but also counterproductive. It has undermined the international solidarity and cooperation needed to cope with planetary heating.

Breaching threshold
Current rich nations’ projected emissions will use up three-fifths of the remaining global warming threshold for the world’s ‘carbon budget’ until 2050, so as not to exceed the 1.5°C addition to pre-industrial levels!

However, the most optimistic recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenario expected the 1.5°C threshold to be crossed by 2040!

But even before US President Trump re-accelerated planetary heating after his re-election, then UN Special Envoy and now Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned this threshold would be breached by the end of this decade!

IPS UN Bureau

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A young girl washes her hands in a puddle near a UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC. Photo Credit: UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti

By Juliana White
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 21 2025 (IPS)

Electric vehicles contribute to an ongoing environmental and humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Mining operations cause deforestation, pollution, food insecurity and exploitative labor practices.

Advertisers paint electric vehicles as an environmentally friendly option to help save the planet. In the West, American states like California and New York incentivize citizens to go green and help their cities by ditching gas-powered vehicles.

California officials are trying to enact legislation to reach 100 percent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035. Across the country in New York, officials implemented the Drive Clean Rebate. Through this program, New Yorkers can receive up to 2,000 USD off the purchase or lease of an electric vehicle.

Governments are pushing for more electric vehicle sales because they are helping reduce the damage inflicted by fossil fuels. In the United States, emissions have reduced by around 66 percent. In China, a country dominating the electric vehicle production and sales market, emissions have been reduced by an estimated range of 37 percent to 45 percent.

However, consumers must understand that electric vehicles primarily benefit the environment in wealthier regions. Rising demands for electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries foster destruction and exploitation in poorer countries like the DRC.

One of the key minerals used to make lithium-ion batteries is cobalt. The DRC is the world’s top producer of mined cobalt, at a staggering 75 percent. To fulfill high demands for the mineral, the DRC has become a hot spot overrun by industrial and artisanal small-scale mining operations.

“The surge in demand for lithium-ion batteries has dramatically increased global demand for cobalt, and DRC cobalt production is projected to double by 2030,” said the International Labor Organization (ILO) to IPS. “Because industrial mines can’t keep pace, this has encouraged expansion of artisanal and unregulated mining.”

Artisanal small-scale mines are poorly regulated, informal operations for extracting minerals. Located all over the DRC, these mines exploit child labor, use basic handheld tools, and disregard safety protocols.

“ASM can also lead to conflict as clashes take place between traditional licensed large-scale mining operations and ASM over access to minerals,” Dr. Lamfu Yengong, the Forest campaigner for Greenpeace Africa, told IPS. “While statistics on the actual number of ASM miners in SSA are hard to find, it is estimated that in the DRC alone, there are between 200,000 and 250,000 ASM miners who are responsible for mining as much as 25 percent of the DRC’s cobalt.”

The growth of mining is also decimating the DRC’s environment. Mining sites need large areas of land to operate. As laborers dig, open pits form, releasing dust and other toxic chemicals into the air and polluting surrounding waterways.

Cobalt mines often contain sulfur minerals, which can create acid mine drainage. This process occurs when sulfur minerals are exposed to both air and water.

Sulfuric acid is incredibly harmful because it can make water unsafe for human consumption, kill aquatic life and produce algal blooms. Contact with the acid causes skin irritation and burns, and respiratory issues, and long-term exposure increases the risk of cancer.

Deforestation, erosion, contaminated soil and water sources, increased noise levels and dust and smoke emissions from mining pursuits disrupt the lives of Congolese locals and wildlife. Many are killed or forced to relocate as land, once prosperous for life, now nourishes profit-fueled exploits.

“Mining in the DRC is tearing through the heart of the Congo Basin, one of the world’s most important carbon sinks, leaving behind poisoned rivers, deforested landscapes, and devastated ecosystems,” Yengong said. “What once were lush forests are now scarred by unregulated extraction, threatening biodiversity, accelerating climate change, and robbing future generations of their environmental heritage.”

Despite having over 197 million acres of arable land, the DRC is one of the top-ranking areas of food insecurity globally. Over 25 million Congolese people suffer from a lack of access to food.

Mining endeavors only fuel the hunger crisis because contaminants in the soil and water make growing crops difficult. Forest resources also disappear as more land is cleared for new mines.

Alongside food insecurity impacted by pollution, agriculture efforts suffer from climate change. Weather patterns have drastically changed across the globe, making rain patterns unpredictable. A heavy reliance on rainfed agriculture and prolonged droughts in the DRC immensely impact food supplies.

One of the many camps in the DRC for people displaced by conflict and environmental devastation. Credit: UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti

The pursuit of minerals for lithium-ion batteries encourages mass destruction and egregious human rights violations in the DRC. But mining operations cannot simply stop to solve the problem. Many Congolese people rely on working in the mines to support their families.

Groups such as the ILO, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Food Programme (WFP) are actively working on sustainable solutions to stop further exploitation and harm to the DRC.

“To improve the health of workers in or near mine sites, the ILO is supporting the roll-out of the universal health insurance scheme (Couverture Santé Universelle—CSU), which aims to provide coverage for all individuals in DRC, including those working in the mining sector and their families,” the ILO said. “The benefit package will include a range of services such as general and specialist consultations, hospitalization, essential medicines and vaccines, medical procedures and exams, maternity and newborn care, palliative care, and patient transfers between facilities.”

The UNEP is forming plans focusing on minimizing the environmental impacts of mining. Working with the DRC’s government

“UNEP is working with the DRC’s government to develop a national plan for the extraction of minerals like cobalt. The plan would focus on minimizing the environmental impact of mining,” said Corey Pattison in a UNEP press release. “We are also exploring whether local and international institutions can help resolve conflict around mineral extraction, including through processes like revenue sharing and dispute resolution.”

The WFP is trying to ease the problem by investing in resilience programs. Activities are created to build skills in communities to improve long-term food security. Skill building includes educating farmers in post-harvest loss management, literacy, business and collective marketing.

They also work closely with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to limit negative environmental impacts. Reforestation initiatives are actively underway across the DRC. The WFP reported that 3,850 women in North and South Ubangi planted tree seedlings in 2022.

