Astana’s futuristic skyline and Japan’s urban landscape converge with symbols of clean energy, connectivity and peace, reflecting a partnership shaped by smart-city cooperation, energy security, and shared memories of nuclear suffering.　Credit: INPS Japan

By Katsuhiro Asagiri
TOKYO, Japan, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The relationship between Japan and Kazakhstan is often described in terms of diplomacy, investment and regional cooperation. But at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty, it deserves to be understood in broader terms: as a partnership linking cities, resources, technology and peace.

Kisho Kurokawa

For Japan, however, Astana is not simply a distant capital. Its master plan was shaped in part by the late Kisho Kurokawa, one of Japan’s leading architects, who sought to combine Kazakhstan’s nomadic heritage, harsh natural environment and state-building ambitions with forward-looking urban design. That historical connection is now taking on new meaning as Japan and Kazakhstan expand cooperation in smart cities, green technologies, energy security and nuclear disarmament.

On May 22, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev met Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike in Astana to discuss cooperation in smart city development, digital technologies, finance, education, emergency response and sustainable urban management. Tokyo, one of the world’s most densely populated metropolitan areas, has developed advanced systems in public safety, disaster preparedness, transportation and administrative services. For rapidly growing Astana, Tokyo’s experience provides a valuable reference point.

Akorda

Yet the deepening Japan-Kazakhstan relationship cannot be explained by urban cooperation alone. Behind it lies a more urgent geopolitical reality: instability in the Middle East and the resulting anxiety over energy security.

Japan has long depended heavily on the Middle East for crude oil. Tensions around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz pose risks that directly affect Japan’s economy and daily life. For Tokyo, diversifying energy sources, critical mineral supplies and transport routes is no longer simply a matter of trade policy. It has become a central element of economic security.

Middle Corridor. Photo credit: TITR

For Japan, rare earths, lithium and other critical minerals are essential to batteries, electronics, renewable energy systems and next-generation industries. Diversifying both sources of supply and transport routes is therefore an energy policy, an industrial policy and a security policy at once. Astana is increasingly becoming an important platform for Japan’s engagement with Central Asia.

Semipalatinsk Former Nuclear Weapon Test site. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

Urban development, environmental technologies, resource cooperation and logistics infrastructure are no longer separate policy fields. They are becoming part of a wider strategic framework in which Japan and Kazakhstan can complement each other: one with advanced technology and urban management experience, the other with resources, geography and a young capital still in the process of defining its future.

But there is a deeper layer to this relationship that should not be overlooked: the memory of nuclear suffering.

Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic bombings in war, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kazakhstan endured severe radiation damage from repeated Soviet nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk test site, where more than 450 nuclear tests were conducted between 1949 and 1989, leaving long-term consequences for local communities and public health.

In 1991, Kazakhstan closed the Semipalatinsk test site. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it gave up one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals remaining on its territory and chose the path of a non-nuclear-weapon state. That decision has become a defining feature of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy.

Japan and Kazakhstan both know, not as an abstract matter of security theory but through historical experience, what nuclear weapons can inflict on human beings, communities, the environment and future generations. This shared memory gives the bilateral relationship a distinct ethical foundation.

That memory has also shaped sustained cooperation among governments, civil society and international organizations. INPS Japan has reported on nuclear disarmament-related conferences and events involving Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Center for International Security and Policy, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Soka Gakkai International.

A Group photo of participants of the regional conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear-free-zone in Central Asia held on August 29, 2023. Photo Credit: Jibek Joly TV Channel

One notable example was the anti-nuclear exhibition “Everything You Treasure — For a World Free From Nuclear Weapons,” jointly organized in Astana by SGI, ICAN and Kazakhstan’s Center for International Security and Policy. Held in September 2022 at Keruen Mall in central Astana, the exhibition used photographs, illustrations and graphics to educate young people about the dangers of nuclear weapons, from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to the continuing humanitarian consequences of nuclear arms.

A documentary produced by CISP, a Kazakh NGO, with support from SGI.

Such initiatives are important because nuclear disarmament cannot be left to diplomats alone. If the memory of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Semipalatinsk is to shape policy, it must also be passed to younger generations. Exhibitions, survivor testimony, documentaries and civil society campaigns help ensure that nuclear weapons are discussed not only as instruments of deterrence, but also as weapons with catastrophic human, environmental and intergenerational consequences.

In 2023, a regional conference in Astana addressed the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone, testimony from nuclear test victims, and victim assistance and environmental remediation under the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Unlike debates that frame nuclear weapons mainly in terms of deterrence or national prestige, such forums place affected people, their families, communities and environment at the center.

A documentary on Kazakhstan’s nuclear test victims, I Want to Live On: The Untold Stories of the Polygon, produced by Kazakhstan’s CISP with support from SGI, has also helped bring the testimonies of second- and third-generation victims in the Semey region to international audiences. Together with workshops involving the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs and discussions on cooperation among nuclear-weapon-free zones, these efforts keep the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons at the center of global disarmament debates.

Akorda.kz

That message should be taken seriously. Japan and Kazakhstan do not occupy identical security positions. Japan continues to rely on the United States’ nuclear deterrence as part of its security policy, while Kazakhstan, having renounced nuclear weapons, is a member of the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone. Yet both countries share common ground in seeking to transform the memory of nuclear harm into action for international peace.

Japan and Kazakhstan Draw Closer as Iran Crisis Reshapes Energy and Security Priorities. Credit: INPS Japan

At a time when crises in the Middle East are shaking the global energy order and nuclear risks are again moving to the forefront of international politics, the Japan-Kazakhstan relationship is no longer merely a story of friendship. It reflects Japan’s own choices in an age of uncertainty: whether to approach Central Asia only as a source of resources, or as a region with which it can build a broader partnership linking cities, technology, energy security and peace.

Astana, the futuristic capital shaped in part by a Japanese architect, has become more than a symbol of Kazakhstan’s ambitions. It is also a reminder that the future of international cooperation will depend not only on markets and infrastructure, but on memory, responsibility and the courage to imagine security beyond fear.

This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.

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The headquarters of the United Nations with Trump World Tower looming in the foreground, in Manhattan, NY, on April 28, 2026. (SEBASTIAN CHRISTOPH GOLLNOW/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES) Source: Wahington Reports

By Ian Williams
NEW YORK, May 25 2026 (IPS)

AS THE WORLD HURTLES TO HELL (albeit in a SpaceX rather than a hand basket), it might seem of only academic interest which cipher vegetates on the 38th floor of the U.N. Headquarters. However, the choice is due by the end of the year, unless, as has happened in the past, the Security Council is veto-bound and asks António Guterres to stay on as interim Secretary General.

Guterres certainly has experience for a seat-warming position, since he has performed like an interim Secretary General ever since he was first appointed. At times when his voice could and should have made a difference, he has followed the guidance of the three wise monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil). The Secretary General’s ability to put items on the council agenda and raise them publicly are his few effective powers in the face of the permanent members’ traditional lackadaisical stance.

His studied withdrawal from influence has infected other levels of the Secretariat and allowed the Security Council to reach new lows of subservience to power. So, if and when the council picks his successor, it’s unlikely that crowds will gather on U.N. Plaza to watch the white smoke rising to announce the anointment.

That is not only because Trump World Tower looms over the plaza like an escaped prop from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but also because its eponymous owner has done so much to devalue the U.N. One could almost suspect that it is only allowed to hang on in New York because property values would plummet in the neighborhood if all the insouciant and complaisant diplomats who work in the U.N. complex had to leave.

The U.N.’s geopolitical absence certainly diminishes potential public interest in the race and is compounded by the increasing ineffectuality of the Security Council in the face of the erasure of the U.N. Charter. The guiding principle of the Secretariat often seems to be plucked from Arthur Hugh Clough’s old poem, “Thou shalt not kill/ But needs’t not strive, officiously to keep alive.”

However, the general membership is almost as complicit. Faced with the latest U.S. demand to reshape the organization before Washington even considers paying a part of its legally obligated payments, their response is to dicker about the depth of evisceration, not to challenge the assumptions. Of course, the U.N. needs reform—but not necessarily in the way the U.S. has been demanding for half a century.

Western signatories of the Rome Convention for the International Criminal Court have left their nationals, like Francesca Albanese and Karim Khan, to swing in the wind in the face of an entirely illegal U.S.–Israeli war on International Criminal Court staff. Even their home states’ declaration that they will provide government backed credit to the victims of U.S. sanctions would send a signal and some succor to the judges. A robust denunciation by the outgoing Secretary General (a lame duck and hence beyond significant U.S. payback) would have helped, but it was not forthcoming.

As the only figure who could coordinate (and heaven help us, lead) the defense, the forlorn position of the Secretary General is still essential despite the lackluster field. So, the choice is important—as well as boring.

So far, there is a growing consensus that the next leader needs to be a woman, which China has been very firm on, and should be from the Latin American and Caribbean region. So far, it’s a very uninspiring and, dare one say, “mature” field. Maybe there should be as much pressure for “youth’s” turn as there is for a woman, not least since both declared female candidates are of a certain age. The “most difficult job in the world” is not one for the elderly.

The April candidate forums at the U.N. featured four announced aspirants, but as the Book of Proverbs says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” None of the candidates offered a vision: their presentations were more like an AI-generated resume for corporate human resources.

Even the candidates who showed some signs of integrity, like the “keeping the law” bit, seem to be missing the vision thing and, frankly, professed over-adherence to the law is a stretch for candidates who want to avoid a veto from the P5. Which is, of course, why there was conspicuous silence on the hustings about Israel and Iran. It also so far guaranteed candidates who will not rock the boat for Washington.

So in a field of lame horses, the three-legged one might limp home, and that could be former President of Senegal Macky Sall, who is not a woman, not Latin American and does not have the support of his own country or the African Union. His best qualification is the traditional U.N. promotion criterion: not being remembered for anything in particular. He could fall in the East River and not cause a ripple. But he is unlikely to be willing to undergo the gender transition necessary. China says it wants a woman and has historically been prepared to stand its ground with repeated vetoes.

Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has the required diplomatic and political credentials, and she has clearly been playing the long game. As U.N. Human Rights Commissioner she sat upon a report about the People’s Republic of China’s abuse of the Uighurs, which might fend off a Chinese veto but raises questions about her integrity and independence.

It does suggest that she had acute political antennae since at that time pandering to China could have cost her support with the U.S. and Europeans—but now, perhaps not so much. Under the MAGA Trump Republicans, human rights are a now and then thing. More important perhaps to Washington, Chile’s new right-wing government pulled its endorsement of her which could burnish her credentials with what’s left of the progressive world. And her gender and Latin American origins tick other boxes.

In contrast, right-wing Argentinian President Javier Milei backs Rafael Grossi’s candidacy, which detracts from Grossi’s globalist credentials to head the U.N. However, as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), his equivocation about Iranian nuclear activities might well be negotiable into active U.S. support. He has been a deft tightrope walker, trying not to give Iran a clean bill of health, but avoiding complicity in an over-explicit casus belli to Washington, which would upset Moscow and Beijing (and may yet). But he has defied best practice for candidates by staying active in his U.N. role, which suggests he knows his IAEA position gives him cards to play.

Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan is an uninspiring apparatchik who has presided over the effectual dismantlement of U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, the development agency that had been in the sights of Washington for decades. While one cannot hold family connections against her, many countries might also worry about the optics of a secretary general whose sister is an Israeli settler in the West Bank. However, she is backed by her government, unlike some other candidates, and is a Latina, so ticks two of the boxes, and is likely to get support from the U.S. (and Israel, which does not have a direct seat on the Security Council, but nevertheless is reputedly a presence).

Looking at the heavily handicapped slate so far, it’s good that there are nominations waiting in the wings. Barbadian PM Mia Amor Mottley would be an ideal candidate, ticking both the vision and law boxes. A woman from the Latin American and Caribbean region whose otherwise disqualifying integrity might pass the Trump test by speaking English and being previously accoladed by no less than the American Enterprise Institute! However, she has just won re-election in Barbados and would probably prefer to stay where she is now.

Another person who announced her candidacy is Ecuador’s María Fernanda Espinosa, former General Assembly President, who is also missing support from her own government, but she has shown both vision and integrity and has other backers. And she is not of pensionable age.

In the end, sadly, the odds are against anyone who meets the needs of the world and organization. Their very qualifications would be unlikely to survive the whims and prejudices of this U.S. administration, let alone survive scrutiny by Moscow or Beijing. Even if Russia and China pay lip service to the international order and sacrifice their immediate prejudices for the greater good, Washington is unlikely to be so forbearing.

Overall, the question is whether the U.N. is redeemable while some countries have veto power. At one time the U.S. realized the advantages of maintaining the U.N. as a thin blue fig leaf for its actual hegemony, but it no longer sees the need to cover its rampant MAGA-hood.

U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is president of the Foreign Press Association of the U.S. He is the author of U.N.told: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).

Source: Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs

IPS UN Bureau

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Budget shortfalls could force the organization to move closer to the communities that it's meant to serve.

By JB Bae
FORT COLLINS, Colorado USA, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The $1.2 billion renovation of the Palais des Nations was intended to reaffirm Geneva’s centrality to the multilateral system. Instead, the city’s international quarter is emptying.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has cut hundreds of positions. The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is relocating core administrative roles to Rome and Budapest. Other agencies are scaling back or relocating operations. The United States, which funds roughly a quarter of the U.N.’s regular budget, now owes approximately $2.2 billion, about 95% of all unpaid contributions to the organization.

Many will read this as a harbinger of the decline, or perhaps even the demise, of the U.N. system. Yet the crisis in Geneva may be creating the conditions for a more resilient multilateralism.

Critics claim that American taxpayers subsidized a U.N. bureaucracy hostile to their interests, one lacking accountability and captured by priorities divorced from its founding purposes. There is some truth to this. However, these arguments have marginalized those who wish to refound the U.N. system, rather than dismantling multilateralism wholesale.

The erosion of U.S. funding may be doing what decades of reform efforts could not: forcing a realignment of the U.N.’s structure with its mission. Numerous proposals, secretary-general initiatives, and expert panels have failed to produce meaningful change.

The U.N.’s own 2021 Integration Review, drawing on input from over 200 staff members across the organization, found that institutional insulation undermined impact, calling for more decentralized decision-making and reforms responsive to field realities. Member states had pressed for the same for decades.

Meanwhile, Geneva came to embody the distance between those running the institution and the constituencies they were meant to serve. The compensation structure tells part of the story. Bureaucrats enjoyed tax-free salaries, exceptionally generous pension arrangements, housing allowances pegged to one of the world’s most expensive cities, business-class travel, and education grants that cover most of the cost of elite international-school tuition in Geneva, where annual fees often reach $45,000 per child per year.

One study of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) operations found spending of roughly $600 per refugee annually (around $800-850 in today’s dollars). U.N. reimbursements for a single child’s school fees in Geneva, in other words, could support dozens of refugees for a year. These arrangements are not reserved for senior leadership. They define the terms of employment for the typical international civil servant.

These terms apply to a substantial workforce. Switzerland hosts roughly forty international organizations that employ more than 25,000 people, most concentrated in the Lake Geneva region. The World Health Organization, the largest, employs roughly 2,400 people at its Geneva headquarters and operated on a biennial budget of $5.3 billion for 2026-27 before recent cuts. The International Labour Organization (ILO), UNHCR, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and others maintain significant presences in Geneva.

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When the U.N. Secretary-General’s office issued a memo in April 2025 directing Geneva and New York to identify posts for relocation to lower-cost duty stations, the Geneva staff union’s response was telling: its official statement declared the union “alarmed,” hundreds of staff demonstrated on International Workers’ Day to protect their Geneva postings, and unions defended housing subsidies, education grants, and tax exemptions as essential. These numbers and reactions reflect the insulation of much of Geneva from the realities the institution nominally exists to address.

Yet the crisis is strengthening the position of those within the system who have long called for change. The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF)’s consolidation of regional functions to Bangkok, the expansion of U.N. agency operations in Nairobi, and shifting administrative functions to lower-cost duty stations all reflect a shift toward where the work actually is. Technology and the remote collaboration it enables make justifying the Geneva-centric model even more difficult. What once required flights to Geneva can now happen across multiple continents simultaneously.

Simply relocating institutions to less costly settings, however, risks reproducing Geneva’s pathologies — insulated professional communities, compensation structures detached from local conditions, and organizational cultures oriented more toward one another than toward the populations they serve. More than simply moving offices, structural reform requires confronting how these institutions are staffed, incentivized, and embedded in the political contexts in which they operate.

A more promising direction is aligning institutions with the political support and capacity of host nations. This goes beyond decentralization and proximity to need, toward placing authority where capacity and political will already exist. Former aid recipients that have become donors and regional powers in their own right — Poland, Chile, and South Korea among them — are natural candidates for anchoring this kind of multilateralism. Having navigated conflict, development, refugee flows, and political transition themselves, they bring the political legitimacy and operational credibility that Geneva-centered bureaucracies cannot replicate.

The substance of the changes also matters for the legitimacy of the international order. A multilateral system whose centers of decision-making remain in Geneva, New York, and a handful of donor capitals is vulnerable to the accusation that it represents a historical moment that has long passed. Institutions whose operational weight sits closer to the communities they serve, staffed by professionals embedded in supportive settings, are harder to displace. What survives will be better able to compete for relevance in a more contested world order.

Geneva will survive this crisis as a conference center for highest-stakes diplomacy and backroom dialogues that only physical proximity can enable. But what emerges beyond Geneva, in the field offices of agencies closer to the populations they serve and potentially in the hands of actors with the legitimacy and experience to carry multilateralism forward, may prove closer to what the system was always intended to be.

Many of the structural problems that have long plagued the U.N. will remain. The shifts now under way will not solve them. But they change where influence accumulates, and who shapes the decisions that matter. This new multilateralism may prove more resilient, more legitimate, and harder to hold captive to the politics of any single donor.

JB Bae is an assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University. His research addresses issues in international security and foreign policy, with a focus on East Asia. He received his PhD from UCLA.

The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.

Source: Responsible Statecraft

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Credit: UN Photo/Sourav Sarker

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The United Nations has had a longstanding tradition, described by some as a “privilege”, where most senior staffers are entitled to highly-expensive First Class or Business Class seats on trips worldwide.

But with the world body facing a severe cash crisis –and demands by the Trump administration calling for drastic cost-cutting—another privilege is likely to end up on the chopping block.

https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/senior-management-group

Speaking off-the-record, a former UN official told Inter Press Service: “On the rare occasion I travelled with the UN for work, I was always shocked by the enormous amounts paid for air tickets. I find it interesting to see that it took the UN a deep financial crisis to invite the staff to a ”voluntary” downgrade”

As part of the Organization’s ongoing efforts to reduce travel costs, and in response to the General Assembly’s call to strengthen measures to promote voluntary downgrades from business or first-class travel entitlements, the UN’s Human Resources Services Division (HRSD), in collaboration with the Travel and Transportation Section (TTS), in the Department of Operational Support (DOS), has launched the Voluntary Downgrade Pilot which introduced a set of new incentives to encourage voluntary downgrade for official air travels by United Nations travelers.

“The initiative is designed to encourage United Nations travelers to voluntarily downgrade from business class to premium economy, or equivalent cabins, by offering eligible travelers, a series of additional incentives aimed at maintaining comfort and convenience, while generating cost savings for the Organization,” says a circular released 18 May.

Meanwhile, in the latest figures released in one published report, the UN spent approximately $319 million on staff travel in one recent reporting year, covering roughly 98,000 trips.

Of those trips:

• About 12,000 flights were business class
• Only 51 flights were first class

The report also noted that the Secretary-General has recommended curbing first-class travel for senior officials.

Current UN travel rules state that:

• Most staff up to D-2 level normally travel economy, though some long-haul exceptions permit a higher class.
• Under-Secretaries-General (USGs) and Assistant Secretaries-General (ASGs) are entitled to “the class immediately below first class,” which in practice is generally business class on most airlines.

So, while the UN’s total annual travel spending has been in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars, the portion specifically attributable to senior officials flying business or first class is likely only a fraction of that total — probably in the tens of millions rather than hundreds of millions annually, based on the relatively small number of first-class tickets reported. The UN has steadily tightened rules on premium travel over the years, according to the report.

In addition to the existing entitlements for travelers, such as reimbursement for advance seat selection, in-flight meals and beverages, and one additional checked bag, the new incentives, according to the staff circular include:

Rest Periods (subject to supervisory approval)

• One additional day of rest upon arrival at the duty station, with up to one day of additional Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA), if arriving early.
• The option to remain at the official business location for one extra day prior to return, with DSA, if this reduces overall ticket cost.
• One additional calendar day of rest upon return to duty station (no DSA).

Reimbursement of costs for

• Lounge access at departure and connection points for both outbound and inbound travel (where applicable).
• Purchase of “extra space seating” including “couch style” in economy class, if offered by the airline.

The circular appeals to staffers to consider the above incentives when planning official travel, ”and should you opt for voluntary downgrade, you may select any combination, provided that the total cost is less than the entitled business class fare, keeping in mind, any additional rest periods selected under the pilot will remain subject to the approval of your first reporting officer.”

How to get started

• Explore details on iSeek: New incentives for travelers: Voluntary downgrade pilot launches | iSeek
• Check out how-to guides on how to opt in;
• Contact your local HR, Travel, or Admin Office for further information and support.

“We encourage all staff to take advantage of these options and contribute to more cost-effective travel practices across the Organization”.

HRSD in the Office of Support Operations (OSO) and TTS in the Facilities and Commercial Acitivites Service (FCAS) within the Division of Administration (DOA), are part of the Department of Operationsl Support (DOS).

Read about DOS on iSeek or our website and follow us on LinkedIn and X.

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Credit: Rizwan Tabassum/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, May 22 2026 (IPS)

Narges Mohammadi, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights activism in Iran, has been allowed to go home. After guards found her unconscious in her cell, the apparent victim of a heart attack, she was granted temporary release from prison and transferred to a hospital. However, she still faces the threat of being taken back to jail once her condition has improved.

