Pakhshan Azizi and a child. Photo credit: Women's Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (WNCRI)

By Clare Quirk
JOHANNESBURG, Sep 1 2026 (IPS)

In 2024, Kurdish social worker Pakhshan Azizi was sentenced to death. She remains incarcerated in Evin Prison, Tehran, Iran. This is her story …

Please read her letter from prison here.

For more on Civicus’s Stand as My Witness Campaign.

Additional reporting and research: Cecilia Russell
Picture credits: Kurdistan Human Rights, BBC Persian, Clare Quirk, Wikipedia, CY Boechat (VOA)/Wikimedia Commons, UNICEF, Civicus, Amnesty International, ANF News, Vida Rabbani, Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (WNCRI)

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Lake Chungará and Parinacota volcano in northern Chile
Credit: Gerd Breitenbach, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

By Céline Delacroix
OTTAWA, Canada, Aug 28 2026 (IPS)

This week is World Water Week, the annual conference of governments, business, and civil society on building a water-secure future as global population, climate disruptions, and water demand increase. In Washington, it’s also Water Resources Development Act season, when every two years the US Congress reauthorizes the legilslation that funds US drinking water, wastewater systems, and flood risk management projects.

Water security ought to be something everyone can agree on, and there are long traditions of bipartisanship in past WRDA reauthorizations, and of diversity and inclusiveness in World Water Week conferences. But these days, water is increasingly a trigger for division, from the public outcry over data center water usage to anti-abortion activists introducing legislation to designate the abortion medication mifepristone as a water pollutant and get the US Environmental Protection Agency to regulate it, which is another way to restrict access to it.

For the record, mifepristone is no threat to waterways. Research overwhelmingly confirms its safety and efficacy, and a Food and Drug Administration assessment found its environmental accumulation in water was less than one part per billion. The lone study alleging mifepristone is a water pollutant is junk science. It used a debunked testing method and was published in a journal run by anti-abortion activists, and then cited by other anti-abortion activists.

While the mifepristone water scare is clearly disinformation, it’s so pointedly backwards that it points up an important truth: it isn’t abortion medication that threatens water security; on the contrary, it’s attacks on it and on family planning in general that pose a real threat.

There are several reasons for this. If family planning access is curtailed or cut off and birthrates rise, so will water demand and water stress. It will be worse in places with faster population growth, and worse globally for women and girls, who are the ones who have to collect the water in 80% of households experiencing shortages. Over 2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water. Women and girls suffer disproportionately from water shortages, yet they are generally excluded from decision making bodies or leadership positions that would give them a say in managing water.

In general, research shows that where gender disparities are high, women have more babies, population grows faster, and water scarcity gets worse. But the reverse is also true: where there is investment in and access to comprehensive family planning, and where women and girls are more empowered and included in decision making about managing water resources, over time birth rates decline, water stress eases, and water resiliency grows.

It ought to be obvious that population trends, changing demographics, and urbanization influence demand for water, food, energy, and land. Yet they are strangely absent from discourse on managing environment resources, including water governance. Ditto for gender inequality, which has a strong bearing on population growth.

The UN warns of “living beyond our hydrological means” amid water crisis and reaching “global water bankruptcy,” where water degradation has largely become irreversible. Population and gender issues are not controlling factors in this per se, as their impacts depend on patterns of production and consumption, technology, inequality and governanceThe same number of people can have radically different environmental footprints depending on where and how they live.

But population trends and gender equity are still important variables in how we use water and other resources that planners should not ignore. As human numbers and consumption levels rise, our ecological footprint, including water consumption, has become overwhelming and unsustainable.

This year, the Earth as a whole reached “overshoot day” – the day past which we’re consuming more in a given year than the Earth’s resources can regenerate — on July 30. The U.S. reached it March 14.

Climate change is intensifying drought, altering precipitation and snowpack, putting pressure on groundwater and surface water. For xample, fast regional population growth and development have stressed the Colorado River, which supplies roughly 40 million people and now faces severe and persistent shortages. In other water-stressed regions of the US, agriculture is the biggest consumer of shrinking water resources. The Ogallala Aquifer, for example, is getting depleted faster than it can naturally recharge.

Population dynamics are part of this complex picture. Water resources are embedded in an intricate web of human and ecological interaction. Water governance needs to take a broad, holistic view to understand the nexus of biodiversity, food production, and human needs and health as part of the same interconnected system of planetary health. Within that, managing water requires considering how population trends, human behavior, gender equity, technology, and human-caused climate change influence water systems.

The last thing policymakers should be doing is demonizing family planning as some kind of threat to the water supply. Reproductive health services are an intrinsic matter of human right, but they have critical environmental co-benefits, too, including easing population pressures on overtaxed water resources.

Managing water is not just about pipes and pumps; it’s about complex interactions between humans and ecosystems, managing them so they respect ecological limits as well as human rights and equity, which ultimately are all part of the same complex web. Water connects everything. Policymaking should too.

Céline Delacroix is adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Health Sciences, a Senior Fellow with the Population Institute, and Director of the FP/Earth Project.

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A street in Faizabad, the capital of Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province. Lailuma’s home province of Badakhshan has been plagued by clashes between various armed groups. Credit: Learning Together.

By External Source
FAYZABAD, Afghanistan, Aug 21 2026 (IPS)

Afghanistan has seen a number of unexplained murders in recent months.

One of the latest victims is Lailuma, the wife of well-known local singer Salam Maftoon and a community activist.

The murder took place in Ishkashim district, in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, Afghanistan, in early May. Lailuma was arriving at her restaurant when unidentified assailants shot her in a market area near the provincial government buildings.

Locals say there were several witnesses to the incident and that the attackers fled the scene immediately after the shooting. People rushed to help Lailuma, who was seriously injured, but she died before reaching the hospital. She was 35 years old.

The attackers have not yet been identified, and the motive for the murder is not officially known.

Lailuma’s senseless murder left many women in a state of terror and deep grief, locals say. Women who previously worked in tailoring workshops or at food stalls selling traditional bolani bread have now stopped working, fearing Lailuma’s fate

Lailuma is not the only victim. In May, the online media outlet Rawa News reported on several recent murders across the country. Among the victims was well-known tribal leader Hajiullah Nazar, who was shot.

According to the human rights organization Rawadar, at least, 611 people were killed or injured in targeted attacks, summary executions or other similar incidents in Afghanistan last year. This is more than 40 percent more than the previous year.

The majority of the victims were men. Among them were former government employees, people allegedly linked to the opposition, protesters, tribal leaders and other prominent figures in the community.

Targeted killings are particularly worrying in remote provinces, where the authorities’ capacity to provide security is limited, Rawa News reports. For example, Lailuma’s home province of Badakhshan has been plagued by clashes between various armed groups.

Lailuma opened a women-only restaurant and tailoring workshop in the city after the Taliban closed schools and universities to girls.

Her goal was to provide girls and women, as well as herself, with employment opportunities amid the difficult conditions in Afghanistan. At the same time, she sought to protect them from forced marriages.

Seven women worked in the restaurant and 11 girls in the tailoring workshop. The girls also received training for their work.

Lailuma also supported her family with her work, as restrictions on performing music had taken away her musician husband’s income. He has not been able to perform in concerts or festivals due to the restrictions imposed by the Taliban regime.

“I remember well how my wife worked in her restaurant together with other women and how active the girls in the tailoring workshop were. She was very enthusiastic about her work and emphasized to her colleagues that you should never lose hope,” Maftoon says.

He doesn’t understand what his wife’s “crime” was that she had to die for it.

Fatima (name changed), a 45-year-old close relative of Lailuma, says that it was the first restaurant in her village. Most residents in the area had never seen a restaurant for women only before.

“Women could go to a restaurant and eat together. It made us happy.”

Fatima can’t understand why Lailuma had to be killed.

Lailuma had already received several anonymous death threats, but she ignored them. She would often say that one day she would be able to help the women of her own village overcome their difficulties. Instead, she herself became a victim.

Lailuma’s senseless murder left many women in a state of terror and deep grief, locals say. Women who previously worked in tailoring workshops or at food stalls selling traditional bolani bread have now stopped working, fearing Lailuma’s fate.

Many of them do not even dare to attend funerals or wedding ceremonies. Recently, fewer and fewer women have been seen in the village center or at the local market.

“I don’t think any of the girls in this village dare to go to work or be active in any way. They don’t even dare to leave their homes,” says one villager.

Rahima (name changed), who also worked at Lailuma’s restaurant, says that after that day she has not dared to work again.

“That day they killed Lailuma. On another day it could be someone else from our restaurant.”

Nadia (name changed), a women’s rights activist, says that Afghan women are currently not safe even in the few jobs they still have. Most of the work available to them is related to small-scale private entrepreneurship, such as tailoring, handicrafts or, alternatively, working in a restaurant.

“Mysterious murders like this make women give up hope of getting a job or maintaining social relationships. Even life itself can seem meaningless.”

She hopes that the international community and human rights organizations will be more active in highlighting the violence and oppression experienced by Afghan women, which is present everywhere, both inside and outside the home.

Excerpt:

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, addresses the General Assembly 2026 high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS. The meeting discussed the implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the political declarations on HIV/AIDS. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Shuli Wong
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 21 2026 (IPS)

As the global HIV response shifts toward sustainable, nationally led, and rights-based care, a new UNAIDS framework published this week argues that integration must start with a country’s readiness.

The report — Operationalizing HIV Integration —published on August 17th, introduces the concept of “protective verticality”, which recognizes that countries begin integrating HIV care at different starting points; therefore, integration should begin according to a country’s readiness, epidemiological patterns, financing realities, and health system capacity.

The report paid particular attention to how in active conflict, fragile settings and outbreak zones, countries need to focus on the deliberate preservation of dedicated and stand-alone HIV infrastructure. “Protective verticality” comes into play because integrating this type of care into national health systems can be dangerous when these systems are themselves on the brink of collapse. The core principle is not a “rapid merger of HIV functions into weak or unstable platforms, but protection of essential services while progressively strengthening the systems, partnerships, financing arrangements and safeguards needed for integration,” the report stated. The focus is on protecting before integrating.

To accomplish this, the report put forth a three-phase approach to show that countries should only move forward in integrating HIV care once they have met the minimum safeguards and proven the health systems’ readiness:

1. ‘Stabilization’; to protect HIV service continuity,
2. ‘Connection”; to strengthen health care and community relationships,
3. ‘Embed’; to align HIV functions with national planning integration when ready.

The focus on HIV integration comes at a time of one of the largest reductions to international funding in decades. In July, UNAIDS reported that international HIV financing fell 18 percent in 2025, from USD 8.8 billion in 2024 to USD 7.3 billion in 2025, marking the lowest level of funding in over two decades.

“The era of relying on international aid is over,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS.

In 2025, 1.2 million people became infected with HIV, and 570,000 people died of AIDS-related illnesses. The reduction in international funding combined with the already fragile HIV response is exactly what the Operationalizing HIV Integration framework is designed to navigate.

The HIV and Ebola crisis across the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) showcases the importance of this framework. In May, as the Ebola outbreak surged across the Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, UNAIDS reported that fear of Ebola exposure in health facilities drove some people living with HIV to avoid community antiretroviral therapy distribution points and miss clinic appointments.

In response, UNAIDS helped integrate HIV protections directly into the DRC’s National Ebola Preparedness and Response Plan. UNAIDS also supported the development of an HIV Mitigation Plan to support the continuity of treatment across the affected regions and protect people living with HIV. These actions highlight a real-world example of the “stabilize” and “connect” phases the Operationalizing HIV Integration framework covers.

Sudan illustrates a longer-running version of the same crisis. When war broke out in April 2023, medical supply chains were cut off, and 75 percent of hospitals in conflict areas closed down, disrupting HIV treatment for thousands of people. In January, more than 1,000 days into the conflict, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) reported on its work with the Global Fund and the National Medical Supply Fund to maintain HIV treatment for patients in hard-to-reach settings. The response included setting up mobile primary health facilities to provide HIV testing and establishing cross-border access routes to deliver HIV medicines into Darfur. Due to the years of conflict, displacement, and medical supplies and personnel shortages, Sudan’s health system remains severely damaged. The conditions across Sudan highlight the importance of “protective verticality,” as any rapid and uniform integration of HIV care into the national health system remains difficult without Sudan’s readiness.

These cases highlight why the Operationalizing HIV Integration framework does not treat integration as a global uniform model. Dismantling HIV infrastructure in settings where health systems are actively under siege for integration purposes risks reversing fragile HIV progress. Sustainability and protection need to be examined, as the report argued integration should not be seen as the automatic absorption of all HIV services or systems into broader platforms. Strategic system transformation is needed.

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Fawzia Koofi, former Deputy Speaker of the Afghan Parliament, says the country is experiencing gender apartheid.

By Ariel F. Dumont
ROME, Aug 20 2026 (IPS)

FIVE years after the Taliban returned to power, Fawzia Koofi, the former Deputy Speaker of the Afghan Parliament, denounces what she describes as “gender apartheid.”

Despite bans, terror, and the systematic erasure of women from society, Afghan women continue to resist through underground schools and online solidarity networks.

Koofi was also a member of the official delegation that represented the Afghan government during the 2020 peace negotiations with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar.

Since the fall of Kabul, she has been living in Europe after being evacuated from Afghanistan, where she continues to advocate for Afghan women and campaign for political alternatives to Taliban rule. Speaking with IPS, Koofi explains how the Taliban have systematically erased women from public life while describing the resilience and determination of Afghan women to continue resisting.

IPS: Three years after their return to power, the Taliban have gradually stripped women of all their rights. Today you describe the situation as genuine gender apartheid. How would you describe the condition of Afghan women?

Fawzia Koofi: Women have gradually lost their rights as the Taliban imposed increasingly restrictive measures through a series of decrees. In 2021, girls were banned from attending secondary school. Then, in 2022, women were barred from universities. In 2024, they were no longer allowed to study medicine, not even gynaecology.

Today, every field of education is closed to them. Compared with the first Taliban regime, the current restrictions are even harsher. Yet Afghan women continue to resist because they know education is essential, and their families understand that it is vital. They attend classes in clandestine home-based schools.

Most of these home schools are run by NGOs that pay teachers’ salaries and sometimes even cover students’ internet connection costs. They also provide online English and computer courses. These schools do not issue diplomas. Nevertheless, students receive an education that sometimes enables them to start an online business, pursue distance learning while remaining underground, or teach other young girls.

IPS: How do these underground schools operate, and how do women manage to escape repression?

Koofi: Officially, these schools do not exist; they are not registered. As a result, whenever the Taliban discover them, they can arrest the teachers, students, or those responsible for running them. That is exactly what happened to one of the networks I helped establish, for example, in Ghor Province, in central-western Afghanistan, and also in Badakhshan, in the country’s northeast. They raided the schools and arrested the staff. In other cases, however, they may be more lenient when members of their families attend these schools.

The curriculum focuses on science, computer skills, and English to help women and girls obtain scholarships, work online, or run online businesses. Some women who manage to build small businesses personally take charge of marketing in an effort to expand their activities. Unfortunately, without diplomas or accreditation, professional opportunities remain extremely limited for most women.

Many Afghan women living in exile devote a large part of their time to providing online education for women inside Afghanistan. We connect them with university students and try to teach them English or other languages. It is regrettable that Western governments repeatedly promise to defend women’s rights while failing to provide the funding or scholarships that would allow Afghan women to continue their studies abroad, return home one day, and help rebuild their country. The Taliban’s declared objective is to erase women from Afghan society in the name of Islamic morality.

IPS: Why do you use the term gender apartheid?

Koofi: Because, little by little, women have been completely erased from public life. Some women tell me that when they walk through the streets of Kabul and encounter Taliban officials or soldiers, they are often looked at as though they were criminals.

They are told: “You are not allowed to work or attend university, so why are you out in the street?”

That is precisely the principle of apartheid: separating a gender or a group of people on the basis of their sex, race, or religion and excluding them from society. That is exactly what the Taliban are doing.

The silence of the international community is deeply regrettable. Some governments occasionally condemn the Taliban system, but that is where it ends.

Even worse, they adopt the same kind of practices.

The United Kingdom, for instance, continues to say, “We support Afghan women,” while refusing to grant student visas for fear that applicants might later seek political asylum. It makes no sense. How many of them would actually do so? Two hundred students? In a situation where they can neither study nor work in their own country, it should not be considered a problem if they apply for asylum.

All these contradictions, together with the international community’s lack of action, only encourage and strengthen the Taliban, who interpret this as a form of recognition and legitimacy.

Many experts say that women are disappearing from public space in Afghanistan. Do you agree with that assessment?

Koofi: Imagine the reality faced by women living there today, who are not even allowed to leave their homes freely. Take humanitarian aid distribution as an example.

In many regions, aid distribution is controlled by the Taliban with the assistance of the local councils they have appointed. Beneficiaries are selected from among relatives or supporters.