The crisis in the DRC should not mark the end of lithium batteries and electric vehicles. Scientists are working on new solutions for cleaner, more efficient power sources. Some new batteries in the works include sodium-ion batteries, silicon-carbon batteries, and lithium-sulfur batteries. Introducing more power sources could limit the overwhelming strain on resources in the DRC as the need for cobalt would reduce.

A report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) suggests that sustainable mining techniques and technologies are another tactic to reduce environmental impacts. However, significant change relies on the DRC’s government and its officials. They must enforce stricter mandates to mitigate the harm ravaging Congolese people’s lives.

The ILO says that Corporate Social Responsibility has been made mandatory through the 2018 mining code. Mining companies are required to invest .3 percent of their annual turnover into community development projects.

In turn, the mandate allows for easy tracking of mining companies’ income through transparency mechanisms like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

While the DRC has enacted environmental regulations and is involved in additional support programs, its history of weak institutions and conflict challenges aid efforts. Rampant instability greatly limits the implementation and enforcement of policies.

“The world’s clean energy transition must not come at the cost of Congolese lives and forests. The critical minerals beneath the DRC fuel the global economy, yet the people above them remain among the poorest and most exploited,” said Yengong. “Real climate solutions must prioritize the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, end greenwashing, and ensure justice, not just extraction.”

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The World Bank Headquarters in Washington D.C. Credit: Unsplash/Zoshua Colah

By Maximilian Malawista
NEW YORK, Jul 17 2025 (IPS)

Today, 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt interest payments than on health or education. This marks a trembling indication that the United Nations’ promise for the 2030 Agenda could be slipping away.

With less than five years left, developing countries are facing an estimated USD 4 trillion in annual financing gaps, placing sustainable development efforts on the back-burner.

The financing gaps across regions, as shown below, reflect the disparity

Asia and Oceania

· 2.139 billion people (Interest > Education)
· 2.24 billion people (Interest > Health)

Africa

· 402 million people (Interest > Education)
· 791 million people (Interest > Health)

Latin America and the Caribbean

· 140 million people (Interest > Education)
· 356 million people (Interest > Health)

The Aggregate

· 3.4 billion people (Interest > Education)
· 2.4 billion people (Interest > Health)

Education has been found to be the most effective long-term solution to lifting people out of poverty. Now with almost half the world in regions where debt interest payments are being prioritized over education, it reveals a daunting future; one which could halt progress in SDG 4 (Quality education), and create hurdles for SDG 1 (No Poverty).

The Sevilla Platform for Action

At the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) the Sevilla Platform for Action was launched, putting forward 130 “high-impact” initiatives aimed at implementation of reconstructive and expansionary policy from the start.

The platforms look at implementing three key areas of solution:

1. Catalyze Investments at Scale – bridging SDG financing gaps, involving the mobilization of tax revenues, blended finance initiatives, among guarantees and local currency lending by multilateral development banks, and overall increasing financing for crisis response.

2. Debt Reform Initiatives – A global hub for debt swaps in exchange for development, a debt pauses clause alliance, and a borrowers’ forum.

3. Structural Reform to Global Financial Architecture – Architecture reforms at national and global levels, involving a coalition of countries and institutions aimed at country led and owned platforms, a second coalition for including measures of vulnerability beyond GDP in all financing operations, and efforts to update development cooperation on a global scale.

UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebecca Grynspan stressed the need for an integrated approach “We need to think about development in an integrated way where trade, investment, finance and technology reinforce each other as the Sevilla Commitment states,” said Grynspan.

According to UNCTAD, trade remains “the strongest link between local economies and global growth”. To establish these networks, this involves advocating for predictable trade rules, and transparent policies to help construct a capacity, competitiveness, and resilience among developing nations economies.

Another proposal by the platform is “turning public debt from a burden into a tool of development,” calling for lowering borrowing costs and fairer mechanisms, ultimately exceeding the limits set by the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatment. This would include a tripling of lending capacity, increasing the borrowing limit from USD 50 billion to USD 150 billion.

The global debt trap

In the last decade, developing countries have borrowed more and at higher interest rates then that of the developed world, leading to the rise of debt burden and the shrinking of essential public services. Since 2010, in developing countries debt has grown twice as fast as that of advanced economies. Today, that debt has grown to USD 102 trillion, an increase of USD 5 trillion from the past year.

Just in 2024 alone, 61 countries allocated more than 10 percent of their government revenues on interest payments, amounting to USD 921 billion. Developing countries now owe USD 31 trillion collectively, resources which could have been distributed toward public goods like education and healthcare.

To put this to scale, many of these developing countries have been borrowing at average rates two to four times higher than the United States despite having far fewer resources to repay that debt. These debt burdens are creating crushing opportunity costs, stunting the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Debt can be a powerful tool for investment and development when used properly. But now, rising interest payments are actively crowding out future investment, creating cycles for delay and dependency through debt traps. This has cost developing nations USD 25 billion in net interest to their creditors, leading to massive net negative financial flows now for several years in a row. These countries are paying more to borrow the money than what they receive, making sustainable development nearly impossible, and ultimately forcing some of these economies into survival mode.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the current debt system as: “Unsustainable, unfair and unaffordable, with many governments spending more on debt payments than on essentials like health and education combined.” Guterres called for the intervention of a new global debt system, one which offers long term and affordable financing, to reverse the damage done by the current global debt trap.

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The United Nations Headquarters in New York. Credit: Unsplash/Nils Huenerfuerst

By Maximilian Malawista
NEW YORK, Jun 24 2025 (IPS)

The world is losing interest in investing in others, especially when it comes to humanitarian aid. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has slowed to critical levels, weakening emerging markets and further slowing growth across developing nations.

As of 2025, FDI has dwindled to its lowest levels yet, largely due to heightened trade tensions among barriers for international investment. Lowered levels of FDI indicate a move to domestic and isolationist efforts, increasing the likelihood of failed budgetary cooperation to international intergovernmental bodies such as the United Nations.