Mohammadi has been repeatedly imprisoned for criticising the theocratic regime, demanding women’s rights, advocating for prison reform and campaigning against the death penalty. Over her lifetime she’s been sentenced to a total of 44 years. She’s already spent more than a decade behind bars, including 161 days in solitary confinement, and has also been sentenced to 154 lashes. In February she was handed a further seven-and-a-half-year sentence. From prison – where she experienced cardiac and blood pressure problems and severe weight loss – she has documented systematic rights violations against political prisoners, including sexual and physical abuse of women detainees, torture and extensive use of solitary confinement.

Mohammadi’s case is one among many. While her ordeal has rightly drawn international attention, others more distant from the spotlight are in danger. Three more women human rights activists – Pakhshan Azizi, Sharifeh Mohammadi and Varisheh Moradi – are on death row at imminent risk of execution. The dangers they and countless others face have grown sharply since the current war began.

Repression tightens

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he wants regime change in Iran. On 1 March, an Israeli strike killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But if the intention was to topple the regime, it didn’t happen. Iran’s ruling theocratic structures run deep, with multiple layers of planned succession. Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei, injured in the same attack, was quickly named his replacement, despite Iran’s official ideology formally rejecting hereditary succession.

While clerical leaders have been killed, Iran’s coercive apparatus has gained in its day-to-day power, hardening the theocracy into something closer to a military dictatorship, with the Basij, the paramilitary volunteer force long deployed to crush public dissent, now front and centre.

Israeli and US hopes that Iranians would rise up against the regime have been disappointed. Iran has seen successive mass protest waves, each crushed with large-scale lethal violence. They include the Green Movement that demanded democracy in 2009 and 2010 and the Woman, Life, Freedom protests that demanded women’s rights in 2022 and 2023. The latest uprising came in December 2025 and January 2026, triggered by economic collapse, forging a movement that united broad sections of society to demand an end to the theocratic regime. The state suppressed it with shocking brutality, killing thousands and detaining tens of thousands.

By February, the uprising had been crushed. The Israeli-US intervention was unlikely to reignite a meaningful mass protest movement. If anything, for some Iranians the war has stoked patriotism and more intense enmity towards Israel and the USA. The anticipated revolt simply hasn’t happened.

Much of Iran’s vast diaspora has rallied in support of the war as a means of toppling the regime. But while the diaspora is united in demanding change, its array of ethnic minority organisations, Islamist factions, leftists, monarchists and republicans is bitterly divided over what should come next. Reza Pahlavi, son of the last shah, enjoys some support but others are wary about monarchical nostalgia and his close ties to Israel and the USA. The most credible potential unifying figures inside Iran are imprisoned or otherwise silenced.

Instead of losing control, the regime has tightened its repression. Even as Iran’s leaders wage a social media propaganda war abroad, at home they’ve imposed a near-total internet shutdown, including a block on VPN services. The blackout has caused immense economic harm, disrupting businesses and financial transactions and hitting women the hardest. This comes on top of the economic effects of the current US blockade of Iranian ports, sending inflation and unemployment soaring.

Under the cover of war and the internet shutdown, the government has accelerated executions of political prisoners. While precise figures are hard to get, rights groups report close to 200 executions so far this year, most preceded by prolonged torture to extract false confessions. Secret hangings are reportedly being carried out on an almost daily basis. Among those killed are people detained during the January protests. On 4 May, it was reported that three people arrested at protests on 8 and 9 January – Ebrahim Dolatabadinejad, Mohammadreza Miri and Mehdi Rasouli – had been hanged. For families, the suffering doesn’t end there, as authorities reportedly refuse to return bodies and pressure relatives to stay silent.

Local priorities

Democracy and human rights in Iran depend on the regime’s departure. But the latest war isn’t about any of this. For Netanyahu, with an election impending and anger remaining at his corruption charges and Israel’s security failures around the 7 October Hamas attacks, permanent warfare is a political strategy. Donald Trump’s many social media announcements provide little clue of what motivates a president who promised not to mire the USA in foreign wars, but distraction from low popularity ratings and his many appearances in the Epstein files may be a factor.

This war isn’t the way to achieve change. The regime appears entrenched and capable of surviving a longer conflict. Any peace deal would leave it intact, which its rulers would treat as a victory.

Real change will come when protests can grow into a mass movement large enough to withstand the lethal repression the state will inevitably deploy. That can only happen with sustained support that respects the autonomy of local civil society leaders and strengthens their capacity. The immediate priorities must be to protect credible local sources of information amid the information blackout and ensure the safety and security of Iran’s democracy and human rights activists.

Above all, states must press the Iranian government to halt executions and release everyone detained for speaking out, protesting and demanding change, beginning with Narges Mohammadi. Temporary medical release is nowhere near enough. The Iranian regime must let her be free.

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

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

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CIVICUS discusses the cancellation of RightsCon 2026 with Barbora Bukovská, Senior Director for Law and Policy at ARTICLE 19, a human rights organisation that works on freedom of expression and information around the world.

Barbora Bukovská

Why does the cancellation of RightsCon matter?

This cancellation is significant on three levels. First, it means the loss of community. The human rights movement depends on relationships built across borders and over time. RightsCon was one of the few global spaces where civil society organisations, funders, governments, journalists, researchers and technology professionals could meet without political interference. Losing it means losing opportunities to build solidarity and strengthen the networks the movement runs on.

Second, it was a symbolic blow. RightsCon represented the idea that at least one global space existed where civil society could convene freely, protected from political pressure. That illusion is now shattered. The space proved vulnerable. It is yet more evidence of shrinking civic space globally, and the message it sends is chilling: no space is truly protected from state interference any more.

Third, it caused financial damage. Following funding cuts from the USA in early 2025 and reduced funding from other major donor governments, civil society is struggling to secure resources. Organisations had invested precious funding to attend RightsCon, covering travel, organising side events and preparing advocacy materials. These are resources vulnerable civil society organisations cannot afford to waste.

What does this episode reveal about transnational repression?

The cancellation lays bare how emboldened China feels to globalise its political red lines and exercise transnational repression. For years, it has applied pressure on governments to sideline Taiwanese participation in multilateral forums. Taiwan’s leading role in digital rights and technology has long irritated China. What’s new is other governments’ willingness to yield.

China’s tactics have grown more sophisticated. Rather than open confrontation, it leverages threats of diplomatic fallout or lost investment. The pressure now extends into spaces once thought beyond its reach, such as cultural institutions, rights conferences and universities. China has shown it can coerce governments across sectors and at multiple levels.

The wider context matters too. The USA, once a leading global supporter of internet freedom, has retreated from diplomatic and financial backing for digital rights. China’s influence on the African continent has expanded in the absence of rights-based alternatives. When democratic states withdraw support for civil society, authoritarian influence fills the void.

How do China’s leverage and Zambia’s democratic decline combine?

China’s leverage across Africa has grown substantially in recent years. Chinese funding has built major infrastructure in Zambia, including Mulungushi International Conference Centre, the venue where RightsCon was due to take place. Only days before the cancellation, China signed a new agreement to fund further development projects. Zambia carries roughly US$5 billion in debt to China, and that dependency comes with strings attached.

Domestically, the picture is similarly bleak. Despite President Hakainde Hichilema being elected in 2021 on a promise of democratic renewal, civic space has shrunk steadily since. In 2025, parliament passed cybersecurity laws now used to curtail freedom of expression online and detain political opponents. Ahead of the August 2026 general election, the government is enacting further laws designed to entrench its power. Political control is winning out over democratic commitments.

Yielding to Chinese pressure while restricting civic space at home calls Zambia’s commitment to the rule of law and human rights into serious doubt. The debt creates a channel through which China can extract political cooperation. Together, these dynamics create a dangerous precedent for other global south nations facing similar pressure.

What does this mean globally?

The danger extends well beyond Zambia. If a government can cancel a major international civil society gathering without serious diplomatic or institutional consequences, it sends the wrong signals. States must show that interference carries costs. Democratic states, multilateral organisations and regional institutions must impose costs through sustained pressure and exclusion from future convenings.

International human rights mechanisms, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, have already condemned Zambia’s decision. But statements alone are not enough. Zambia shouldn’t be considered a reliable host for rights-based global dialogue in future.

If governments can yield to authoritarian pressure at the expense of civil society protections without paying a price, the pattern will spread.

What steps should be taken to protect global civil society forums?

Civil society can adapt but cannot insulate its gatherings from state pressure on its own. Real responsibility lies with states that claim to support human rights. They must send a diplomatic and political signal that interference in global forums is costly and prevent other governments from following Zambia’s example. They must reaffirm their commitment to multi-stakeholder forums and invest in civil society’s ability to convene and participate.

That includes member states of international coalitions such as the Freedom Online Coalition and the Media Freedom Coalition. They must act against restrictions on civic space and freedom of expression, using these platforms to impose costs on governments that interfere with civil society. The behaviour Zambia has just normalised must be made costly.

The UN, other intergovernmental organisations and states must work to guarantee the safety and openness of global gatherings. As democratic states withdraw support and authoritarian states expand their reach, the spaces where global civil society can gather, build relationships and advance human rights will continue to shrink. What’s at stake is the infrastructure of global civil society coordination and solidarity.

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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Democracy: an enduring aspiration CIVICUS | State of Civil Society Report 2026
Zambia: ‘Constitutional changes in an election period tend to be driven by political expediency rather than the public interest’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Gideon Musonda 24.Dec.2025
Zambia: ‘The NGO Bill strengthens legal mechanisms designed to discredit or silence critical civil society voices’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Josiah Kalala 03.Jun.2025

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U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Aquidneck (WPB-1309) in the Strait of Hormuz, with a large container ship visible in the background as it transits the critical global trade route (Dec. 2, 2020). Credit: MC2 Indra Beaufort

By Lulseged Desta and Jonathan Mockshell
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, May 20 2026 (IPS)

Sharp surges in energy, fertilizer, and food prices triggered by the ongoing conflict in the Persian Gulf strikingly illustrate the deep interconnections between geopolitical conflict, food insecurity, and the fragility of fossil fuel–dependent food systems.

Besides carrying roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day (about 27 percent of global oil exports), the Strait of Hormuz also handles 20–30 percent of internationally traded inorganic fertilizers, which uses natural gas as a key ingredient in its production. Its closure has immediately disrupted the flow of these essential commodities, triggering sharp price spikes in fuel and key agricultural inputs.

This situation demonstrates how geopolitical instability can rapidly disrupt essential agricultural functions under current input-dependent, industrial production systems that rely heavily on external energy and supply chains. This crisis highlights, more clearly than ever, a critical reality: food systems tied to fossil fuels are inherently unsustainable, continually undermine food sovereignty, and disproportionately affect farmers, particularly smallholders in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). World Food Programme estimates warn that, if the conflict continues, the soaring oil, shipping and food costs will push an additional 45 million people into acute hunger, driving the global total beyond its record 319 million¹.

Reducing food systems’ reliance on fossil fuels and external inputs is essential to strengthen our collective resilience to future shocks. The truth is that fossil fuels courses through every stage of the food system – from fertilizers and pesticides to processing, preservation, transportation, packaging, food waste disposal, and even food preparation. Moreover, entrenched economic and political structures lock in this fossil-fuel dependence through massive subsidies and price protections – estimated at over $1 trillion in recent years².

Food systems account for at least 15 percent of total fossil fuel use – mostly through synthetic fertilizers ⁴ – but also to power machinery and vehicles, and generate electricity and heat for key processes like irrigation, grain drying, livestock housing, and food storage.

Agroecological approaches to food production offer an alternative to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels while still meeting the needs of a growing global population. This supports a transition from energy-sink systems to regenerative ones, radically enhancing food systems’ resilience in the face of escalating geopolitical instability and environmental vulnerability.

Agroecology is based on natural processes and local resources for sustainable soil fertility. Crucially, many of these practices draw directly from indigenous knowledge systems, where local communities have long maintained soil health through time. Practical steps include the use of organic fertilization (often blended with minimal synthetic inputs), efficient soil microorganisms, nitrogen-fixing plants, and soil health practices like crop rotation, cover cropping, intercropping, reduced tillage, and crop-livestock integration.

Research consistently shows that agroecological approaches – such as farm diversification and tree integrated systems – outperform conventional systems in climate resilience, nutrient cycling, and soil health^5,6, often while boosting yields^7-9. Agroforestry also provides a source of wood fuel, making it a valuable alternative during fossil fuel shortages and price spikes.

Examples can be found worldwide. Peruvian cocoa farmers are using bokashi and bio-oil amendments to restore soil organic matter, regenerate microbial activity, and enhance nutrient cycling¹⁰. In Vietnam, rice-fish coculture systems optimize nutrient cycling, curb pests, and diversify outputs – lowering costs while stabilizing farmer incomes¹¹. Ethiopian farmers practicing wheat-fava bean rotations are cutting fertilizer needs while improving soil structure and building long-term fertility11. India’s agroecology programme, ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF)’, delivers biodiversity benefits while more than doubling farmers’ economic profits and maintaining comparable crop yields, than chemical-based farming ^12,13.

Other farm-level steps to curb fossil fuel dependence include integrating renewable energy sources for on-site generation and operations – like solar panels, biogas digesters, and wind turbines; solar water pumps, adopting fuel-efficient engines and draft animals; and embracing practices such as minimum tillage, precision irrigation, integrated pest management, and low-input crop-livestock systems.

More fundamentally, shifting from global, industrial commodity chains toward territorial, agroecological food networks can relocalize production, processing, and consumption – shortening supply chains and reducing energy-intensive operations. Shorter, localized supply chains reduce reliance on long-distance transport, lower packaging demand, and promote reusable packaging systems, thereby decreasing fossil fuel consumption.

These efforts can be reinforced by complementary practices that strengthen food sovereignty, such as home gardens and urban agriculture. Crucially, agroecology also aligns with reduced production of ultra-processed foods – among the most energy-intensive products – helping to curb fossil fuel use while potentially improving public health.

In the short term, it is crucial that the allocation of emergency funds are earmarked to procure or purchase organic alternatives to synthetic fertilizers, particularly in the most affected regions. Longer-term, it is necessary to reduce structural barriers to farmers’ adoption of these agroecological approaches including reforms to agricultural subsidies and strengthening support for technical assistance and local governance.

References
1. Farge, E. Iran war may push 45 million people into acute hunger by June, WFP says. Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-war-may-push-45-million-people-into-acute-hunger-by-june-wfp-says-2026-03-17/ (2026).

2. IPES-Food. Fuel to Fork: What Will It Take to Get Fossil Fuels out of Our Food Systems? https://ipes-food.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/FuelToFork.pdf (2025).

3. FAO, UNDP, and UNEP. A Multi-Billion-Dollar Opportunity – Repurposing Agricultural Support to Transform Food Systems. (FAO, UNDP, and UNEP, 2021). doi:10.4060/cb6562en.

4. Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Power Shift: Why We Need to Wean Industrial Food Systems off Fossil Fuels. https://futureoffood.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/ga_food-energy-nexus_report.pdf (2023).

5. Niether, W., Jacobi, J., Blaser, W. J., Andres, C. & Armengot, L. Cocoa agroforestry systems versus monocultures: a multi-dimensional meta-analysis. Environ. Res. Lett. 15, 104085 (2020).

6. Beillouin, D., Ben‐Ari, T., Malézieux, E., Seufert, V. & Makowski, D. Positive but variable effects of crop diversification on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Glob. Change Biol. 27, 4697–4710 (2021).

7. Dittmer, K. M. et al. Agroecology Can Promote Climate Change Adaptation Outcomes Without Compromising Yield In Smallholder Systems. Environ. Manage. 72, 333–342 (2023).

8. Rodenburg, J., Mollee, E., Coe, R. & Sinclair, F. Global analysis of yield benefits and risks from integrating trees with rice and implications for agroforestry research in Africa. Field Crops Res. 281, 108504 (2022).

9. Jones, S. K. et al. Achieving win-win outcomes for biodiversity and yield through diversified farming. Basic Appl. Ecol. 67, 14–31 (2023).

10. Altieri, M. A. & Nicholls, C. I. Agroecology and the reconstruction of a post-COVID-19 agriculture. J. Peasant Stud. 47, 881–898 (2020).

11. FAO. The State of Food and Agriculture 2022. (FAO, 2022). doi:10.4060/cb9479en.

12. Berger, I. et al. India’s agroecology programme, ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming’, delivers biodiversity and economic benefits without lowering yields. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 9, 2057–2068 (2025).

13. O’Garra, T. Agroecology benefits people and planet. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 9, 1973–1974 (2025).

14. IPES-Food. Food from Somewhere: Building Food Security and Resilience through Territorial Markets. https://ipes-food.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FoodFromSomewhere.pdf (2024).

15. Einarsson, R. Nitrogen in the Food System. https://tabledebates.org/building-blocks/nitrogen-food-system (2024) doi:10.56661/2fa45626.

Lulseged Desta, CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program; Jonathan Mockshell, Alliance Biodiversity International – CIAT

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Bibbi Abruzzini/Forus - Rabat, Morocco

By Silla Ristimäki, Miguel Santibañez, Emeline Siale Ilolahia and Aoi Horiuchi
HELSINKI, Finland / SANTIAGO, Chile / SUVA, Fiji / TOKYO, Japan, May 20 2026 (IPS)

Just four years of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development remain. What comes after 2030 is already a political battleground.

The next global development framework is being shaped now: through quiet agenda-setting, shifting alliances, financing choices, contested norms, and decisions about who gets to participate and who is pushed to the margins. That matters because the world that will shape what comes next is not the world that adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.

The context is harsher, more fractured and less generous. Geopolitical fragmentation is deepening. Armed conflicts are distorting priorities. Climate impacts are accelerating. Development finance is under growing strain. Civic space is shrinking. Public trust in multilateralism is weaker. And too often, the rights, equality and accountability commitments that gave the SDGs their normative force are treated as negotiable.

“We step into the next decade against the background of climate chaos, growing inequality and increasing poverty. The scaffolding for positive change shall be to infuse democratic values in the blood stream of all our governments from the Right to the Left,” says Dr. Moses Isooba, executive director of the Uganda National NGO Forum and Vice-Chair of Forus.

The post-2030 debate must confront the political and structural weaknesses that limited implementation the first time around.

As a civil society network, we have been here from the very beginning. We have secured the adoption of the SDGs with the Beyond 2015 campaign, pushed for innovation and ambition, challenged power, brought forward the voices of communities, and held systems accountable. That role evolves and as we now look “beyond 2030”, we remain present, engaged, and determined to influence what comes next.

One message comes through clearly: the next agenda will only be credible if we are clear about three things — what must be defended, what must be demanded, and what must be declined.

What must be defended

Some foundations of the current framework remain essential and must not be traded away for the sake of political convenience.

The first is universality. One of the most important achievements of the SDGs was to establish that sustainable development is not only a concern for lower income countries, but a universal responsibility. Policies, consumption patterns and economic models that drive inequality, exclusion and ecological harm must be addressed in all regions. High-income countries must not only finance development but also reform their own adverse policies. If the next framework weakens the recognition that sustainable development must integrate social justice, equality, environmental sustainability, peace and human rights, it will not move us forward. It will mark a retreat.

The second is civic space. Civil society participation is one of the conditions that makes accountability, inclusion and implementation possible yet it is increasingly constrained by financial pressures, exclusion from global decision-making processes and erosion of fundamental rights. A future agenda which prioritises resources and protection for civil society supports the building of stable, sustainable societies.

The third is local leadership. Communities and local civil society actors remain closest to the realities that global frameworks claim to address, yet they are still structurally under-resourced and under-represented. Localisation beyond the “buzzword” can bring essential resources for problem diagnosis and planning, increasing effectiveness and legitimacy for sustainable development and peacebuilding.

And finally, what must be defended is multilateralism itself, not as an abstract ideal, but as the shared political space where common commitments can still be built.

“Safeguarding the structures created to advance peace, cooperation and rights sustains global hope and possibilities to address common global challenges. This is in the interests of us all, future generations and the planet.” Silla Ristimäki, Adviser at Fingo. “This is why ambitious reform of the UN cannot be separated from the post-Agenda 2030 discussion.”

What must be demanded

Defending core principles is not enough. Negotiations about the future must also correct what the Agenda 2030 left unresolved.

At the centre of this is financing. A credible post-2030 framework cannot rest on the same unequal financial architecture that has constrained implementation for years. Debt burdens, unequal fiscal space, volatile aid flows and weak commitments have all narrowed the room for governments and communities to act. Financing reforms must include debt restructuring and relief, fairer lending terms, increased concessional finance, stronger domestic resource mobilisation, tax justice, policy coherence and predictable support for civil society.

“Many countries are spending more on debt than education or health. We need to reform the current unjust international financial architecture,” says Aoi Horiuchi, Senior Advocacy Officer at JANIC, the civil society network for international cooperation in Japan.

Accountability must also be stronger. Voluntary reporting and soft review mechanisms have not been enough. A future agenda must be backed by mandatory, transparent and regular review, with independent oversight and a formal role for civil society and local actors in tracking progress and exposing implementation gaps.

And participation must mean more than consultation after decisions are already taking shape. Civil society needs a formalised, meaningful and safe role in both negotiating and implementing the future framework, especially for local actors and groups continuing to face structural or political exclusion.

“Meaningful change comes from meaningful participation. That’s why we need to defend civic space,” says Horiuchi.

What must be declined

Some directions already visible in early discussions must be rejected outright.

A thinner agenda that lowers ambition in the name of consensus must be declined. So must any attempt to weaken universality, rights, gender equality, civic freedoms or climate ambition for political expediency.

The continuation of a financial status quo that deepens inequality while speaking the language of partnership must also be declined. So must accountability arrangements that remain symbolic, selective or performative.

And tokenistic participation must be named for what it is. A process that brings civil society into the room for appearance’s sake while excluding it from agenda-setting, decision-making and follow-through is managed exclusion.

Finally, as development governance evolves, the expanding role of private and philanthropic actors must not come without public-interest safeguards, democratic oversight and accountability. Public goals cannot be left to unaccountable power.