Single women, such as war widows with dependent children, or women who lost their jobs under Taliban rule, are excluded from receiving aid. And when they protest, the local council members appointed by the Taliban report them, and they are arrested.

There have been cases of sexual violence in Taliban prisons.

The Taliban have locked down the entire system by systematically controlling the country and all its institutions. If local council members rebel or fail to cooperate sufficiently, they are simply replaced. That is how the system functions.

Yet women continue to resist and to protest in order to survive, although it is far from easy. Some open beauty salons or small shops inside their homes. A few television channels that have reached agreements with the Taliban and comply with censorship are still allowed to employ women, but they are required to wear face masks while on air. In effect, they have become spokespersons for the Taliban, who tightly control the news that they broadcast.

Are there still any spaces where women can enjoy some degree of freedom?

They are becoming increasingly rare. Last month in Herat, in western Afghanistan, the Taliban arrested more than 60 women who were not wearing the burqa but instead a large headscarf in keeping with local tradition. Their families and other women protested, and for once, men also took to the streets. The Taliban responded by opening fire. To them, human life has very little value. They arrest, imprison, torture, and kill.

On April 28, they arrested three members of my family as well as one of our gardeners. They then confiscated my house. My relatives were held in solitary confinement for a week and tortured. We managed to mobilise social media, and my family was eventually released. All this simply because I am able to speak to the media and communicate with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Kabul.

In most cases, however, families do not even know where their loved ones are being held. They can disappear for months. The media do not report these cases because they are controlled by the Taliban. This is the reality for everyone. Women continue to write and to protest through social media, each in their own way.

Do you feel that the world has forgotten Afghanistan and Afghan women?

Yes. The world paved the way for the Taliban’s return.

Let us remember the Doha Agreement signed between the Taliban and the United States, which says absolutely nothing about the condition of women or about human rights in general. A

ll of this encouraged the Taliban.

I took part in those negotiations, and the Taliban told me that women’s rights were not among the priorities of my American and European friends. Unfortunately, they were right.

Now the European Union has invited the Taliban to negotiate the return of Afghans living abroad irregularly or individuals considered to pose a security threat. This approach is rather strange and paradoxical because as long as conditions in Afghanistan do not improve, people will continue to want to leave.

Everyone living in the country wants to leave. I speak by telephone every day with Afghans, and every one of them tells me they want to leave. Without work, without education, and without freedom, there is no dignity.

It is absurd. The European Union is engaging with the Taliban, who will simply exploit these negotiations for their benefit.

The attention of Western countries, and indeed of the world as a whole, is focused on other major conflicts. I believe this is a mistake because, sooner or later, Afghanistan will become a rear base for several violent extremist groups.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Islamic State (ISIS), and Al-Qaeda remain highly active in the region. In fact, Al-Qaeda’s leader was killed only two kilometres from the Taliban presidential palace in July 2022.

To claim that the Taliban will effectively fight these groups while allowing them to govern the country is, in my view, sheer hypocrisy. The world must act before it is too late. We are not asking for NATO troops to return. Rather, we are asking governments not to encourage or support the Taliban.

Unfortunately, I have the feeling that human rights — and women’s rights in particular — are simply not considered a strategic issue or a priority. That is the reality.

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SBI7 Secretariat in a huddle. Credit: IISD/ENB | Danny

By Stella Paul
NAIROBI, Aug 18 2026 (IPS)

Despite record participation in global biodiversity reporting and planning processes, countries remain off track to meet the world’s 2030 biodiversity goals, according to discussions that concluded this month at two key meetings under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Delegates left Nairobi with a package of recommendations on conservation, finance, business accountability and implementation that will now move to COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia, where governments will assess collective progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF).

The warning emerged from two back-to-back meetings under the Convention on Biological Diversity: the 28th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA-28), held from 27 July to 1 August 2026, and the seventh meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI-7), held from 4 to 12 August 2026. Together, the meetings were the last major negotiating session before COP17, which kicked off yesterday (August 18, 2026), where governments will conduct the first formal review of collective progress towards the KMGBF and consider measures to speed up implementation in the second half of the decade.

A Global Review Reveals the Gap Between Commitment and Delivery

The first global review of the KMGBF dominated discussions across both meetings. The review came at the halfway point between the adoption of the framework in 2022 and its 2030 deadline, drawing on an unprecedented volume of national submissions. By February 2026, 172 parties had submitted national biodiversity targets aligned with the framework, while 130 parties had filed national reports on implementation.

The assessment also examined 85 National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), more than 180 commitments from non-state actors, submissions from multilateral organisations, and dozens of case studies from Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

Taken together, the submissions painted a mixed picture. Governments have integrated the framework into national planning processes at an unprecedented rate, but progress remains uneven. The review found encouraging movement on several conservation-related targets, while action on biodiversity finance, subsidy reform, business accountability and inclusive governance lagged behind. It also exposed significant weaknesses in monitoring and reporting, with countries citing data gaps, financial constraints, limited technical capacity and institutional challenges as barriers to tracking progress.

The overarching conclusion was clear: despite growing engagement, the world is not on track to achieve the framework’s 2030 targets.

“It is true that progress is being made across all targets. However, implementation is not yet happening at the pace and scale needed to achieve the KMGBF. Fewer than half of aligned national targets assessed by Parties are currently on track, with some of the largest gaps in mobilising biodiversity finance, reforming harmful subsidies, addressing business impacts and dependencies, and shifting toward sustainable consumption,” said Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the CBD.

Jennifer Tauli Corpuz, of IIFB, spoke at the SBI on August 9. She called for Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ greater engagement in decision-making processes. CREDIT: IISD

Wildlife, Technology and Emerging Governance Challenges

The implementation gap was reflected across several of the issues discussed in Nairobi, from wildlife management and emerging technologies to business accountability and biodiversity finance.

Discussions on sustainable wildlife management and synthetic biology highlighted the growing complexity of biodiversity governance. Delegates debating sustainable wildlife management moved well beyond questions of species conservation, examining how biodiversity policies intersect with livelihoods, equitable benefit-sharing, community participation and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

The discussions reflected a growing recognition that conservation measures are more likely to succeed when they incorporate social and economic considerations alongside ecological objectives. Representing the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), Jennifer Tauli Corpuz argued that effective wildlife management depends on the “transparent, structured and meaningful participation” of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in decision-making processes.

Synthetic biology presented a different set of challenges. While delegates broadly agreed on the need to strengthen capacity-building, scientific cooperation and knowledge-sharing, discussions also exposed ongoing questions about how international biodiversity institutions should respond to rapidly evolving technologies. As scientific innovation advances, governments are increasingly being asked to balance potential benefits with concerns related to governance, risk management and oversight.

Taken together, the two agenda items illustrated how biodiversity negotiations are evolving. Future CBD discussions are likely to focus increasingly on balancing ecological objectives with technological innovation, social equity and effective governance.

Business Accountability Under Greater Scrutiny

A major focus of SBSTTA-28 was the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Business and Biodiversity Assessment, which examined how companies and financial institutions influence biodiversity outcomes.

Presenting the findings, IPBES Chair David Obura said the assessment identifies more than 100 practical actions that companies can take across their operations, supply chains and financial portfolios to reduce biodiversity impacts and support nature recovery.

“Businesses can no longer be seen only as drivers of biodiversity loss. They are also an essential part of the solution,” Obura said, adding that companies already have tools available to begin addressing biodiversity risks and dependencies.

The assessment linked many recommendations to KMGBF Target 15 on business disclosure and accountability. Negotiations highlighted continuing debates over disclosure requirements, supply-chain transparency and biodiversity impact reporting, underscoring growing expectations that corporate biodiversity impacts be measured rather than merely acknowledged.

The opening plenary of the 28th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA-28) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. CREDIT: Ahmed Nayim Yussuf/UNEP

Finance Emerges as a Central Political Challenge

At SBI-7, discussions shifted from technical issues to implementation challenges, including resource mobilisation, capacity-building, biodiversity mainstreaming and the Convention’s financial mechanisms.

The prominence of finance was closely linked to the findings of the global review, which identified finance among the weakest-performing areas of the framework. Although biodiversity finance has increased since the KMGBF was adopted, the review concluded that progress remains insufficient and that the 2025 milestone of mobilising USD 20 billion annually in international biodiversity finance was likely not achieved. Countries also reported continued challenges in securing financial resources, technology transfer and technical support needed for implementation.

These findings shaped much of the discussion at SBI-7, where delegates debated resource mobilisation, the Convention’s financial mechanism and the role of the Cali Fund, which is intended to channel private-sector contributions toward biodiversity conservation. While broad agreement exists on the need for greater biodiversity finance, significant differences remain over how resources should be raised, governed and distributed.

Echoing concerns raised by many developing countries, a delegate from the African Union stressed that “adequate, predictable and accessible financial resources are essential conditions for developing countries to translate global commitments into concrete national actions”.

“Ambition alone is not enough to accelerate implementation: it requires commensurate means,” he added.

Youth and Gender Advocates Push for More Inclusive Governance

Youth representatives from the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) welcomed progress on sustainable wildlife management but argued that current recommendations do not go far enough on business accountability, calling for stronger provisions on transparency, traceability and biodiversity impact assessments throughout wildlife-related supply chains. More broadly, youth advocates also called for greater inclusion in biodiversity decision-making. “A global review of progress is incomplete if it does not reflect the information, concerns, needs and priorities of youth and other rights-holders,” said a GYBN delegate.

Preparations ahead of COP17 have also drawn greater attention to gender-responsive biodiversity governance. In Armenia, the CBD Women’s Caucus, together with the Armenian COP17 Presidency, the CBD Secretariat and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, organised a training programme to strengthen women’s participation in biodiversity policy processes.

Mrinalini Rai of Women4Biodiversity argued that women, youth, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are not simply stakeholders but rather “key actors in the implementation, monitoring and review of the framework.” She said their knowledge systems, leadership and contributions are fundamental to ensuring biodiversity policies are “equitable, inclusive and effective”.

These discussions reflect a growing recognition that implementation challenges are not only technical or financial but also institutional and that broader participation is essential to strengthening biodiversity governance and implementation.

Looking Ahead to COP17

Despite the challenges identified in the review, Schomaker expressed optimism about the road to COP17.

“I think that we can all leave Nairobi with a sense of satisfaction at what we have accomplished here, but the task awaiting us in Yerevan in nine weeks will take all the stamina and determination that Parties can summon.”

When governments gather in Yerevan in October for COP17, they will face a clear challenge: turning commitments into the financial, institutional and policy action needed to keep the framework’s 2030 goals within reach.

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Amna Idres Musa Mahamod leads the Al-Wifag Women’s Association in Toker, Sudan. Photographed for the Through Her Lens: Women Rising for Peace Exhibition. Credit: UN Women/Mona Elfateh

By Shuli Wong
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 2026 (IPS)

Women-led and women’s rights organizations (WLOs) in humanitarian settings are collapsing amidst a complicated predicament in which needs are surging and international support is dwindling.

These organizations are often the first responders in humanitarian and conflict settings, providing psychosocial and gender-based violence (GBV) support; however, 84 percent of WLOs surveyed report that women and girls in the communities they serve have reduced access to essential services, according to UN Women’s July 2026 Beyond the Breaking Point report.

The report surveyed 855 WLOs operating across 52 crisis- and conflict-affected countries and found that as women and girls face heightened risks and increased need for assistance, services and support have dwindled significantly. Nine in ten organizations say they cannot meet the current levels of need, and two in five expect to shut down either temporarily or permanently within the next year.

Galit Wolfensohn, UN Women’s Humanitarian Research and Knowledge Management Specialist

Beyond the Breaking Point builds off UN Women’s alarm first raised in their 2025 report, At a Breaking Point. In it, they warned that half of WLOs surveyed in crisis zones risked closure within six months if current funding levels persisted. Fifteen months later, the situation remains the same. When asked what the warning in ‘At a Breaking Point’ generated from donors, Galit Wolfensohn, UN Women’s Humanitarian Research and Knowledge Management Specialist, told Inter Press Service it brought “greater recognition among donor governments and humanitarian partners of the severe consequences that funding reductions were having.” She added that the response has “not matched the scale or urgency of the crisis…the latest findings show that recognition alone is not enough.”

When examining the collapse of WLOs, Sudan offers an illuminating case to understand the on-the-ground impacts of the reduction of services. Over three years of conflict in Sudan have driven GBV needs to unprecedented levels, with the number of girls and women requiring GBV services quadrupling since the conflict began. However, two-thirds of WLOs in Sudan reported having to close or significantly reduce services, and half expect to close entirely within the next year without urgent financial support.

Salvator Nkurunziza, UN Women’s Representative in Sudan

As WLOs across Sudan have had to either close or scale back operations, Nkurunziza explained that “women and girls lose access not only to critical support but also to safe spaces that provide protection, psychosocial assistance, information, and a sense of security.” WLOs act as trusted entry points for survivors of GBV seeking help, and when these services disappear and become harder to access, survivors “may be less able or willing to seek assistance.” When services disappear, it creates a vicious cycle that “can result in prolonged exposure to violence, increased psychosocial distress, and heightened protection risks,” including greater reliance on “negative coping mechanisms, like child marriage and other harmful practices.”

“What we are observing is likely only the surface, as the absence of quality services is deterring those in need from seeking help,” Fabrizia Falcione, UNFPA’s Representative in Sudan, said on help-seeking behaviors in GBV survivors. In El Obeid, UNFPA estimates that 55,712 women and girls are at an increased risk of GBV as of August.

Fabrizia Falcione, UNFPA’s Representative in Sudan

Despite the operational and financial challenges, he remarked that many Sudanese WLOs “have demonstrated remarkable resilience and adaptability”. Organizations have “continued to provide services by reprioritizing activities, mobilizing community-based volunteers, utilizing remote modalities where feasible, and strengthening partnerships with other local actors to share resources and referral networks.” However, Nkurunziza was clear that these adaptive approaches “are not a substitute for sustained financial support.”

On a global scale, Wolfensohn outlined the changes that need to happen within the next six months to reverse the course of what was documented in the reports. “Donors must protect and increase funding for WLOs by providing direct, flexible, predictable and multi-year financing,” she said.

At the same time, Wolfensohn emphasized that funding alone is not sufficient: “women’s organizations must be recognized as essential humanitarian partners through meaningful participation and leadership in humanitarian coordination and decision-making.”

Reversing the current trajectory requires a type of accountability that does not yet exist: “measurable commitments, clear funding targets and greater transparency on how much humanitarian financing reaches local women-led organizations directly,” Wolfensohn said. Without decisive action, WLOs will be forced to scale back or close services globally.

“Reversing this trend is not only about sustaining organizations; it is about safeguarding access to protection services, GBV prevention and response, livelihoods support, and other critical assistance relied upon by women and girls in crisis settings,” Wolfensohn remarked.

In the weeks since Beyond the Breaking Point was published, Wolfensohn discussed the impact the report has had in increasing conversations between donors, governments, and humanitarian organizations. “The discussions generated by the report are helping to reinforce broader humanitarian reform agendas focused on localization, equitable partnerships and the meaningful participation of affected communities,” Wolfensohn said. However, she stopped short of claiming progress at the scale required to reverse the trends documented in the course, but “it should serve as a catalyst for action.”

UN organizations are already working in collaboration to close the funding gaps WLOs face in Sudan. According to Falcione, the approach is not only about advocacy, but also about working with WLOs “as genuine partners in the response.” Agencies like UNFPA and UN Women “support local and grassroots organizations in capacity development, institutional strengthening, leadership, and empowerment.” Falcione underscored the importance of strengthening the partnership, as WLOs “are not simply beneficiaries or implementing partners, they are essential actors in the humanitarian response.”

Over the course of fifteen months, UN Women’s reports have painted a picture from warning to confirming what happens when WLOs disappear. In Wolfensohn’s own framing, what comes next depends on measurement and follow-through. This requires donors publicly tracking what funds reach WLOs, and commitment to multi-year flexible financing. Recognition alone will not solve the problem, and supporting WLOs is the difference between a third report that documents reversals of these trends or repeats the same warnings.

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CIVICUS discusses the challenges posed by Paraguay’s ‘anti-NGO law’ with Hugo González, executive director of the Paraguayan Network of LGBTQ+ Artists (REPAR+), a civil society organisation (CSO) that promotes the rights of LGBTQI+ people, which has joined the constitutional challenge against this law.

Hugo González

What are the problems with Law 7363?

The law was enacted in November 2024, and its regulations came into force in October 2025. It applies to CSOs that receive or manage private or public funds from national or international sources and use those funds to influence public policy or state activities. The regulatory decree defines influence broadly, including reports, press releases and other forms of public expression.

The law establishes a public register administered by the Ministry of Economy and Finance and requires balance sheets, minutes, supporting documents and annual reports on programmes, beneficiaries, professionals, staff and affiliated entities. It also prohibits reference to donor confidentiality to circumvent these controls and provides for sanctions ranging from a formal warning to suspension and deregistration.