This is already evident in the UN’s budgets for the Secretariat and for humanitarian aid operations. With many of the UN’s largest donors deciding to cut back on their contributions, the organization will now see a 20 percent reduction in its workforce (6,900 jobs), in addition to sizing down humanitarian aid operations globally. On June 20th, Spokesperson for the Secretary General Stéphane Dujarric remarked, “no office in the UN will be exempt from the 20 percent reduction, and that includes the Secretary General’s office.” This would suggest that the cuts have been brought on due to the reduced budget, and not a want for managerial optimization of the UN’s staff. Under U.S. President Donald Trump, nearly USD 1.5 billion in missed payments have contributed to a USD 3.7 billion budget cut to the UN. This financial strain has been further exacerbated by multiple overdue payments from China. Together, China and the U.S. make up a little over 40 percent of the UN’s total budget.

These cuts have also been seen across the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), where “the deepest funding cuts ever to hit the international humanitarian sector” have occurred. This has resulted in resulting in OCHA to presenting their new global “hyper-prioritized” appeal, aimed at supporting 114 million people facing life threatening necessities worldwide. The new plan asks for USD 29 billion in funding, a decrease of USD 15 billion called for in the previous plan.

“We have been forced into a triage of human survival,” said Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator .“The math is cruel, and the consequences are heartbreaking. Too many people will not get the support they need, but we will save as many lives as we can with the resources we are given.”

The Global Humanitarian Overview for 2025 originally called for USD 44 billion and aimed to reach about 180 million people out of the nearly three hundred million in need. However as of June, only USD 5.6 billion has been received, less than 13 per cent of the appeal. As a result, aid will be disbursed not purely by human necessity, but by cruel and cold calculations.

With the new calculations, the new plan was designed with three goals. Firstly, by reaching the people facing the most urgent conditions, using a scale ranking humanitarian need for aid, prioritizing cases that reached level 4 (Extreme) and level 5 (Catastrophic) as a starting point for disbursement. Second, the prioritization of life-saving support, according to the planning already concluded in the 2025 Humanitarian Response. Third, ensuring that limited resources are directed based on where they can do the best, accounting for speed of disbursement capabilities.

In his statement on the situation, Fletcher concluded by saying: “Brutal funding cuts leave us with brutal choices. All we ask is 1 percent of what you chose to spend last year on war. But this isn’t just an appeal for money – it’s a call for global responsibility, for human solidarity, for a commitment to end the suffering.”

The Investment-Aid Correlation

Credit: Unsplash/Salah Darwish

The shortfall in humanitarian aid funding has directly coincided with global FDI pull backs, reflecting an investor who is less donor-confident, having a decreased interest in bilateral engagement, and overall lack of security about putting money towards fragile states. For the 2023 financial year, developing economies received USD435 billion in FDI (which was USD 867 billion in 2022), the lowest since 2005. A larger slowdown has also been seen for advanced/high-income economies receiving USD 336 billion in 2023, the lowest since 1996. FDI as a portion of gross domestic product (GDP) accounted for 2.3 percent of developing economies in 2023, which is only half of what it was in 2008 at its peak year.

To combat the shortfalls of decreased FDI, The World Bank identified a three-policy priority plan, specifically for developing economies. The first priority would be to “redouble efforts to attract FDI” by easing restrictions and speeding up investment. According to the World Bank, a 1 percent increase in countries’ labor productivity has been associated with a 0.7 percent increase in FDI inflows.

The second priority would be to “amplify the economic benefits of FDI”, which will involve offering a greater quality of development post investment, and uplifting sectors that create opportunities for underrepresented groups. The third priority would be to “advance global cooperation” by creating initiatives to increase multi-sectoral/international flows, offering geopolitical relief, and creating structures to support developing economies.

By boosting FDI, this plan would also encourage UN member states to expand or maintain their current humanitarian contributions. FDI can be seen as a signal for the depth of global connectedness, with stronger investment flows reinforcing a shared commitment to the delivering of aid. To establish the most efficient system, everyone is needed, and that includes the mobilization of capital and communication. An increase in FDI provides a crucial backbone for countries struggling with crises. While the UN can support and implement as many aid plans as possible, true impact depends on the individual state’s willingness to invest in these developing nations. Without this investment, these economies will remain stagnant, unable to recover and grow, falling behind the world stage indefinitely.

At the same time, official development assistance (ODA) globally is also on a downward trend.

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Farmer in Colombia. Credit: Both Nomads/Forus

By Sarah Strack and Christelle Kalhoule
SEVILLE, Spain , Jun 23 2025 (IPS)

Can the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) be a turning point? The stakes are high. The international financial system—so important to each and every one of us—feels out of reach and resistant to change, because it is deeply entrenched in unjust power imbalances that keep it in place. We deserve better.

Under its current form, the Compromiso de Sevilla – the outcome document of FFD4 adopted on June 17 ahead of the conference – reads like a mildly improved version of business as usual with weak commitments. To avoid being derailed, decision-makers at FFD4 must act with clarity and courage, and here’s why.

With predatory interest rates, the international financial system is pushing hundreds of millions into misery as several nations continue to be shackled by a deepening debt crisis. While millions struggle without adequate food, healthcare, or education – basic services and rights – their governments must funnel billions to creditors.

Shockingly, 3.3 billion people – almost half of humanity – disproportionately in Global South nations, live in countries where debt interest payments outstrip education, health budgets and urgent climate action. This imbalance is particularly pernicious toward women, who bear the brunt of the failure of the gender-blind global financial architecture. This system fails to acknowledge and redistribute care and social reproduction responsibilities, resulting in women, especially those located in the Global South, lacking access to adequate essential services and decent jobs.

“The current model of international cooperation is not working, and its financing is also not working while we are facing a series of interconnected crises,” says Mafalda Infante, Advocacy and Communications Officer at the Portuguese Platform of Development NGOs, sharing their recently released Civil Society Manifesto for Global Justice calling for change and a restoration of fairness at FFD4 and beyond.