We must get out of silos, create spaces of dialogue, of co-responsibility and raise the question of whether the post-2030 framework will be more honest about power, more serious about accountability, more capable of confronting structural inequality, and more open to those whose lives and rights are most at stake.

Our answer is here:
Defend what must not be lost.
Demand what must be corrected.
Decline what would weaken the future.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Osugi / shutterstock.com

By Jordan Ryan
May 19 2026 (IPS)

 
Where does real power reside in the UN development system? A new policy brief from Cepei, a Colombian development policy institute, and the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), presented earlier in May, poses this deceptively simple question. The answer matters because institutions that cannot govern fairly or transparently struggle to sustain legitimacy, and legitimacy is essential for peace.

The Cepei-IDOS diagnosis identifies a “triple disconnect” that structures contemporary development governance. Formal oversight bodies (the Executive Boards, ECOSOC, the General Assembly) set policy directions but control only a fraction of financing. Real resources flow through bilateral arrangements between major donors and agency leadership, operating largely beyond collective scrutiny. The ten largest donors shape system priorities through informal channels of influence. Meanwhile, the programme countries that host the vast majority of UN development operations report significantly weaker upstream influence than traditional donor states. This misalignment between authority, resources and voice is no longer incidental. It has become embedded in the way the system operates.

What transforms this observation from an efficiency problem into a peace imperative is the reality that ungovernable systems cannot respond to prevention and peacebuilding needs. A development architecture shaped disproportionately by donor priorities and limited programme-country voice lacks the legitimacy, flexibility and democratic accountability required to address the structural drivers of conflict. When host countries experience UN operations as imposed rather than negotiated, and when funding priorities reflect donor interests rather than local prevention priorities, the development system becomes an actor in grievance production, not prevention.

The governance–legitimacy nexus works in both directions. Ungovernable institutions erode the multilateral system’s credibility in the Global South. Successive rounds of ineffective UN reform, driven by incremental adjustments within existing power structures, signal to programme countries that the system is designed to resist their inclusion. This perception is strengthened when donors can navigate around formal governance bodies through bilateral arrangements. Over time, institutional opacity breeds delegitimation. The UN is then weakened as a platform for both development cooperation and conflict prevention, because confidence in its democratic character has fractured.

The Cepei-IDOS brief positions the first 1000 days of the next Secretary-General’s term as a narrow window for visible structural change. The argument is neither revolutionary nor naive. It does not propose wholesale redesign of the UN system. Rather, it suggests that an incoming Secretary-General with political capital and an informed strategic agenda can make power visible, realign financial flows with governance decisions, strengthen coordination across fragmented programme delivery, and treat programme country inclusion not as charitable consultation but as an operational requirement. Small shifts in how decisions are made, where resources are allocated and whose voice is heard can accumulate into meaningful redistributions of power.

For those committed to multilateral peace and development, the brief is important precisely because it refuses the false choice between institutional realism and structural ambition. It recognises that the current system is durable and resistant to change. It also demonstrates that durability does not mean immutability. The Secretary-General occupies a unique position to convene, name problems and propose sequenced shifts in practice. Whether that role is exercised for incremental adjustment or for visible realignment of power depends on the strategic choices made in the first 1000 days, when institutional attention is high and political mandates are fresh.

The launch event captured something essential about the moment. Participants acknowledged that the system is ungovernable as presently designed while recognising that accepting that reality is not the same as accepting its inevitability. The brief itself can serve as an anchor for what peace advocates and policymakers need to argue in the months ahead: that the next Secretary-General should treat governance reform not as a technical fix but as a peace imperative. When multilateral institutions are trusted by the countries they purport to serve, they become more effective instruments of prevention and cooperation. When they are experienced as vehicles for donor capture, they become part of the problem they claim to address.

If the next Secretary-General treats governance reform as a peace imperative rather than a technical exercise, the UN development system can begin to rebuild the legitimacy it is steadily losing among the countries and communities it exists to serve.

Related articles from this author:
The Secretary-General This Moment Demands
From Reform to Reinvention: Reimagining the United Nations for the 21st Century
The UN’s Withering Vine: A US Retreat from Global Governance

Jordan Ryan is a member of the Toda International Research Advisory Council (TIRAC) at the Toda Peace Institute, a Senior Consultant at the Folke Bernadotte Academy and former UN Assistant Secretary-General with extensive experience in international peacebuilding, human rights, and development policy. His work focuses on strengthening democratic institutions and international cooperation for peace and security. Ryan has led numerous initiatives to support civil society organisations and promote sustainable development across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He regularly advises international organisations and governments on crisis prevention and democratic governance.

This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished from the original with their permission.

IPS UN Bureau

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The World Bank Group is consulting publicly on whether to merge its three independent complaint mechanisms. This note explains what is being proposed and how civil society organizations can participate in the consultation.

By Danny Bradlow and David Hunter
PRETORIA, South Africa / WASHINGTON DC, USA , May 19 2026 (IPS)

The World Bank made history in 1994 by creating the Inspection Panel, the first independent accountability mechanism, at any international organisation. Its function is to investigate complaints from communities who allege they were harmed because the bank failed to comply with its own policies and procedures.

By establishing the three-member Inspection Panel, the World Bank showed support for a democrati Soth Arica/c vision of international governance based on the rule of law and the rights of individuals to take part in development decisions that affect their lives.

To date, the panel has received 186 complaints. Fifty-two have been from Africa. They involved projects in 56 countries, including 26 African countries. The complaints have raised issues such as the World Bank’s failure to comply with its own policies regarding public consultations, environmental and social impact assessments and involuntary resettlement in the projects that it funds.

The board has expanded the bank’s accountability process to include both compliance reviews and dispute resolution processes. Today, the World Bank Group has three independent accountability mechanisms:

• the Inspection Panel, which focuses on compliance reviews in public sector projects
• a separate dispute resolution mechanism for public sector projects
• the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, which offers both compliance reviews and dispute resolution services for private sector projects, primarily funded by the International Finance Corporation.

These accountability mechanisms have operated with mixed success. There have been some wins, for example in a case in Uganda involving risks for women and children associated with the building of a road. And some failures. An example is the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman finding against the International Finance Corporation for noncompliance in a coal fired power plant in India that was ignored.

We were involved, as legal academics and working with civil society organisations, in the establishment of the Inspection Panel. We have been following the activities of these independent accountability mechanisms for over 30 years. We are concerned about their future.

The World Bank Group is seeking to become a “bigger and better” bank. This involves promoting more collaboration between the five entities that make up the group. It is doing so under the banner of “One WBG”. This is an important development because the World Bank is the only global multilateral development bank. It offers developing countries both financial and advisory services. For example, it is the biggest funder of development projects in Africa.

The increasing collaboration between the different institutions in the bank raises concerns about which of their policies are applicable to a particular project. It also raises the issue of whether the bank should integrate the group’s independent accountability mechanisms so that there is no question about which mechanism is applicable to the project.

We believe that resolving this issue offers the bank’s board an opportunity to improve the structure of its independent accountability mechanisms and their contribution to the bank’s operations.

The dangers

The board appointed a two-person task force in September 2025 to advise it on the feasibility of integrating the three organisations in a way that does not reduce their independence, accessibility and effectiveness. The task force prepared a thorough and well-reasoned draft report.

The report was finalised after public consultations and is being considered by the board. It shows that integration of the mechanisms is a feasible, but complex exercise. The existing mechanisms have different operating cultures, policies and practices and human resource needs. The report describes various models for integrating the existing mechanisms.

The report also demonstrates that if mishandled, the exercise could result in a less independent and less effective accountability mechanism. To avoid this risk, we propose that the board adopt a model consisting of two separate independent accountability mechanisms. One to cover compliance reviews across the entire group. The other to cover dispute resolution across the group. This will enable both functions to operate independently and efficiently.

Our proposal raises four issues.

First, it is important that each mechanism is independent of the bank’s management. Each mechanism must have sufficient resources to undertake effective compliance reviews or dispute resolutions. Their processes must also be robust enough to result in meaningful outcomes for the complainants.

Second, the new compliance mechanism must retain a three-member panel appointed by and reporting to the bank’s board. The panel should have a permanent chair serving a six-year term. The chair must have the authority to decide which cases need the panel’s attention. The other two panel members should also serve staggered six-year terms.

A three-person panel allows for some geographic, technical and experiential diversity. Gaining a consensus among the panel members improves the quality and increases the credibility of the panel reports. A three-member panel is better able to withstand pressure from the bank’s management and other stakeholders than is a mechanism headed by one person.

Third, the dispute resolution mechanism should be headed by an experienced dispute resolution professional at the vice-president level. This official should report to the president of the bank. Our view is that this arrangement could encourage the institution to play a more proactive role in resolving disputes.

To ensure that the unit has some independence it should also have regularly scheduled meetings with the board. The head of the unit should also be able to request a meeting with the board whenever they deem it necessary and without requiring the prior approval of the bank’s president.

Fourth, the process of consolidating accountability mechanisms will be complex. Consequently, the board should first decide on the basic structure: a compliance review unit headed by a three-member panel and a separate dispute resolution unit headed by a senior professional.

It should delay any decisions on the policies, principles and practices of the mechanisms until it receives advice from a multi-stakeholder working group that includes external stakeholders and management and is co-chaired by one person from each of the units being merged.

An opportunity to fix things

The bank has the opportunity to strengthen its development mission. The changes it makes should be designed to:

• help make the bank a better institution that supports higher quality projects
• make the bank a learning institution that openly accepts criticism and looks to implement solutions
• ensure it becomes an institution that recognises that people affected by bank-funded projects are stakeholders in its operations who may be forced to risk their well-being for the greater good.

Source: The Conversation Africa May 17, 2026

Daniel Bradlow is Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria; David Hunter is Professor Emeritus, The American University Washington College of Law, American University.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Emmanuel Herman/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Hannah Wheatley, Joanna Makhlouf and Taís Siqueira
BAGAMOYO, Tanzania / BEIRUT, Lebanon / WASHINGTON D.C., May 18 2026 (IPS)

In an era when civil society funding is in decline, it’s time to rebel against a broken system.

Today, too much is being asked from the people already doing the most. In a time of multiple and connected global crises – of climate, conflict, democracy, disinformation, global governance, human rights and inclusion – and in a context of intensifying civic space restrictions and collapsing funding, funders and the intermediary organisations that distribute resources somehow expect frontline organisations to transform systemic injustices that have built up over centuries. At the same time, these groups are expected to keep meeting inflexible targets, writing flawless reports and keeping their teams emotionally and physically afloat.

As governments, international organisations, investors, philanthropists, civil society and business leaders meet at the Global Partnerships Conference on the future of international development, it’s time to do things differently.

Let’s stop asking local leaders to transform their communities before they’ve had space to heal. Let’s stop training grassroots organisations to become international clones. Let’s stop intermediaries replicating burnout culture.

No single organisation can undo the long legacy of colonialism or the systemic problems of global capitalism. And they shouldn’t have to. The role of the civil society ecosystem must be to build and protect space, redistribute power and resources and, most of all, stop transferring institutional pressure downwards. If we truly trust local civil society, we must also trust its limits. That means intermediaries must stand their ground with funders, set realistic expectations and champion the right to do less when circumstances demand it.

At CIVICUS’s Local Leadership Labs – an initiative to tackle the barriers that get in the way of local leadership of development – partners often report feeling compelled to deliver ambitious workplans that involve them reaching every district, leading multiple initiatives and facilitating extensive community engagements, even as civic space is closing around them. Driven by passion and the need to prove their worth in a competitive ecosystem, many have overextended without realising the toll on their wellbeing and sustainability.

Burnout is not just about long hours. It stems from impossible expectations in unsafe, high-pressure contexts. Civil society is striving to stretch every grant dollar, prove its worth at every reporting cycle and ensure the survival of communities. In restrictive civic space conditions, these pressures are compounded by harassment, intimidation, surveillance and violence.

The result is a constant feeling of not doing enough, even when the demands are structurally impossible. Over time, this erodes morale, health and leadership sustainability.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, funders proved that another way was possible. They provided unrestricted funding and offered flexibility and simplified reporting. Trust was extended. Partnerships were strengthened. But that willingness to experiment has not lasted.

What must change

It must be recognised that in these conditions, scaling back is not failure. It is how movements endure.

We have seen that investing in healing and reflection is not a luxury. It is what sustains movements. At Local Leadership Labs, partners working with survivors of state violence realised they could not move forward without first addressing exhaustion and trauma. Their care-centred approach showed that the process itself can be the outcome. Taking time for healing and thoughtful collaboration produces more sustainable, transformational results.

This is what the civil society ecosystem should support: not chasing impossible targets, but creating conditions for dignity, reflection and resilience.

Addressing burnout requires more than acknowledgement. It calls for rethinking about how support is structured and how expectations are set. Funders and intermediaries can help break the cycle by:

1. Budgeting time and priority for healing
Leaders are often asked to deliver systemic change while carrying unaddressed trauma. Without space for healing, burnout is inevitable. Intermediaries can normalise pacing, integrate healing into workplans and advocate with funders for timelines that reflect reality.

2. Showing funders the way
Funders need guidance on becoming more adaptable to intensifying civic space conditions and contexts of high volatility. Intermediaries can convene learning spaces where funders reflect on how flexibility and responsiveness protect communities and sustain movements. They can also challenge extractive, funder-driven processes and advocate for spaces where local civil society can lead and influence on its own terms.

3. Bridging, connecting and humanising
Behind funders, intermediaries and frontline civil society are people, all under institutional pressure. Intermediaries can help in both directions, by shielding local partners from unrealistic demands while working with funders to develop an understanding of what’s achievable. By cultivating empathy, they can replace transactional directives with reciprocal accountability, unlocking collaborations that go beyond the extractive.

In many contexts, civil society is holding the line in the face of authoritarianism, even worse attacks on human rights and still stronger repression. The enemies of democracy and human rights thrive when those defending freedoms and demanding social justice burn out. When forced to compete for scarce resources, organisations try to over-deliver to prove their worth, further deepening stress and accelerating exhaustion.

In this context, supporting the wellbeing of local civil society is not optional. It is central to protecting the energy that drives activism. Funders and intermediaries must pause, reflect and reset expectations. If we create space for healing, rest and resilience, movements will survive the current storm, and emerge equipped to resist, transform and win.

Taís Siqueira is Local Leadership Labs Coordinator at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. Hannah Wheatley is CIVICUS’s former Data Analyst and Joanna Makhlouf is a former member of the Local Leadership Labs implementation team.

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Credit: Africa Center for Strategic Studies

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, May 18 2026 (IPS)

Under the auspices of the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Russian-African Club, in late April, held its IV International Forum of Journalists from Russia and Africa, which marked another historical milestone. According to an established annual tradition, discussions were focused on aspects of the media, its structure, current performance, information contents, and challenges as well as future perspectives.

The shared common purpose was also to critically review whether the media, both in Africa and in the Russian Federation, have played its role in strengthening bilateral relations, and promoted the important goals set out during the first and second Russia-Africa summits. Why Media?

As largely expected, there were in-depth discussions. There were also controversies over the dynamics of media performance, with prominent participating experts raising narratives and criticisms, in the context of the forum’s theme: “Mass Media of Russia and Africa: The Role in Strengthening Friendship and Solidarity among the Peoples of the World.”

Elena Vartanova, dean of the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University, pointed to the fact that the media has to build diverse partnerships between Russia and Africa, further emphasized the importance of intercultural dialogue in creating a unified information space amid the complex global transformations of the modern world.

Yaroslav Skvortsov, dean of the Faculty of International Journalism at MGIMO, spoke about his recent unique trip to South Africa, noting that South Africa and the continent as a whole remain a “media blind spot” for Russian media, just as Russia receives very little coverage for African audiences.

The expert emphasized the need for serious, thoughtful, and in-depth reporting work in this area. The necessity to explore more opportunities in building strong ties, deepening the understanding of geopolitical developments, while fostering dialogue among the continent’s public.

Underlining Reasons

The media performance gap between Russia and Africa stems from overwhelming dominance of Western media outlets, a little of direct African reporting in Russia (including a lack of accredited African journalists), and limited institutional investment. These are some of the reasons highlighted during the discussions by an African studies journalist and columnist for the ITAR-TASS Analytical Center, Oleg Osipov, Timur Shafir, Secretary of the Union of Journalists of Russia and Head of the International Department of the Union of Journalists of Russia, and Louis Gowend, chairman of the Commission for Relations with African Diaspora and the Media of the Russian-African Club of Moscow State University, and president of the African Business Club.

Oleg Osipov, unreservedly, expressed concern about information deficit in Russian and African journalism, emphasized the urgent need to expand the network of Russian correspondent offices across the African continent, as well as getting a few experienced African media practitioners to Russia. This is especially important in today’s reality, as geopolitics heightens in the world.

Assessing current global trends, Russia needs to expand its presence in all spheres, and the media space is a crucial component of this process, the Russian expert believes. But for Timur Shafir, the thoughts were on the fact that it was especially important now to find common grounds in the mutual perceptions of the peoples and cultures of Russia and Africa through media communication.

In addition, he further emphasized that the media landscape is currently undergoing significant transformations, with technologies, audiences, and means of communication changing. Therefore, journalism is currently an area of particular responsibility and professional integrity, and direct dialogue between journalists in Russia and Africa has become crucial now.

Search for New Approach

The IV International Forum of Journalists from Russia and Africa, was considered as the new dawn, turning a new chapter with suggestion and paving the path for improving media performance in both regions. The participants offered a deafening applause to this position. The speakers expressed confidence that the Forum will serve as a starting point for many new joint initiatives.

According to Louis Gowend, the RusAfroMedia media platform—an information resource, which was created by the Moscow State University RA Club in 2022, for instance has to undergo serious facelifting, by strengthening cooperation and to improve the image of Russia-Africa cooperation.

This platform provides all the conditions for a free and frank exchange of opinions, relevant useful information, and the promotion of initiatives in all areas of cooperation between Russia and Africa. The speaker expressed concern over the fact that Russian journalists are much less active on the RusAfroMedia platform than their African counterparts and urged those present to make greater use of this resource.

In his contribution, Alexander Berdnikov, executive secretary of the Russian-African Club, distinctively noted that, at a time when new development trends are unfolding in the world, journalism and the entire media sphere are literally becoming a battlefield for information wars and special operations.

The speaker reminded that the Forum, being held ahead of the Third Russia-Africa Summit scheduled for October 2026, indicates how crucial for participants to develop solutions and initiatives for cooperation in journalism between Russia and Africa, and which will form the basis for practical recommendations in preparation for the forthcoming African leaders’ Summit.

Preserving Traditional Practice

Lyubov Sakhno, head of the Protocol and African Section of the TASS International Relations Department, represented Russia’s oldest news agency and spoke about ITAR-TASS’s consistent efforts to provide African media with foreign-language news feeds. But then, Russian media expansion faces limited budget constraints.

According to her, over 400 media outlets in Africa use these resources. She also discussed the organization’s media forum, which traditionally takes place on the sidelines of the Russia-Africa Summit.

Sergey Grachev, deputy director of the Media Research and Analysis Directorate at Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency, agreed with his colleagues that today we are facing unprecedented pressure from Western media. African media, most often, depends on Western sources, which Russian officials argue creates a “vacuum” filled by biased or hostile information.

Despite this, Russian media projects in Africa continue to develop, presenting analytical models of Sputnik’s presence on social media, where it broadcasts in 33 foreign languages.

Editor-in-chief of the African Initiative news agency, Buinta Bembeeva, noted in her discussions that Africa has become noticeably, and more prominent in Russian news in recent years. The speaker discussed the African Initiative’s experience in Africa. The agency is noticeably represented in many African countries through cooperation agreements with local media outlets.

The agency also collaborates with bloggers and organizes a journalism school for young African journalists. This close, on-the-ground, direct collaboration with African media outlets is key to achieving full-scale journalistic activity.

Contributions from Nigerian Academics

Professor Babatunde Joseph, Kaduna State University, spoke about using strengthened strategic communications to strengthen partnerships and unite the cultures of African countries. He agreed with his Russian colleagues on the need to expand the presence of Russian news agencies in Africa and African media in Russia. The expert cited the example of a well-known British radio station that broadcasts in five languages in Nigeria alone: Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Pidgin English (called “Najin” there), and plain English. “This is a successful strategy,” the professor was forced to note.

Professor Mohammad Bashir Ali, Kaduna State University (Nigeria), leading the Nigerian delegation to the Forum, discussed at length, the traditional role of media in promoting economic and entrepreneurial cooperation between Russia and Africa. Despite the multiple challenges posed by the complex international environment in both Africa and Russia, there is enormous potential for opportunity in this area. He concluded that greater consolidation in the media sphere is essential.

Professors Yushau Ibrahim Ango and Ayodele Babatunde, both from Kaduna State University, presented a working paper entitled “African Creative Industries and Media Systems in the Context of Digitalization,” analyzing the impact of digital media on entrepreneurship in the Nigerian economy.

The paper, however, concluded that reliance on digital platforms introduces new vulnerabilities, including algorithmic unpredictability, into the economy. This paper contributed to entrepreneurship and media research by theorizing digital platforms as entrepreneurial infrastructure, which has implications for policy, platform governance, and understanding how media shapes economic life in the African context.

Concluding Remarks

Hafiz Basi, chairman of the Youth Projects Commission of the Russian-African Club, seriously echoed the opinion in closing remarks, stating that it is time to change outdated stereotypes that portray Russia and Africa through Soviet political clichés. “We need journalism that brings people together, not further distances,” Hafiz Basi emphasized. He also noted that the lack of accredited African journalists in Russia remains a pressing issue.

Meanwhile, African media outlets write about Russia primarily in political terms, failing to reveal the true depth of Russian culture and the soul of the Russian people. In his opinion, the Russia-Africa Journalists Forum, once more, demonstrated its importance, which discusses the most pressing issues, prospects, and strategies for strengthening media cooperation between Russia and Africa.