Civil society doesn’t oppose transparency. We were already complying with civil, labour, tax and anti-money laundering obligations, so this law was unnecessary. We call it the ‘big stick law’ because it duplicates controls, uses broad definitions and turns public advocacy into a risk factor that triggers extraordinary scrutiny for punitive purposes.

In what political context was the law passed?

The bill was passed thanks to the majority held by the ruling Colorado Party. The process moved forward against a backdrop of stigmatisation of CSOs, human rights activists and journalists, and coincided with the work of a congressional committee that framed CSO funding within a narrative centred on money laundering.

The law also reflected the convergence between parts of the ruling coalition and conservative religious networks. Among its main proponents were legislators such as Gustavo Leite and Lizarella Valiente, who have also participated in activities and initiatives linked to evangelical organisations. While this doesn’t prove that these organisations drafted or funded the law, it does highlight an asymmetry in access and scrutiny between groups that influence public policy.

The law treats different groups that influence the same policies very differently. It imposes extensive controls on CSOs but expressly exempts churches and religious groups.

What impact is the new law having?

The impact began even before the first sanctions were imposed. Ever since the Ministry of Economy and Finance launched the registration portal, CSOs have had to devote time, money and staff to complying with the new accounting, administrative and legal requirements. For small organisations or those run by volunteers, this means that a large proportion of their resources is no longer being channelled into activities, assistance, research or support services.

Uncertainty is also a factor. Although sanctions are not yet being applied on a large scale, the law is having a deterrent effect. Donors, organisations and supporters fear the consequences of getting involved or advocating for causes.

The obligation to provide detailed information on beneficiaries and supporters poses privacy risks, particularly in small communities and among vulnerable groups. The safety of these people depends on who has access to the information, for what purpose and with what effective safeguards.

What obstacles do LGBTQI+ organisations face, and how does the new law exacerbate them?

In Paraguay, gender and diversity organisations operate in a context of structural discrimination, characterised by hate speech, exclusion from education and the labour market, barriers to accessing healthcare and difficulties in reporting violence. Added to this is the lack of a comprehensive anti-discrimination law, legal recognition for same-sex couples and accessible administrative procedures for the recognition of gender identity. All this leaves LGBTQI+ people in a particularly vulnerable situation.

Law 7363 exacerbates these difficulties, as it imposes broad and unclear requirements on CSOs that defend these rights. REPAR+’s artistic activities can be regarded as advocacy, culture and support all at once. The vagueness of the law, combined with discretionary powers and the threat of suspension, makes it impossible to predict how these activities will be classified, and could stifle critical voices before any sanction is imposed.

How has civil society mobilised to challenge the law at the Supreme Court?

The response has combined dialogue, international appeals, litigation and technical analysis. Since December, CSOs working on community development, culture, the environment and human rights, as well as rural communities, have filed constitutional challenges against the law and its implementing decree. REPAR+ has joined the effort because we believe freedoms of association and expression are essential for organisations that support LGBTQI+ people, denounce discrimination and engage in public policy.

We hope that the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court will examine these challenges independently and urgently, in the light of the Constitution, the American Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A favourable ruling would directly protect the organisations bringing the challenges and establish an important precedent. We don’t seek to be exempt from accountability. We seek to prevent a regulatory process from becoming a form of political surveillance, exposing vulnerable people or serving as punishment for dissent.

What action is needed in and outside Paraguay to reverse these restrictions?

Within Paraguay, the court must rule urgently and prevent irreparable harm while it considers the merits of the case. However, a lasting solution requires Congress and the executive to repeal or comprehensively modify the law, through a pluralistic consultation process. Any regulation should be precise, avoid duplicate registrations and protect beneficiaries, donors, victims and workers. Intrusive requests should be subject to independent scrutiny and sanctions should be limited to what is strictly necessary and proportionate. These criteria should apply equally to anyone who manages public funds or influences policy, including religious organisations.

The international community could continue to monitor the situation at the United Nations, particularly through the Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review process, and at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. It can also take action through embassies and cooperation agencies. Donors should offer flexible support to cover accounting, legal, security and technological costs, rather than withdrawing out of fear of the new regime.

Paraguay also needs a comprehensive anti-discrimination law, effective recognition of gender identity and protection for human rights defenders and journalists.

We are not asking for external guardianship or privileges. We are calling for democratic solidarity to preserve a space where people can organise, question and propose ideas. Transparency should strengthen democracy, not expose vulnerable people or turn criticism of those in power into a cause for suspicion.

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

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Paraguay: arbitrary detention of land rights defenders CIVICUS Monitor 24.Apr.2026
Cutting civil society’s lifeline: the global spread of foreign agents laws CIVICUS Lens | report 19.Oct.2025
Paraguay: ‘The new law’s purpose is to increase government control over civil society’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Marta Ferrara and Olga Caballero 25.Oct.2024

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

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

On July 7, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres presented a report from the Special Rapporteur on the sale, sexual exploitation, and sexual abuse of children, Ai Kihara-Hunt, to the General Assembly, underscoring her goals and priorities for the implementation of protection measures for children worldwide.

The report, submitted in coordination with the Human Rights Council, highlights the systemic barriers that leave children increasingly vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse, including weak government oversight, limited support and justice services for victims, and worsening protracted crises.

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

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

This follows the 61st session of the Human Rights Council on March 10, where former Special Rapporteur Mama Fatima Singhateh warned that emerging digital technologies are revolutionizing how perpetrators commit abuse and rendering online spaces increasingly dangerous for children. Singhateh urged closer cooperation between humanitarian actors, governments, and stakeholders to prevent digital advancements from creating “new pathways” for human rights violations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Syrian women speak out about obstetric violence while giving birth. Credit: Sonia Al-Ali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
ALEPPO, Syria, Aug 11 2026 (IPS)

The abuse 30-year-old Nour Al-Badawi experienced in an Aleppo public hospital while giving birth resulted in her having two major follow-up operations and left her with depression and anxiety.

She is one Syrian woman who spoke out to IPS about “obstetric violence” – a term that refers to physical, verbal, or psychological abuse by healthcare providers; medical interventions performed without the pregnant woman’s informed consent; and violations of her dignity and privacy within healthcare facilities.

The experience of these women extends far beyond medical challenges and harsh humanitarian conditions.

Obstetric violence encompasses all forms of abuse, neglect, violations of dignity and privacy, or the performance of medical interventions without informed consent.

Al-Badawi describes her most recent childbirth experience as one of the harshest chapters of her life.

“Poverty forces us to give birth in public hospitals and endure the mistreatment that takes place there. Because of the violence and abuse I experienced during childbirth, I no longer consider becoming pregnant again.”

Nour explains that her suffering was not limited to verbal insults and violations of her dignity but extended to violent practices during the delivery process, including forceful pressure on her abdomen, as well as an improperly performed procedure to widen the birth canal. This resulted in serious uterine complications that required two surgical operations to treat an obstetric urinary fistula.

The experience completely transformed Nour’s life. She developed severe depression and a constant desire for isolation. Her family also faced significant financial burdens to cover the costs of her treatment, forcing her to sell some of her belongings and resort to borrowing money.

Despite what happened to Nour, her husband chose not to make any comment and said he would not file a complaint or take legal action against the healthcare centre where the delivery took place, fearing further disputes and additional difficulties. Instead, he assumed responsibility for caring for his wife and covering her treatment expenses.

Farida Al-Hassoun (26), from Hama, also remembers the day she gave birth to her first child at a public hospital as one of the most difficult days of her life — not only because of the pain of labour, but also because of the way she was treated by nurses and midwives inside the hospital.

“I was screaming from the pain, but a nurse told me to be quiet and said I was exaggerating. No one explained what they were going to do. I was shocked when they stitched the wound resulting from childbirth without anaesthesia. At that moment, I felt indescribable pain,” Al-Hassoun said.

She points out that her fear increased as her questions were ignored and she received no psychological support during childbirth. After leaving the hospital, she was unable to forget the experience and continued to suffer from anxiety for months whenever she remembered the delivery room.

Al-Hassoun asks: “Can a Syrian woman give birth with dignity, or will violence inside delivery rooms remain a silent experience that no one steps forward to stop?”

Dr Ola Al-Omar (36), an obstetrician and gynaecologist, discusses the risks of obstetric violence, saying:

“In Syria, years of war and economic collapse have placed increasing pressure on the healthcare system, which has affected the quality of maternal care services. Shortages of medical staff, overcrowded hospitals, and declining resources have all contributed to creating an environment in which women are exposed to mistreatment during pregnancy and childbirth.”

She said that obstetric violence took many forms, including performing medical interventions without explaining them to the patient or obtaining her informed consent; using humiliating expressions; blaming women for crying out during labour; failing to respect privacy inside delivery rooms; depriving women of sufficient information about their health condition; ignoring their pain; or delaying the provision of necessary care.

She emphasises that every woman has the right to receive respectful maternity care, including the preservation of her dignity and privacy, obtaining informed consent before any medical intervention, receiving the necessary information to make decisions regarding her health, and being protected from humiliation, discrimination, or neglect.

Social and Psychological Counsellor Sereen Al-Sheikh (33), from the city of Idlib in northern Syria, speaks about the suffering of pregnant women, saying: “I have met many women who were subjected to artificial induction of labour to accelerate the delivery process, even though the mother’s cervix was already dilated, as well as repeated vaginal examinations that caused severe distress and trauma. In addition, patients are not allowed to have companions present during childbirth, and their movement is sometimes restricted.”

Al-Sheikh explains that these practices leave long-term psychological effects, including fear of becoming pregnant again, postpartum psychological disorders, and a loss of trust in healthcare institutions.

“Most women choose silence out of fear of social stigma, as well as because it is difficult to prove that violations or abuses have occurred. These incidents often take place without evidence or witnesses and, therefore, pass without accountability,” she says.

A childbirth experience may end with the arrival of a newborn into the world, but for some Syrian women, what follows is a long journey of fear and trauma.

At a moment that is supposed to be among the safest and most reassuring experiences in a woman’s life, some Syrian women find themselves facing an entirely different reality: cries that no one listens to, medical procedures carried out without explanation or consent, and harsh words that remain engraved in their memories for years after childbirth.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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

Harshit Singh

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would you call this a Gen Z movement?

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

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

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

What role has social media played?

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

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

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

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

How has the government responded?

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

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

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

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

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

What has the movement achieved?

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

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

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

What support does the movement need now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“They say driving is only for men. But women have proved that they, too, can drive.” Credit: Learning Together.

By External Source
KABUL, Aug 7 2026 (IPS)

The Taliban’s rise to power robbed Mehrmaa of her husband, her job and her chance to live freely.

It was a cold, snowy night in March 2022 when Mehrmaa’s neighbors brought her husband’s lifeless body home. He had disappeared more than seven months earlier. Mehrmaa had barely managed to cope with the new restrictions imposed on women by the Taliban, and now she felt as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

“At the end of our road home, there were seven coffins containing bodies that had been delivered to their families. Seven months ago they had been taken alive and now they have been returned dead,” Mehrmaa says.

“I will continue to fight against forced marriage for the sake of my children and in memory of my late husband, until my last breath,” Mehrmaa says

Mehrmaa describes how, in July 2021, the Taliban took over the provinces and its forces entered her hometown on motorbikes. The Taliban raised their flag in the centre of the city as a sign of victory. Government helicopters bombed the city, leaving many people homeless and without shelter. Mehrmaa’s province was the first to fall under Taliban oppression. Many fled in panic.

“The state kidnapped many young men to defend the city, including my husband.”

After the Taliban takeover, women were threatened with imprisonment if they walked the streets alone.

“Women were flogged in public for small and frivolous reasons. Widowed women and underage girls were forced into marriages without their consent.”

Women faced daily hardships, regardless of whether they had male relatives to protect them.

“Now that the Taliban are in power in Afghanistan, what can we do? We only live for our children. Women want to work so they can earn money for their families.”

Under the Taliban, women were forbidden from working. Mehrmaa wanted to continue working to support her children. That drove her onto the streets.

“Now I live a nomadic life with my children. We have no permanent home and we don’t stay in one place for long.”

Work became a means of survival

Mehrmaa is a trained teacher and midwife. She treats women’s fertility problems with herbs and gives massages for knee, back and joint pain. Under her late husband’s guidance, Mehrmaa learned to drive. She ran the first driving school for women in her province and taught hundreds of women how to drive.

Then the Taliban banned women from driving. Under the direction of the Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, or morality police, local Taliban authorities reprimanded Mehrmaa and issued her a warning.

“They say driving is only for men. But women have proved that they, too, can drive. Even those who don’t have a husband in their family have learnt to drive.”

After her husband died, Mehrmaa had to continue working to feed her children. To survive, she returned to the city and began working as a teacher.

Despite changing careers, Mehrmaa was once again banned from working. Girls were banned from attending school from high school onwards, and educational institutions were closed to them. Mehrmaa took up work as a domestic helper and also provided personal physical education lessons to girls and women who had been excluded from school.

She is also a skilled physiotherapist. She founded the first women-only sports and massage centre so that she could help women manage their weight and improve their overall health. Mehrmaa’s health advice has given hope to women who had lost faith in their recovery.

Through her work, Mehrmaa met an 18-year-old girl who had fallen into a well two years earlier, damaging her legs, arms and ribs in the accident. Mehrmaa treated the girl’s muscles by massaging them with olive and black cumin oil. In less than two months, the girl was able to move.

The girl’s father praised Mehrmaa’s skills at the local mosque. Men heard about her healing abilities and rushed to propose marriage to her.

The Taliban regime considers it shameful for an unmarried woman to work alone. When the morality police learnt that Mehrmaa had rejected all offers of marriage, they banned her from working.

Mehrmaa rejected a life of dependence on others.

“For the sake of my children, I want to earn my own honest living and not live under the humiliation of anyone,” she says.

Sometimes injustice is a greater pain than poverty.

“I will continue to fight against forced marriage for the sake of my children and in memory of my late husband, until my last breath,” Mehrmaa says.

Once again, Mehrmaa moved with her children, this time to the northeast of the country. She brought with her hope for justice and a better future.

The women of her new village encouraged Mehrmaa to stay and help provide healthcare at local clinics. They told her about the countless pregnant women who die before they can reach a hospital.

The women in the village speak of Mehrmaa with admiration, describing her as incredibly kind and capable.

“It’s as if there’s light in every finger of hers,” they say, using an Afghan proverb to describe someone who is highly skilled and brings much good to those around them.

Despite constant losses, threats, and marriage proposals, Mehrmaa keeps going. She fights for her children, for women in need, and for a better future. Mehrmaa envisions an Afghanistan where women can work freely, study, and take care of their families.

Excerpt:

Anti-FGM activists protests outside the National Assembly in Banjul, The Gambia, on 18 March 2024, as lawmakers discuss a bill seeking to lift the ban on FGM. Credit: by Muhamadou Bittaye/AFP

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 3 2026 (IPS)

Last August, a one-month-old girl in The Gambia bled to death after being subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that had been illegal in the country since 2015. FGM is a human rights violation, whatever the appeals to faith or tradition made in its defence, but now the Gambian Supreme Court is being asked to strike the country’s ban down. This is the second attempt in two years to make FGM legal again.

Civil society stopped it the first time. When a repeal bill reached the National Assembly in 2024, the Network Against Gender-Based Violence brought survivors to testify, lobbied legislators, ran radio programmes and obtained a ruling from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University saying that FGM is not required under Islam. The bill fell in July 2024.

The ongoing fight in The Gambia is a measure of how fragile advances in the recognition of rights are. FGM is in retreat across most of the countries where it is practised, the result of decades of campaigning by survivors and community organisations. But holding that ground is becoming harder, as the money supporting those campaigns dries up and a resurgent anti-rights movement works to recast FGM as a traditional practice under foreign attack.

A practice in retreat

Over 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, with an additional four million cut every year. But the direction of travel has changed. A 2024 UNICEF report found that half of the decline in prevalence over the past 30 years has come in the last decade, with rates among adolescent girls halved or cut by 30-plus percentage points in countries including Ethiopia, Kenya and Sierra Leone. Attitudes have shifted too. Around 400 million people in practising countries, two-thirds of the population, now say they want FGM to end.

That change has a clear source. The Joint Programme run by UNICEF and the UN Population Fund found that the sharpest reductions come where communities are supported to deliberate and then commit, publicly and collectively, to abandoning the practice. The UN channels funding and provides coordination, but the dialogues, declarations and door-to-door persuasion are the work of community activists, national organisations and survivor networks. Thanks to these civil society efforts, in 2025 alone, over 7.5 million people took part in community dialogues and over 190,000 religious leaders and community influencers publicly denounced FGM.