“Gender equality perspectives are absolutely central to how we understand global justice and financial reform, because let’s be clear: the current system isn’t neutral. It produces and reinforces inequalities, including gender-based ones. The debt crisis and climate emergency disproportionately affect women and girls, especially in the global south. We’ve seen it again and again when public services are cut, when healthcare is underfunded or when food systems collapse, it’s women who carry the heaviest burden. But at the same time, feminist economics also offer solutions. They challenge the idea that GDP growth is the ultimate goal. They prioritise care, sustainability and community well-being. They demand that financing should be people-centered and rights-based and accountable as well. So the role of civil society has been to bring these ideas into the FFD4 space to connect macroeconomic reform with everyday realities and to insist that justice – economic, climate, racial, gender justice – is indivisible,” Infante adds.

FFD4 offers an opportunity to reimagine a financial architecture that can be just, inclusive, and rights-based. This is not a technical summit for experts alone. It is the only global forum where governments, international institutions, civil society organisations, community representatives and the private sector sit together to shape the future of global finance, and it’s happening after 10 years since the latest edition in Addis Ababa.

But there are realities that decision-makers just can’t shy away from. While some powerful countries borrow at rock-bottom rates, other nations face interest charges nearly four times higher. We must thus ask ourselves: is this really a pathway to truly sustainable development or a continuation of profound financial injustices through something akin to “financial colonialism” ?

“Many countries like us in the South, are totally concerned that there can be no development with the current debt situation not discussed. The issue of debt vis-a-vis taxes is vitally important. The money that countries are collecting from the domestic mobilization of resources is all channeled to self-debt servicing. And debt handcuffs social policy. Without these resources, these countries cannot deliver on public services like health and education. There can be no way of improving people’s social indicators without addressing the question of debt stress,” says Moses Isooba , Executive Director of the Uganda National NGO Forum (UNNGOF).

“The Seville conference should decide whether to continue sustaining a system that perpetuates injustices or, once and for all, listen to decency and commit to a world without extreme inequalities. Thousands of organisations around the world demand that public money should not finance weapons, but rather schools, hospitals, healthy environments and a culture of peace. The present and the future are at stake; at stake are the rules we have given ourselves to order the world and the very survival of democracy,” says Carlos Botella, from La Coordinadora, the Spanish NGO for Development Platform.

Forus is attending FFD4 as a global civil society network with one clear message: the current model must change.

We call for a radical transformation of global finance that moves away from a system that enables “tax abuse” and outsized influence from a powerful few.

A crucial step for transformation is creating a UN Convention on Sovereign Debt to fairly and transparently restructure and cancel illegitimate debt, as many countries spend more on debt than on essential services.

In today’s context of shrinking development aid, the role of public development banks is ever more important in support of Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement on climate change. Forus therefore calls on public development banks to work in partnership with civil society and community representatives through a formal global coalition and local engagement to ensure development finance is locally-led and reflects the real needs of people, rooted in consent and mutual trust.

Official development assistance (ODA) must be protected and increased, reversing harmful aid cuts that damage civil society as well as urgent and basic services. The UN has warned that aid funding for dozens of crises around the world has dropped by a third, largely due to the decrease in US funding slashed US funding and announced cuts from other nations.

Finally, governments should support a new UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, adopting gender-responsive, environmentally sustainable fiscal policies while disincentivizing polluters and extractive industries.

“Development financing must not perpetuate cycles of debt, austerity, and dependency. Instead, it must be grounded in democratic governance, fair taxation, climate justice, and respect for human rights. It’s also crucial to promote inclusive decision-making by strengthening the role of the United Nations in global economic governance, countering the dominance of informal and exclusive clubs such as the OECD,” says Henrique Frota, Executive Director of the Brazilian Association of NGOs (ABONG) and former C20 Brazil Chair.

FFD4 must ensure that there is a genuine space for civil society engagement, where all voices are heard and can influence financial decision making, to strengthen accountability and transparency, and to promote greater inclusion.

“This ensures the creation of appropriate spaces and mechanisms for meaningful engagement. Only through this inclusive approach can we fundamentally rethink and redesign the architecture of aid to work effectively,” says Elisa Lopez Alvarado, Forus project coordinator for the EU System for an Enabling Environment for Civil Society – EU SEE, a consortium of international and national civil society organisations in 86 countries, that monitors an enabling environment guided by six diverse principles.

“This partnership is essential for building healthy democracies, strengthening the rule of law, and establishing robust national institutions that guarantee rights. It ensures that development truly follows an inclusive path toward social justice and more equitable societies. Importantly, when strong democratic institutions are in place, they create an environment where diverse initiatives from development banks, private sector actors, and other stakeholders can also thrive and contribute effectively to development goals and social justice,” she adds.

Civil society must be included as an equal partner at the table, with full consideration of the enabling environment in which they operate and their specific contextual circumstances – which goes hand in hand with the real needs of communities.

“The voices of the communities most affected should be included, otherwise large-scale development projects are not sustainable. Local communities and local civil society are the point of contact to make implementation more inclusive,” says Pallavi Rekhi, Programmes Lead at Voluntary Action Network India (VANI), reinforcing that FFD4 must shift from vague aspirations to binding, systemic reforms that rebalance power and serve justice.

“Don’t take stock of what has been done. Instead, look at what has not yet been done at this conference and you will see the immense challenges that lie ahead for the future of our planet,” says Marcelline Mensah-Pierucci, President of FONGTO, the national platform of civil society organisations in Togo.

“The continuous cycle of unfairness and social inequality must come to an end. The time to act is now,” adds Zia ur Rehman, Chairperson of Pakistan Development Alliance.

For many, the road to Sevilla has been long and hard and still, the world’s majority are left behind on this journey. The hard work continues after FFD4 on the need for bold leadership, real action and transformative change that can lead to a more effective and responsive global financial architecture.

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Excerpt:

Close up of the New York Stock Exchange. Credit: Unsplash/Aditya Vyas

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 6 2025 (IPS)

While Asia and the Pacific seem to be booming in employment and GDP growth, reports reveal a possible volatile and fragile market pegged to U.S. consumerism.

The World Employment and Social Outlook for May 2025 from the International Labour Organization (ILO) reveals reductions of projections about the global job market in large percentages, reflecting an increasingly dependent and fragile job market.