This is in reality, important during the time of rapid geopolitical changes, in response to the aggressive rhetoric of Western countries and their satellites, public diplomacy, soft power, and peacekeeping journalism which are becoming increasingly relevant careful analysis and take effective measures in building a solid foundation for Russian-African dialogue.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

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A residential building in Beirut, Lebanon, lies in ruins. Credit: UNICEF/Fouad Choufany

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, May 13 2026 (IPS)

Violence has metastasized into humanity’s baseline condition. Yet international institutions remain paralyzed by vetoes and rivalry, offering hollow declarations while dehumanization becomes normalized. Coordinated action, not gestures, is desperately needed.

Global violence today is metastasizing, not contained; over 180,000 violent events reported globally by the International Institute for Strategic Studies signal a world in which conflict has become a baseline condition rather than an exception. More than 130 armed conflicts now rage—over twice the number of 15 years ago—shattering infrastructure, tearing apart social fabric, and normalizing dehumanization as a political weapon.

Women and children bear the brunt: hundreds of millions live within range of armed clashes, with millions of preventable deaths and lifelong trauma caused not only by bullets and bombs but by hunger, disease, and gender-based violence unleashed by war’s chaos.

Yet the UN system and the world’s democracies appear increasingly paralyzed—trapped in vetoes, geopolitical rivalries, and hollow declarations—offering gestures of concern rather than the coordinated, enforced accountability this modern plague of violence so desperately demands.

The global escalation of violence is a structural crisis rather than an aberration—one that reveals the failure of international institutions, exposing the normalization of suffering across political, economic, and societal dimensions.

The proliferation of violence signals not just an increase in armed confrontations but a breakdown in the very mechanisms meant to constrain conflict, rendering dehumanization a routine tool of power, as demonstrated in the following.

The Philosophical Angle

Violence represents the collapse of legitimate political authority and the rise of impotence masquerading as force. Hannah Arendt’s foundational insight remains essential: “Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course, it ends in power’s disappearance” (On Violence, 1970).

This speaks directly to today’s proliferation of conflicts, which indicate not state strength but institutional failure, where violence substitutes for the consent and legitimacy governments can no longer command. The resort to violence signals the exhaustion of political dialogue and the absence of legitimate power structures capable of resolving disputes.

Economic Disenfranchisement

Economic drivers are critical accelerants of contemporary violence through resource competition, commodity exploitation, and systemic inequality. Slavoj Žižek’s concept of systemic violence captures the pervasive economic roots: “Therein resides the fundamental systemic violence of capitalism, much more uncanny than the direct pre-capitalist socio-ideological violence: this violence is no longer attributable to concrete individuals and their ‘evil’ intentions, but is purely ‘objective,’ systemic, anonymous.”

The greed-driven exploitation of natural resources—from diamonds in Sierra Leone to oil in Venezuela and cobalt and other conflict minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo—finances rebellions and turns conflict into a profitable enterprise. Economic deprivation, geoeconomic confrontation through weaponized tariffs and sanctions, and commodity price shocks directly shape military capacity and conflict outcomes.

The Political Compulsion of Violence

Political violence emerges not merely from divergent interests but from the deliberate choice to pursue objectives through coercion rather than negotiation. The paralysis of the UNSC and democratic institutions reflects what Arendt identified as bureaucratic tyranny: “In a fully developed bureaucracy, there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. … everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act… where we are all equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.”

This captures the international community’s inability to enforce accountability—vetoes and geopolitical rivalries create a structural void where violence thrives unchecked. Political fragility and weakening institutions, seen in Syria and Myanmar, make societies vulnerable to breakdown, radicalization, and violent dissent.

Societal Fragmentation

Societal conditions create climates where violence becomes normalized through inequality and the erosion of social cohesion. Thomas Hobbes’s bleak assessment of unconstrained human nature remains relevant: in the state of nature, “the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” While Hobbes described a pre-political condition, his insight applies to societies where governance collapses and fear dominates, conditions now afflicting millions living within range of armed clashes.

Social norms that accept violence as conflict resolution, combined with economic inequalities and a lack of community participation, create environments where aggression flourishes. This normalizes dehumanization, where, as in Nigeria, Israel and South Africa, gendered violence, ethnic tensions, and historical grievances fuel recurring cycles of brutality.

Nationalism, Repression and State Complicity

State-level factors amplifying violence include the failure to address ethnic marginalization, resource competition, and the absence of functional governance. Walter Benjamin warned of violence’s relationship to law and state power: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism” (On the Concept of History, 1940).

This observation underscores how national institutions perpetuate violence through their foundational structures and exclusionary practices. Nations repeatedly falling victim to civil and international wars demonstrate governments’ inability to recognize and address destabilizing issues like political, religious, or ethnic marginalization. The weaponization of state apparatus through totalitarian mobilization of violence destroys the very space where political thinking and resistance might occur, as demonstrated in China and Eritrea.

Religious Instrumentalization

Religion, when co-opted by political actors or stripped of its ethical core, becomes a potent catalyst for violence, sanctifying exclusion and legitimizing brutality. Sectarian divides—whether in the Middle East, South Asia, or parts of Africa—transform identity into a battlefield where compromise is heresy and annihilation becomes duty. René Girard’s insight is instructive: “Religion shelters us from violence just as violence seeks shelter in religion.” When faith is manipulated to justify power or grievance, such as in India, Israel or Iraq, it ceases to restrain violence and instead consecrates it, deepening cycles of retribution and rendering conflicts existential rather than negotiable.

The convergence of these dimensions explains why violence has become a baseline condition rather than an exception. Several measures must be considered to de-escalate global violence. Although effecting change is extremely difficult, every effort must still be made, provided the public leads the charge through sustained protest, continuous advocacy, and relentless pressure on policymakers to enact change.

Reform UN Security Council Veto Power

Governments must constrain veto authority by restricting its use in cases involving genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Permanent members should abstain when directly involved, transforming the veto from obstruction into accountability and addressing institutional paralysis that enables unchecked violence.

Establish Functional Early Warning Systems

International bodies should implement systems linking detection to preventive action, closing the warning-response gap. These must integrate predictive analytics, local expertise, and cross-border coordination to anticipate violence months before eruption, enabling timely diplomatic and humanitarian intervention.

Address Economic Inequality and Insecurity

Governments should implement policies that reduce income inequality—including wage increases, tax reform, and financial assistance—aimed at addressing violence triggers. Targeted lending, job creation, and redistributive policies alleviate financial strain that fuels conflict and crime, making structural prevention more effective than reactive measures.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is President of the Institute for Humanitarian Conflict Resolution.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Mohamed Omar
MOGADISHU, Somalia , May 12 2026 (IPS)

When war erupted in the Middle East in late February, the most visible consequences were playing out in the Persian Gulf, with smoke rising from Dubai’s Jebel Ali port and shipping traffic across one of the world’s most critical maritime routes grinding to a near halt.

What was harder to see was a mother in Somalia, traveling 200 kilometers with a child too sick to sit upright, arriving at a stabilization center that was running low on the one product that could save her child’s life.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most consequential maritime chokepoints, has sent shockwaves through global supply chains that reach far beyond the Gulf. Before the war began, roughly 3,000 vessels transited the strait each month.

In March, that number fell to just 154. The UN has warned that the resulting disruption is triggering a widening humanitarian and economic shock far beyond the Middle East, with rising oil prices and reduced maritime traffic driving up transport and food costs across import-dependent economies. We are certainly feeling that shock in Somalia.

Dr. Mohamed Omar is head of Health and Nutrition at Action Against Hunger in Somalia.

These children are treated with two products: Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) and therapeutic milk, specifically the formulas F-75 and F-100, which are produced exclusively by Nutriset in France. Before the Strait of Hormuz closure, those products arrived in Mogadishu in 30 to 35 days via the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden.

Ships now divert around the entire African continent, extending delivery times to 55 to 65 days. That is nearly double the original transit time, and it comes with far less certainty about when shipments will actually arrive.

The cost increases compound the delay. A carton of therapeutic milk that cost $139 in 2024 rose to $186 in 2025 after USAID funding cuts, and has since climbed to $200 in 2026 following the Strait of Hormuz closure, a 44 percent increase in two years.

Fuel costs inside Somalia have surged by 150 percent, raising both the price of food for households and the cost of transporting supplies from Mogadishu to remote program sites like Hudur in the Bakool region. They represent the difference between whether a child receives treatment and whether a facility can afford to stay open.

Action Against Hunger, which operates 10 of the 52 remaining stabilization centers in the country, currently has only 69 cartons of therapeutic milk on hand. That figure covers roughly two weeks to one month of supply under current demand, and demand is rising sharply. Admissions at our facilities increased 35 percent between the first quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026. At the same time, the number of stabilization centers across Somalia has already fallen from 71 to 52, after USAID’s termination order prompted facility closures earlier this year.

In areas such as Wajid, Somalia, Action Against Hunger replaced diesel-powered engines with solar-powered systems to supply water, reducing costs and providing a sustainable, long-term solution. Credit: Action Against Hunger

The funding gap to sustain nutrition interventions through 2026 stands at $2.9 million. That figure covers product procurement and in-country transportation costs. To put that in context: treating a child for severe acute malnutrition costs between $140 and $213. Preventing it costs $35. The math on early intervention is not complicated.

The Council on Foreign Relations has documented how shipping containers at Dubai’s International Humanitarian City now carry a $3,000 emergency surcharge, while the World Food Program has warned that supply chain pressures are driving up the costs of life-saving operations globally. These are systemic failures that compound each other.

There is a specific and urgent timeline here. UNICEF’s in-country stock of therapeutic milk is projected to run out by August 2026. Because of the extended shipping times caused by the Africa diversion route, funding must be committed by May or June for the product to arrive before that deadline.

Iran has agreed, in principle, to facilitate humanitarian aid shipments through the strait, and diplomatic efforts to reopen the waterway to commercial traffic are ongoing. But the ceasefire remains fragile, and even a partial reopening offers no guarantee that the specialized supply chains supporting therapeutic nutrition programs will recover in time.

The supply chain disruptions caused by the Iran war are a new layer on top of pre-existing funding deficits and a withdrawal of US foreign aid that was already forcing closures and rationing across the country.

The children arriving at stabilization centers and outpatient nutrition sites in Somalia did not cause any of these disruptions. They are the downstream consequence of a global logistics network absorbing simultaneous shocks it was never designed to handle. A $2.9 million funding gap is solvable. The question is whether the international community will respond in time.

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Attendees at the NPT Review Conference side event titled 'Preventing Nuclear Use and Escalation: Lessons from Nuclear Close Calls. ' Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2026 (IPS)

The consequences of nuclear warfare would transcend borders and the impact would be felt across generations. Yet knowing this, member states, including nuclear-armed states, are increasingly flouting the nuclear taboo, while also relying heavily on deterrence to prevent fallout.

Throughout the Cold War period, there were stories of nuclear “close calls”—moments where the world could have been plunged into nuclear warfare were it not for human intervention or sheer luck. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Petrov incident of 1983 may be more well-known examples from history, but others may also reveal what lessons should be taken from these ‘close calls.’

At the sidelines of the 2026 NPT Review Conference, academics, government and civil society convened to discuss just that. On May 1, at an event convened by Soka Gakkai International (SGI) and the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), people came together to deliberate over past and present efforts to prevent nuclear escalation. The panelists argued that these stories demonstrate how nuclear deterrence may not be an effective security strategy towards disarmament or even nonproliferation.

Chie Sunada, Director of Disarmament and Human Rights, SGI Peace Center, speaks in a panel on nuclear escalation risks. Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS

“The history of close calls—Cuba, Petrov, Black Brant—and many other less well-known events does not tell us that deterrence works. It tells us that deterrence has, on a number of documented occasions, almost failed,” said George-Wilhelm Gallhofer, Director for Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Austria’s Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs. “Luck is not a security strategy. And yet, the global security order, 60 years on, still rests on it.”

Gallhoffer went on to suggest that the nuclear taboo needs to be reinforced once more by promoting honest dialogue between nuclear powers and non-nuclear states, where the non-nuclear states remind all parties of the stakes at play. Doctrines like the NPT and the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) should be regarded as security treaties, not only moral or ethical frameworks.

Elayne Whyte, a professor at Johns Hopkins and former UN Ambassador of Costa Rica, also echoed this sentiment, adding that the issue of nuclear danger is just as rooted at the societal level as it is through legal frameworks. The shared understanding of nuclear danger is not only produced through weapons systems or treaties but also through decision-makers and the values of society.

“It is [the] 21st century; we also have to acknowledge that the erosion of the nuclear taboo cannot be separated from the wider nationalist trends that rank human lives unequally and make it easier to imagine that mass destruction inflicted on others is […] tolerated,” said Whyte.

Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence threaten to further complicate nuclear escalation, wherein nuclear states, in an effort to stay ahead of the curve, adopt these technologies for their perceived potential to reduce the human margin of error. The automation of decision-making in nuclear weapons use is not entirely new, as was seen in 1979 and 1980, when the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) received several false alarms through errors in their missile warning system.

Yanliang Pan, a research associate at CNS, remarked that these cases proved that automated systems would still be susceptible to automation bias and compressed decision-making time, thus increasing the likelihood of accidents. Although humans should still have ‘meaningful’ control over decisions of nuclear use, Pan noted that these close calls occurred while humans were in control. “We should be talking about the effect of automation on the reliability of human control, rather than simply human control as an antidote to automation,” said Pan.

At present, academic research can uncover recurring patterns in how nuclear close calls were handled and what that can tell decision-makers about risk reduction in this space. According to Sarah Bidgood, a postdoctoral fellow at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, recent studies have looked into how there might not be a singular framework for crisis management that could apply across nuclear close calls. When it comes to crisis management and risk reduction, the dynamics of previous nuclear close calls do not exist in a monolith, but there are variations in the outcomes instead. The lessons that leaders take from such situations may not lead to a shift away from nuclear weapons. Instead, these events may reinforce what leaders already think about the risks and benefits of nuclear weapons. If a leader regards nuclear weapons for a perceived strategic value, then after a close call, they may be just as likely to embrace new capabilities that would allow them to threaten the use of weapons across multiple levels of conflict. Bidgood raised the question of what this scenario would mean for the future of risk reduction in the present geopolitical environment.

“We need to be quite skeptical of this conventional wisdom that we often hear in our community… which is that to get arms control and risk reduction back on track, maybe we need another event like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Because if my theory is right, what this tells us is that the next crisis could just as easily lead us farther down a very, very different path. And that’s something that I don’t think we as scholars or practitioners have really accounted for,” said Bidgood.

Such near-misses may often be thanks to individual human judgement calls rather than the positions of nuclear states. Chie Sunada, Director of Disarmament and Human Rights at the SGI Peace Center, recalled the example of an incident during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, where a near-miss also brewed in the Pacific, which would have targeted an uninvolved third party. During this time, U.S. military bases hosted nuclear missiles in Japan that were powerful enough to level cities. The base in Okinawa received what seemed like authenticated launch orders. However, the most senior field officer on site, Captain William Bassett, found discrepancies with the launch orders and the missiles’ readiness level, including that the missiles at this base were primarily targeted at China. So he ordered subordinates to stand down.

Sunada warned that the sense of urgency that informed decisions on nuclear de-escalation was missing from the current discourse and that the reality of nuclear fallout and the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be “fading into abstract history.” She urged that nuclear disarmament education would be a “vital mechanism” for maintaining “strategic restraint” by recognizing that a key element for its success is empathy for the pain of others, which is itself a form of deterrence.

“We cannot continue to outsource our survival to luck,” said Sunada. “We urge all state parties to recognize that risk reduction requires more than just adjusting military doctrines. It requires a fundamental shift in how we understand these weapons, driven by education. By cutting the chain of hatred and nurturing the heart that cherishes and is respectful to others, we achieve the ultimate disarmament and pure, proper peace education.”

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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Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2026 (IPS)

The 10-month-old Middle East conflict—which has triggered a rise in the cost of living worldwide, and an increase in the prices of food, groceries and gasoline—is likely to impose burdens on hundreds of UN staffers, delegates, journalists and civil society representatives– and thousands more, during the General Assembly sessions beginning September.

The proposed increases are mostly due to the naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and the battle between the US and Iran, specifically targeting ships entering or departing– and halting oil exports and trade.

The UN’s Department of Operational Support (DOS) has decided “as mitigating cost savings measure to increase café prices by approximately 5% in general, any up to 20% for items, including sodas, cakes, oatmeal, pastries and soups”.

“This cost savings measure is meant to reduce the organization subsidy amount from $2.1M to $1M. The measures also include reduction in the hours of café operations to lower labor cost”.

The UN Staff Union (UNSU), responding to the price hike, said early this week, it “strongly objected to the proposed cafeteria price increases, which places an undue financial burden on staff already facing rising living costs and limited on-site alternatives”.

This concern is amplified by the fact that the cafeteria (run by an outside contractor) “benefits from substantial organizational subsidized support, and bears no overhead cost such as rent, utilities, and maintenance expenses”, says a message from UNSU released early this week.

Moreover, says UNSU, current economic data does not support increases of this magnitude. With year-over-year inflation between January 2025 and January 2026 at approximately 2.3–2.4%, even accounting for higher food and labor costs, there is no credible basis for price hikes in the range of 5–20%.

Fluctuations in oil prices further fail to justify such increases, given their limited impact on overall cafeteria operations. Taken together, these facts point to “disproportionate and unjustified measures passed on the staff, who have not received comparable salary increases”, says Narda Cupidore, President of the UNSU Staff Council.

In this context, shifting additional costs to staff is neither transparent nor justified, particularly in the absence of meaningful prior consultation as required under the Terms of Reference of the Headquarters Catering Advisory Committee.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one UN staffer told Inter Press Service: “At a time when there are reports of proposed salary cuts, as part of UN reforms, this hits us where it hurts us most –in our stomachs”.

Moreover, says UNSU, current economic data does not support increases of this magnitude. With year-over-year inflation between January 2025 and January 2026 at approximately 2.3–2.4%, even accounting for higher food and labor costs, there is no credible basis for price hikes in the range of 5–20%.

Fluctuations in oil prices further fail to justify such increases, given their limited impact on overall cafeteria operations.

Taken together, these facts point to disproportionate and unjustified measures passed on the staff, who have not received comparable salary increases.

The Staff Union calls for a suspension of the proposed price hikes at the Café and encourages the DOS to evaluate alternative financial strategies that could avoid passing on such a significant cost burden to staff.

“We remain committed to constructive engagement and continue to seek opportunities for open dialogue and clear answers from management. UNSU believes it is essential to be a partner in both the discussion and the solution, working collaboratively we can reach an outcome that is fair and minimizes the impact on staff. We will keep you informed of any developments.

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Students at GH Rusheshe School in Kucikiro District, Rwanda, identified through the monitoring system through the ZERO Out of School initiative.

By Noor Muhammad Ansari
DOHA, Qatar, May 7 2026 (IPS)

In 2024, 273 million children, adolescents, and youth were out of school globally as per the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. While that is a staggering number, the figure is incomplete. The 2026 Global Education Monitoring report warns that the global out of school population may be undercounted by at least 13 million once humanitarian sources are used to correct data gaps in conflict-affected contexts.

When education data fails, the children most likely to be excluded are not just the ones out of school. There are also those who are completely missing from the systems meant to find them.

This is why data gaps are not simply a technical issue, they are a structural driver of exclusion. If a child is not in the dataset, they are less likely to appear in school planning processes, teacher-allocation formula, textbook procurements systems, transport route, or targeted social protection programmes that could have kept them enrolled.

The 2026 GEM Report highlights the depth of the challenge. In primary and secondary education, one in three countries does not report disparities by urban–rural location and one in two does not report disparities by wealth. When such information is missing, education policies that rely on national averages mask the children who are furthest behind.

Why Children Disappear from Education Data

An Education Above All Foundation Occasional Paper on counting out-of-school children explains how administrative enrolment figures can diverge from reality in predictable ways. Systems may undercount children who attend but are not registered; undercount late registrants when data are captured only once at the start of the year; or overstate participation by counting registered children who never attend.

And, these are not minor measurement errors. They are precisely how children slip through institutional cracks, especially those affected by poverty, displacement, disability, language barriers, and gender discrimination.

Finding the Children who are Missing

Consider what happens when programmes treat identification as seriously as instruction.

In our joint project with Educate Girls in rural Rajasthan in India we found that official child-tracking data often missed children in remote hamlets. To address this, community volunteers conducted door-to-door surveys at scale, across more than three million households in over 9,000 villages to identify out of school girls.

The effort enabled the programme to identify, enrol, and retain tens of thousands of girls who had previously been absent from official records. The lesson from this exercise was straightforward: it is hard to serve children you cannot see. But when systems invest deliberately in identification and verification, those learners can be found.

The same challenge applies to children with disabilities, who are too often hidden by stigma and undercounted by systems that do not measure disability consistently. In our ten-country inclusive education programme implemented with Humanity & Inclusion across Africa, we sought to “bring children out of the shadows”, through community outreach, disability-sensitive identification tools, and sustained tracking of participation, the programme successfully enrolled more than 32,000 out of school children with disabilities and supported strong retention outcomes.

These experiences show that exclusion is not only about access to education. It is also about whether systems can identify and track children who face multiple barriers to participation.

What Stronger Education Data Systems Can Do

Across many countries, governments and partners are beginning to recognise that stronger education data systems are essential to identifying and supporting the most excluded learners. For instance, in Rwanda, the Zero Out of School Children initiative uses the Waliku application, a digital monitoring tool developed with partners including Save the Children and the Ministry of Education.

Teachers use the mobile platform to register out of school children, record attendance, and track patterns of absence. When repeated absences occur, the system generates follow-up alerts so schools or community workers can contact families and support re-enrolment.

In partnership with UNICEF and Government of The Gambia, efforts are underway to integrate education data with health and civil registration systems through DHIS2 for Education, helping authorities identify children who are missing from school records and coordinate responses across sectors.

Other partnerships illustrate how digital tools can strengthen identification and monitoring in different contexts.

In Nigeria, a partnership project with UNICEF developed the Tracking Re-entry of Children to Education (TRACE) system that combines community mapping and school records to track children from identification through enrolment and progression.