The tools that work

Where campaigners have targeted the religious justifications that sustain FGM, results have followed. In 2025, Islamic scholars in Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia issued a joint ruling saying that nothing in the faith requires FGM. Litigation has proved another powerful tool. In July 2025, the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States found Sierra Leone in breach of its international obligations for failing to criminalise FGM, and said that, when intentionally inflicted, the practice meets the threshold of torture. In India, the Supreme Court has begun hearing whether cutting among the Dawoodi Bohra community should lose constitutional protection as an essential religious practice. And this June, Colombia became the first country in Latin America to ban FGM, driven by Emberá Indigenous women campaigning against a practice carried out in their own community.

Prohibition is now the norm rather than the exception, with Djibouti and Guinea writing bans into their constitutions in 2025. But laws alone don’t necessarily change what happens on the ground, and enforcement remains thin. Arrests and prosecutions rose sharply in 2025, yet there were still only 711 FGM court cases all year. In The Gambia, the fine imposed on the country’s first convicted cutters was paid by a prominent imam, an act that helped galvanise the campaign seeking to repeal the ban.

The movement’s defunding

The tactics that drove three decades of progress are now being starved of funding, with budget cuts falling hardest on the survivor-led and grassroots groups that are most effective but always face the toughest struggles for support. Funding for the Joint Programme fell from US$29.6 million in 2024 to US$16.3 million in 2025. The dismantling of USAID removed the largest single source of civil society funding worldwide, and total US foreign aid halved in a year. The UK, once the biggest funder of FGM prevention, is winding down its flagship programme with no replacement, so it can spend more on weapons.

The economics make no sense, because every dollar invested in prevention brings a tenfold return. The Joint Programme estimates that treating the health consequences of FGM currently costs US$1.4 billion a year. Politics, though, is playing a big part. In global north countries, political shifts are driving the withdrawal of aid, and far-right parties invoke FGM to stigmatise migrant communities while also opposing the gender justice policies that would make a difference. In practising countries, prohibition is increasingly recast as a foreign imposition on culture and faith. What unites these arguments is a shared sleight of hand that treats FGM as a question of cultural identity rather than a violation of fundamental human rights.

Elimination by 2030, the target that states set when they agreed the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, is already out of reach. But the evidence on what works is not in dispute, and it points towards communities and grassroots movements. The question is whether governments that claim to value human rights will keep supporting those delivering progress, or let a generation of girls pay the price of retreat.

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

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

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

Hripsime Kizogyan

What was the fake Pride campaign about?

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

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

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

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

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

What was the campaign trying to achieve?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How is Pink Armenia countering disinformation?

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

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

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

What support does Armenian civil society need?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Josephine Sembeyo (in blue) competes during Kenya's World Athletics Under-20 trials in May, where she qualified for the World Athletics Under-20 Championships in Oregon. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

By Robert Kibet
OLOITOKTOK, Kenya, Jul 30 2026 (IPS)

Before sunrise each morning, 19-year-old Josephine Sembeyo joins dozens of teenage runners leaving Magnolia Athletics Camp for training beneath the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

The quiet morning air is broken only by the rhythm of footsteps along the dusty roads that have shaped generations of Kenyan distance runners.

But for Sembeyo, every kilometre represents far more than preparation for the 2026 World Athletics Under-20 Championships, where she will represent Kenya in the 1,500 metres.

Running has given her a chance she once feared might never come: to complete her education, support her family and make choices about her own future.

“Life hasn’t been easy for us. My father married a second wife and left my mother to raise us on her own. Seeing everything my mother has gone through motivates me every day. I want to succeed in athletics and education so that one day I can support her and my siblings and give them a better life,” Sembeyo says.

Girls from Magnolia Athletics Camp during a daily road training session in Oloitokitok, Kenya. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

A Camp Creating New Possibilities

Sembeyo is among 45 girls from pastoralist communities living and training at Magnolia Athletics Camp in Oloitokitok, near Kenya’s border with Tanzania.

The camp provides full scholarships covering education, accommodation, meals, athletics training and safeguarding support.

For many of the girls, athletics is not only about competition. It has become a pathway to education, confidence and opportunities that might otherwise remain out of reach.

The girls’ journey comes as they mark the International Day for Women and Girls of African Descent on July 25, a day that recognises the contributions, resilience and experiences of women and girls of African descent while highlighting the need to address discrimination and inequality.

For girls growing up in marginalised communities, access to education, safe spaces and opportunities can be a powerful tool for breaking cycles of poverty and exclusion.

Coach Andrew Lesuuda says Magnolia was created not only to identify talented runners but also to give girls a safe environment where they can develop academically and personally.

“When we started Magnolia Athletics Camp, our vision was not only to identify talented runners. We wanted to create an environment where girls could discover their potential, stay in school and believe that they can achieve more in life,” Lesuuda says.

“Athletics gives them an opportunity to dream, but education gives them the foundation to build a future beyond sport.”

Sports Against Early Marriage and FGM

Many of the girls joining Magnolia come from communities where opportunities for girls remain limited and where some continue to face risks linked to female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage.

According to UNICEF, more than 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM. The United Nations says progress towards ending the practice remains too slow to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target of eliminating FGM and child marriage by 2030.

Kenya outlawed FGM in 2011 and has made progress through legislation and awareness campaigns, but the practice continues in some communities, particularly among sections of pastoralist populations.

The struggles facing girls in vulnerable communities are part of a wider global challenge.

Sarah Hendriks, a UN Women spokesperson, in a recent press conference said no country in the world has achieved full legal equality between women and men, leaving millions of girls exposed to harmful practices and unequal opportunities.

“No country in the world has achieved full legal equality between women and men. More than half of the world’s countries do not actually define rape by law on the basis of consent. Nearly three-quarters — 74% of the world’s countries — still allow child marriage by law, allowing girls to be married as children,” Hendriks said.

At Magnolia, athletics has become a tool for changing that reality by keeping girls in school and giving them opportunities beyond traditional expectations.

A Second Chance Through Running

Before joining Magnolia, Sembeyo feared her education could end early and that she might face an early marriage.

Today, she believes the camp has transformed her future.

“Had it not been for Magnolia Athletics Camp, I believe my life would have been very different. I was at risk of an early and forced marriage, but coming here gave me the chance to stay in school, train and dream about a better future. Today, I’m happy because I know my life has a direction,” she says.

Her daily routine starts before sunrise with training, followed by school and another athletics session in the afternoon before homework in the evening.

“Every morning when I train, I remind myself why I’m doing it. I know every session brings me closer to my dream and gives me another opportunity to change my family’s life,” she says.

When Climate Change Threatens Dreams

Sembeyo is joined at Magnolia by Jeska Lenawatop, a 1,500-metre runner from Lkuroto village in Samburu County, a pastoralist region in northern Kenya.

Before joining the camp, Jeska’s life revolved around helping her family care for goats and sheep, the main source of livelihood for many pastoral households.

But recurring droughts have devastated livestock and deepened economic hardship for communities that depend on animals for survival.

“Before Magnolia, my life was mainly about grazing goats and sheep. With droughts destroying livestock, our family’s main source of income, I had little hope for the future. This camp gave me a chance to stay in school and pursue my dreams,” Jeska says.

Through athletics and education, Jeska now sees a future beyond the challenges facing her community.

Building Confidence Through Education

Another athlete benefiting from Magnolia is Felister Naimutie, a 400 m and 800 m runner from Lolgorian village in Kilgoris.

She says drought and limited opportunities affected many girls growing up in her community.

“Growing up, I saw how drought affected our families and made life difficult. Many girls had few choices beyond pastoral duties and early marriage. Magnolia gave me hope through education and athletics,” Felister says.

For her, the camp represents more than a training facility. It is a place where she can continue learning while pursuing her sporting ambitions.

Beyond the Finish Line

Barnaba Korir, Athletics Kenya’s Youth Development Director, says community-based programmes, such as Magnolia, complement national efforts to identify young talent while ensuring athletes remain in school.

He says sport can build confidence, leadership and opportunities for young people.

At Magnolia, parents, teachers, community leaders and anti-FGM advocates also engage with families to promote girls’ education and challenge harmful practices.

As another training session ends beneath Mount Kilimanjaro, the girls jog back to camp laughing and encouraging one another.

For Sembeyo, the finish line is no longer defined only by medals.

Her selection to represent Kenya at the World Athletics Under-20 Championships has strengthened her belief that athletics can transform not only her life but also those of her family.

“Being selected to represent Kenya at the World Under-20 Championships means everything to me. It’s proof that hard work pays off, and I believe it is opening opportunities that can change my life. I want to make my family proud and show other girls that they should never give up on their dreams,” she says.

One day, she hopes to stand on an international podium wearing Kenya’s colours.

But her greatest ambition goes beyond medals.

“I want girls from communities like mine to know that education and sport can change their lives. If someone believes in you and gives you an opportunity, you can achieve your dreams. My dream is not only to win medals for Kenya but also to make sure my mother and my siblings have a better life,” Sembeyo says.

Perhaps Magnolia’s greatest achievement will not be measured by medals but by the number of girls who leave the camp with education, confidence and the freedom to choose the futures they want.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IPS UN Bureau Report

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“It is no longer clear what is allowed and what is not. Uncertainty keeps people in their homes. The city has fallen silent, and businesses are struggling.” Credit: Learning Together.

By External Source
HERAT, Afghanistan, Jul 16 2026 (IPS)

One morning in June, Halima (name changed), went to the market in Herat, her hometown in western Afghanistan, with her mother. She was wearing a long coat and a surgical mask covering her face. She could not have imagined that just a few minutes later she would be sitting in prison.

Vehicles from the Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or morality police, arrived at the market right after Halima and her mother. According to Halima, female employees of the ministry began arresting women without asking any questions. Cars waiting nearby took the detainees away.

“Everything happened quickly. Some tried to escape, while others were terrified. We did not understand on what basis the Taliban selected those to be arrested.”

Halima says that some of the women arrested were wearing burqas that covered both their faces and bodies. Like Halima, some were wearing long coats and face masks. Still, the morality police seized her.

“My mother cried and begged them not to take me. She was threatened with a one-month prison term, along with corporal punishment and a fine, if she tried to prevent my arrest. No one dared to come and help, even though my mother yelled.”

Women were being arrested, kicked and beaten, humiliated and mocked. Taliban troops stood by their SUVs, watching as their female colleagues grabbed the women. They grabbed those whose clothing did not conform to the Taliban’s concept of dress code

The phones of the arrested girls and women were confiscated. There were about 30 of them, and all were taken to a so-called shelter run by the Department of Labor and Social Affairs. It houses both single women and newly arrested women. None of them were allowed to contact their families. The next morning they were transferred to a prison.

The women’s wing of the prison was dirty and poorly equipped. Fear and uncertainty filled the minds of every prisoner.

“I sat in a corner and looked at my fellow prisoners: young girls, middle-aged women, and mothers who were worried about their children. There were about 60 of us. Everyone was either wearing a burqa or wearing what I thought was appropriate clothing. Yet, each of us was imprisoned because we supposedly did not follow the dress code,” says Halima.

The next day she was released. At home, her mother hugged her and they both cried. Halima was told that her father had paid 16,000 Afghanis (about 220 euros) for his daughter’s release. In addition, the family had to sign a guarantee that none of the women in the family would go out again without proper clothing.

After returning home, nothing felt the same. Halima’s brothers were furious and claimed that she had tarnished the family’s honor by going to prison.

“As if I had committed a crime! But I still believe that I did nothing wrong,” she says.

“Fear has become a part of my life. I will never forget those two nights in prison. I kept wondering whether all my fellow prisoners had been released and whether others had been arrested after us. I wondered what would happen to the women and girls of this country,” says Halima.

“I can’t go out like I used to. I’m always afraid when I leave home. I keep thinking about what will happen if I’m arrested again.”

Halima is not alone in her experiences. The Taliban have recently begun enforcing the dress code for women in Herat more strictly.

In early June, mosques in the city announced stricter regulations, and reports of the arrests of women and girls across the city began spreading on social media. The arrests have raised concerns, sparked protests and heightened security across the province.

According to the UN, at least 30 women were arrested in Herat over the first weekend of June.

Suhaila (name changed) remembers the moment when anger and powerlessness led many in Herat to protest.

The day before the protests, Suhaila went shopping at the market. Earlier that day, the imam of the local mosque had announced a new Taliban order: women who violated the dress code would be arrested and imprisoned without the possibility of appeal.

Suhaila’s father believed that the threats from the authorities should be taken seriously and that her daughter should not go out without full-body clothing. Suhaila followed her father’s advice and dressed as instructed, but still experienced something at the market that she will never forget.

“As soon as I arrived at the market, I sensed an unusual atmosphere of confusion. Women were moving restlessly from one side of the market to the other, and many were trying to do their shopping and leave as quickly as possible.”

Then it started happening. Women were being arrested, kicked and beaten, humiliated and mocked. Taliban troops stood by their SUVs, watching as their female colleagues grabbed the women. They grabbed those whose clothing did not conform to the Taliban’s concept of dress code.

“I wanted to scream and protest, but I was at the market with my little sister. I held her tightly to me and just cried. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, they would take us, too.”

Zainab did not escape.

That evening, Suhaila joined a WhatsApp group for young people in her neighborhood, where they discussed what had happened. The group had dozens of messages about the arrests. Some shared photos and stories of what had happened, while others shared personal experiences of family members.

Soon, the group began dicussing the possibility of organizing a protest. Some warned that protesting would lead to more arrests and perhaps even deaths. Others believed that remaining silent in the face of injustice would rob people of their self-respect.

Suhaila decided to join the protests. She wanted to give a voice to the girls and women whose arrests she had witnessed. In the morning, she left for the agreed-upon meeting point without telling her father about her plans and despite her mother’s objections. The protesters began chanting slogans demanding women’s rights to education, work, and freedom.

The protest grew quickly but did not last long. Suddenly, Taliban SUVs approached the crowd from several directions and surrounded it. The protesters were beaten, and the Taliban opened fire. Desperate screams could be heard everywhere, and people looked for shelter wherever they could. Some were injured, while others tried to help them.

Among those arrested were also Suhaila’s friends.

“Zainab did not escape. The last time I saw her was when she was forced into a Taliban car. No one has heard from her since,” Suhaila says.

“We do not feel safe even in our homes. The Taliban are going from street to street looking for protesters,” Suhaila says of the atmosphere after the protests.

Fear is everywhere. Women no longer want to go to the market, and many families leave their homes only when forced to.

It is no longer clear what is allowed and what is not. Uncertainty keeps people in their homes. The city has fallen silent and businesses are struggling.

Shakoor (name changed) believes that it is not just a question of women’s clothing.

“Girls and women have a special status in this city. Arresting a woman or publicly humiliating her is considered an attack on the dignity and honor of the family. That is why the reaction has been so strong, and this time men have also demonstrated.”

The local Taliban administration believes that tightening the dress code for women protects social values.

Governor Noor Ahmad Islamjar believes the protests are the result of misunderstandings and outside influence. In a television interview, he reminded the public that demonstrations are not allowed.

The Taliban regime says the women arrested will be released after receiving a warning, their families will be notified, and they will be required to sign a pledge to follow the dress code. However, not all families know what has happened to their loved ones.

One of them is Suhaila’s friend, Zainab. Her family has not heard from her since her arrest.

The WHO-led Women’s Integrated Cancer Services Program; the pilot programs were first implemented in Kenya in the Bungoma and Nyandarua counties. Credit: WHO/Yasin Abdullahi

By Shuli Wong
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 15 2026 (IPS)

One in five people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, and when the emotional and physical toll on close family members is factored in, an estimated 92 percent of people globally will be affected by cancer at least once in their lifetime. This staggering statistic is the centerpiece of the World Health Organization (WHO)’s latest global report on cancer.

The Global Status Report on Cancer 2026, published in July 8 in conjunction with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), is the most comprehensive cancer assessment to date and provides an in-depth analysis of the current global status of cancer care and prevention. The report also paints an alarming picture of persistent and widening inequities in prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care.

WHO estimates that cancer claimed nearly 10 million lives in 2024 (over 26,000 lives every day), along with 20.6 million new diagnoses globally. Without urgent and accelerated action, annual cancer cases are projected to rise to 35 million by 2050, said Stephane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General on July 8. Furthermore, the steepest increases in cancer cases are projected to disproportionately burden low-and-middle-income countries (LMICS), with a 133 percent increase in cancer incidence rates in low-income countries and an 86.5 percent increase in lower-middle-income countries by 2050.

The report highlighted the deep global inequities in cancer survival rates. In high-income countries, the five-year net survival rate for breast cancer exceeds 85 percent, while, in low-income countries it drops below 45 percent. For childhood leukemia, only 54 percent of countries have reached the 60 percent five-year survival rate that WHO’s Global Institute for Childhood Cancer set as the minimum target. Furthermore, there are stark regional differences, with some African and Eastern Mediterranean countries falling at only 19 percent, and some South-East Asian countries at 26 percent.