According to the report, global GDP growth projections were lowered from 3.2 percent to 2.8 percent, correlating to a slowdown in economic growth, which is linked to a decrease in employment growth from 1.7 percent to 1.5 percent, a difference of 7 million jobs. The root cause of this decrease seems to be based in U.S. consumerism, linking trade disruptions due to high tariffs directly to lower outcomes.

A reliance of the global market on a single country’s consumerism reflects a weakening job market, one which relies on trade from high-income countries. Additionally, the labour income share — the percentage of money from a country’s GDP which goes directly into the laborers pockets — has fallen from 53 percent in 2014 to 52.4 percent in 2024, reflecting a global decrease in purchasing power parity (PPP).

Employment is also seeing a shift, with high- and middle-income countries experiencing market shifts from lower- to medium- skill occupations to high-skill occupations. Between 2013 and 2023, under-educated or qualified workers relative to their occupation dropped from 37.9 percent to 33.4 percent. Overeducated or overqualified workers rose from 15.5 percent to 18.9 percent.

The report also indicates shifts from generative AI, reflecting that nearly 1 in 4 workers have some level of exposure in their tasks, which could be automated by AI. Additionally, 16.3 percent of workers are experiencing medium exposure while 7.5 percent are in high exposure, especially in high-skill occupations.

Uncertainty rewriting employment projections

An estimated 407 million people are in want of a job but do not have one, leading to more people taking positions they may be overqualified for due to the lack of options. Credit: Unsplash/Alex Kotliarskyi

Uncertainty has become the biggest contender for slowed job growth. Even in a time where global market outputs continue to expand and inflationary pressures ease, employers are becoming more cautious in hiring more workers, while still retaining their current employees. Geo-political disturbances combined with systematic transitions have altered the job landscape, creating unprecedented and unconsulted scenarios for enterprises globally.

Inflation is projected to fall across most countries, dropping to 4.4 percent in 2025 compared to 5.8 percent in 2024. This could be due to an overall contraction in economic expansion globally. The U.S. reciprocal tariffs in April have been deemed to have profoundly shifted global trading landscapes, leading to a synchronized slowdown multilaterally across all regions. These changes influence businesses to create new strategies to either combat against the new landscape, or bend to the set demands.

407 million people in 2025 are estimated to want a job, but currently do not have one, resulting in a greater occupancy of people taking lower quality or more vulnerable positions due to a lack of options.

The Asia-Pacific region accounts for the world’s fastest-growing economies, projecting a growth of 3.8 percent, compared to the Americas at 1.8 percent, and Europe and Central Asia at 1.5 percent. Yet from a 2023 estimate, 56 million jobs in Asia and the Pacific were found to be directly or indirectly linked through supply chains to final demand, the highest share out of any other region, creating the most volatility out of any other market in face of new tariffs: leaving employment in the hands of US demand for imports.

Employment growth sees its highest rates in Asia and the Pacific growing at 1.7 percent or 34 million, followed by Africa, with much lower projections seen by the Americas at 1.2 percent, and then Europe and central Asia at a mere 0.6 percent.

Economic growth and productivity amidst global setbacks

From 2014 to 2024, the global GDP grew by 33.5 percent, with the Asia-Pacific GDP growing up to 55 percent. This would reflect fast recoveries even amidst the economic downturns brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ILO report finds that economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region is found in productivity improvements rather than the creation of new jobs. Contrasting this, Africa and Arab states accompanied their economic growth by increased employment opportunities.

Informal employment remains slightly above formal employment, with a difference in growth rate by 1.1 percent, informal employment representing 2 billion people, 57.8 percent of all workers globally. Countries with high informal employment still saw large amounts of economic growth, with 85 percent of workers in Africa to be informally employed, expanding at 29.3 percent in the recent decade. However, in Asia and the Pacific, informal employment has been in decline of 11.3 percent over the past decade, reflecting on similar economic outcomes whether it be from formal or informal employment.

Labour income shares decline in Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Central Asia, and yet increase in Asia and the Pacific along with the Arab states across the same period of time. This suggests occupational dynamic changes in technology and market structures fractioned regionally across the globe. Due to this, the occupation composition – the type of jobs which flood the market – have changed throughout the years, mainly driven by different technological needs and the use of different skill sets.

Employment shares per country tend to look very different, usually depicted by GDP, as higher income countries will be less invested into markets like elementary occupations and agriculture, and more into professional, technical, and managerial sectors, reflecting greater interest in technology, business, and higher education.

Globally, more than half of workers are mismatched to their job, either being undereducated or overeducated, with the deficit being the largest in low-income countries, but this has been decreasing significantly over the past decade. Rising education levels seem to contribute to the share of appropriate qualifications for jobs.

An ever-changing landscape

Faster than any other time in human history, dynamics are changing. This report reflects on the volatility of the employment market globally, and how certain factors might correlate to a decrease or increase in one sector but could be completely different regionally: overall reflecting on a difference of technology and focus. Economies which are still agricultural, garment-based, and high-labor low-education see opposite methods to similar economic outcomes to countries which are prioritizing productivity, education, and technical skills, meaning there is no perfect formula to a stable global economic balance.

“The findings of this report on the employment landscape are sobering, but they can also act as a roadmap for the creation of decent jobs,” said ILO Director-General Gilbert Houngbo. “We can make a difference, and we can do so by strengthening social protection, investing in skills development, promoting social dialogue, and building inclusive labor markets to ensure that technological change benefits all. And we must do so with urgency, ambition, and solidarity.”

Mentioning the “need for inclusivity” is perhaps the most important factor when looking to expand the global economy. If each country is not going to tilt increasing in the same manner, each region needs to be addressed according to their needs and economic focus.

In February, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, said that governments were “shifting policy priorities”. “There are significant policy changes in the United States, in areas such as trade policy, taxation, public spending, immigration, and deregulation, with implications for the U.S. economy and the rest of the world…The combined impacts of possible policy changes are complex and still difficult to assess but will come into clearer view in the months ahead.” The acting director reflected on the current era of “uncertainty”, viewing the United States’ role in global trade to only be adding to that level of uncertainty, also displaying that each country’s policy creates different economic outcomes based on their own economic focuses.