In Kenya, under EAA Foundation-UNICEF partnership, a Digital Attendance Application enables near real-time monitoring of school attendance, allowing schools to detect patterns of absenteeism and intervene early.

Digital systems are also proving valuable in fragile contexts. In Syria, the EAA Foundation-UNICEF partnership project developed a Self-Learning Programme Child Monitoring System to track children participating in alternative learning pathways when formal schooling has been disrupted.

In Zanzibar, the EAA Foundation-UNICEF partnership project developed a mobile-based monitoring tool that supports community-level identification and follow-up of out-of-school children, while the EAA Foundation-World Bank partnership project in Djibouti developed digital tools that help track participation in alternative education programmes and support transitions into formal schooling.

In Zanzibar, a mobile-based monitoring tool that supports community-level identification and follow-up of out-of-school children.

Taken together, these initiatives illustrate an important shift: Education systems are moving from periodic aggregate reporting toward child-level identification, real-time monitoring, and early-warning systems.

As these systems evolve, particularly with advances in analytics and artificial intelligence, they offer the potential to predict dropout risks and guide targeted interventions, helping ensure that every child remains visible within the education system.

Rwanda’s school attendance register and tracking system, Waliku Application. Teachers use the mobile platform to register out of school children, record attendance, and track patterns of absence.

So, what should change?

Governments must treat education data as an inclusion tool, not only a reporting obligation. This means investing in learner-level education information systems that can uniquely identify learners, track attendance and progression, and safely link education data with civil registration, health, and social protection systems where appropriate.

Governments should also routinely combine and integrate data from various sources to correct blind spots in national statistics.

Secondly, development partners should fund data systems as core public infrastructure. It is untenable to finance classrooms, teachers, and learning materials while leaving ministries without the capacity to know which children are missing, where they are, and what barriers they face.

Results-based financing should also reward governments and implementers for verified inclusion outcomes, not only aggregate enrolment.

Education agencies and partners should standardise how the world counts ‘excluded.’ Globally tested tools already exist. For example, the UNICEF–Washington Group Child Functioning Module, provides a standardised approach for identifying children with disabilities in surveys and administrative systems.

For displaced learners, stronger coordination between education and humanitarian data systems is essential. According to UNHCR, there are 12.4 million refugee children of school age worldwide, and nearly 46% of them out of school.

The takeaway is straightforward: The most excluded children are often the least counted.

Closing the education gap requires closing the education data gap, so that every child is visible, reachable, and supported well before exclusion becomes permanent.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

A conversation with Toril-Iren Pedersen, Director of the UNDP Global Policy Centre for Governance, and Michael Jarvis, Executive Director of the Trust, Accountability, and Inclusion (TAI) Collaborative

Q1: What is financial integrity and why is it important right now? Why is it relevant to TAI’s members?

Toril-Iren Pedersen

For us, the issue is not limited to one category of wrongdoing. It is about the connection between different parts of economic value, from public revenues to criminal flows, and the loopholes that exist within the regular financial system. Financial integrity cannot be considered in isolation. Weaknesses across tax, corruption, anti-money laundering and the broader global financial architecture all have to be understood together.

Michael Jarvis: At TAI, we see financial integrity as the need for systems to operate transparently, accountably and ethically. That is how people ideally manage their personal finances, and how we hope corporations run their businesses. But we are especially focused on governments and countries: how they strengthen the integrity of their financial systems, minimize corruption, encourage fairness and better steward public resources.

There is a clear development case for why this matters. TAI’s members are primarily U.S.-based philanthropies working internationally, and our work is organized around three priorities: strengthening healthy democracies, advancing climate accountability and improving fiscal accountability through fair and effective financial governance. Financial integrity underpins all three. Without it, progress in each area is weakened.

Michael Jarvis

When financial systems lack integrity, the damage is broad. It undermines trust in government, contributes to democratic disillusionment and weakens citizens’ confidence that public resources are being used fairly. It can also slow the energy transition, as we have seen with concerns around carbon markets. And it directly affects the ability of governments to raise and spend revenue effectively.

Toril-Iren Pedersen: I would add that declining trust in governments and in the multilateral system is higher than we have seen in a very long time. Lack of financial integrity contributes directly to that distrust.

Visible wealth inequality is one challenge, but so is the perception of invisible wealth being accumulated through the global financial architecture. When people sense that wealth is moving in the shadows, outside transparency and democratic control, it creates legitimate grounds for distrust. That is why lack of financial integrity must be understood as a systems failure that requires a systems approach.

Michael Jarvis: That is also the focus of the new paper from your team, the UNDP Global Policy Centre for Governance, which TAI supported. It emphasizes why progress requires action on multiple fronts and why no single actor or institution can solve this alone. Financial integrity is a collective action challenge.

Q2: How has UNDP’s Global Policy Centre for Governance worked on financial integrity over the past few years? What were your most important results and insights?

Toril-Iren Pedersen: The Centre’s work has taken place across several streams, but the most important contribution has been analyzing the system and the relationships among different actors. When we look at corruption and illicit financial flows, we have to ask who enables those flows within countries and across borders. Understanding those relationships is central to financial integrity.

The Centre has also convened actors within the UN and among practitioners, including country representatives involved in the Financing for Development negotiations in Sevilla last summer. That process helped produce stronger commitments to curb illicit financial flows and introduced more substantive language on financial integrity and corruption than we had seen in earlier iterations of the Financing for Development agenda.

The analytical work on the financial integrity ecosystem and the systems approach has also been developed in collaboration with several TAI members, including the MacArthur Foundation and Ford Foundation. Their support has been important both substantively and financially.

Q3: How will the Centre work on financial integrity going forward, under your leadership?

Toril-Iren Pedersen: The Centre has worked on a range of governance frontier issues. Going forward, we will focus on two areas: financial integrity, and data systems and data availability at the country level. The data agenda connects directly to financial integrity, but it also has broader relevance.

On financial integrity, we see a need to problem-solve the systemic challenges that are preventing progress at both the country and global levels. We will continue analyzing what is stopping countries from making substantive progress and what kinds of solutions and policy alternatives can be made available to them.

Some of these solutions already exist, but they are not always accessible. As a UNDP Policy Centre, our role is to make research, policy options and insights into systemic challenges available to UNDP country offices so they can be integrated into country-level programming. We also hope this work will help countries engage more effectively in global processes.

There is currently a disconnect. The Financial Action Task Force, the OECD tax framework and anti-corruption frameworks all rely on data from countries, but they do not always help solve what is fundamentally a systems challenge. We will continue engaging in those processes while breaking the work into more manageable areas where countries can take action nationally, regionally and globally.

Q4: What is the role of philanthropy in strengthening financial integrity against the backdrop of a fast-evolving global development landscape? What collaboration opportunities do you see between philanthropies, multilateral organizations and other stakeholders?

Michael Jarvis: Philanthropy’s role is a nimble one. The volume of finance philanthropy brings is not the same as government donors or what countries can mobilize themselves. The question is how philanthropy can prompt the right conversations and support work that moves the agenda more effectively.

Traditionally, philanthropy has supported civil society groups, independent media and think tanks at the global and national levels. Those actors investigate financial integrity issues, build evidence, raise public awareness and develop policy recommendations for governments and multilateral forums.

Philanthropy also has limits. Individual donors, including TAI members, often focus on a relatively small number of priority countries. They are not operating at a scale that covers all countries affected by these issues. That is where the UN system and international financial institutions can play a different role, because they work with nearly every country and have government relationships built into their mandates.

There are important complementarities. The MacArthur Foundation, for example, has made a major investment in Nigeria around financial integrity and anti-corruption, working with government agencies while also supporting civil society and media. More broadly, different actors bring different relationships, mandates and capacities.

The Financing for Development process in Sevilla is a good example. The outcome was stronger because many players were involved, from civil society groups working in-country to global and regional convenings that reinforced the message. Those efforts helped shape the negotiations and elevate financial integrity on the agenda.

An important opportunity is the Illicit Finance Summit, being hosted by the UK Government in June. It can bring together governments committed to addressing financial integrity challenges and create space for civil society, academia, philanthropy and others to develop practical solutions. Philanthropy should be part of that conversation and think about where its support can amplify or pilot ideas that emerge.

Visibility also matters because it helps attract resources. Funding for financial integrity work remains very limited. In a 2023 analysis, TAI estimated that about $150 million had been directed to illicit financial flows work since 2020, including efforts to address tax avoidance.

That averages roughly $30 million a year across different groups, countries and sectors. Compared with the scale of the problem, and compared with funding for fields such as climate or AI, that is extremely small.

The upcoming summit could serve as a call to action for philanthropy and other funders to invest more. The rise in fraud enabled by crypto and other technologies affects people directly and is creating grassroots demand for action. Partnership will be essential, including with UNDP, the World Bank, national governments, civil society and research networks.

Toril-Iren Pedersen: I agree. We need to mobilize more resources, but it is also important to recognize what has already been achieved with limited funding. Much of the momentum for change over the past 10 to 15 years has come from civil society organizations, journalist networks and collaborative investigations around leaks. Those efforts helped put issues such as tax fairness, transparency and beneficial ownership on national and global agendas.

This field has shown that limited resources can have an outsized effect when actors from different parts of the ecosystem work together. Anti-corruption, tax fairness and anti-money laundering were once treated as separate silos. Bringing those communities together around shared solutions is a cost-effective way of working.

Going forward, we also need to connect financial integrity to other development priorities, including climate finance and health financing. Each sector has its own financial integrity challenges. With the current development financing crunch, we cannot afford to leave money on the table, and we cannot afford to let resources disappear when policy action could prevent it.

Q5: Is there a case for involving the business community? What would the message be?

Toril-Iren Pedersen: Yes. Governance investments are one area we will be looking at closely. There is enormous pressure to mobilize funding from private actors and the private sector. Much of the focus has been on ensuring that specific investments comply with human rights and development standards. That remains important.

But financial integrity is also about longer-term systems de-risking. Investments in anti-corruption mechanisms, laws that reduce corruption risk and dispute-resolution frameworks can make markets more attractive for private investment. The goal is to build systems where private actors face lower real or perceived risk and can operate without relying as heavily on facilitated investment support.

In that sense, we need to distinguish between short-term and long-term de-risking, and between project-level and systems-level de-risking.

Michael Jarvis: There is a strong private sector incentive to support financial integrity, especially for companies operating across borders. But there is also a quid pro quo: corporate actors need to uphold their own standards of financial integrity. That includes thinking responsibly about the taxes they pay in different jurisdictions and avoiding excessive profit shifting.

The private sector benefits from stronger financial integrity systems, but it also has responsibilities within them. Beneficial ownership transparency is one example where progress has helped make it easier to identify who is behind corporate structures. These structures are still misused, but many legitimate private sector actors increasingly recognize that transparency can help distinguish them from bad actors and reduce reputational risk.

All of us have a role in the system. The challenge now is to make a clear case for why financial integrity deserves continued investment, government attention and policy bandwidth, especially at a time of aid cuts, foreign assistance pressures and tight country budgets. That is a collective challenge, and one we need to keep elevating.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Samuel King
BRUSSELS, Belgium, May 4 2026 (IPS)

In January, the government of Algeria succeeded in locking two civil society groups out of access to the United Nations (UN). It raised questions at the UN Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, known as the NGO Committee, about two civil society groups with accreditation. It alleged that Italian organisation Il Cenacolo was making politically motivated statements at the UN Human Rights Council and the Geneva-based International Committee for the Respect and Implementation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (CIRAC) was selling UN grounds passes. Four days later, it called a vote to revoke their status. Other states urged delay, but the no-action motion failed, and 11 of the body’s 19 members voted to recommend that the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) revoke Il Cenacolo’s accreditation and suspend CIRAC’s for a year.

As the primary gatekeeper for civil society participation at the UN, the NGO Committee controls ECOSOC consultative status, which allows organisations to attend UN meetings, submit written statements, make oral interventions, organise side events and access UN premises. Its mandate, set out in ECOSOC Resolution 1996/31, is straightforward: to facilitate civil society access to the UN system.

Such access is particularly valuable for organisations working in repressive contexts, where domestic advocacy is suppressed. It can mean the difference between a community’s concerns being silenced or becoming a matter of international record. In practice, however, the Committee has so consistently worked to obstruct rather than enable access that it is widely known as the ‘anti-NGO Committee’.

On 8 April, in an almost entirely uncompetitive vote, ECOSOC members elected 19 states to serve on the NGO Committee for four-year terms. Only 20 candidates ran for the 19 seats. UN states are organised into five regional blocs, and four of them presented closed slates, putting forward only as many candidates as the number of seats available.

As a result, the Asia-Pacific group selected China, India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), states with consistent track records of silencing civil society. Latin America and the Caribbean is represented by the likes of Cuba and Nicaragua, which suppress dissent and routinely detain critics. Four of the five African states elected have repressed or closed civic space. Two states elected from the Western European and Other States group, Israel and Turkey, have also recently intensified their repression of civic space.

The one exception was the Eastern European group, where Estonia and Ukraine won seats in a three-way contest, keeping out authoritarian Belarus, which received only 23 votes against Estonia’s 44 and Ukraine’s 38. As in 2022, when Russia lost a similar race, the result showed that competitive elections open up scrutiny and produce better outcomes. The problem is they rarely happen.

Overall, 13 of 19 newly elected states are rated as having closed or repressed civic space by the CIVICUS Monitor, our research initiative that tracks the conditions for civil society around the world. Only one, Estonia, has open civic space. Fourteen of the 20 candidates had been named as carrying out reprisals against people engaging with the UN.

In the run-up to the election, the International Service for Human Rights published scorecards assessing all 20 candidates against eight criteria; 12 of the 20 met none. Over 80 civil society organisations called on ECOSOC member states to hold competitive elections and vote for candidates committed to civil society access. Forty independent UN human rights experts, including special rapporteurs on human rights defenders and on countries including Afghanistan, Iran and Russia, issued a statement warning that Committee members were abusing the accreditation process to block access for human rights organisations. All these warnings went unheeded.

The withdrawal of accreditation from Il Cenacolo and CIRAC, which awaits ECOSOC confirmation, was unprecedented, but it sits within a long pattern of obstruction. At the Committee’s latest regular session in January, 618 applications were under consideration, 381 of which had been deferred from previous sessions.

The backlog is no accident. States ask repetitive questions about minor details and make short-notice requests for complex documentation to repeatedly delay applications until future sessions. States that repress civil society at home do the same in the international arena, targeting organisations that work on issues they deem controversial or opposed to their interests. Three states – China, India and Pakistan– stand out as the worst abusers of this mechanism, having asked almost half of the 647 questions posed to applicants during the January session. Repeated deferrals raise the costs for civil society organisations, draining financial resources and time.

The UN’s current financial crisis is compounding the problem. The consequences of funding cuts were visible at the latest session, when the question-and-answer session was cancelled following an early adjournment. The loss of the only opportunity for organisations seeking accreditation to engage directly with the Committee fell hardest on smaller organisations that had travelled to New York to take part.

The UN’s current cost-cutting drive could at least be used as an opportunity to push for online participation and other efficiency reforms to reduce the bureaucratic burden of repeated requests for information. Beyond this, there’s a need to reassert that the Committee’s function is supposed to be that of an enabler rather than an obstructor.

The NGO Committee determines whether the voices of communities facing repression and violence can be heard in the UN system, and it’s been hijacked by states with every interest in ensuring that they cannot. The floor can’t be left clear for states that repress civil society to act as gatekeepers. States that claim to support civil society must be willing to put themselves forward.

Samuel King is a researcher with the Horizon Europe-funded research project ENSURED: Shaping Cooperation for a World in Transition at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation.

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

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The second quadrennial International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) 2026 will be held at the UN Headquarters in New York from 5-8 May 2026, preceded by a multi-stakeholder hearing on 4 May. This forum reviews progress on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and aims to produce an inter-governmentally agreed Progress Declaration to set future migration policy goals.
 
https://migrationnetwork.un.org/international-migration-review-forum-2026

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, May 4 2026 (IPS)

Migration is a strange thing, hard to pin down. It is a complex phenomenon that transforms communities while shaping people’s identities and it is so multifaceted that individuals perceive it and live it in different ways.

It can turn to be a vehicle to security and prosperity for some but, on other hand, it can be also experienced with anguish and fear.

In short, migration is something personal that intimately affects both those settling into a new land and those communities that are supposed to co-exist with them.

A German’s state, Baden-Württembergwill soon will have its first state premier from Turkish origin, Cem Özdemir, a veteran green politician. In the past, Mr. Özdemir, according to DW report, has rejected the idea that he should be considered a “successful model of integration” because he always felt at home.

Özdemir’s unwillingness to be boxed into a fixed category of migrant contrasts those narratives that simplify and demean migration.

As we know, migration has been a toxic and divisive issue in many parts of the West, a dangerous problem that must be stopped at any cost. It is being portrayed through the lens of illegality as an open door that only invites violations of the law, including dangerous criminal activities.

While it is undeniable that security concerns can arise especially when there are massive flows of foreigners enter without papers into a new country, much less discussions are about the positive impact of migrants in the local economy.

But the level of politicization is so high that it ended up defining the whole issue. Migration has become something to be fixed, controlled in many parts of the Global North.

Such a framing ignores the fact that migration also occurs in large quantities also between developing nations and is not only about hordes of people from the Global South pushing their way into richer North.

It is unsurprising that the same logic also disregards the multiple and diverse “push factors” that bring individuals to migrate.

Poverty, discrimination and climate change are forcing millions of individuals to search for better places to live. This view has become so pervasive that it has delegitimized a different conversation, one based on exploring legal pathways to migration.

A different way of talking, discussing and regulating migration is possible.

The United Nations, over the last decades, have been trying to offer a venue to promote an approach leading to safe migration based on human rights, conducive, at least on paper, to a multilateralism centered governance of migration.

While far from being perfect, these mechanisms underpinning it, address migration in a way that goes past the deafening rhetoric that generally characterizes the debate on migration.

Because, as we know, migration if managed properly, taking into account the rights of migrants and bringing on board local communities in the destination countries with investment in social integration, instead offers a potent instrument to fight poverty while contributing to the economies of the Global North.

The International Migration Review Forum 2026 is one of these tools at the disposal of the UN to reframe the conversation about migration.

The United Nations in New York will host, from 5-8 May an essential conversation aimed at reviewing the Global Compact on Migration, GCM adopted on 19 December 2018.

Instead of being seen as an opportunity to reboot the conversation about immigration, this non-binding global blueprint, intended to offer a 360 degree approach to foster international cooperation to effectively and inclusively manage migration, ended up being instrumentalised by cunny politicians.

Since then, unfortunately the GCM has been overshadowed by the relentless politics of immigration based on the logic of “control” that has become more and more mainstream in the European Union and in the United States.

Making things more complicated is the fact that it is fitting for demagogues to conflate the issues of migrants with those of refugees. While these two categories often overlap, legally, they remain different concepts, a fact conveniently ignored by politicians.

It has not always been like this.

The international community, thanks also to a more favorable politics in the USA, on September 19, 2016, had successfully managed to create a united policy framework that would bring together both migration and the refugee’s related policies.

The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants led the foundations not only to the Global Compact on Migration but also to another tool, the Global Compact on Refugees approved just two days before the GCM.

These are two examples of soft law designed to ignite international support and cooperation even if they were criticized as attempts by the Global North of watering down the international human rights framework.

Yet in order for them to remain useful without diluting the international obligations of nations, they must remain as close as possible in terms of implementation.

The central question is if they revitalize and re-balance the conversation on immigration and refugee protection with practical cooperation and synergies among nations.

I doubt that IMRF 2026 can do much to elevate a new discussion about migration and challenge the status quo. After all, GCM has been designed to be structurally weak in terms of its governance.

For example, there is no mandatory reporting for its signatories.

A silver lining in the GCM’s framework is the existence of the United Nations Network on Migration that “coordinates system-wide, timely and practical support to Member States implementing the GCM.

Yet this is the only mechanism where the international community can holistically discuss immigration. No matter how battered the United Nations are amid drastic funding cuts and ongoing discussions about its re-organization and restructuring, multilateralism is needed more than ever in the areas of migration and refugees.

Yet it appears that the UN is not fighting the fight at political levels.

Reading the Report of the Secretary General on the Global Compact on Migration, you do not find a strong, vigorous push back against the politics that tackle immigration as a problem to be controlled.

There is only a small section on Dispelling Misleading Narratives and you could have expected a more punchy style and more space to counterattack this mainstream narrative on migration based on fear.

Perhaps the “immigration as a problem” approach has already metastasized and, inevitably, it adversely influences and restrains the United Nations. The International Migration Organization, the guardian of the GCM, remains a marginal institution within the UN system.

The Office of the High Commissioner on Refugees faced substantial funding cuts and underwent in 2025 a profound restructuring despite its essential role in many humanitarian situations.

At least the former Higher Commissioner, Fillippo Grandi who stepped down at the end of 2025, did not mince his words in criticizing the ways many governments in the West have been dealing with immigration.

“Building walls, sending boats back, offloading refugees and migrants on to other countries –, populists assure voters that controlling everything from borders and immigration numbers to job markets and national security will make their lives better” he wrote for The Guardian in 2024

“Few political tactics succeed like fear. But I can also tell you such claims of control are illusory”. he continued. It is not only the USA which has embraced this tactics.

Civil society organizations across Europe have been recently criticizing the European Union for the way it is drafting its Return Directive that, once approved, would streamline the return of non-EU nationals staying irregularly, including those whose asylum requests have been denied.

Yet amid this gloom, there are some best practices emerging.

Local governments have an important role to play.

The Local Coalition for Migrants and Refugees is showing an interest model to promote a bottom approach to migration. Moreover, some countries are stepping up.

For example, in 2025, Brazil approved a National Plan on Refugees, Migrants and Stateless while Kenya also brought in a new policy that would positively impact the more than 830,000 refugees and asylum-seekers that are hosted in the country.

At the same time, Ecuador reached an important milestone in 2025 with its National Implementation Plan (NIP) of GCM. Similarly, Malawi has finalized its first National Implementation Plan on Migration.