The regional disparities are highlighted by the report’s statement that “our experience of [cancer] and chances of surviving now depend less on the stage or biology of our disease than on where we live and our economic circumstances.” A primary driver of these inequities is limited treatment capabilities and infrastructure in LMICs. For example, 23 LMICs lack any active radiation facilities, resulting in over 197 million people without local access to any critical radiation treatment. Furthermore, even when facilities exist in LMICs, they are chronically unreliable and subject to downtime, high operating costs, limited local maintenance expertise, and delays in importing parts.

While the physical and emotional health effects of cancer are astronomical, the financial consequences for families are just as devastating. Approximately 45–60 percent of people diagnosed with cancer experience catastrophic health expenditure, leading to impoverishment, food insecurity, and disrupted education for the children and siblings of cancer patients. Even in countries that have universal health coverage, the indirect costs of cancer are detrimental, and female caregivers experience greater consequences for their employment and productivity than men.

Throughout the report, prevention is highlighted as the most important yet underused tool for reducing cancer incidence rates. In 2022, 38 percent of cancer cases were attributed to 30 modifiable risk factors, with tobacco use, infections, alcohol consumption, and excess body weight as the primary factors. However, only 30 percent of national cancer control plans incorporate evidence-based cancer prevention interventions.

The WHO outlined three strategic shifts to help shape the future of cancer control: better capabilities, better protections, and better value. These shifts are anchored in a person-centered cancer agenda that is shaped by lived experience. Cancer care needs stronger governance and financing that is centered around investing in human resources. Globally, there needs to be a primary focus on prevention through early detection and equitable access to diagnosis and treatment. Outcomes must be focused not just on survival but also on function and quality of life.

The report concluded, “the primary gap is no longer a gap in knowledge, but a gap between what we know and what we do, between what we plan and what we implement.” WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, emphasized that the path forward for cancer care “must be shaped by more than data and scientific research; they must also reflect the voices and lived experiences of people impacted by the disease.”

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Pride Parade participants march on the Elisabeth bridge in Budapest, Hungary on 27 June 2026. Credit: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jul 15 2026 (IPS)

On the morning of 28 June, riot police sealed off Taksim Square with iron barriers and enforced bans on all weekend gatherings in Istanbul. Marchers pressed ahead anyway, re-emerging from side streets each time police dispersed them. By the end of the day police had detained at least 50 people, including a journalist. It was Istanbul Pride’s 24th edition, and the 12th year running that the authorities banned it outright.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey, so the state cannot prosecute people for who they are. Instead, it punishes them for making themselves visible. Authorities ban marches on ‘public morality’ grounds, block access to the social media accounts of LGBTQI+ organisations and put activists on trial for ‘obscenity’.

The pattern repeats in country after country. For a movement that spent decades making progress in winning recognition of rights, this Pride season tells a story of regression. A concerted backlash is clawing back territory once claimed, and Pride has again become a protest.

Much of the current wave of regression is a direct response to the gains LGBTQI+ movements made over previous decades. Anti-discrimination laws, recognition of equal marriage rights and growing public visibility have given opponents a clear target to mobilise against, and governments under economic or political pressure have found a convenient scapegoat in the LGBTQI+ community.

Authoritarian and populist leaders, facing discontent over corruption, inflation and unemployment, redirect public anger towards a minority that can be attacked without political cost, while conservative religious institutions find in opposition to LGBTQI+ rights, and particularly trans rights, a rallying cause that restores their claim to define society’s moral order. The result is a mutually reinforcing alliance between political power and religious conservatism, dressed up as the defence of children, the family and national identity.

Existence criminalised

A growing number of states are going further, criminalising not only LGBTQI+ people’s visibility but their very existence. Four West African states have criminalised consensual same-sex relations in the past two years, framing their move as a defence of national sovereignty against western influence. Mali’s military government criminalised homosexuality in December 2024 and Burkina Faso’s junta followed in September 2025. Niger’s new penal code, adopted last month, imposes punishment of up to 20 years in prison. Within weeks, media reported at least 40 arrests, the suspension of HIV prevention services and people fleeing the country.

Electoral democracies aren’t immune. In Senegal, parliament doubled the maximum sentence for ‘unnatural acts’ to 10 years in March, and over 300 ‘suspected homosexuals’ have reportedly been arrested in the past few months. Ghana’s parliament passed a bill imposing jail sentences on anyone who identifies as LGBTQI+ and requiring people to report prohibited activities to the authorities. President John Mahama has yet to sign it into law, but the debate about the bill has already fuelled a rise in blackmail, evictions and workplace discrimination.

The model is Uganda’s 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, which includes the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ and punishes the vaguely defined crime of ‘promoting’ homosexuality with up to 20 years in prison.

All these laws, marketed as a rejection of foreign interference and imported values, have been promoted with foreign money. US-based conservative groups such as the American Center for Law and Justice and Family Watch International have played a key role in funding anti-rights advocacy. Days after passing its bill, Ghana’s parliament hosted the African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty, a platform with documented ties to those groups that has promoted Uganda’s law as a template for the continent.

Consensus in retreat

US anti-rights groups have their president’s ear. Since returning to office, Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders rolling back federal protections, particularly targeting transgender people. Private companies heard the message. Major events including NYC Pride and San Francisco Pride lost sponsors in 2025, and Tampa Pride had to cancel its 2026 parade.

For years, activist groups such as New York’s Reclaim Pride Coalition accused corporations of pinkwashing, that is, turning Pride into a corporate vehicle without advancing demands for rights. Many sponsors are now gone, but for the wrong reasons. Whatever its motives, sponsorship functioned as a seal of approval from mainstream institutions. Money withdrawn out of political fear takes with it more than event budgets; it erodes a social consensus that took decades to build.

Marching for those who can’t

In this context, the year’s biggest marches have become acts of political defiance. A million people marched in São Paulo under the theme ‘The street summons, the ballot box confirms’, ahead of Brazil’s October general election. In Bangkok, an all-time record half a million people marched a year after Thailand’s marriage equality law took effect, a testament to what legal recognition can do for a community’s visibility.

On 27 June, tens of thousands joined the 31st Budapest Pride, the first held since voters removed the right-wing populist government that repeatedly banned it. Organisers are treating this as a starting point, pressing the new government with a list of 14 demands that begins with repealing a 2021 ‘anti-LGBT propaganda’ law the European Union’s top court has ruled incompatible with equality and human dignity. Hungary shows that change is possible after all.

In places like Indonesia, Iraq, Niger and Uganda, among many more, there’s no Pride march to ban, because holding one is unthinkable. Even private organising now risks prosecution. In those places, people are looking outward, hoping that a crowd marching freely somewhere else will march for them too. That’s the duty of Pride season for those still free to gather: to mobilise both for themselves and for the many being forced to hide who they are.

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

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

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Ask why so many Indian classrooms struggle, and the answers arrive in the language of audit: Too few trained teachers, too many vacancies, weak colleges of education and low accountability. Each of these is real, and each matters. Yet none of them explains a quiet confession a veteran teacher made to me, years into her career, holding a teacher training degree all the while. “Only this program”, she said, “made me realize what my prior training had left out”. The program she was referring to is a small teaching preparation program in Gurugram, North India called I Am A Teacher, or IAAT.

Vani S. Kulkarni

We argue endlessly about whether teachers are qualified. We rarely ask whether they have been formed.

Across hundreds of hours of conversation, a pattern emerged. To become a teacher, these women and men had to become three things at once: a person, an educator, and someone who could earn a living from the work. We obsess, rightly, over the second and third. We build degrees and licenses and salary scales around them. The first we treat as if it takes care of itself. It does not.

Formation as a person sounds soft until you watch what it does in a classroom. One teacher described a child who was being difficult, the kind of child she once would have disciplined and labeled. After her training, she found herself feeling something closer to empathy, sitting with the situation instead of punishing it. A week later, she said, the child was thriving. Another spoke of finally learning to listen to her students, and to her own children, after years of mistaking instruction for relationship. Many said a version of the same thing: that a conventional degree had certified them, but had not made them ready to teach on the first day. This program, they felt, had.

There is a gendered story here too, and it is important. Almost ninety percent of the teachers in the program were women, many returning to work for a second innings, after the corporate world or after years at home. For them, the experience was about identity, confidence and economic independence as much as it was about pedagogy. When we talk about teacher quality in the abstract, we forget that the teaching workforce in this country is overwhelmingly of women, and a certificate, rarely captures that what brings them into a classroom, and keeps them there.

But here is the finding that should trouble policymakers most, and I offer it precisely because it complicates the hopeful story. Over a decade, the meaning of this program changed for the people inside it. Its earliest cohorts spoke of a calling. They used words like temple, transformation, a remaking of the self. Later cohorts, without quite abandoning that language, increasingly described the program more materialistically, in the currency of placements and salaries. The expressive was slowly giving way to the instrumental.

I do not read this as the failure of one program. I read it as the gravitational pull of a system that values teaching only as a credential and a job, and that drags even its idealists toward the transactional. If this is what happens inside a program built expressly to resist that pull, it tells us something about the field as a whole.

As the National Education Policy rebuilds teacher education around new integrated degrees, it has a rare chance to ask a better question than how many teachers we can certify. The harder question is whether we are forming them. And formation cannot be examined into existence. It needs mentoring, time, reflection, and the experience of belonging to a community of fellow teachers. These are exactly the things a metrics-driven system finds hardest to fund, because they do not show up on a dashboard, and because their results appear years later, in a child who was seen rather than sorted.

I want to be honest about the limits of what I studied. One program in one city is not a national blueprint. There were skeptics among the teachers I met, some who found the approach overdone, and circumstances my research could not reach. A small case is not proof. But a small case such as IAAT that for a decade has quietly and against the current, tried to keep the expressive dimension central by focusing on formation of teacher as a person can still hold up a mirror, and what this one reflects is a blind spot we can no longer afford.

India does not have a shortage of people willing to teach. It has a shortage of attention to who they become on the way. A license certifies that a person has met a requirement. It does not certify that a person has been made ready to stand in front of thirty children and actually see them. Until we learn to value that making, and until we are willing to pay for it, we will keep mistaking the certificate for the teacher. Recognising and resourcing teacher-training programs such as IAAT would cost little and benefit teacher quality a great deal.

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

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An Islamabad High Court ruling awarding a divorced woman an equal share of assets acquired has sparked debate in Pakistan. Credit: Handout

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Jul 14 2026 (IPS)

A landmark Islamabad High Court ruling that recognised marriage as an economic partnership and awarded a divorced woman an equal share of assets acquired during marriage has triggered a legal and religious backlash, with Pakistan’s law ministry challenging the judgment before the Federal Shariat Court, a constitutional court empowered to determine whether laws and judicial rulings conform to the Qur’an and Sunnah.

Pakistani women, in general, spend years raising children, managing households and helping build family wealth but have little legal claim to assets accumulated during marriage.

“The continued resistance to recognising women’s non-financial contributions to building family wealth has no basis in religion or law,” said Maliha Zia of the Legal Aid Society, referring to the law ministry’s appeal before the Federal Shariat Court against a recent judgment by Islamabad High Court judge Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, who held that assets acquired during marriage should be divided equally, recognising homemaking and childcare as contributions equal to earning an income. She said it was disheartening to see a government ministry refusing to grant women economic rights and freedoms when it should be supporting women’s equality as guaranteed by the Constitution of Pakistan.

What began as a routine dowry dispute in 2021 – after Amara Waqas sought a share of her dowry and jointly acquired assets, along with maintenance for her two children – has grown into a debate over who gets what once the marriage ends, not just for Waqas but for countless Pakistani women facing a similar predicament.

Unsatisfied with the family court’s award of 30% share, she appealed to the appellate court, which dismissed her claim. Undeterred, she approached the Islamabad High Court, which ruled in her favour and transformed her case into a landmark judgment on women’s economic rights after divorce.

Dr Rakhshinda Perveen, founder of the Fight Against Dowry Advocacy Network, said the judgment marked a first step in recognising marriage as an economic partnership, valuing unpaid domestic work, dowry, and wedding gifts as measurable assets. A survivor of gender-based violence, including dowry-related abuse, Dr Perveen has campaigned to criminalise dowry demands and related violence, ban public display of dowry, and legally separate dowry from bridal gifts for over three decades.

“A woman who built a home, raised children and contributed income should never leave a marriage with nothing,” agreed Zia.

Fauzia Viqar, Federal Ombudsperson for Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace, said: “The issue isn’t the ruling but resistance. Men in Pakistan refuse to grant women the property rights Islam already provides.” According to Viqar, there are over 20 Muslim countries (including Morocco, Iran, Malaysia, and the UAE) that provide maintenance and marital property rights in their family laws.

She also said the judiciary has started taking note of that. “Some proposals have been submitted to parliament since 2008,” she said but no action was taken.

Zia agreed, saying the judgment was years in the making. “LAS, with Musawah, has been working towards this for years” and training lawyers in strategic litigation. “Policy papers mean little without advocates willing to take cases to court,” she said, adding that a draft law on matrimonial property rights is now headed to parliament.

More recently, in 2023, the Lahore High Court directed amendments to the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961 to recognise women’s matrimonial property rights. A year later, in 2024, Senator Barrister Syed Ali Zafar tabled a set of amendments to the family law seeking a share in assets accumulated during marriage for divorced women as “compensation for her contribution during her marriage”.

But the 2024 amendments were opposed by the Council of Islamic Ideology (which advises the legislature on the conformity of laws with the Qur’an and Sunnah).

It also opposed Justice Kayani’s recent judgment. “We don’t think it is in keeping with the teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah, said Ghulam Majid, a senior research officer at the CII. “We thought the matter had been settled two years ago when the bill was blocked, but it keeps resurfacing,” added Majid, dismissing the proposal as part of a “Western agenda” with no place in Pakistan’s legal system.

Viewing marriage as an economic partnership, Justice Kayani’s judgement had cited laws in countries including the US, the UK, Türkiye and Malaysia, where jointly owned marital property is equitably divided regardless of title after divorce.

Majid remained unconvinced.

“These countries can have their own interpretation, but what is wrong is wrong, and we cannot endorse it.”

The debate is not simply between women’s rights advocates and religious scholars.

Islamic jurists are divided over whether the Qur’an and Sunnah support the recognition of a wife’s contribution to assets acquired during marriage. Unlike inheritance, which the Qur’an addresses explicitly, matrimonial property is left open to interpretation.

Humaira Masihuddin, who teaches Islamic jurisprudence to law students, argues that the Qur’anic principle of mata’a al-talaq (which provides for post-divorce support, together with its broader emphasis on justice) offers a basis for compensating divorced women.

Masihuddin, who also provides judicial training to family court judges on various women-specific laws, argues the issue should be revisited through ijtihad (independent legal reasoning). “We already have a forum – the CII. It should include jurists, judges and lawyers to deliberate on these interpretations and arrive at a fair solution for both spouses,” she said. The 20-member council currently comprises 19 men, one woman and no legal experts.

Justice Kayani also proposed amending the nikahnama (marriage contract) – the Muslim marriage contract – to allow spouses to agree in advance on an equal division of assets during marriage, after divorce or upon the husband’s death. Masihuddin, terming the nikahnama a “prenuptial agreement”, said these provisions are fully consistent with Islam. The judge also recommended legislation guaranteeing wives an equitable share of assets acquired during marriage.

Meanwhile, Waqas’ case remains pending despite the Islamabad High Court’s order for a fresh hearing within two months. Her husband has challenged the ruling in the Supreme Court. “A man’s ego, often reinforced by his family, can cause immense harm to a woman seeking justice after years of marriage,” said her lawyer, Rana Raza.

Whether Justice Kayani’s ruling survives the Federal Shariat Court remains to be seen.

But whatever the outcome, it has already forced Pakistan to confront a question its family laws have long avoided: should years spent building a home and raising a family count as an economic contribution when a marriage ends?

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On 24 June, in Sudan, women and children displaced by the fighting in Al Obeid seek refuge in Tagat, gathering shelter for the internally displaced. Credit: UNICEF/PFP Geneva

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13 2026 (IPS)

Throughout 2026, the humanitarian crisis in Sudan has deteriorated significantly, prompting the United Nations (UN) to raise alarm over the escalation of human rights violations. Persistent clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continue to cause mass civilian casualties, drive widespread displacement, and obstruct the delivery of life-saving aid. As a result, war-torn communities are being pushed further into catastrophe, struggling with severe shortages of essential basic services and the rapid spread of infectious disease.

According to the latest UN findings, since the outbreak of hostilities in 2024, at least 59,000 civilians have been killed due to ongoing insecurity, while an additional 14 million people have been forcibly displaced. Characterized by the UN as the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world”, approximately 33.7 million people are in urgent need of aid. Millions are currently residing in highly restricted areas that remain out of reach for humanitarian organizations.

The past six months alone have been particularly turbulent for war-torn communities, with daily drone strikes being reported across Sudan, with the Kordofan and Darfur localities reporting the highest numbers of child casualties. Figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) show that since May, there have been more than 35 child casualties recorded across North Kordofan, including at least 18 children killed and over 17 others injured. Some of these children are as young as two months old.