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Credit: Zed Jameson/Anadolu via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jun 5 2025 (IPS)

For decades, Portugal stood as a beacon of democratic stability in an increasingly unsettled Europe. While neighbours grappled with political fragmentation and the rise of far-right movements, Portugal maintained its two-party system, a testament to the enduring legacy of the 1974 Carnation Revolution that peacefully transitioned the country from dictatorship to democracy. It was long believed that Portugal’s extensive pre-revolution experience of repressive right-wing rule had effectively inoculated it against far-right politics, but that assumption is now demonstrable outdated. An era of exceptionalism ended on 18 May, when the far-right Chega party secured 22.8 per cent of the vote and 60 parliamentary seats, becoming the country’s main opposition force.

This represents more than an electoral upset; it marks the collapse of five decades of democratic consensus and Portugal’s reluctant entry into the European mainstream of political polarisation. Chega could hold the balance of power. The centre-right Democratic Alliance, led by Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, won the most parliamentary seats, but fell far short of the 116 needed for a majority. Meanwhile, the Socialist Party, which governed from 2015 to 2024, suffered its worst defeat since the 1980s, relegated to third place by a party that’s only six years old.

Chega’s meteoric rise from just 1.3 per cent of the vote and one seat in 2019 to its role as today’s main opposition demonstrates how quickly political landscapes can shift when mainstream parties fail to address people’s fundamental concerns. The roots of the transformation lie in a toxic combination of economic pressure and political failure that has systematically eroded public confidence in the political establishment.

Portugal has endured three elections in under four years, a sign of its novel state of chronic instability. The immediate trigger for the latest election was the collapse of Montenegro’s government following a confidence vote, with opposition parties citing concerns over potential conflicts of interest involving his family business. This followed the previous Socialist government’s fall in November 2023 amid corruption investigations, creating a recurring cycle of scandal, government crisis and electoral upheaval.

The political turmoil unfolds against a backdrop of mounting social challenges that mainstream parties have failed to adequately address. Despite its economy growing by 1.9 per cent in 2024, well above the European Union average, Portugal faces a severe housing crisis that has become the defining issue for many voters, particularly those from younger generations. Portugal now has the worst housing access rates of all 38 OECD countries, with house prices more than doubling over the past decade.

In Lisbon, rents have jumped by 65 per cent since 2015, making the capital the world’s third least financially viable city due to its punishing combination of soaring housing costs and traditionally low wages. This crisis, driven by tourism, foreign investment and short-term rentals, has pushed property ownership beyond most people’s reach, creating widespread frustration with governments perceived as ineffective or indifferent to everyday struggles.

Immigration has provided another flashpoint. The number of legal migrants tripled from under half a million in 2018 to over 1.5 million in 2025. This rapid demographic change has fuelled populist narratives about uncontrolled migration and its alleged impact on housing and employment markets. It was precisely these grievances that Chega, led by former TV commentator André Ventura, expertly exploited.

As an outsider party untainted by association with the cycle of scandals and governmental collapses, Chega positioned itself as the defender of ‘western civilisation’ and channelled anti-establishment anger into electoral success. It combines promises to combat corruption and limit immigration with a defence of what it characterises as traditional Portuguese values, including through extreme criminal justice policies such as chemical castration for repeat sexual offenders.

Despite Ventura’s insistence that Chega simply advocates equal treatment without ‘special privileges’, the party’s ranks include white supremacists and admirers of former dictator António Salazar. Its openly racist approach to immigration and hostility towards women, LGBTQI+ people, Muslims and Roma people reflects a familiar far-right playbook that has proven successful across Europe. Chega has cultivated significant connections with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, Germany’s Alternative for Germany, and Spain’s Vox party, and Ventura was among the European far-right leaders invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Montenegro has so far refused to work with Chega, which he has publicly characterised as demagogic, racist and xenophobic – a rejection that may have inadvertently strengthened Chega’s anti-establishment credentials. However, the arithmetic of Portugal’s fractured parliament suggests that any significant policy initiatives will require either Socialist abstention or, more controversially, Chega support, creating new opportunities for far-right influence, particularly on criminal justice and immigration policies.

Portugal’s experience offers sobering evidence that far-right influence should no longer be viewed as a passing fad but rather as an established feature of contemporary European politics. The speed of the shift offers a stark reminder that no democracy is immune to the populist pressures reshaping the continent.

The question now is whether Portugal’s institutions can adapt to govern effectively in this new fractured landscape while preserving democratic values. Portugal’s civil society has an increasingly vital part to play in holding newly influential far-right politicians to account and offering collective responses to populist challenges.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, 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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With two-fifths of the world economy, East Asia can inspire others by creatively responding to the US President’s tariff challenge by promoting fair, dynamic and peaceful regional cooperation.

No winners in economic war
Trump’s Liberation Day tariff announcement on April 2nd poses a common challenge that everyone needs to take seriously. Dismissing it as crazy or stupid for rejecting conventional policy wisdom is useless.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

His first shot was arguably fired when Canada arrested Huawei’s founder’s daughter at the behest of the first Trump administration. Others suggest different starting points.

Obama announced the US ‘pivot to Asia’ to contain China. The Nobel Peace Laureate also undermined the multilateral World Trade Organization (WTO)’s ability to settle disputes by blocking arbitration panel appointments.

Trump’s approach is termed transactional. It presumes ‘zero-sum games’ and ignores cooperative ‘win-win’ solutions. Its implications mean we live in perilous times.

His penchant for ‘shock and awe’ is well-known. As if demanding instant gratification, Trump seems uninterested in the medium-term, let alone the long-term.

He insists on bilateral one-on-one transactions – weakening ‘the other’ by refusing collective bargaining. He rejects plurilateral and other collective arrangements but embraces cooperation to share costs. China is different but exceptionally so.

ASEAN
The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) did not include all in the region when it was formed in 1967.

Malaysia had recently had conflicts with all other founding members. Indonesia and the Philippines both opposed the new British-sponsored Malaysian confederation established in 1963, and in 1965, Singapore seceded from it.

Like the European Union, ASEAN helped resolve recent conflicts. But ASEAN soon got its act together, even before the Vietnam, Cambodian and Laotian wars ended in 1975.