It is too early to see if these plans will be enforced and a lot will depend on the availability of international funding. Despite the constraints, the IOM remains steadfast in its mission of protecting the rights of migrants.

In 2024 a new Strategic Plan that aims at saving lives and protecting people on the move, driving solutions to displacement and facilitating pathways for regular migration, was introduced.

In a world in which 8,000 migrants were officially reported dead or missing worldwide in 2025, bringing the total since 2014 to more than 82,000 and with 117.3 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced, the international communities cannot stay indifferent.

Let’s remind ourselves of the real power of the GCM.

This Global Compact does not only recognize that safe, orderly and regular migration works for all when it takes place in a well-informed, planned and consensual manner. It is also a tool that highlights the role of the international community in helping create conducive policies for individuals to be able to lead peaceful and productive lives in their home nations.

In short, migration should never be an act of desperation.

While there are individuals of migrant origins like Cem Özdemir who offer a glaring example of successful achievements that allow himself to openly reject a stereotyped categorization, there is a sea of vulnerabilities and deaths affecting millions of others who voluntarily or forcibly left their homes.

This is the reason why legal tools like the International Refugees Convention, this year in its 75th anniversary and more limited but potentially useful mechanisms like IMRF this coming week and next Global Refugee Forum (GRF) 2027, do matter and we should all pay attention to them.

Simone Galimberti writes about the SDGs, youth-centered policy-making and a stronger and better United Nations.

IPS UN Bureau

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By External Source
May 1 2026 (IPS)

On May 3rd, the world marks World Press Freedom Day – a United Nations observance dedicated to the fundamental principles of press freedom.

First proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1993, the day traces its origins to the Windhoek Declaration, adopted by African journalists in 1991, calling for a free, independent and pluralistic press.

In 2026, World Press Freedom Day is observed under the theme: “Shaping a Future at Peace: Promoting Press Freedom for Human Rights, Development, and Security.”

UNESCO says the day is a reminder to governments of their commitment to press freedom. It is also a day of reflection for media professionals, a day of support for media under pressure, and a day of remembrance for journalists who have lost their lives in pursuit of a story.

This year’s global commemoration comes at a time of growing concern.

UNESCO’s latest World Trends Report finds that freedom of expression has declined globally since 2012, while self-censorship among journalists has risen sharply. The report also highlights growing physical, digital and legal threats against journalists.

Between January 2022 and September 2025, UNESCO recorded the killing of 310 journalists, including 162 killed in conflict zones.

The 2026 World Press Freedom Day Global Conference will be held on May 4th and 5th in Lusaka, Zambia, co-hosted by UNESCO and the Government of Zambia.

The conference will bring together journalists, digital rights advocates, policymakers, civil society, researchers and technology experts to discuss how journalism, technology, human rights and information integrity can support more resilient societies.

As conflicts, disinformation and pressures on independent media continue to grow, World Press Freedom Day is a reminder that access to reliable information is not only a media issue.

It is a human rights issue.

A development issue.

And a peace and security issue.

IPS UN Bureau

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Press freedom is on the retreat across much of the world.

As documented by recent global surveys authored by the UN and media institutes, the erosion of an independent, fearless and diversified press is a trend that has worsened for well over a decade.

Farhana Haque Rahman

Delivering the 2026 Reuters Memorial Lecture on March 9, Carlos Dada, Salvadoran editor of El Faro, now operating in exile, did not mince his words:

“A far-right, populist, autocratic wave is taking the world by storm and breaking all the rules, and journalists, as in every authoritarian regime or dictatorship, no matter its ideological foundations, are labelled as enemies. Journalism is being criminalized, and our colleagues are being imprisoned or killed.”

Just days earlier, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele was described by the Autonomous University of Barcelona as imposing one of the most restrictive environments for press freedom in Latin America through a “model of techno-populist authoritarianism”.

World Press Freedom Day, on May 3, has adopted as its declared theme: “Shaping a Future at Peace: Promoting Press Freedom for Human Rights, Development, and Security” – a challenging title given the wars, turmoil and economic crises currently besetting the world.

UNESCO, co-hosting the 2026 conference with the Zambian government in Lusaka on May 4-5, has itself charted a sharp decline in freedom of expression globally. Its 2022/2025 World Trends Report, Journalism: Shaping a World at Peace cites an increase in physical attacks, digital threats, and a surge in self-censorship among journalists.

This crisis is summed up by UNESCO as a “historically significant and unprecedented shift”, noting that for the first time in 20 years non-democratic regimes outnumber democracies. Some 72 percent of the world’s population lives under “non-democratic rule”, the highest proportion since 1978.

This decline in press freedom, plurality and diversity “mirrors broader patterns: weakened parliaments and judicial institutions, falling levels of public trust, and deepening polarization. It has also coincided with setbacks in equality, alongside rising hostility toward environmental journalists, scientists, and researchers”, UNESCO’s report says.

It also warns how “the growing dominance of major technology companies – and the consequences of their shifting policies and practices – have created fertile ground for hate speech and disinformation to spread online.”

In its World Press Freedom Index for 2025, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says physical attacks against journalists are the most visible violations of press freedom but “economic pressure is also a major, more insidious problem”.

“Much of this is due to ownership concentration, pressure from advertisers and financial backers, and public aid that is restricted, absent or allocated in an opaque manner,” RSF states. “Today’s news media are caught between preserving their editorial independence and ensuring their economic survival.”

“For the first time in the history of the Index, the conditions for practising journalism are ‘difficult’ or ‘very serious’ in over half of the world’s countries and satisfactory in fewer than one in four.”

World Press Freedom Day goes back to a 1993 decision by the UN General Assembly to commemorate the Declaration of Windhoek, a statement of free press principles produced by African journalists in 1991.

But as RSF notes, press freedom in Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing a worrying decline. The economic score of the index deteriorated in 80 percent of countries in the region.

Overall Eritrea (180th) remained the worst-ranking country. The Democratic Republic of the Congo fell 10 places to 133rd as its economic indicator plummeted. Conflict zones saw sharp declines in press freedom in Burkina Faso, Sudan and Mali with newsrooms forced to self-censor, shut down or go into exile.

“The hyper-concentration of media ownership in the hands of political figures or business elites without safeguards for editorial independence remains a recurring problem,” RSF says, citing issues in Cameroon, Nigeria and Rwanda.

Nonetheless higher-ranking countries, such as South Africa, Namibia, Cape Verde and Gabon “provide rays of hope”, RSF adds.

A clear casualty of the toxic combo of autocratic populists, media-owning cronies and dwindling budgets is coverage of climate change. Even normally heavy-hitting media groups are cutting back their reporting of the global climate crisis in another blow to the key SDG Target of promoting public access to information.

China remains the “world’s largest jail for journalists”, ranking 178th on RSF’s global press freedom index, one place above North Korea.

Bangladesh ranked 149th in the World Press Freedom Index. Following the parliamentary elections in February this year, RSF has urged the new Bangladeshi government to put an end to arbitrary detentions, the instrumentalization of the justice system and impunity for crimes against journalists. Such abuses have caused lasting damage to the country’s press.

Summing up the state of the press following Perugia’s annual International Journalism Festival in April, Carole Cadwalladr, investigative journalist for The Nerve — a “fearless, female-founded, truly independent [UK] media title” – commented: “There’s “not much light in these dark times” while referencing the killing by Israeli forces of over 200 Palestinian journalists and media workers since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023.

But she did feel an “energy” at the festival held in the Italian hill-top city.

“All across the world, there are journalists doing the hard yards of trying to hold power to account,” she wrote. “And increasingly, this is being done by small, insurgent new outlets that are sprouting up because there is a gap that needs to be filled.”

Or as Dada, editor of El Salvador’s exiled El Faro, declared in his lecture:

“We are journalists in resistance. In resistance to the violation of our rights, the shuttering of public information… resistance to limitless power. We practised journalism in democracy for a quarter century. That era is gone. Today, we are a newsroom in resistance.”

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service and Executive Director IPS Noram; she served as the elected Director General of IPS from 2015-2019. A journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

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Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 1 2026 (IPS)

A longstanding rule bars international civil servants from publicly taking a political stand against member states, even against those accused of human rights violations, war crimes and genocide (and even barring staffers from participating in political demonstrations outside the UN).

And more importantly, the rules also forbid UN staffers from campaigning for– or against– candidates for secretary general, including the current race for a new UNSG.

Perhaps that’s a price one has to pay—forfeiting the right to political expression– when you are an international civil servant. But is it worth the sacrifice?

A new circular to UN staffers, released April 29, reiterates these restrictions cautioning against any participation in the run-up to the election of a new Secretary-General later this year.

“As recent and ongoing wars and conflicts continue, the UN remains indispensable as a platform for dialogue, human rights, and collective action and all staff play a vital role in this effort.

While it is understandable that many staff members feel compelled to share views about events that are unfolding, including in personal fora such as social media, we must be mindful at all times of our rights and duties as international civil servants, which require us to act independently and impartially,” says the circular.

Four candidates in the running for the next UN Secretary-General; Michelle Bachelet (Chile), Rafael Grossi (Argentina), Rebeca Grynspan (Costa Rica), and Macky Sall (Senegal). Credit: United Nations

This applies to all public communications (including those shared through personal social media accounts) related to ongoing crises, political matters, and other elections and electoral processes, which should be framed in a manner that is consistent with the Organization’s positions and the statements of the Secretary-General.

Recent instances have also highlighted the need for particular caution with regard to public expressions of support for candidates in the selection process for the Secretary-General.

“Any such expressions—whether explicit or implicit—may be perceived as inconsistent with the independence and impartiality required of international civil servants and risk undermining the integrity of the process”, the circular cautions.

‘Disclaimers indicating that views are expressed in a personal capacity do not absolve us of our obligations under the Staff Regulations and Rules. The standards of conduct apply irrespective of the platform used or the capacity in which views are expressed,” the circular warns.

Dr Palitha Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, told Inter Press Service (IPS):
“It is undoubted that international civil servants must remain above national and sectarian differences. It is this quality that makes them and the Organization credible. Sometimes it may become difficult to remain silent in the face of gross abuses, and these circumstances present a dilemma”.

In this context, he pointed out, it is most important to bear in mind Article 101 of the Charter.

During the time of SG Kofi Annan (1997-2006), a more relaxed atmosphere prevailed and staff were permitted to express their views within their own areas of responsibility.

“Then again, one is constrained to ask whether staff should remain mute when the very fundamentals of the Charter are being violated. Whether they be human rights, or the prohibition or the threat of the use of force, or the commitment to live in peace and harmony,” he argued.

The leadership of the Organization must provide the guidelines within which the staff could express themselves. But not the wishy-washy stuff that we are increasingly getting used to.

But will the leadership ever call a spade a spade, declared Dr Kohona, a former Sri Lankan Permanent Representative to the UN, and until recently, Ambassador to China.

Samir Sanbar, a former Assistant Secretary-General and head of the Department of Public Information (DPI) told IPS: “I recall taking an “Oath of Office”‘ to “exercise in all loyalty, discretion and conscience the functions entrusted to me as an international civil servant of the United Nations, to discharge these functions and regulate my conduct with the interests of the united Nations only in view. and not to seek or accept instructions in regard to the performance of my duties from any government or other authority external to the Organization”.

I am not clear, he said, whether that oath is currently required particularly after several former government officials joined the Secretariat.

Supporting a particular candidate proposed by a government –as officially required– for the post of Secretary General would be contrary to that oath of international civil service, he pointed out.

Recounting his strong personal relationship with a former Secretary-General, Sanbar said: “Kofi Annan was my closest United Nations colleague as we started our work at the same time and progressed together when he headed Peace keeping and I headed Public Information.”

He visited me at home on a Sunday evening, said Sanbar, to inform me of his candidacy for Secretary-General yet graciously agreed that my contacts with the media would not indicate public support until he was elected when we walked to the photo unit on the eighth floor for an official portrait.

Meanwhile, the UN circular also says : “We, as staff members must adhere to the policies set out in the Status, basic rights and duties of United Nations staff members; outside activities. The guidelines for the personal use of social media also include a number of useful tips including on privacy settings, liking or sharing posts, and reminders on information that has not been made public.’

In particular, staff regulation 1.2 (f) provides: “While staff members’ personal views and convictions, including their political and religious convictions, remain inviolable, staff members shall ensure that those views and convictions do not adversely affect their official duties or the interests of the United Nations.

They shall conduct themselves at all times in a manner befitting their status as international civil servants and shall not engage in any activity that is incompatible with the proper discharge of their duties with the United Nations.

They shall avoid any action and, in particular, any kind of public pronouncement that may adversely reflect on their status, or on the integrity, independence and impartiality that are required by that status.”

The “2026 Guidance on Political Activities” issued on iSeek by the UN Ethics Office provides more guidance.

“We, as staff members, are obliged to comply with these provisions. Failure to do so can result in the initiation of a disciplinary process, which may result in disciplinary sanctions being imposed.”

Given the above, please also be aware, in accordance with staff rule 10.1 “Failure by staff members to comply with their obligations under the Charter of the United Nations, the Staff Regulations and Rules or other relevant administrative issuances or to observe the standards of conduct expected of an international civil servant may amount to misconduct and may lead to the institution of a disciplinary process and the imposition of disciplinary measures for misconduct.”

In addition, affiliate (non-staff) personnel must also comply with the principles set out under the terms and conditions of their engagement as well as the administrative instructions that govern their modality of engagement such as ST/AI/2020/10 on United Nations Internship Programme, ST/AI/2013/4 on Consultants and Individual Contractors, ST/AI/231/Rev.1 on Non-Reimbursable Loan Experts, ST/AI/1999/6 on Gratis Personnel, and the MOU and Conditions of Service guidelines for UN Volunteers.

“This reminder is issued in the interest of protecting both individual staff members and the Organization, and to ensure that the United Nations continues to be perceived as an impartial and trusted institution by Member States and the public”.

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Over recent decades, agricultural commodities have been transformed from goods into financial assets. Markets anticipate future disruptions and push prices up faster than underlying conditions would justify. Credit: Bigstock

By Mihaela Siritanu
LONDON, Apr 29 2026 (IPS)

As the United States and Israel’s 2026 attack on Iran remains on pause, most eyes have fixed on oil. Tankers reroute around the Strait of Hormuz, oil benchmarks climb, and insurance costs spike. But while the headlines focus on energy, warning signs are already flashing from the food commodities markets.

Middle East tensions continue to escalate, but global wheat and maize supplies remain relatively well stocked and production has not been significantly disrupted. Yet UK wheat futures have risen to almost £183 per tonne — their highest level since mid-November — after rising more than £2.60 in a single week. At the same time, fertiliser prices — a key input for future harvests — have doubled since the start of the year, even though the main impacts on crop production have yet to materialise.

These are early warning signs — not of a harvest failure, but of how today’s food system responds to crisis. Food prices are beginning to rise, with the FAO Food Price Index steadily increasing in February and March 2026, even though crops have not yet failed, harvests have not collapsed, and global production remains broadly stable. The crisis is unfolding in real time, before any physical shortage has fully materialised.

Of course, real factors matter — but they operate very differently. When oil prices rise, they feed into food production through higher fertiliser costs, more expensive transport, and increased energy use on farms.

But these are gradual pressures: they work their way through the system over months, as farmers purchase inputs, plant crops, and bring harvests to market. Prices linked to these costs would normally rise slowly, in step with actual changes in production.

Instead, prices are moving immediately, driven less by current shortages than by expectations of what might happen. Markets anticipate future disruptions and push prices up faster than underlying conditions would justify. In this system, financial markets are no longer simply reflecting reality — they are actively reshaping it.

Over recent decades, agricultural commodities have been transformed from goods into financial assets. Wheat, maize, and rice are now traded not only by farmers and merchants, but by hedge funds, investment banks, and institutional investors seeking returns.

In wealthier countries, higher food prices squeeze household budgets. In much of the Global South, where food accounts for a larger share of income, the same increases can push families into hunger. Import-dependent countries must pay prices set on global markets even when local supply conditions remain stable

Financial instruments such as commodity index funds channel large volumes of capital into these markets, often detached from real supply and demand. Large trading firms straddle both physical and financial markets, allowing them to profit from volatility, rather than mitigate it.

When geopolitical shocks occur, this capital moves quickly. Investors position themselves ahead of expected disruptions, driving up futures prices that then feed through to importers, retailers, and consumers. The Iran crisis is therefore not just raising costs, it is activating a financial system primed to amplify them.

The consequences are global but uneven. In wealthier countries, higher food prices squeeze household budgets. In much of the Global South, where food accounts for a larger share of income, the same increases can push families into hunger. Import-dependent countries must pay prices set on global markets even when local supply conditions remain stable.

These pressures do not remain purely economic. Food price spikes can have destabilising political effects. Rising costs of staple foods have long been linked to social unrest, including in the lead-up to the Arab Spring, when increases in bread prices contributed to protests across North Africa and the Middle East. This reflects a broader pattern in which rising food costs – amplified by market speculation – increase the likelihood of unrest by intensifying existing social and economic grievances.

This helps explain a persistent paradox: hunger continues to rise in a world that produces more than enough food. The problem is not simply production, but access – and increasingly, how prices are formed.

That system was built over decades: on one hand through the deregulation of commodity markets in the Global North, which opened the door to large-scale speculative investment, and on the other, deregulation exported globally through IMF and World Bank programmes that promoted market liberalisation, privatisation, and the dismantling of public price stabilisation mechanisms, leaving many countries exposed to volatility.

The emerging food price pressures linked to the Iran conflict should therefore be understood as more than a temporary shock. They are a warning signal. If prices can spike before shortages occur, then food insecurity is no longer just a matter of supply. It is a function of how markets are organised.

Until that system is addressed, each new geopolitical crisis — whether in Iran or elsewhere — will continue to reverberate through food markets in ways that deepen inequality and intensify hunger. The next food crisis is not just growing in the fields. It is already being priced in.

Mihaela Siritanu is the Economic Governance and Financialisation Lead at the Bretton Woods Project.

Picture alliance/AA/Royal Court of Saudi Arabia. Source: International Politics & Society
 
The war with Iran is exposing deep fractures beneath the surface of Gulf unity. Still, cooperation remains the only viable option.

By Sebastian Sons
BONN, Germany, Apr 29 2026 (IPS)

While the world watches the Strait of Hormuz and the discord in negotiations between Iran and the United States, the role of the Gulf states is fading into the background. Iran’s attacks on the Arab Gulf states have triggered a threefold shock.

First, their business model – built on free trade routes, logistics, energy, tourism and entertainment – is under strain. Second, they are losing the confidence of international investors as safe havens, undermining their narrative as a reliable bulwark against the chaos in their neighbourhood. And lastly, their strategy of shielding themselves from external threats through comprehensive diplomacy, de-escalation and dialogue is at stake.

Influential mediators such as Qatar and Oman have come into the crosshairs of the war, as has Saudi Arabia, which only in 2023 resumed relations with Iran precisely to prevent such a scenario of regional escalation. This threefold shock is now forcing all Gulf states to rethink their security architecture in order to better protect themselves in the future.

Contrasting strategies

At present, it appears as though each ruler in the Gulf is pursuing their own strategy, relying on their own instruments and forging their own alliances. This is particularly evident in the case of the Gulf heavyweights Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Saudi kingdom sees itself more as an actor committed to de-escalation, coordinating closely with regional players such as Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan.

Despite considerable frustration with the Islamic Republic, which has torpedoed any rapprochement in recent weeks, diplomatic relations with Tehran have not been severed. Instead, Riyadh recognises that some form of modus operandi with Iran will remain necessary.

The UAE, by contrast, has sharpened its rhetoric towards Iran in recent weeks, is increasingly adopting a confrontational stance and emphasises that Israel and the United States will assume an even more dominant role in the region after the war.

These differing positions point to deep-seated divergences between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, which had already become apparent before the war. In Yemen, the rivalry between the two regional powers escalated in December, culminating in Saudi Arabia publicly criticising its Emirati ‘brother’ and taking military action against its local partner, the Southern Transitional Council.

In Sudan, both governments support opposing sides – the UAE backs the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), while Saudi Arabia supports the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) – further fuelling the humanitarian catastrophe three years into the bloody civil war.

The Gulf states are not striving for pure harmony, but rather pursuing similar interests through different instruments.

The two states also pursue contrasting strategies towards Israel. While the UAE signed the Abraham Accords in 2020 and continues to maintain diplomatic and economic ties with Israel, Saudi Arabia has positioned itself as an active defender of the Palestinian cause since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and rejects any normalisation of relations with Israel.

These differing positions also reverberate beyond the region. Saudi Arabia, for example, criticised Israel’s recognition of Somaliland in December 2025, where the UAE operates an important port — another illustration of the growing divergence between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Two rival axes thus appear to have emerged, further consolidated by the current war. On one side stands Saudi Arabia as the representative of a more restrained approach to regional policy, working with partners such as Oman, Qatar, Pakistan and Turkey to pursue assertive diplomacy.

On the other side, the UAE – particularly the powerful emirate of Abu Dhabi – has adopted a policy of interventionist strength against Iran and Islamist movements, a stance that is supported in varying degrees by Kuwait and Bahrain. Along these axes, a regional arms race could intensify, economic rivalry could grow, and hyper-nationalism could deepen, leading to further hardening and polarisation of positions across the Gulf.

Yet this seemingly irreconcilable confrontation overlooks the fact that the Gulf states are not striving for pure harmony, but rather pursuing similar interests through different instruments. Their approach is based on a pragmatic both-and strategy that relies on flexible alliances to achieve their objectives. In fact, their goals are not as divergent as often assumed, but can be summarised as three core priorities: preserving national legitimacy, maintaining regional stability and safeguarding economic development.

These are all threatened by the war, creating a natural interest among the Gulf states in avoiding lasting harm to one another — or even outright conflict.

Competition does not preclude cooperation

The Gulf states have a long and shifting history of conflict and rapprochement. Disputes over borders, rivalries between ruling dynasties and families, conflicts over resources and trade routes, and competing approaches to developing their oil- and gas-dependent economies have repeatedly led to periods of defamation, demonisation and disintegration.