Repeated bombardment and artillery shelling have caused widespread destruction to civilian infrastructure, damaging or rendering non-functional homes, health facilities, schools, water systems, markets, and critical supply routes, which has severely restricted access to essential services. The UN estimates that roughly 500,000 civilians are at risk in and around the Al Obeid and wider North Kordofan regions, where even minor surges in violence could expose more children to grave protection risks, including death, injury, and displacement.

“Children are being caught in a relentless cycle of violence, displacement and deprivation,” said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Representative for Sudan. “For many children, there is no safe place left. They are being killed and injured in their homes, on the roads, in markets, and while attempting to access essential services such as education and healthcare. Children must never be a target. Their lives, rights and futures must be protected.”

The disruption of water infrastructure and the collapse of the national health system have ravaged war-torn displaced communities, particularly in North Kordofan, which has been described as the epicenter of the conflict. This has resulted in a deadly new outbreak of cholera, which has already claimed more than 100 lives.

On July 10, Dr. Shible Sahbani, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Representative to Sudan, told reporters in Geneva that there have been over 1,330 confirmed cholera cases, including 114 deaths. The true number of fatalities related to this outbreak is estimated to be much higher, with humanitarian organizations expressing fears that the outbreak could spread among hundreds of thousands of civilians who have fled North Kordofan and reside in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. WHO also noted that civilians struggle with persistent outbreaks of dengue, malaria, meningitis, hepatitis E, and measles.

“We are particularly concerned about the spread [of cholera] to El-Obeid in North Kordofan, where the access is very limited and where the fragile health system is under increasing strain,” said Sahbani. “Health facilities are overwhelmed there and access to care is very, very limited.”

“We call for our partners and donors to help us to be able first to access and second to be able to send enough supplies and enough facilities in El-Obeid. But we know that the situation there is very, very bad and it’s worsening with higher risk of disease outbreaks, malnutrition, violence, including violence against women and children.”

On July 3, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that El Obeid has faced “siege-like” conditions for the past 18 months, with the area currently being under SAF control. UN Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk, told reporters that OHCHR has documented 15 drone strikes in El Obeid and surrounding areas between June 6 and 28, leaving at least 45 civilians killed and 41 others injured. The true number of casualties is projected to be much higher.

“These attacks, and fuel shortages, have a compound impact, making it difficult for civilians to access clean water, food, transport and healthcare, and to communicate with each other and the outside world,” said Türk. “Some people are selling their belongings to finance their escape from the city. For many, the exorbitant cost of transport, and constant attacks on vehicles along exit routes, make leaving impossible.”

Furthermore, OHCHR has documented a sharp rise in human rights violations over the course of the year. According to Türk, OHCHR has recorded numerous instances of summary executions, abductions, torture, and sexual violence, particularly along routes regularly used by displaced civilians travelling across Kordofan. In El Obeid, there is a substantial risk of arbitrary arrest and detention, with the agency recording numerous cases where civilians fleeing RSF-controlled areas have been accused of collaborating with the SAF.

On June 18, Türk highlighted this surge in abuses, issuing a stark warning that an imminent offensive “risked fresh commission” of serious international crimes. He specifically noted an alarming rise in ethnically motivated attacks and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. On June 20, the UN Security Council adopted a statement in which members called for an immediate cessation of the RSF’s assault on El Obeid, as well as for all human rights violations to be thoroughly investigated and for perpetrators to be held accountable.

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For most individuals, the process of peace starts with the signing of a ceasefire or an agreement among politicians. However, those who live in regions experiencing violence understand that peace is made long before politicians meet at the negotiating table. Peace is created among communities by people who work everyday to ensure that no violence takes place, and that disputes are sorted out.

Muna Luqman, Yemeni peacebuilding advisor and humanitarian leader.

Speaking to IPS Inter Press Service, Yemeni peacebuilding advisor and humanitarian leader Muna Luqman challenged conventional thinking about who builds peace and where peacebuilding truly begins, “Communities never wait until peace happens,” Luqman said. “They’re working to protect peace on a daily basis.”

Based on her extensive experience working in Yemen for more than 15 years, Luqman explained how local communities, especially women, resolve disputes, provide crucial services, negotiate humanitarian assistance and create dialogical spaces way ahead of any intervention of international organizations.

Luqman is the founder and chairperson of Food for Humanity, has seen first-hand the changes conflict brings about in society. While living through the Yemeni civil war, she faced airstrikes and negotiated the evacuation of civilians caught up in the war zone. These experiences led her to realize that humanitarian response alone is inadequate.

“If we only respond to the consequences of conflict without addressing its causes, we will always be a step behind,” she reflected. Her experience also exposed one of the greatest challenges facing local peacebuilders and that is of recognition.

“We thought we would be the first to be supported,” she said, referring to local organisations that led humanitarian responses before international actors arrived. “But we found out that it was a long process.”

According to a report by UN Women, around 676 million lived within 50 kilometers of deadly conflict in 2024 – the highest figure since the 1990s. Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, said, “Women and girls are being killed in record numbers, shut out of peace tables, and left unprotected as wars multiply. Women do not need more promises, they need power, protection, and equal participation.”

Data collected by the United Nations from 2020-2024 found that, “Women’s representation as negotiators, mediators and signatories in peace processes is far below the target set by the UN. In 2024, women made up only seven percent of negotiators on average worldwide, and nearly nine out of ten negotiation tracks included no women negotiators”. The report stated, women were slightly more represented in mediation roles, averaging 14 percent but still, two-thirds of mediation efforts did not include women.

The discrepancy for Luqman pointed to an underlying problem in international peacebuilding. While local groups responded immediately to communities in need, other institutions were bound by mandates, funding, and procedures. It becomes evident, she says, why true inclusion in peacebuilding should be more than merely symbolic in nature.

True inclusion requires recognizing women not as mere recipients of help or observers of processes, but as active participants in negotiating, mediating, and taking crucial decisions. It is proven that peace treaties are much more sustainable in those cases where women are actively involved in the negotiation process. Women broaden the agenda from purely political aspects like political power-sharing to such crucial areas as justice, education, health care, livelihoods, displacement, and community reconciliation.

Luqman believes that local women possess a unique understanding of these realities because they remain deeply embedded within their communities. “Women mediators are willing to prevent disagreements before they become violence,” she explained. She has witnessed women in Yemen securing the release of prisoners, organizing their communities to rebuild schools and water supplies, and preventing children from joining armed groups. This is often done discreetly, outside the limelight of the international community.

“The strength of women peacebuilders is their ability to mobilize their communities,” she said. However, it is precisely these women who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. They are threatened, intimidated, forced to flee, and often lack funds despite helping others. Protecting women peacebuilders must be a priority on the global agenda, Luqman asserts.

“They do this work while they are facing either lack of funding or no funding at all. They remain resilient, they remain vulnerable at the same time, and they remain under threats.”

She believes that the international community needs to go beyond recognizing the contribution of women and work to provide financial support to women-led organizations that are trusted and credible within the local communities.

While serving as the United Nations National Coordinator on Inclusion in the Peace Process of Yemen, Luqman developed an approach that would allow local people to speak up. The initiative did not consider participation just as a formal aspect but actually aimed to bring in the community perspective. “It wasn’t symbolic participation,” she told me. “We really took that analysis and used it in our system.” This is because peace processes cannot be made by the political elite only; they need to be inclusive of communities that have been experiencing conflict.

In Luqman’s opinion, local governance, climate challenges, livelihoods, transitional justice, and building trust are not marginal questions but rather central factors in avoiding further outbreaks of violence.

Luqman insists on the need for peacebuilding to involve listening: “Sometimes listening to the people themselves and giving them a space is in itself a peace process.”

In the context of rising complexity of conflicts, the importance of inclusion into peace processes has never been so urgent. Women’s involvement in the processes cannot be considered as some kind of equality issue or simply as an obligation under international mechanisms.

On the contrary, it is strategically necessary based on experience and community trust. The message from Luqman to policymakers is obvious: local women peacebuilders are not marginal figures in peacebuilding but its cornerstone. “The local women peacebuilders are the structure and the backbone of these societies,” Luqman said. “They are valuable. They should be treated as valuable assets. They should be supported and protected.” Constructing sustainable peace is not possible only through negotiations of the parties involved in armed conflict but also through investing in people who have done so many years of keeping communities together despite the situation being unrecognizable.

Sania Farooqui is an independent journalist and host of The Peace Brief, a platform dedicated to amplifying the voices of women in peacebuilding and human rights.

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Ranjana Kumari, activist.

By Kumkum Chadha
NEW DELHI, Jul 13 2026 (IPS)

To say that the men scored over women yet again would be an understatement. To say that the women lost and men have won would be an oversimplification and to say that political manoeuvring, intrigue and deceit outdid half of India’s population would be stating the obvious.

So, what is the story? Or the plot with its twists and turns? Or the game that women lost even before they started playing?

Rewind to three decades when the women of India woke up to what today is branded as political empowerment.

In this context the one name that stands out is that of Parliamentarian Geeta Mukherjee, who chaired the Joint Parliamentary Committee to examine a Bill seeking reservation of seats for women in Parliament and state legislatures: 33 percent to be precise.

It was in 1996 that a legislation for this was tabled in the Lower House of the Indian Parliament

We are into 2026, and the women of India are still fighting for legitimacy in political power, relentlessly demanding what is their due.

The Women’s Reservation Bill has been tabled in Parliament several times – five times, to be precise.

Its history and the twists and turns that come with it are telling. Add to the mix the interesting questions that its tumultuous journey has thrown up. But more importantly, what has this unfulfilled dream done to the dignity of women of the world’s largest democracy? Simply put, it has left them hanging, staring in the dark with a ‘will it? will it not?’  question. As things have panned out, the future holds little hope.

Rewind to the Constituent Assembly that adopted the Constitution of India in 1949. Of its 389 members, only 15 were women. There were questions even then, but they were different.

If a woman member feared that reservation would mean restriction and, hence, exclusion of women from general seats, another member asked quite pointedly: “Were women not led by the heart, and was politics not a matter of the mind? Even as the heart versus the head debate dogged minds, the issue remained unresolved.

Some fifty years later, in 1996 to be exact, it was Sushma Swaraj, then a Parliament Member and later India’s foreign minister, who resurrected the issue. She told Parliament that only 6.5 of the 543 members in the Lower House of Parliament were women. Without saying it in so many words, she indicated that the situation was dismal and the future bleak.

Swaraj’s words were prophetic. The future was indeed bleak because three decades on, the women continue to fight for what should rightfully be theirs.

When the Bill was introduced in Parliament in 1996 and later in 1998 and 1999, the men kind of ganged up to ensure that a smooth passage was thwarted. On all three occasions, the Bill lapsed upon the dissolution of the Lower House in Parliament.

However, in 2008 another route was adopted and this time around it was introduced in the Upper House of Parliament.

This obviated the possibility of a lapse given that the Indian Parliament is structured in such a way that the Lower House has a fixed five-year term while the Upper House is a permanent chamber which is not subject to dissolution. Unlike the Lower House of Parliament, Bills tabled in the Upper House do not lapse.

That notwithstanding, the smooth passage of the Bill in the Lower House still remains a question mark, and that too a big one, staring at women in the face.

All through this rigmarole what stood out and continues to is the contempt and disregard men have for women in this part of the world.  And these are no ordinary men but those who have been elected to work for the welfare of the people, men and women alike. Therefore, when they speak of women in disparaging terms, one stops to ask: have we actually progressed or do we continue to be a regressive and male-dominated society – one where men outside and fathers, brothers and husbands at home continue to call the shots?

Even as the answer is obvious, one’s soul may cringe at the manner in which lawmakers inside Parliament have targeted women during the several debates on reserving 33 percent of seats in Parliament and state legislatures.

Sample this: During a 1997 parliamentary debate, two leaders, both from the backward castes, opposed reservation even as they demanded what was termed a “quota within quota” for women. Decode this and it means that within the 33 percent reservation ensure a certain representation for the other backward castes, Dalits and Muslim women.

In the Indian context, the untouchables are called Dalits, while the Other Backward Castes, or OBCs as they are popularly known, represent the marginalised. The Muslims comprise the minorities in India.

But back to the debate in Parliament when these two leaders spearheaded the anti-reservation campaign under the garb of protection for women from the marginalised and backward castes.

They use “choicest phrases”, if one can use the term, to denigrate women segregating the elite and educated from the rural and the unversed.

 Calling them par-kati mahilayen, roughly translated as ‘short-haired and elite’, a former Union Minister, Sharad Yadav, from the state of Bihar, threatened to consume poison if a Bill was passed without proper caste representation. His take: women who are privileged, urban and elite do not understand the struggle of their counterparts living in far-flung rural areas.

To quote him: “Like Socrates, who died consuming poison fighting for principles, I am also willing to die fighting for principles.” Given the male mind-set, such a statement may well be interpreted as if it is women’s reservation, and it will be “over my dead body”.

A former Chief Minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav, from the state of Uttar Pradesh, had another fear. Way back in 2010 he had told his constituents: “The kind of women who will enter Parliament… The wives and daughters of officers and businessmen, who invite whistles from boys…” He also said that rural women would be left out because they are “not that attractive”.

Another leader, a former Union Minister and Chief Minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav from the state of Bihar, said that India being a “male-dominated society”, to use his exact words, women vote according to the political diktat of the family. In other words, they are incapable of thinking and choosing independently and are a rubber stamp of their husbands: “My own wife votes according to my diktat,” the former Chief Minister had then said.

In later years, Yadav anointed his wife to succeed him when he was jailed in a fodder scam.

For the record, Lalu Prasad Yadav, who has served as Chief Minister of India’s populous state of Bihar and also as Union Minister, was convicted in a fodder scam and charged with syphoning off huge amounts from the animal husbandry department. This followed his resignation. Not the one to cede political space to anyone outside the family, Yadav named his wife, Rabri Devi, as his successor. That Devi was uneducated and could not even sign her name did not matter considering she was her husband’s proxy.

The first woman to head the state of Bihar, Devi ruled the state not once but three times over.

That notwithstanding, it is true that in India men dictate where and how their wives, mothers and sisters, or rather all the women in the family, should vote. This is one of the reasons why En bloc voting is a rule rather than an exception among women in rural areas.

However, by 2023 the power of the women’s vote dawned on political parties, particularly under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has launched several welfare schemes for women while heading the Government in India.

Unwilling to lose the momentum of emerging as a votary for women’s rights, the Modi Government brought in the Reservation Bill, which was passed in the Lower House of the Indian Parliament, both grudgingly and willingly.

With this, history took a half-turn: a half-turn because even while the Bill mandated a 33 per cent reservation, it was tied to a distant future, namely the upcoming census and subsequent redrawing of electoral constituencies or delimitation as it is better known and understood.

Ostensibly, it was a step forward, but in reality, it was an idea stuck in time. Linking reservation to the Census and delimitation that would follow was talking of a distant future because there is neither clarity on when the Census will take place nor a clear date, rather year, when the delimitation will take effect. Hence, the passing of the Bill remains a cosmetic measure and one on paper.

The truth of the matter is that men are reluctant to cede political space to women. Yet for any political party to oppose a  reform like political empowerment for women is clearly counter-productive. No party can be seen as being a roadblock to women’s progress and risk being perceived as anti-women.

Therefore, while each party professes support for the issue and the cause, the real story is that they do not want to see reservation being a reality. The answer is simple: if 33 percent reservation for women becomes a law, then it is the men who will have to give up their seats to make way for women. In a patriarchal society like India, this seems like a pipe dream.

Having said that, it is ironic that every political party has committed to providing reservation in their political manifestos but no party has budged an inch to work towards this welfare measure. If anything, they have consistently worked against the Bill becoming a reality.

Fast forward to 2026 when the Government brought in the Women Reservation Bill in Parliament yet again through a special session of Parliament. But, this time around, the motive was suspect. The move was sudden and came at a time when the state elections were underway. Therefore, there was more politics than good intent that was attributed to what the Government wanted to showcase as women’s welfare.

What made it worse was that the Government tagged another bill with the women’s reservation bill: delimitation.

For the uninitiated, delimitation is the process of redrawing the boundaries of electoral constituencies. By this principle, seats for Parliament and states would be reallocated on the basis of the latest census, which is yet incomplete.

The Government’s bid to club delimitation with the reservation bill was decried. Opposition parties slammed the Government for making women a scapegoat and “using women” for a political end.

To quote an Opposition MP, Mahua Moitra, the Government’s move was “delimitation wrapped in a saree”. What she meant was that the Government is firing from the shoulders of women to push through legislation which otherwise would be opposed tooth and nail.

It is pertinent to mention that the opposition-ruled states are against delimitation, as it erodes the political power of those states that have fewer numbers in terms of population. With the voting numbers stacked against the Government, the Delimitation Bill would have hit a roadblock  in Parliament. Hence, the Government linked the two Bills. The logic: delimitation would ride piggyback on the Women’s Reservation Bill. The women’s vote being very important in elections, no party would like to be seen as opposing women’s reservation.