In 1973, ASEAN leaders agreed that Southeast Asia should become a zone of peace, freedom, and neutrality (ZOPFAN). But its progress has been mixed.

The Philippines removed all US military bases before the end of the 20th century, but now has eleven, with four new ones in the north, facing Taiwan.

ZOPFAN is especially relevant now as several Global North powers have a military presence in the South China Sea. Worse, several Asian leaders have made generous concessions to ‘circumvent’ personal legal ‘problems’ with US authorities.

The recent ASEAN summit will be followed by a second one later in 2025. Two ASEAN precedents, established in response to earlier predicaments, remain relevant.

Bandung
The 1955 Bandung conference of Asian and African leaders of newly emerging nations, which led to the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement, remains relevant.

Europe recently celebrated the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Now rejecting peaceful coexistence with its erstwhile liberator, Europe insists on fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

Military interventions after the first Cold War now exceed the number during it! Despite its rhetoric, the Global North seems uninterested in freedom and neutrality.

Western pundits deemed the world unipolar after the 1980s. However, many now see it as multipolar, with most in the Global South preferring not to be aligned with any particular world power.

Major Western powers have increasingly marginalised the UN, undermining its capacity for peacemaking. Few in the West, especially in NATO, remain seriously committed to the UN Charter despite giving much lip service.

But realistically, ASEAN cannot really lead international peacemaking. It can only be a pro-active, pro-UN voice of reason for peace, freedom, neutrality, development and international cooperation.

East Asia
Meanwhile, the world economy is stagnating, mainly due to Western policies since 2008. ASEAN+3 (including Japan, South Korea, and China) is especially relevant now with its Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

The earlier ASEAN+3 Chiang Mai Agreement responded to the 1997-98 Asian financial crises. After years of Northeast Asian encouragement, ASEAN nations agreed to move from bilateral to multilateral swap arrangements.

Meanwhile, the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) has progressed little since its creation over three decades ago.

More recently, the governments of Japan, China, and South Korea met without ASEAN in late March to prepare for Trump’s tariffs.

Sadly, key ASEAN leaders can hardly envision regional economic cooperation beyond yet another free trade agreement.

Trump has declared he wants to remake and rule the world to make America great again. His tariffs and Mar-a-Lago proposals should be seen as long overdue wake-up calls that ‘business as usual’ is over.

Will East Asia rise to the challenge and go beyond defensive actions to offer an alternative for the region’s economies and people, if not beyond?

The UN-led multilateral system still largely serves the US, but not enough for Trump. Thus, the US still invokes multilateral language self-servingly, e.g., it claims its unilateral tariffs are ‘reciprocal’.

Hence, despite his blatant contempt for them, Trump is unlikely to withdraw from all multilateral organisations and arrangements, especially those which serve him well.

IPS UN Bureau

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US President Donald Trump has deliberately sown discord worldwide in attempting to remake the world to serve supposed American interests better. He will not cede influence, let alone power and control, to other nations, let alone people.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

For Miran, Trump is reshaping the US-led unipolar world more equitably by getting others to bear more of the costs of ‘global public goods’ that the US ostensibly provides.

As geopolitical economist Ben Norton has noted, the US spends trillions on its global empire, with around 800 military bases abroad! While influential US corporate interests have benefited most, others have also gained.

The US contributed to the Global North’s reconstruction boom after World War II (WW2). After pre-empting growing Soviet influence from the last year of WW2, the US enhanced its hegemony by strengthening allies during the first Cold War.

However, Miran complains it is too “costly” to maintain the post-Cold War unipolar order without others bearing their “fair share” of the US costs of providing a “global security umbrella” and international dollar liquidity.

1985 Plaza Accord
In the 1980s, many complained about how Japan and Germany, which had lost WW2, had benefited from imposed military spending constraints and US occupation to gain industrial leadership worldwide.

At its second meeting at New York’s Plaza Hotel, the US-led Group of Five (G5), of the largest Western economies, agreed that the yen and Deutschemark should greatly appreciate against the US dollar.

This would ensure US recovery from its slowdown following dollar strengthening due to the Fed’s high-interest rate policy to quell inflation after the second oil price hike.

As the yen appreciated, Japan’s 1989 ‘Big Bang’ financial reforms sealed its fate. Its asset price bubble burst, also ending the post-war Japanese miracle boom.

Miran acknowledges US dollar “overvaluation has weighed heavily on the American manufacturing sector while benefiting financialised sectors of the economy in manners that benefit wealthy Americans”.

From Plaza to Mar-a-Lago
Unlike Plaza, Miran’s proposed Mar-a-Lago Accord, named for Trump’s private Florida retreat, will be imposed on all, especially allies in the Global North.

The Global North must improve the US trade balance by deterring imports and increasing exports by letting the dollar depreciate. Allies have been threatened with tariffs and unilateral withdrawal of the US security umbrella.

Miran’s proposal also envisions foreign governments holding 100-year US Treasury bonds. This should transfer long-term losses due to inflation to bondholders abroad.

He also wants a US sovereign wealth fund financed by revaluing US gold reserves to market prices. Meanwhile, his proposed cryptocurrency stabilisation fund already threatens to disrupt international finance.

His plan claims to reduce US trade deficits and bring back good jobs. Miran expects it will significantly shrink the US current account and fiscal deficits without requiring more tax revenue or spending cuts.

Weaker dollar not enough
Jenny Gordon has challenged Miran’s argument. She reasons that his plan is unrealisable without significantly shifting US resources from non-tradables to tradables.

Manufacturing investments needed to substitute imports and increase exports have to be financed. But the US has been a net borrower for almost half a century!

Its current account deficit reflects these savings-investment imbalances. The US would have to cut its capital account surplus by borrowing much less from others to reduce its current account deficit.

Making manufacturing more competitive requires a weaker dollar and new investment. The US must encourage Americans to save more, consume less, divert investment from elsewhere, and cut its fiscal deficit.

Otherwise, foreign borrowings financing manufacturing investments will strengthen the US dollar. Worse, a weaker greenback is needed to boost US competitiveness.

Miran may prevail
Even if US manufacturing recovers, well-paid jobs in depressed areas remain unlikely. Besides ageing, changing technology, consumption, and incomes have adversely affected prospects for reviving US manufacturing.