Most recently, the so-called Gulf crisis from 2017 to 2021 shook Gulf unity, when the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt imposed an air, sea and land blockade on Qatar. Despite these cycles of tension and reconciliation, the Gulf states have proven remarkably resilient, not least because of their ability to adapt flexibly to new challenges.

They must now demonstrate this capacity more than ever. The current war represents a pivotal moment in Gulf history, redefining how their both-and strategy can remain effective. To ensure this, they may increasingly rely on comprehensive deterrence, flexible alliances and diplomacy, which could lead to closer cooperation in certain policy areas.

This may include enhanced military cooperation, aimed at strengthening national security through regional defence capabilities and reducing dependence on the United States.

The development of a joint drone programme and protection against attacks on maritime security, desalination plants and future technologies are in the interests of all Gulf states — despite their differences in dealing with Iran. The same applies to other areas.

The war, through the sinking of tankers and the deployment of mines in the Persian Gulf, could seriously endanger an already fragile environment. Environmental disasters such as oil spills must therefore be prevented, which can only be achieved through collective action.

The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has made it abundantly clear to most Gulf states how dependent they are on this sensitive maritime chokepoint for their energy exports.

The impact on the collective psyche of Gulf societies should not be underestimated either. Addressing this will require joint efforts in trauma recovery. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has made it abundantly clear to most Gulf states how dependent they are on this sensitive maritime chokepoint for their energy exports.

Alternatives are scarce, benefiting primarily Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait are being cut off from international maritime trade. Alternative trade routes are therefore essential, but can only be developed through partnership.

Plans for such routes have existed for years and could gain renewed momentum in the context of the crisis — whether in energy, transport or the construction of a Gulf railway network. Saudi Arabia, for instance, is planning new logistics corridors with Egypt and Jordan to enhance its independence.

At present, all Gulf states are suffering from declining revenues from oil and gas sales, tourism and financial services. Overall, economic growth in the region is projected to fall in 2026 from an expected 3.7 per cent to just 1.4 per cent. In Qatar, economic output could shrink by as much as 13 per cent, in the UAE by 8 per cent and in Saudi Arabia by 6.6 per cent.

This will likely lead all Gulf states to invest more cautiously and more selectively — particularly at home. The more they channel their reduced funds domestically, the fewer resources will be available for the urgently needed reconstruction in regional crisis zones such as Syria.

Here too, closer coordination in development cooperation could prove beneficial, as was the case during the Gulf crisis within the framework of the Arab Coordination Group, which brings together the development funds of all Gulf states alongside regional donor organisations such as the Islamic Development Bank.

These examples demonstrate that competition does not necessarily preclude cooperation, but rather depends heavily on context. The existing divergences among the Gulf states should therefore not be seen as set in stone, but as part of a complex process of negotiation and adaptation in times of crisis.

Alliances are shifting, leading to profound transformations that are particularly affecting the Gulf states. They will not abandon their both-and approach, but will recalibrate it. Whether they act against or alongside one another will depend more than ever on circumstances and the instruments they choose — resulting in a dynamic that could combine partnership with simultaneous polarisation.

Dr Sebastian Sons is a scientist at the CARPO research institute and conducts research primarily on the economic, foreign, social, development and sports policy of the Arab Gulf monarchies.

Source: International Politics and Society. Brussels

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Credit: UNICEF/Giacomo Pirozzi
 
The niqab is a full-body Islamic piece of clothing, worn by some women in devout Muslim communities, and which covers the whole body, leaving only a narrow slit for the eyes. French full-body veil ban, violated women’s freedom of religion, says the UN Human Rights Committee.

By Lina AbiRafeh, Azza Karam and Henia Dakkak
NEW YORK, Apr 28 2026 (IPS)

The veil has been lifted—but not the one you think.

Not the veil the West has spent decades weaponizing. The veil now exposed is the one that concealed Western feminism’s selective solidarity—its silence on the women it was never truly fighting for. The “othering” of women from the South West Asian and North African region. In other words: us.

In Against White Feminism, Rafia Zakaria offers a powerful critique of how mainstream feminism often reinforces white supremacist, colonial, and patriarchal logics. The suffering of women of color becomes useful—deployable.

The image of the veiled, victimized woman, waiting to be saved, has long justified wars, interventions, and foreign policies driven not by liberation, but by imperial ambition. When these women resist on their own terms, they are ignored or discredited.

This pattern is not new. It is structural. Discrimination is embedded in the system. Palestine has simply made it undeniable. The silence that followed stripped away any remaining illusion that “we are in this together.” Feminist solidarity, it turns out, has limits—and some of us were never included.

That is the veil we lift today.

We speak as Arab women aged 50–65, activists and feminists with over a century of combined experience across 90 countries. We now live in the United States, where these contradictions are stark. We have paid a price for insisting on integrity. So have many others.

Across conversations with colleagues and communities, the message is consistent: the system is not broken—it functions exactly as designed.

Early feminist movements everywhere have grappled with patriarchy, sometimes resisting it, sometimes accommodating it. In the West, this struggle has often aligned uncomfortably with white supremacy.

In formerly colonized regions, patriarchy cannot be separated from colonialism, racism, or imperialism. These systems are intertwined; dismantling one requires confronting them all. This is where Western feminism consistently falls short.

Today, little has changed. The language is more polished. The imagery more diverse. But the underlying structures—and the values sustaining them—remain intact. Nowhere is this clearer than in how women from the South West Asian and North African region are treated by movements that claim to champion them.

The same logic that invoked Afghan women to justify military intervention now watches Palestinian women document their own destruction while offering silence—or excuses.

The data reflects this reality.

In the United States, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination rose sharply in 2024. The Council on American-Islamic Relations recorded 8,658 complaints—the highest since it began tracking in 1996. Employment discrimination alone accounted for 15.4% of cases. In 2025, these numbers climbed again. Rhetoric has consequences.

But numbers only tell part of the story. Women’s voices tell the rest.

One Arab aid worker described being sidelined after speaking publicly about Palestine following October 7:

“When I spoke about Ukrainian women, it was welcomed. When I spoke about Palestinian women, it was suppressed. I lost my work.”

Others describe being silenced on social media, accused of saying too much—or too little. Some were advised to remove their hijab for safety. Others were warned to avoid expressing views altogether to protect institutional reputations.

Yet another was denied the right to exercise leadership among her own staff, because as a Muslim from the Arab region, her ability to clearly articulate opinions, exercise judgement, and make decisions, was deemed ‘abusive’. One woman was denied employment because her call for “ceasefire and humanitarian aid” was deemed “too political.”

Western feminism often recoils at these truths. Yet Palestine is not only a political issue—it is a feminist one. All struggles against oppression are interconnected. Justice cannot be selective, even if its application often is.

Feminism demands confronting power, violence, and dehumanization wherever they occur. Palestinian women live at the intersection of multiple forms of oppression—patriarchy, occupation, militarization—and resist across all of them.

A feminism that ignores this reality is not feminism. It is complicity.

As Teju Cole describes, this is the logic of the “white savior industrial complex.” It operates through what can be called gendered orientalism: women from the South West Asian and North African region are portrayed as victims of culture, religion, or men—but rarely of bombs, sanctions, or occupation. This framing preserves the West as liberator while erasing its role in producing violence.

In the United States, the language differs but the outcome is the same. Conservatives fear Islam; liberals seek to save us from it. Both deny our agency. Both silence our voices.

We are rarely represented as we are: organizers, scholars, community leaders, mothers, activists, feminists.

This silence must be named clearly. It is not neutrality. It is complicity.

The credibility of any feminist movement rests on whether it stands with all women—especially when doing so is politically inconvenient.

We have paid the price for this failure: in erasure, in exclusion, in lost friends, in being told our grief is too complex and our politics too divisive.

What passes for solidarity is often conditional. It appears when it costs nothing and disappears when it demands accountability. Women from the South West Asia and North Africa were welcomed when our oppression reinforced dominant narratives. We became inconvenient when our liberation required confronting Western power itself.

Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced intersectionality to describe how overlapping identities produce compounded forms of discrimination. What we are witnessing now is an intersectional crisis: women from those regions face discrimination based simultaneously on race, religion, gender, and geopolitics. The very movement best equipped to confront this has gone largely silent.

From decades of work in conflict settings, one truth is clear: women from South West Asia and North Africa do not need to be singled out for ‘saving’.

We need the violence to stop.

We need colleagues to speak our names when it is difficult. We need those marching for human rights to recognize that feminism that excludes Gaza, Beirut, or Tehran is neither feminism nor human rights. It is branding—a convenient narrative that avoids confronting deeper structures of power.

Palestine has revealed a deeper truth: these systems were never designed to serve everyone. They were built by—and for—those in power.

What is required now is not reform at the margins, but a reckoning.

Solidarity demands accountability. If women’s rights are human rights, then they must apply to all women—without exception.

Lina AbiRafeh – Better4Women – Azza Karam and Henia Dakkak– Lead Integrity: House of Wisdom.

IPS UN Bureau

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By HMGS Palihakkara
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Apr 28 2026 (IPS)

As delegates from 191 countries, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, gathered Monday at UN headquarters for a month of diplomacy at the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the stakes could hardly be higher.

They meet in the shadow of a war of choice, waged by the United States and Israel against Iran—ostensibly to prevent nuclear proliferation. It is a war steeped in tragedy and laced with irony. The human toll and global economic costs speak for themselves.

The irony is starker.

The United States, a principal depositary of the NPT, unilaterally caused the collapse of a UN-authorised agreement it had itself initiated to verify Iran’s non-nuclear status—the JCPOA. Having done that, the US, alongside Israel—a state that rejects the NPT—now bombs a hitherto NPT-compliant Iran to achieve the same end: a non-nuclear Iran.

This oxymoronic irony lies at the heart of America’s war of choice. Waged in the name of non-proliferation, it may accelerate the very outcome it seeks to avoid. By demonstrating that even a state short of nuclear weapons can be subjected to unilateral unauthorised force, Washington risks sending a stark message: survival may depend not on restraint and diplomacy, but on possession of the bomb.

This paradox exposes a longstanding fragility in the global nuclear matrix. Built around the NPT and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards regime, it rests on a bargain: non-nuclear states forgo weapons in exchange for security assurances, access to peaceful nuclear technology and good-faith progress towards disarmament.

This system, discriminatory but functional, endures only so long as it is seen as credible. When a treaty-compliant non-nuclear state becomes the target of military action over suspected ambitions, that credibility erodes.

At the centre of this erosion is the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. Before the conflict, Iran’s posture was widely understood as “hedging”—developing technical capacity without crossing the weapons threshold.

This allowed Tehran to retain leverage while avoiding the full costs of weaponisation. But hedging depends on a shared understanding: that ambiguity will be tolerated—or at least not punished with illegal use of force.

War shatters that assumption. The lesson is stark: nuclear latency does not deter attack; nuclear possession might. The comparison with North Korea is instructive. Its overt arsenal has largely insulated it from large-scale intervention despite decades of hostility with Washington.

For policymakers in Tehran—and elsewhere—the implication is difficult to ignore. If ambiguity invites vulnerability, clarity in the form of a deterrent may appear rational. Nuclear weapons risk being recast from political liabilities into strategic necessities.

The damage extends beyond Iran. The non-proliferation regime has long depended on the belief that compliance will not be punished. Yet recent history has already weakened that assumption. Ukraine relinquished the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in the 1990s in exchange for security assurances, only to face Russian invasion decades later.

Libya abandoned its programme and soon after saw regime collapse following the US initiated external intervention. These precedents have chipped away at trust.

Against this backdrop, war with Iran reinforces a troubling pattern: states without nuclear weapons appear vulnerable, while those with them appear secure. This is the opposite of what the non-proliferation regime is meant to uphold.

Officials at the IAEA have warned such dynamics could trigger a “domino effect”, with multiple countries reconsidering their options. Across the Middle East and beyond, governments are quietly reassessing their assumptions.

Military aggression also reshapes domestic politics in ways that complicate non-proliferation. External pressure strengthens hardliners while marginalising advocates of engagement. This is not unintended but predictable. Hardliners are less inclined toward compromise and more likely to view nuclear weapons as essential to survival.

The space for diplomacy narrows as nuclearisation gains appeal. War, in other words, transforms not just capabilities but preferences.

There is also a practical limit to military solutions. Airstrikes can damage or even ‘obliterate’ facilities, but they cannot erase knowledge. Scientific expertise cannot be bombed out of existence. Indeed, intervention may accelerate the very processes it seeks to halt by pushing them underground. A programme once visible to inspectors may become more secretive and harder to monitor.

The regional implications are equally concerning. The Middle East is already marked by rivalry and fragile security arrangements. An Iranian move towards nuclear weapons—especially one accelerated by conflict—would likely prompt countervailing responses.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey have both signalled they would not remain passive. The result could be a cascading arms race, turning an already volatile region into a multipolar nuclear environment.

This is a classic security dilemma: one state’s attempt to enhance its security leaves others feeling less secure, prompting reciprocal measures that leave all worse off. By seeking to eliminate a potential threat through unauthorised force, the United States may multiply such threats. Instead of one threshold state, the region could face several.

These dynamics point to a deeper flaw: the belief that military force can resolve nuclear proliferation. Nuclear ambition is not merely technical; it is a political response to insecurity. Bombing addresses symptoms, not causes.

Without addressing the security concerns that drive states towards nuclear capabilities, coercion alone cannot produce lasting results. All successful non-proliferation goals-ranging from NPT to JCPOA- were reached through calculated diplomatic negotiations, not by military means.

Past experience underscores this. Diplomatic agreements, however imperfect, have constrained nuclear programmes. The collapse of the JCPOA removed mechanisms that had limited Iran’s activities. In the absence of a credible diplomatic alternative, military action amounts to little more than a delay—buying time at the cost of increasing long-term incentives to pursue nuclear weapons.

The war also risks reinforcing the perception that international law is subordinate to power politics. If rules can be bypassed by powerful states, weaker ones are unlikely to rely on them. Instead, they may turn to capabilities that cannot easily be neutralised. Nuclear weapons become not just tools of deterrence, but symbols of sovereignty and survival.

Perhaps the most enduring impact will be psychological. States learn from precedent. From Iraq to Libya to Ukraine—and now Iran—a pattern appears: vulnerability invites intervention, while nuclear capability deters it. This conclusion may be uncomfortable, but it reflects a cold logic of international politics. Once such a perception takes hold, it is difficult to reverse.

For this reason, the war may prove a watershed moment not only for Iran but for the global non-proliferation regime. It alters perceptions of risk and security in ways that favour proliferation over restraint. Even states with no immediate intention of pursuing nuclear weapons may begin hedging against a future in which international guarantees appear unreliable.

The tragedy is that a policy intended to prevent proliferation may instead accelerate it. By undermining trust, empowering hardliners and reinforcing deterrence logic, the United States risks achieving the opposite of its stated aim. Even if military action sets back Iran’s programme in the short term, the long-term consequences may be far more damaging.

A more secretive, more determined and more widely emulated pursuit of nuclear weapons would not represent a victory for non-proliferation. It would mark its gradual unravelling—an “own goal” in geopolitical terms.

If the aim of non-proliferation is to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, this conflict points in the opposite direction. It suggests that security cannot be reliably guaranteed by treaties or norms alone, and that in an uncertain world the ultimate insurance policy remains the bomb.

That message will resonate far beyond Iran. Its consequences may shape nuclear choices for decades.

The question the Iran war poses to the world is not polemical but stark: is it a new normal that a depositary state of the NPT and a covert nuclear power not party to the treaty can preclude diplomacy and bomb their way to non-proliferation?

If the current NPT Review Conference in New York, like its predecessor conferences, fails to reach consensus on the way forward for the Treaty’s three pillars—non-proliferation, peaceful nuclear cooperation based on sovereign equality, and disarmament—it will amount to an answer in the affirmative, to that question. This may then signal the onset of the treaty’s terminal decay.

HMGS Palihakkara is a former Sri Lankan Ambassador to United Nations; one time Chair /Member of UNSG Advisory Board on Disarmament; a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel updating the ’Comprehensive Study on Nuclear Weapons’; Advisor to the President of the 1995 NPT Review & Extension Conference.

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Photos of former Secretaries-Generals in the UN’s public lobby.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 28 2026 (IPS)

The race for the next UN Secretary-General has, so far, attracted only four candidates—perhaps with more to come in an unpredictable contest.

But most of the candidates have played it safe – avoiding controversial issues and circumventing the wrath of the US whose veto can demolish the chances of any candidate by a single stroke in the Security Council.

The Trump administration has taken a vociferous stand against some the longstanding basic principles and goals advocated by the UN, including combating climate change, promoting gender empowerment and supporting equity and diversity in the world body.

“This ‘climate change,’ it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion,” Trump was quoted as saying.

“All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”

Trump has also initiated a comprehensive, government-wide rollback of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, signing executive orders in January and March 2026 to eliminate DEI offices, initiatives, and training in federal agencies and among contractors.

The policy emphasizes “merit-based” opportunities over DEI and gender empowerment goals, restricting federal funding in the US for, and requiring contractors to stop, “racially discriminatory” DEI activities.

Who, amongst the candidates, will publicly stand on these issues, defying the US?

As of last week, the four candidates vying to succeed António Guterres as the next UN Secretary-General, starting January 1, 2027 were:—Michelle Bachelet (Chile), Rafael Grossi (Argentina), Rebeca Grynspan (Costa Rica), and Macky Sall (Senegal).

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Secretary General CIVICUS, an alliance of civil society organizations, told Inter Press Service (IPS) the United Nations was born out of the horrors of the Second World War, which witnessed cruelty and human rights violations on a monumental scale.

“It is telling that the candidates’ vision skirted addressing impunity for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, the very violations that are weakening the promise of the United Nations today.”

Most candidates, he pointed out, come with years of experience within the system. But experience within a broken system is not the same as the capacity to repair it.

“What the world needs is not another politician or diplomat driven by pragmatism alone, but a leader with a moral vision grounded in a human rights framework, one willing to confront eye-watering inequality, the rise of misogyny, environmental degradation, and the normalization of might-is-right conduct in international affairs”, he said.

“Almost all presentations were made under the long shadow of a possible veto, a reality that shapes what candidates say and, more importantly, what they do not”.

Civil society has been actively calling for straw polls to be held at the General Assembly, giving member states beyond the Permanent P5 and the Elected E10 a formal opportunity to indicate their candidate preference.

That effort has not succeeded, he lamented, whether through a General Assembly resolution or any other mechanism, and that failure is its own indictment of how the selection process is structured.

People across the world need a leader who can drive change through their moral authority and serve as the conscience of the world. At this stage, each of the candidates could have done more to demonstrate that they possess the courage and conviction required to do that. said Tiwana.

Instead, they appeared to play to the gallery of powerful states when they could have been speaking to the people who need a functioning and relevant United Nations in the second quarter of the twenty-first century” declared Tiwana.

Ian G Williams, a longtime commentator covering the UN since 1989 and currently President of the Foreign Press Association (FPA), told IPS, so far, it’s a very uninspiring and, dare one say, “mature” field.

Maybe there should be as much pressure for “youth’s” turn, as there is for a woman, not least since both female candidates are of pensionable age. The “most difficult job in the world” is not one for Donald Trump’s contemporaries!

The hustings had four announced candidates, but as the Book of Proverbs says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

“None of the candidates offered a vision: their presentations had all the breadth and depth of an application for deputy head of corporate Human Resources,” said Williams, who covered four previous SG elections– BBG, Kofi, Ban and Guterres.

Even the candidates who showed signs of integrity, keeping the law, seem to be missing the vision thing and, frankly, keeping the law is a stretch for candidates who want to avoid a veto from the P5, he pointed out.

“So, in a field of lame horses, the three-legged one might limp home, and that could be Mackie Sall, who is not a woman, not Latin American and does not have the support of his own country or region. His big benefit is that he passes the traditional UN promotion test of not being remembered for anything in particular.”

In an in-depth analysis, Williams said Bachelet has the credentials, but for obvious reasons camouflaged her vision while Rebecca Grynspan is an uninspiring apparatchik who has presided over the effectual dismantlement of UNCTAD, the development agency that had been in the sights of Washington for decades.

While one cannot hold family connections against her, many countries might also worry about the optics of an SG whose sister is an Israeli settler in the West Bank. However, she is backed by her government unlike some other candidates.

Indeed, it could be a plus for Bachelet that Chile’s new reactionary government pulled its endorsement, just as the Argentine Grossi’s backing by Millei, and thus implicitly by Trump, is not exactly a vote winner.

Looking at the heavily handicapped slate so far, said Williams, it’s good that there are nominations waiting in the wings.

Barbadian PM Mia Amor Mottley would be an ideal candidate – ticking both the vision and law boxes. A woman from the Latin American and Caribbean region, (whose ”turn” it is for the position) and whose otherwise disqualifying integrity might pass the Trump test by speaking English and being accoladed by no less that the American Enterprise Institute! However, she has just won re-election in her homeland.

Another candidate who is reportedly waiting to declare, said Williams, is Ecuador’s María Fernanda Espinosa, former GA President, who is missing support from her own government, but has other supporters, is young, a woman and a Latin American and who has shown both vision and integrity.

However, he pointed out, the odds are against anyone desirable surviving the vetting and vetoing from this US administration, and they would be unlikely to survive scrutiny by Moscow or Beijing, Russia and China, pay lip service to the international order, and might be prepared to sacrifice their immediate prejudices for the greater good.

Overall, the question is whether the UN is redeemable without finding a way to bypass the veto. At one time the US realized the advantages of maintaining the UN as thin blue fig leaf for its actual hegemony, but it no longer sees the need to cover its rampant MAGAhood, declared Williams.