However, the Government’s calculations went haywire and the Opposition unitedly voted against the Bill. The result: What seemed achievable fell through.

As an opposition member of Parliament, Sushmita Dev explained, “We are not against women’s reservation. But what is a betrayal is the Government riding on the shoulders of women to push delimitation. Why link delimitation with women’s reservation? Why bring in politics? Why push an agenda? Why not given women the dignity they deserve?” is what she asks.

Politics apart, women who have been fighting for women’s empowerment for decades see this slugfest between the Government and the Opposition as “a lost opportunity”. To quote activist Ranjana Kumari, Founder of the Centre for Social Research: “The defeat of the Women Bill in Parliament compels deeper reflection on the state of India’s democracy. There is a gap between intent and action. The political parties must take responsibility and move beyond tokenism. Globally, gender quotas have demonstrated that change is possible when backed by political commitment and clear design. India stands at a similar crossroads.”

Kumari has been in the forefront of the women’s reservation movement in India.

It is at this juncture that one needs to stop and ask: For how long will the women of India keep knocking doors? For how long will political parties and politicians continue making them scapegoats to achieve their political goals? Why is their due being denied to them time and again? Why do they continue to be victims at the hands of men who are politically powerful?

Why does politics get the better of women? Why is their future being linked to complicated legislative processes? Why are they being subjected to political juggernauts?

Too many questions but one straight and simple answer: The men of India, as in many other parts of the world, want women to continue being subservient and remain second class in a world where half the sky is theirs.

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Security Council. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Shihana Mohamed
NEW YORK, Jul 13 2026 (IPS)

As the United Nations (UN) Security Council prepares for its first round of closed-door straw polls this month to select the tenth Secretary-General, the organization stands at a critical crossroads. Multilateralism is fracturing under geopolitical gridlock, and the UN is battling a severe budgetary deficit driven by funding cuts.

Yet the gravest threat to the institution is not financial; it is cultural. To regain the trust of the global public, the UN urgently needs a radical transformation of its organizational culture, beginning with the selection of candidates for its highest office—the post of UN Secretary-General. This requires dismantling entrenched nepotism, cronyism, patronage, and quid pro quo practices in recruitment, promotion and appointment, and replacing them with a culture grounded in merit, integrity, transparency, and gender equity.

Patronage Becomes Institutional Norm

The history of the Secretary-Generalship and senior leadership is marked by allegations and documented cases of favouritism that have undermined the UN’s professed values of merit and equity. During the tenure of former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, concerns were raised about the employment of his son-in-law within the UN system, prompting debate over perceived favouritism, though the appointment was defended on merit grounds. Under Kofi Annan, the Oil-for-Food Programme scandal exposed widespread corruption, bribery, and serious administrative failures.

Such controversies are not confined to the highest levels of leadership. Allegations of politicized staffing and patronage have periodically surfaced across the UN system, highlighting a persistent gap between the organization’s principles and internal realities.

What begins as an exception at the executive level can become embedded practice throughout UN agencies and departments. Mid-level managers often replicate these patterns by shaping job descriptions, tailoring interview panels, sharing interview materials, and influencing or “fixing” vacancies for preferred candidates. In such an environment, backdoor recruitment risks becoming normalized rather than exceptional.

The result is a damaging paradox: while the UN publicly champions fairness, equal opportunity, and transparency, its internal systems often operate through favoritism, personal connections, and exclusion. Talented staff without access to influential networks face limited advancement, while better-connected but less qualified individuals may benefit from patronage, eroding institutional credibility, staff morale, and public trust.

The 2026 Secretary-General Race Under Scrutiny

Even in the current selection process for the next Secretary-General, concerns about institutional fairness persist. Accountability investigations by independent watchdog groups have raised questions about the presence of family members of candidate Rafael Grossi, Director General of the IAEA, across Vienna- and Rome-based UN agencies. By contrast, candidates such as Michelle Bachelet, Rebeca Grynspan, and María Fernanda Espinosa bring extensive records in multilateral governance and international leadership, with no publicly substantiated findings of comparable family-based appointments during their UN service.

Concerns have also emerged regarding unequal institutional advantages during the selection process. Rebeca Grynspan stepped aside from her role as Secretary-General of UNCTAD in line with General Assembly Resolution 79/327, which encourages candidates holding UN positions to suspend their duties during campaigns to avoid conflicts of interest and undue advantage. Rafael Grossi has remained in office as Director General of the IAEA while pursuing his candidacy.

Critics argue that continued access to institutional visibility and resources may create an incumbency advantage. Whether or not this violates formal rules, it raises broader concerns about fairness and structural imbalance in leadership selection.

The UN’s Persistent Gender Gap

Beyond nepotism and back-door recruitment, the most glaring failure of this selection cycle is the UN’s inability to break its own highest glass ceiling. In over 80 years and nine Secretary-Generals, the organization has never been led by a woman. This persists despite years of relentless, highly coordinated global campaigns by civil society groups, advocates, and the 1 for 8 Billion coalition calling for gender-balanced leadership.

Despite decades of calls for historical justice and General Assembly Resolution 79/327—which notes with regret that no woman has ever held the position of Secretary-General and urges Member States to strongly consider nominating women, two men—Rafael Grossi and Macky Sall—were still nominated to such a narrow and exclusive candidate pool. At a time when women are leading nations and global institutions through major crises, this outcome highlights a gap between the commitments of Member States and their practice. It risks reinforcing the very inequalities the United Nations has pledged to address.

Reform in the UN Cannot Wait

The next Secretary-General must treat institutional integrity as a priority long before taking office—indeed, even before announcing a candidacy. Member States must translate long-standing reform commitments into enforceable mandates. These reforms can no longer remain aspirational; they must become immediate requirements shaping how the UN governs, recruits, and leads.

• Prioritizing a Female Leader to Break the Status Quo: Member States—and especially the five permanent Security Council members with veto power—must recognize that meaningful reform requires breaking entrenched networks of power and patronage. Electing the first female Secretary General in 2026 would signal a decisive shift toward aligning leadership with the principles of equality the UN promotes globally.

• Mandatory Campaign Step-Aside Rules: Any active UN official seeking the post of Secretary General should be required to suspend all institutional duties upon declaring candidacy. This would eliminate even the perception of using institutional platforms, influence, or resources for campaigning.

• Ban on Family Appointments: The UN system should adopt a strict policy prohibiting the hiring, consulting, or internship of immediate family members of any Assistant Secretary-General, Under-Secretary-General, agency chief, and Secretary-General candidate. The international civil service must never be treated as a family business.

• Preventing Post-Fixing and Backdoor Recruitment: The Secretary-General’s Office should be empowered to independently review recruitment and selection decisions across the UN system and investigate credible evidence of favoritism, cronyism, or reciprocal patronage. All appointments must follow transparent, merit-based procedures that withstand internal and public scrutiny.

Restoring Institutional Credibility

The world does not need a Secretary-General who merely manages bureaucracy; it needs one who restores moral authority to a fractured international order.

If the next Secretary-General is selected through informal bargaining, backroom deals, entrenched patronage, or continued exclusion of women, the UN risks deepening its legitimacy crisis and accelerating its decline in global relevance.

The UN must first reform itself: break the highest glass ceiling in its history, dismantle entrenched systems of patronage, open its selection process to genuine transparency and scrutiny, and ensure that its leadership reflects the principles and values enshrined in the UN Charter.

The transformation must begin now, starting with this month’s straw polls in the UN Security Council for the Secretary-General selection.

Shihana Mohamed, a Sri Lankan national, is the President of Asia Global Network (www.AsiaGlobalForum.org) and a US Public Voices Fellow on advancing the rights of women and girls. She is the founder of the UN Asia Network for Diversity & Inclusion (www.UN-ANDI.org) and is a strong advocate for gender equality and the advancement of women. She served at the UN for over 25 years.

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Cameroon pledged to halve gender-based violence by 2026. That deadline has arrived, and the government has fallen far short. Credit: Shutterstock

By Stacey-Leigh Manuel
BLOOMFIELD, United States, Jul 9 2026 (IPS)

In Cameroon’s Far North region, Adiza, a 57-year-old woman had spent nearly three decades confined to her home by her husband. She was not allowed to leave, receive visitors, or speak with non-family members. When she disobeyed, he beat her.

Rosaline, a 44-year-old hairdresser in the southwestern region, went to work at her hair salon and found all her equipment  gone. Her husband of 16 years had sold everything and cancelled the lease without consulting her. He also sold  land they had jointly acquired.

These stories are not unique. While some laws exist to protect women, serious legal gaps and weak enforcement leave many women without protection.

A new Human Rights Watch new report, I Live in Constant Peril, examines the prevalence and dynamics of violence against women, particularly domestic violence, how it manifests as economic violence, and the structural discrimination that enables it.

Government awareness campaigns and rhetoric  are not enough. The government has failed to reform discriminatory laws, strengthen government institutions to prevent violence, or invest in public services that could help women escape abuse.

A law against domestic violence is essential but alone will not end that violence as long as the broader legal framework continues to grant husbands authority over their wives and treats men as the default owners of marital property.

The most recent official data was collected in 2018, but found that nearly 4 in 10 women and girls in Cameroon who had been in a relationship experienced physical, sexual, psychological and economic violence in their lifetime. The figure rises to 64 percent in Cameroon’s Centre Region, excluding Yaounde. In 2024 Government officials counted at least 77 women killed by current or former partners, and they believe the real number is higher. These figures do not reflect a country where violence against women is being taken seriously.

Cameroon’s Civil Code still designates husbands as the heads of household and primary administrators of marital property. Husbands have the right to decide the family’s place of residence and can stop their wives from seeking employment or running a business in the interest of the family.

In cases we documented,  one  husband told his wife to quit her job and asked her employer to fire her; multiple husbands ransacked and destroyed the businesses their wives had built themselves claiming the wife didn’t obtain their permission; some confiscated their wife’s earnings, or filled  their home with relatives, depleting any profit or savings from the wife’s business.

Women in long-term consensual relationships, commonly known as “cam we stay” or “viens on reste” in Cameroon, discovered that they had no legal protections, and when those relationships ended, that they had no legal standing .

A draft Family Code has remained stalled between ministries for more than 20 years without reaching the National Assembly. Completing it is not a question of complexity but of political will.

Women who report abuse encounter a fragmented system. Poor coordination between government agencies, police, courts and social services creates additional barriers to protection and justice.

Instead of receiving support, women are often told to reconcile, blamed for the abuse, or see cases dismissed when perpetrators have influence. Many stop reporting because they believe doing so will only increase the violence.

Leaving an abusive relationship is far harder for women who are economically dependent on their husbands. Most women in Cameroon work in the informal economy, often in low paid and insecure jobs without contracts and employment protections, while also carrying the bulk of unpaid care and household work. Social security coverage is extremely limited.

This lack of protection has serious consequences. Cameroon inaugurated its first One-Stop Centre for survivors of violence in Yaounde in 2025, but one center is insufficient.  Legal aid also remains difficult to access because of  lack of information, bureaucracy and delays, corruption risks, leaving many women without a safe path out of abuse.

Over the last 15 years, Cameroon has touted a commitment to reduce gender-based violence, with a 2022 target to cut it in half by 2026. That deadline is now. The government has not come close.

Cameroon pledged to halve gender-based violence by 2026. That deadline has arrived, and the government has fallen far short. It should urgently reform discriminatory laws, adopt the Family Code, establish a coordinated national response to domestic violence, and ensure women can access the services they need to live safely and independently.

Stacey-Leigh Manuel is deputy women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch

Woman farmers harvest tea leaves at a tea plantation in Nyaruguru, Kibeho District, Rwanda. Tea is one of Rwanda’s major agricultural export commodities.Credit: FAO / Jean Baptiste Nkurunziza

By Zipporah Musau
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 9 2026 (IPS)

As FAO coordinates the implementation of the International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026, gender team leader Tacko Ndiaye discusses why investing in Africa’s women farmers is essential for food security, economic growth and creating more resilient agrifood systems

Africa Renewal: What role do women farmers play in ensuring food security in Africa?

Ms. Ndiaye: We know that women are at the heart of Africa’s agrifood systems. Across the continent, women play a central role in agrifood systems through their labour, expertise and care, supporting households, communities and local markets.

Women make up almost half of the agrifood workforce—49 per cent—and contribute at every stage of the value chain, from production and processing to distribution and trade, according to FAO’s recent report, The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Also, women are custodians of culture and keepers of traditional knowledge passed down through generations about seed preservation and protecting biodiversity, as well as maintaining the social bonds that underpin the agrifood sector.

At the same time, Sub-Saharan Africa continues to face multiple food insecurity challenges. To give you an example, in 2024, about 64 per cent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, according to FAO data. We also know that more than 30% of women aged 15 to 49 years are experiencing anemia in the region.

If Africa is to address its food security challenges, empowering women farmers must be a priority.

What are the most pressing challenges women farmers in Africa face today?

In Africa, as you know, women till the land. Every time you see a publication on agriculture and food systems in Africa, you are more likely to see a photo of a woman farmer on the front page.

Yet despite their central role, women continue to face structural inequalities that limit their productivity, resilience and economic opportunities.

• One of the most significant barriers women face is unequal access to and control over land. In 28 of the 32 Sub-Saharan African countries we studied, men are more likely than women to own or control agricultural land. In more than 40 per cent of those countries, the gender gap in ownership or secure rights over agricultural land is particularly pronounced.

• We also know that even where there is law to protect land rights, such legal protections are either weak or insufficient. In half of the countries we studied, legislation does not adequately protect women’s land rights.

• Land ownership is also closely linked to access to finance because land is often used as collateral. Yet only 49 per cent of women in the region have a financial account, compared with 61 per cent of men.

• Women also face barriers in accessing agricultural inputs, extension services, markets and technology.

• Digital exclusion is another challenge. Digital platforms have become essential for marketing products, accessing information and acquiring new skills. Yet women are 29 per cent less likely than men to use mobile internet. An estimated 205 million women in Sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to digital tools.

• In addition, despite their substantial contributions to agrifood systems, women often work under poorer conditions than men. They are disproportionately represented in precarious, informal, labour-intensive, lower-skilled and underpaid jobs. This is reflected in the fact that nearly 90% of women in the region work in the informal sector.

• Discriminatory social norms, gender-based violence, restrictions on women’s leadership and participation, and the heavy burden of unpaid care work further limit their opportunities.

There are many challenges that need to be addressed if we are to build agrifood systems that are more inclusive, resilient and efficient.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

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Excerpt:

CARICOM Heads of Government during the opening ceremony of the 51st Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community in Gros Islet, Saint Lucia, on July 5, 2026. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
GROS ISLET, Saint Lucia , Jul 6 2026 (IPS)

Caribbean leaders are meeting in Saint Lucia for their annual summit, confronting a convergence of global and regional challenges ranging from rising living costs and climate change to crime, food security and geopolitical tensions.

The 51st Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the regional organisation that promotes economic integration, coordinates foreign policy and fosters cooperation among its 15 member states, runs until Wednesday.

Leaders are expected to discuss regional security, climate resilience, economic integration, trade, migration, food and water security and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.

The country’s Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre assumed the grouping’s rotating chairmanship.

He said he was taking over at a time of “profound uncertainty”, with Caribbean people feeling the effects of international instability in their daily lives.

“Our people feel these pressures every day,” Pierre said during the conference’s opening ceremony, citing the rising cost of food and energy, worsening climate impacts and growing concerns about crime and public safety.

He told the gathering that his six-month chairmanship would focus on ensuring regional integration delivers tangible benefits for Caribbean citizens rather than remaining confined to official meetings and declarations.

“Our people are asking a serious and legitimate question: What more can CARICOM do for me?” Pierre said. “We must make integration work for the ordinary citizen.”

The Saint Lucian leader outlined priorities that included strengthening regional unity, advancing the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, improving food and nutrition security, addressing violent crime and illegal firearms, expanding transportation links, increasing access to climate finance and developing a coordinated regional approach to artificial intelligence.

He also called for stronger support for young people, women, people with disabilities and other groups that have historically faced barriers to opportunity.

Pierre renewed CARICOM’s call for climate justice, arguing that Caribbean nations contribute little to global greenhouse gas emissions while bearing a disproportionate share of climate impacts. He urged the international community to expand access to climate finance, loss-and-damage funding and debt relief mechanisms that better reflect the vulnerability of small island developing states.

The summit comes as Caribbean governments continue to navigate the economic effects of global conflicts, supply chain disruptions and inflation while confronting increasingly severe hurricanes, prolonged droughts and other climate-related disasters that disproportionately affect small island developing states.

CARICOM Secretary-General Carla Barnett said the region’s founders envisioned cooperation as a practical response to external pressures.