Government spending cuts have hurt state-sponsored research, which enabled the US to lead technological innovation worldwide until early this century.

Miran’s proposed forced conversion of US Treasury bonds held in official reserves to ‘century bonds’ will reduce confidence in the dollar and its liquidity value.

Besides lowering US borrowing costs, it would undermine the deep secondary market for US T-bills and dollar-denominated trade and financial flows—all key to dollar privilege.

The dollar’s status as a reserve currency has enabled the US to maintain massive fiscal deficits without high interest rates or the threat of currency collapse. But it has also constrained US economic options, favouring finance and other modern services.

Trump does not want to lose the dollar’s status as a reserve currency. His threat to the BRICS suggests likely harsh retaliation against efforts to reduce reliance on the US dollar.

The dollar’s status in international finance also enables the US to threaten others credibly. However, Trump’s treatment of allies reminds us that compliance does not ensure stability.

Miran presumes that trade and investment partner countries will do as he wants. While few may agree to his proposal, which will not work, not many may stand up to Trump. Worse, some are already giving lip service to the proposal.

IPS UN Bureau

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A healthcare worker vaccinates children in Barikotal Rezkan village, Argo district, Fayzabad, Badakhshan province, Afghanistan. Credit: UNICEF/Muzamel Azizi

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 30 2025 (IPS)

For 2025, the theme of World Health Immunization Week (24-30 April), “Immunization for All is Humanly Possible”, emphasizes the need to eradicate disparities in access to vaccines, particularly for children. By encouraging governments to implement vaccination programs at the local and national levels, the World Health Organization (WHO) seeks t0 ensure worldwide access to life-saving vaccines.

“Vaccines are among the most powerful inventions in history, making once-feared diseases preventable,” said WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Thanks to vaccines, smallpox has been eradicated, polio is on the brink, and with the more recent development of vaccines against diseases like malaria and cervical cancer, we are pushing back the frontiers of disease. With continued research, investment and collaboration, we can save millions more lives today and in the next 50 years.”

According to figures from the United Nations (UN), over the past 50 years global immunization efforts have saved roughly 154 million lives. Vaccines are also estimated to save around 4.2 million lives each year. More children live to see their first birthday and beyond than ever before in human history.

Health experts have estimated that immunization is one of the most cost-effective disease treatments, with every 1 dollar invested in vaccinations yielding a 54 dollar return in productivity. Additionally, vaccines are estimated to save the average infected person around 66 years of life, with roughly 20 million people having been spared of paralysis due to polio vaccinations.

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, reported that in 2024, more than 5 million children who had not received a single dose of an essential vaccine were immunized in 20 vulnerable countries, many of which were in Africa. Gains in public health were most notably observed in Uganda, Chad, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Malawi, Madagascar, and Côte d’Ivoire.

In the past year alone, cases of polio type 1 have decreased in these regions by roughly 65 percent. Additionally, Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination coverage has increased by 28 percent as a result of this campaign, making Africa the region with the second highest coverage rate for HPV vaccinations.

Despite recent improvements, rates of global immunization have begun to slip in recent years due to humanitarian crises, recent cuts in funding, and public doubt surrounding the efficacy and implications of child vaccinations. Humanitarian organizations have expressed concern due to the rise or re-emergence of several public health concerns. According to a study conducted by WHO, roughly 50 percent of people across 108 countries are experiencing moderate to severe disruptions to immunization services.

“The progress seen across African countries – bolstered by an unprecedented record of co-financing toward vaccine programmes in 2024 by African governments – demonstrates the tangible impact of sustained commitment,” said Thabani Maphosa, Chief Country Delivery Officer at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. “However, this momentum must not stall. Conflict, population growth, displacement, and natural disasters are creating ideal conditions for outbreaks to emerge and spread. Investing in immunization and securing sufficient funding for Gavi to carry out its mission over the next five years is essential to protect our collective future.”

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the recorded cases of measles reached a total of 10.3 million in 2023, marking a 20 percent increase from the previous year. It is projected that measles cases have risen sharply in 2024 and 2025.

Additionally, rates of meningitis infections have been on an upward trend in 2024 and 2025. Health experts have dubbed the recent rise in meningitis cases in sub-Saharan Africa as the “meningitis belt”, fearing that low and middle-income communities have been hit the hardest.

In 2024, there were nearly 26,000 cases of meningitis and 1,400 deaths across 24 countries. From January to March 2025, there have been approximately 5,500 suspected cases of meningitis and roughly 300 recorded deaths in 22 countries. Health experts also recorded re-emerging malaria and yellow fever epidemics.

In order to ensure global public health and maximize quality of life, it is imperative for governments to invest in health systems that benefit all walks of life, maximize disease surveillance, and tackle persisting cultural taboos surrounding immunization. However, recent cuts in funding threaten to undo decades of progress.

“The global funding crisis is severely limiting our ability to vaccinate over 15 million vulnerable children in fragile and conflict-affected countries against measles,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Immunization services, disease surveillance, and the outbreak response in nearly 50 countries are already being disrupted – with setbacks at a similar level to what we saw during COVID-19. We cannot afford to lose ground in the fight against preventable diseases.”

Although many local governments would consider allocating funds for vaccination services as financial losses, Gavi reports that investing in immunization campaigns and programs nets significant financial gains. In recognition of World Immunization Week, UNICEF, WHO, and Gavi released a joint report that detailed the results of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in Bangladesh.

The report found that Bangladesh’s EPI has saved roughly 94,000 lives, prevented 5 million child cases of child infections, and yielded a 25 dollar return per 1 dollar of U.S. funding invested. Additionally, as a result of this model, Bangladesh has managed to increase the coverage of fully immunized children from 2 percent to over 81 percent since 1979.

“The need to maintain investments in immunization to improve health security and protect populations from vaccine-preventable diseases has never been more urgent if we are to sustain the progress and tangible impact seen across Bangladesh and South-East Asian countries,” said Sam Muller, Regional Head, Core Countries at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. “It is important that Gavi is fully funded for its next strategic period from 2026 to 2030, and governments continue their remarkable commitment to the lifesaving power of vaccines.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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