“Then, as now, external factors and influences put at risk the vision of regional integration,” Barnett said, adding that leaders must accelerate implementation of long-standing regional commitments, particularly within the CARICOM Single Market and Economy.

Barnett pointed to progress in expanding the free movement of skilled workers, increasing agricultural production under the region’s food security strategy and strengthening international partnerships but said much work remains to implement agreed regional measures fully.

Outgoing CARICOM Chairman, Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, Terrance Drew said his tenure reinforced the importance of unity during a period marked by global uncertainty, climate threats and questions about regional cohesion.

“The question is no longer whether CARICOM will survive,” Drew said. “The question now is how we strengthen CARICOM for the next generation.”

He said Caribbean governments had continued working together on food security, climate resilience, regional security, Haiti, reparatory justice and international diplomacy despite mounting external pressures.

Founded by the Treaty of Chaguaramas on July 4, 1973, CARICOM promotes economic integration, coordinated foreign policy and functional cooperation among its member states. The organisation now comprises 15 member states and seven associate members and works across areas including climate change, agriculture, education, health, security, trade, transportation and sustainable development.

This year’s meeting is being held under the theme ‘People, Partnerships, Prosperity: Promoting a Secure and Sustainable Future’. Leaders will continue discussions through July 8 before issuing a final communiqué expected to outline decisions on regional security, climate resilience, economic integration and other priorities identified during the conference.

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Anyone whose life has been touched by cancer knows that care is highly complex.

From first symptoms through diagnosis and treatment, patients may need multiple diagnostic tests, combinations of surgery, systemic therapy and radiotherapy, and input from several specialists, alongside support services such as financial counselling, psychological support and palliative care.

Such a complex chain is inherently vulnerable, with one weak link meaning that a vital referral is missed, test results not delivered, or a patient is lost in the system while awaiting follow-up.

As a chronic disease, cancer tests the full breadth of health systems like few other illnesses, exposing system-wide gaps that affect us all.

In low- and-middle income countries (LMICs), where more people are experiencing and dying from cancer, and resources are limited, the infrastructure that connects the elements of cancer care is often missing.

Health systems in cities offer a unique entry-point for building this connective tissue – for people with cancer and, ultimately, all others. Cities are close enough to patients to reveal the failures in care, and large enough to bring together the institutions, workforce, data and governance needed to fix it.

Cities are ground zero for closing the gap between cancer care policy and delivery in LMICs, which are projected to see cancer incidence rise 142 per cent by 2040 and represent more than half of new cancer cases and two-thirds of deaths by 2050.

Cities can offer the full range of health services that a patient needs: from primary care appointments to discuss initial symptoms to laboratory tests, imaging, surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. These services are connected by a city governance architecture ensuring patients are referred from one institution to another, treatment is uninterrupted and services are financially accessible.

Cities also serve as referral and treatment hubs for surrounding areas, and even for neighbouring countries, meaning that developing stronger urban systems will undoubtedly create stronger national pathways of care, provided equity is designed in from the start.

This makes the city the most strategic starting point for closing the gap between cancer policy and delivery.

National cancer plans are essential, but they do not deliver care. Patient outcomes will only improve when these are actually implemented. And this requires policies being translated into time-bound, costed, funded programmes, and health authorities being given the governance structure, funding and authority to act earlier and more seamlessly to support better treatment and survival rates.

To transform this and turn policy into practice, governments and funders need to make at least two fundamental shifts.

First, they must move beyond externally designed interventions and invest in locally owned systems that can diagnose their own gaps, set priorities and sustain improvements over time.

Second, governments and funders need to stop treating national policy as proof of delivery and invest in the implementation mechanisms that make delivery possible and strengthen the systems at large.This means sustained investment in robust governance systems, defined referral pathways, sustainable financing and a trained and empowered health workforce.

At City Cancer Challenge (C/Can), we know this approach can work. We have seen how locally-led healthcare reform can ensure the fundamental processes and networks are in place to deliver long-lasting sustainable cancer care.

In Asunción, Paraguay, this approach showed what strengthening health systems means in practice. Improved diagnostic processes meant that women with suspected cancer were diagnosed earlier, started treatment sooner, and ultimately had better survival chances. It also meant that fewer women got lost along the pathway.

Asunción’s success came from coordinated action, not a single intervention. Laboratory quality improved, workforces were trained and empowered, protocols upgraded to international standards, and sample traceability strengthened across hospital services. Because these changes were locally owned and co-developed, they hold. This is what distinguishes real health system improvement from equipment that sits in a locked room, or protocols that disappear the moment external support does.

The value of this locally-owned model lies in its sustainability and scalability. Learnings from Asuncion can be used by other cities to identify bottlenecks in their own healthcare delivery, align institutions and build the local systems needed for better cancer care.

Cities have always been where health systems evolve, integrate and scale. And the impetus for strengthening LMIC health systems, starting in cities, is even greater to address the growing cancer crisis.

Where you live and who you are should not determine the quality of care you receive. Governments and funders should stop looking only at national cancer plans, protocols or new equipment. Instead, they should also ask whether local health systems can deliver timely, coordinated and equitable care, and invest accordingly.

Isabel Mestres, CEO, City Cancer Challenge (C/Can)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Almost half the family’s harvest disappeared this way.

Yet the labour never stopped.

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

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

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

Mission Accomplished

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

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

But the award was not her only accolade.

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

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

In her remarks Botchwey congratulated all the finalists.

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

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

A Journey That Began With a Big Question

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

It began with a question she carried since childhood:

How can people who grow food still remain hungry?

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Ainomugisha, those statistics have faces.

Her mother’s face.

Her father’s.

Her neighbours’.

And her own.

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

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

Her father became one of her earliest inspirations.

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

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

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

He attempted to preserve produce in improvised storage spaces.

But tomatoes continued spoiling.

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

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

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

That conviction followed her into university.

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

Solar to AI to Filling Knowledge Gaps

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

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

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

But customers quickly changed the direction.

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

Some had little produce to preserve.

Storage alone was not enough.

The team expanded.

Solar irrigation came next.

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

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

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

Then came the next leap: artificial intelligence.

Ainomugisha says the AI component emerged from another observation.

Many farmers lacked access to agricultural training.

Knowledge gaps were driving losses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Changing the Narrative

That narrative matters deeply to her.

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

“That is sad.”

She pauses.

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

One of the defining moments came in 2023.

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

Her mother became the first customer.

Then came neighbours.

Then more farmers.

Initially, usage was free.

People needed proof.

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

She stored produce for a month.

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

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

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

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

Solafam eventually introduced a pay-per-use model.

The impact, Ainomugisha says, became measurable.

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

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

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

Winning Reaction

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

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

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

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

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

For Ainomugisha, being selected is an honour.

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

She believes three things contributed most to the selection.

Sustainability.

Impact.

Accessibility.

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

“Secondly, we are creating meaningful impact.”

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

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

Women.

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

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

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

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

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

It is lived experience.

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

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

Technology alone is not enough.

It must be accessible.

Affordable.

And designed around people’s realities.

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

The larger vision is not simply digitising agriculture.

It is restoring dignity to farming.

The memory of rotten tomatoes remains.

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

But today, those memories no longer represent failure.

They represent the beginning of a different harvest.

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

And for Ainomugisha, that future has already started.

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Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Generations-Old Traditions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ground-Level Interventions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Public Consumption

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

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

The Benin government has ambitious plans for the harvested salt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Clarke A survivor of sexual violence covers her face with her hands in a camp for displaced people in Tawila, North Darfur. Credit: UNOCHA/Giles

By Mariya Salim
DELHI, India, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

Three years ago, during a mission to the Central African Republic from United Nations Headquarters, I met a woman whose story has remained with me ever since. She had survived rape during the conflict. Yet what stayed with her most was not only the violence she had suffered, but the stigma that followed it. When she returned home, her family refused to take her back. In a society where survivors of sexual violence are too often burdened with shame that rightfully belongs to perpetrators, she found herself isolated and struggling to rebuild her life. In that moment, it became painfully clear that for survivors, the violence does not end when the assault ends, it continues through stigma, exclusion, and the resulting silence for most.

Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) does not end when the act itself ends. Its consequences ripple through families, communities, and generations and that is precisely why more needs to be done to not just address it but prevent it from happening in the first place.

As the world marked the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict on 19 June, (The day marks the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008), which condemned sexual violence in conflict and recognized its impact on peace and security), I found myself reflecting on the many survivors whose stories I have encountered throughout my career. I witnessed firsthand the devastating and enduring impact of these crimes, sometimes documenting and analysing the many cases sent to us by colleagues on the field and sometimes while interacting with the survivors first hand. At a moment when wars dominate global headlines, from Gaza and Ukraine to Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo, ignoring CRSV means ignoring one of war’s most enduring and devastating consequences.

Today, the issue is more urgent than ever. Civilians continue to bear the heaviest burden of conflict, and among the most devastating consequences of conflict is sexual violence. According to the United Nations Secretary-General’s 2026 Report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, nearly 9,800 cases were verified globally in 2025, more than double the number documented the previous year. Yet even these alarming figures represent only a fraction of the actual scale of violations, given the barriers to reporting, including stigma, insecurity, fear of retaliation, and limited access to services. “The figures contained in this report should be understood not as the full picture, but as an indication of a much broader pattern of violations that remain largely unseen and underreported.” said Special Representative to the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten.

From Sudan and South Sudan to Haiti, Ukraine, and Myanmar, recent UN reporting shows that conflict-related sexual violence continues to affect communities across the globe, reminding us that it remains one of the most enduring and devastating consequences of armed conflict.

CRSV is not an inevitable consequence of war; it is often a deliberate act used to terrorize communities, assert power, and deepen divisions. Its impact extends well beyond the immediate violation. For many survivors, the trauma is compounded by stigma, rejection from family members, exclusion from community life, loss of livelihoods, interrupted education, and limited access to justice and support services. The consequences can endure long after the conflict itself has faded from public attention.

In South Sudan, I documented stories of women and adolescent girls who had survived gang rape while collecting firewood, water or travelling to markets. I listened to survivors who feared reporting violations because they worried about being ostracized by their communities and feared retaliation by their attackers who ranged from soldiers to armed militia. I encountered families struggling to support children born out of rape while facing stigma and economic hardship.

Although women and girls bear the overwhelming burden of conflict-related sexual violence, my work also exposed me to the experiences of men and boys who had endured similar violations. Many carried their trauma in silence, reluctant to come forward because of stigma, fear, and societal expectations surrounding masculinity. As a result, their experiences are frequently overlooked, even as they grapple with profound physical and psychological consequences.

In conflict zones such as South Sudan, local civil society organisations continue to play a critical role in supporting survivors despite significant resource and safety constraints. These organisations often serve as the first and sometimes only point of contact for survivors seeking assistance. They provide psychosocial support, referrals to healthcare, legal aid, community awareness programmes, and safe spaces for healing. Yet the scale of need far exceeds available resources.

As Rev. John Ngbapia Bakiri, Executive Director of Rural Development Action Aid (RDAA), explains:

“The biggest challenge we face in dealing with Survivors of CRSV in South Sudan is the limited scope and resources of the intervention relative to the scale of need. Many CRSV Survivors remain unreached, several highly affected communities excluded, and the specific needs of children born out of rape are not fully integrated into the response. These children continue to face stigma, protection risks, and limited access to essential services, compounding the vulnerability of survivor households.”

Addressing conflict-related sexual violence therefore requires moving beyond emergency response and looking at prevention with a survivor centred approach. It requires sustained investment in healthcare, psychosocial support, education, livelihoods, legal assistance, awareness building and social reintegration. It requires supporting local organisations that remain embedded within communities long after international attention has shifted elsewhere. It also involves very importantly engaging with the government including the implementation of national action plans, criminalization of conflict-related sexual violence in domestic legislation, and meaningful accountability for perpetrators regardless of rank or affiliation.

Despite decades of advocacy and normative progress, accountability remains elusive in many contexts. Survivors continue to face significant barriers in accessing justice and perpetrators often operating with impunity is common. With peace processes and political negotiations frequently overlooking the experiences and priorities of survivors, funding for survivor-centred services remains inadequate despite growing needs. At a time when violence and instability are rising across the world, we can no longer afford to relegate conflict-related sexual violence to the margins of policy and peacebuilding efforts. Its consequences are profound and enduring, leaving scars not only on survivors but also on the communities and societies struggling to rebuild in its aftermath.

The International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict offers an important moment for reflection. But remembrance alone is not enough. What survivors deserve is justice, protection, meaningful support, and genuine participation in shaping the policies and responses that affect them with a seat at the decision making table. Their stories are not simply testimonies of suffering, they are calls to action.

Mariya Salim is co-founder of Zariya. She is a Human Rights activist and an international SGBV expert currently based in Delhi India. She has served as a Women Protection Adviser with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), and was part of the United Nations team working on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence at UN Headquarters in New York.

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By UN Women
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 23 2026 (IPS)

A study of 133 AI systems found that 44 per cent demonstrated gender bias and 26 per cent demonstrated both gender and racial bias. Yet only 51 per cent of marketers currently use human oversight to test AI-generated creative before release. Ahead of the United Nations Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance from 6 – 7 July and AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, Switzerland from 7-10 July, UN Women sets out what is at stake – and what must change – to build a gender-equal digital future.

1. The AI content era is here. And the window to shape it is closing fast.

Generative AI is now among the most widely used technologies in day-to-day marketing and communications work, in the United Kingdom (UK) alone, 88 per cent of advertising and media agencies are already using it in some form. Discriminatory algorithms could therefore further perpetuate gender inequality and discrimination. As AI tools become embedded in content generation and media buying at scale, decisions about who gets seen, how they are portrayed, and whose stories get told are being made at speed, and largely without human scrutiny or gender perspective.

2. Bias and discriminatory algorithms are not a glitch in AI – it is a pattern documented across systems at scale.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have been found to consistently associate women with “home,” “family,” and “children,” and men with “business,” “executive,” “salary,” and “career.” When tasked with completing sentences that start with a person’s gender, about 20 per cent of responses from LLMs exhibited sexist and misogynistic attitudes, including portrayals of women as sex objects and property of their husbands. These are the predictable output of AI systems trained on decades of unequal representation of women and men. AI bias is not only a system design problem, but also a policy problem. Of 138 countries assessed, only 24 referenced gender in a national AI strategy, and just 18 included substantive gender-responsive provisions, risking inequality being “baked in” to future systems.

3. AI is intensifying violence against women and girls in digital spaces.

According to UN Women data, women and girls globally already have less access to digital spaces – and when they do, they are far more likely to experience online violence. Almost one in four surveyed women human rights defenders, activists and journalists had experienced AI-assisted online violence and 12 per cent report having experienced the non-consensual sharing of personal images, including intimate or sexual content. Six per cent say they have been targeted through “deepfakes” or manipulated images/video, while more than one in four have received unsolicited sexual advances through digital messaging. AI is compounding this. Deepfakes are among the most visible examples of AI-enabled abuse that disproportionately targets women and girls. As AI-generated content becomes the norm, the tools for harassment, manipulation, and image-based abuse are scaling alongside it.

4. Women are being locked out of the rooms where AI is built.

Gen AI is expected to drive job growth in tech-intensive sectors, yet women remain underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and AI, making up only 30 per cent of the AI workforce globally. The people designing these systems are not representative of the billions of people the systems are expected to serve – and that glaring gap is compounding the problem.

5. The economic disruption of AI will fall hardest on women.

Women outside the AI sector are nearly twice as likely as men to hold jobs at high risk of automation. AI disparity does not manifest in gender inequality alone – harms are multiplied across race, disability, socioeconomic status, and geography. The communities already most underrepresented in media and labour markets face the greatest risk of being left further behind.

6. Inclusive AI is a commercial imperative.

In a first-ever global study, the Unstereotype Alliance, an industry-led initiative convened by UN Women, proved that inclusive advertising has a positive impact on business profit, sales and brand value. Brands that create inclusive advertising, free of gender stereotypes, enjoy +3.46 per cent short-term sales and +16.26 per cent long-term sales uplift. They are 62 per cent more likely to be a consumer’s first choice, have 54 per cent higher pricing power, and experience 15 per cent higher customer loyalty. As AI becomes central to how campaigns are planned and produced, the brands that embed inclusion into those processes stand to gain – and those that do not, face significant reputational and commercial risk. The Unstereotype Alliance playbook launched in June 2026 gives marketers a way to catch bias before it ships, every time they use generative AI.

UN Women calls for gender equality and the rights and experiences of women and girls to be embedded at every stage of AI life cycle from development, deployment, and governance. When designed with safety and used with intention, AI can help detect stereotypes, broaden representation, and improve accessibility at scale. The choice of whether it does lies with the people making decisions – in governments, in companies, in experts researching and developing AI – and it depends on whether we incorporate the voice, expertise, and lived experience of women and girls from diverse contexts, civil society organizations who work with them and know their issues deeply.

For interviews or more information, contact the UN Women media team at media.team@unwomen.org.

IPS UN Bureau

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