A list of former UN Secretaries-Generals follows:

• Ban Ki-moon (Republic of Korea) who served from January 2007 to December 2016;
• Kofi Annan (Ghana) who held office from January 1997 to December 2006;
• Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt), who held office from January 1992 to December 1996;
• Javier Pèrez de Cuèllar (Peru), who served from January 1982 to December 1991;
• Kurt Waldheim (Austria), who held office from January 1972 to December 1981;
• U Thant (Burma, now Myanmar), who served from November 1961, when he was appointed acting Secretary-General (he was formally appointed Secretary-General in November 1962) to December 1971;
• Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden), who served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in Africa in September 1961; and
• Trygve Lie (Norway), who held office from February 1946 to his resignation in November 1952.

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The January 2026 US National Defense Strategy (NDS) departs significantly from those preceding it, including from Trump’s first term. Is it deliberately misleading? Or is actual policy, including war, being driven by other considerations?

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Much like the latest National Security Strategy (NSS), released by Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio in December 2025, the NDS claims to be about putting ‘America First’.

Both documents promise ‘no more business as usual’. They claim to change decades of strategy, supposedly in the national interest. Unlike earlier US military blueprints, the NDS is filled with vague rhetoric and eschews interventions abroad.

But in Trump 2.0’s first year alone, the US bombed ten countries, threatening at least four more, all in the Americas. Despite scant mention in both documents, the US-Israel war on Iran resumed on 28 February!

Europe
The NDS claims the US is reducing its direct military role in Europe but still wants to be influential.

It pledges to remain central to NATO “even as we calibrate US force posture and activities in the European theater” to meet US priorities.

Nurina Malek

The NDS blows hot and cold on Europe’s aggressive support for Ukraine’s Zelensky, envisaging a reduced troop presence on NATO’s borders with Ukraine.

Many European allies complain the Trump administration has created a ‘security vacuum’ by leaving Europe to confront Russia with uncertain US support.

They also complain about Secretary Pete Hegseth’s insistence on “credible options to guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain”. The NDS insists on more than access to Greenland and the Panama Canal.

Issued days after Trump claimed he had a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security with NATO chief Mark Rutte, he insisted it ensured the US “total access” to Greenland, long a territory of NATO ally, Denmark.

However, Danish officials insisted formal negotiations had not yet begun. Trump also threatened European nations opposing his Greenland plan with tariffs.

Western Hemisphere
The NDS supports the NSS and Trump’s ‘Donroe doctrine’ focus on the Western Hemisphere, envisaging the Americas as the US backyard.

In his January Davos speech, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted that recent US actions are disrupting established international norms.

The NDS was issued three days later, after a week of tensions between the White House and its Western allies. Cooperation with the Americas, including Canada, is conditional, to “ensure that they respect and do their part to defend our shared interests”.

It warns the US will “actively and fearlessly defend America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere. And where they do not, we will stand ready to take focused, decisive action that concretely advances US interests.”

Trump had declared the US should retake Panama and its Canal, accusing the government of ceding control to China. Later, however, Trump was more ambiguous about ‘taking back’ both the country and the canal.

Many also doubt Trump’s intentions in kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, ostensibly for trial on drug charges in the US.

Asia-Pacific
The previous NDS, issued in 2022 under then-President Joe Biden, had deemed China the US’s principal threat. Biden also embraced Trump 1.0’s Indo-Pacific alliance to encircle China.

In contrast, the new NDS describes China as an established power in the Indo-Pacific region that only needs to be discouraged from dominating the US and its allies.

The goal “is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them… This does not require regime change or some other existential struggle…President Trump seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China”.

The NDS even proposes “a wider range of military-to-military communications” with Chinese counterparts! The U-turn followed the administration’s retreat from its threatened tit-for-tat tariff escalation after China’s successful retaliation.

Biden’s 2022 NDS promised the US would “support Taiwan’s asymmetric self-defense”. The new NDS offers no such assurances to the self-governing island province of China, which Beijing warns it will take by force if necessary.

The NDS also calls for “a sharp shift – in approach, focus, and tone”, insisting US allies must take more responsibility for countering adversaries such as China, Russia and North Korea.

It insists, “South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support”.

Cutting costs of empire
Like Trump, the new NDS wants allies to pay much more for US ‘protection’.

It echoes his frequent criticisms of allies for taking advantage of previous administrations to subsidise their defence and being ungrateful for US protection.

But the terms of such subordination remain ambiguous and arbitrary, even extortionate and corrupt. Gulf monarchies may now regret their generous donations to the president, apparently to little avail so far.

Trump’s treatment of allies, the Netanyahu-led war on Iran, and continuing US-led efforts to ‘contain’ China suggest both documents offer poor guidance to knowing and understanding, let alone anticipating, US policies abroad.

Nurina Malek is an economics graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, currently working on policy research at the Khazanah Research Institute.

IPS UN Bureau

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Frontispiece of Tom Paine’s Common Sense

By Peter Costantini
SEATTLE. USA, Apr 27 2026 (IPS)

This is the third part of a three-part commentary. Read Part 1: No Kings? Meet King Don and King John – Part 1 of 3,   Part 2 of 3

Whose head?

In foreign relations, as in immigration, King Don the Con appears to be channeling King John the Bad and often surpassing him.

However, our wannabe monarch should consider one more exemplar, this one fictitious: Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen could be another spiritual ancestor of the Golden Emperor. After all, his Bling Dynasty has been a creature of fiction more than fact.

Carroll wrote in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

“Let the jury consider their verdict.” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”
“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.
“I won’t!” said Alice.
“Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

As we’ve seen, King Don has demonstrated a similar disdain for legal niceties. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards” could be the motto of much of his foreign policy as well as immigration enforcement. He often skips indictment, trial, and verdict, and jumps straight from accusation to carrying out the sentence.

There is one striking difference between the two monarchies, though: the Red Queen’s courtiers understood that she was not playing with a full deck, and so they ignored her ranting. The Golden Emperor’s toadies are too cowardly to tell him that he’s acting increasingly unhinged, and have become immune to shame about their North Korea-like sycophancy. A possible exception is “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, who may be even more deranged than his boss. His speeches sound like they’re written by a B-grade action-movie screenwriter torqued on crank. Economist Paul Krugman said in an interview that some people in the Pentagon are calling him the Secretary of War Crimes.

In the summer and fall of 2025, Trump marshalled a massive armada of ships, air power and troops in the southern Caribbean. The official name was Operation Southern Spear, and they were clearly positioned to threaten Venezuela. But while they were waiting to carry out the eventual abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros, Trump reportedly ordered them to unleash military strikes against small boats that he said were smuggling drugs.

Instead of ignoring the President, as the Red Queen’s courtiers did, Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio obediently began extrajudicial executions of civilians in small boats. The victims reportedly included sailors, fishermen, bus drivers, laborers, and possibly some small-time smugglers.

The Defense Department reportedly confirmed to Congress that as of March 17 the U.S. military had killed at least 157 people in military strikes on 47 alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. More strikes have allegedly occurred since, raising the death toll to at least 163 people.

As an Elizabethan connoisseur of royal mayhem might have put it: “As flies to wanton boys are we to King Don. He kills us for his sport.”

If Trump had wanted to make a serious case to the world that he was actually combatting drug smuggling, he could have ordered normal policing operations: intercept and impound the boat, display the packets of drugs and weapons captured, perp walk the smugglers and publicize their indictments and convictions. However, the his government has not publicly presented evidence that drugs were being smuggled or that the crews were connected with drug cartels or terrorists.

U.S. forces did not give the boats or crews a chance to surrender. They simply blew them (and any evidence of their alleged crimes) to smithereens. In one case, they reportedly slaughtered two survivors of an initial strike who were still clinging to the wreckage. Some boats were apparently carrying more people than would be needed for a crew, so perhaps some were just passengers. In another strike in which two survivors were rescued, they were not arrested by the U.S., but instead returned to their respective countries, Colombia and Ecuador. This was an improbable outcome if they were in fact smugglers or terrorists.

Here’s the lowdown: regardless of whether the crews or passengers were smuggling anything, they were civilians. Even if a war had been in progress, it would have been illegal under international and U.S. military law to kill non-combatants. But this was not a war with a foreign government, nor an attack on the U.S. by terrorists. Given that many of the strikes killed four or more people, the customary threshold for mass homicide, the operation should be investigated as serial mass murders.

Even before the strikes began, the senior Judge Advocate General (JAG, a military lawyer) at the U.S. Southern Command in Miami questioned the legality of the strikes and voiced concerns that they could amount to extrajudicial killings, NBC News reported. This JAG’s opinion was reportedly overruled by more senior officials.

Many other military lawyers and other officials also voiced concerns about the strikes’ legality up their chains of command. The “Former JAGs Working Group”, formed by victims of Hegseth’s earlier mass firings of JAGs, issued a statement that it “unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both.”

Questions about the operation’s legality also apparently troubled the head of the U.S. Southern Command. Admiral Alvin Holsey abruptly announced that he would step down from his post in December, without offering any explanation for his decision. But the New York Times reported that Holsey, too, had expressed concern about the legality of the killings. This brought him into conflict with Hegseth and the White House. Ultimately, Hegseth pushed out the Admiral.

Six Democratic members of Congress who are veterans made a video that simply told serving military members: “Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders.” This is advice commonly given to soldiers. Trump responded hysterically on Truth Social: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”, and reposted another user: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” [Buchanan 11/20/2025]

Trump reserved his nastiest blast of vitriol for the only U.S. senator in the group, Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy combat pilot and astronaut. Defense Secretary Hegseth moved to demote and censure Kelly and reduce his retirement pay. In February, a federal judge temporarily blocked the demotion and criticized Hegseth for trying to punish a veteran and member of Congress for First Amendment-protected speech. Ironically, the attacks on Kelly seem to have supercharged his political fund-raising and helped establish him as a credible Democratic presidential candidate for 2028.

The rationales for killing civilians on small boats followed an opportunistic trajectory: first frame the strikes as tools to intimidate Maduro, then claim to be interdicting drug smuggling to save American lives. Next up the ante to fighting narco-terrorists. Finally, admit that the main goal of the whole operation was to take back oil from Venezuela that somehow belonged to the U.S.

After the abduction of Maduro, the usefulness of boat strikes to intimidate the now deposed president, if it ever existed, should have expired. But since then, Trump has continued to claim he is protecting U.S. citizens from “narco-terrorists” by destroying small boats.

The U.S. Southern Command claims with each strike that it is targeting boats along “known smuggling routes” that U.S. intelligence has identified. But it has yet to provide evidence that these boats were actually carrying drugs – perhaps because it is hard to collect it when the boat is blown to bits remotely from the air. And whether or not smuggling goes on along those routes, people living on the coasts of Latin America use small boats for public transportation, carrying legal goods, fishing, and many other purposes. Unsurprisingly, some may follow the same routes that smugglers use (as I have witnessed traveling in a small passenger panga on the Caribbean).

As the case of the Venezuelan deportees established, Venezuela is not a major drug producer; it serves primarily as a conduit for illicit substances produced elsewhere in South America and bound for European markets, not the U.S. Furthermore, in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the main drug being moved is cocaine, which is rarely fatal for users. The fentanyl that Trump flagged as responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. is produced almost exclusively in Mexico and smuggled into the U.S. from there.

As a congressional interrogator at a hearing on the strikes asserted, any amounts of drugs the strikes may have destroyed were insignificant, and are having no impact on the volume or price of drugs entering the U.S.

Furthermore, small boats are only one of numerous modes of drug transport from South to North America and Europe. Drug enforcement has been playing Whac-A-Mole for a half-century with submersibles, commercial shipping, air freight, small planes, drones, tunnels, parcel post, package express, U.S. citizen travelers, and the list goes on. Despite high-profile drug seizures, arrests of drug lords, and spasms of violence, drug markets keep calm and carry on. Meanwhile, fatal overdoses, almost exclusively from fentanyl, spiral upward.

And narco-terrorism? Sorry, but in the non-fiction world, organized crime and terrorism are fundamentally different beasts.

Big drug cartels resemble legal transnational corporations in many ways. Their main purpose is to make money – and then they have to launder it, which also requires business acumen. They have vast decentralized networks that include voluntary and involuntary sub-contractors and investors. They spin off subsidiaries in different countries. They can be very violent when competing over plazas, treating migrants as a profit center, or responding to attacks by governments, but usually they want to run their businesses without visibility or drama. The most successful organized crime executives have been the cagey facilitators and deal-makers.

Occasionally, when the gangs have become stronger than the police forces, governments have had to use the military to confront them. But only patient use of law enforcement tools like the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and socio-economic programs to offer foot soldiers ways to get out of the life can ultimately disentangle their roots from society.

On the other hand, organizations that practice terrorism use violence or the threat of it for political, social, or ideological purposes. They want to visibly menace and destroy their enemies, and they are not primarily concerned with making money.

Many political movements from the American Revolution onward have practiced terrorism – in that case against Tory sympathizers with the British crown. And as in most wars, the British army also practiced terrorism against civilian colonists. Whether a given armed group is classified as terrorists or freedom-fighters generally depends on which side of the conflict the observer stands.

Organized crime may sometimes pursue socio-political objectives, and terrorists may sometimes use illicit activities to fund themselves. But defending against each phenomenon requires very different approaches. The Global War on Terror and the War on Drugs have both been long-running failures because neither terrorism nor organized crime can be eliminated militarily.

When King Don calls an organization “narco-terrorists”, he is simply slapping a label on it that gives him legal cover for using military force to blow things up and kill innocent bystanders. (“Oopsie!”, as his buddy Bukele might say with a smirk.) And as a bonus, the violence may distract his followers from his rich stew of corruption, juicy emoluments and tender pardons garnished with a soupçon of Epstein.

Despite the smoke screens, international efforts to hold Trump responsible for serious human rights violations have begun in a few venues.

A panel of experts convened by the United Nations Human Rights office in September 2025 concluded that the boat strikes violated the right to life under international law and the law of the sea. Their statement asserted: “International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers. Criminal activities should be disrupted, investigated and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of law, including through international cooperation.”

The U.S. had accused the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua of mounting “an ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion’ of the U.S., at the behest of the Venezuelan Government.” But the experts found that “There is no evidence that this group is committing an armed attack against the U.S. that would allow the U.S. to use military force against it in national self-defence.”

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an organ of the Organization of American States, also held a hearing on the boat strikes in March. It heard testimony from several human rights organizations and the U.S. government. “We are doing everything in our power to hold the Trump administration responsible for its egregious violations of both U.S. and international law”, Jamil Dakwar of the ACLU testified. “These extrajudicial killings,” said Angelo Guisado of the Center for Constitutional Rights, “were poorly veiled cover to justify the illegal overthrow of the Venezuelan government, as admitted by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.” A State Department spokesman responded: “The IACHR lacks the competence to review the matters at issue.” He also accused the Commission of interfering in domestic litigation.

The Trump administration has not released the names of the slain. But a few families have come forward to identify their loved ones. Human rights groups are representing two of them seeking redress from the government.

Although we have focused on the boat strikes as Trump’s most literal implementation of “Off with their heads!”, the operation that they were supposedly a warm-up for – the ousting of Venezuela’s president – also resulted in pointless and illegal bloodshed.

On January 3, 2026, Trump cried “Havoc!” and let slip the dawgs of Delta Force. The U.S. invaded Venezuela, abducted its president, Nicolás Maduro, and charged him in a U.S. court with heading a drug-smuggling cartel and illegally possessing firearms. During the operation, U.S. officials estimated that at least 75 people were killed by U.S. forces. The Venezuelan defense minister later said that 83 were killed and more than 112 injured by U.S. forces. He confirmed that the operation killed 47 of its personnel, and the Cuban government said that 32 of the dead were Cuban citizens. Some reports have suggested that additional civilians may have been killed.

As mentioned previously, an investigation by U.S. intelligence services had already found that the Venezuelan government did not direct or cooperate with Tren de Aragua, and was instead generally hostile towards the gang. So whatever his other faults, Maduro was evidently not a drug lord.

These charges also beg the question of how a president who is the commander-in-chief of an army and under protection of a presidential guard can be guilty of illegally possessing firearms. Stay tuned to Maduro’s trial in federal court in New York City for more details.

In any case, just for the record, it is generally illegal under international law for one country to invade another, kill its citizens, and capture or assassinate its leaders.

To understand Operation Southern Spear, it may help to compare the capture and abduction of Maduro with Trump’s pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who was convicted in a U.S. court of large-scale drug trafficking and imprisoned. His brother Tony had already suffered the same fate.

Trump’s pardoning of JOH at the same time he was detaining Maduro on similar charges was widely seen as contradictory. But on the contrary, the message was eloquent: the law means nothing, and King Don the Con doesn’t care if friends break it. All that matters, even if you’re a convicted narco, is that you shamelessly genuflect to him and declare undying fealty.

Despite U.S. criticism of the Maduro government, the abduction of the Venezuelan president left his vice-president in charge as the temporary president, and did not remove any other high officials from the existing Venezuelan government. So much for régime change.

In an outburst of candor, Trump confirmed afterwards that his main motivation was to force Venezuela to give back “our oil” to the United States. This was apparently done under what he calls the “Donroe Doctrine”. The reality was that since long before Maduro, Venezuela had expropriated the assets of some foreign oil corporations, as many developing countries have done. But Trump conveniently omits the backstory that foreign oil companies had originally expropriated Venezuela’s oil from Venezuela. This was fueled by concessions from dictators in the first half of the 20th Century. [Wolfe 1/9/2026]

Treachery, lechery, mendacity and cruelty? Sorry, King John the Bad: in immigration, foreign policy and many other domains, King Don the Con has elevated those qualities far above your crude medieval badassery.

Kings and laws

When the New York Times asked Trump if there were any limits on his global powers, he replied: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. … I don’t need international law.”

It is true that Trump has a finely calibrated moral compass. The problem is that it always points to himself.

Conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig laid out the challenge starkly: “Once more, we must ask, as Lincoln did, whether a nation so ‘conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,’ can long endure. …We have been given the high charge of our forebears to ‘keep’ the republic they founded a quarter of a millennium ago. If we do not keep it now, we will surely lose it.”

The millions of partisans of No Kings and other resistance initiatives are working overtime to organize the massive and diversified political insurgency necessary to throw King Don the Con into the toxic waste dump of history and to re-establish something resembling the rule of law. Some of the political opposition seems to be slowly awakening from its torpor and showing signs of life. However, if the MAGA fever has not broken by 2028, I fear that our democracy and human rights will be languishing in hospice.

The last word goes to Tom Paine, the sharp-tongued English pamphleteer who lit a fire under colonial revolutionaries in 1776 with Common Sense: “[A]s in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”

This is the third part of a three-part commentary. Read Part 1: No Kings? Meet King Don and King John – Part 1 of 3, Part 2 of 3

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Izumi Nakamitsu, Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, at a press conference on the 11th Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Credit: Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 2026 (IPS)

The Eleventh Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will meet at the United Nations in New York from 27 April to 22 May 2026. State parties to the treaty will meet with the urgent aim of finding common ground on the issue of nonproliferation.

“The NPT is very often referred to as a cornerstone of the international disarmament and nonproliferation regime and also a very important pillar of international peace and security,” said Izumi Nakamitsu, Under-Secretary-General of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (ODA).

The NPT came into effect in 1970 and was extended indefinitely in 1995. This landmark international treaty calls for all signatories to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and promote nuclear disarmament above all and encourages pursuing more peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It remains the only legally binding agreement that nuclear powers adhere to, with 191 states, both nuclear and non-nuclear, as signatories to the treaty. Review conferences are typically held at five-year intervals beginning in 1970 (the conference originally scheduled for 2020 was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was later held in 2022).

The president of the conference is Do Hung Viet, the Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the UN. The conference is expected to begin with a general debate during the first week, which will be followed by thematic discussions under each of the three pillars of the Treaty.

It will be attended by high‑level representatives, including Ministers of Foreign Affairs, as well as senior representatives of key international organizations. Side events will be held in parallel to the thematic discussions by attending members of civil society. This year’s conference will assess the implementation of the NPT since the last review conference, which ended without countries reaching a consensus on the final outcome document.

Ahead of the conference, Nakamitsu spoke to reporters at UN headquarters on 24 April. She remarked that state parties should take this meeting as an opportunity to converge on common ground when it came to nonproliferation. Ultimately, country representatives would want to avoid both an increase in proliferation and the intentional use of nuclear weapons. It will be a collective responsibility, said Nakamitsu, for the state parties to reach a consensus on the outcome document.

The NPT Review Conference will convene during a period of deepening geopolitical tensions, where major nuclear powers are embroiled in regional conflicts. The current military conflict in Iran and, in particular, the war in Ukraine from 2022, have caused shifts in countries’ attitudes about nuclear proliferation.

Some experts have claimed that the situation has led to a start of a new arms race as more countries hold discussions around “improving” nuclear weapons and even outright expanding into procuring nuclear arms themselves, as some see weapons as the “ultimate guarantor of national security”. Nakamitsu acknowledged this as a “proliferation driver”, or growing public sentiment for nuclear proliferation, irrespective of the formal governments’ position on the NPT. She also expressed concern over the increased rhetoric that threatened the use of nuclear weapons, warning that the more nuclear weapon states there were, the greater the risks of nuclear weapons being used by mistake or by miscalculation.

“[The] prevention of nuclear weapons’ use will have to become also one of the key focuses of the conference because when it comes to nuclear weapons, again, it’s not just one or two countries’ security; it goes beyond the borders. It is the security of all of us,” said Nakamitsu. “We need to put to rest the wrong narrative that more nuclear weapon states would guarantee our security.”

A “shared sentiment in crisis” within all state parties may in fact encourage them to “protect and maintain” the NPT. Despite this, Nakamitsu warned that with a growing leniency around nuclear weapons, this poses a risk to the gains made right after the end of World War II and throughout the Cold War.

In the current strategic security environment, the rapid rise of certain technologies will also be a factor in discussions. The advent of artificial intelligence has sparked great debate within the international community for its application in certain sectors and the risk of misuse without the proper guardrails.

It was only in December 2024 that the UN General Assembly passed a resolution that detailed the use of AI in the military domain and ‘its implications for international peace and security’, though it should be noted that there is no reference to the use of AI in the context of nuclear weapons.

When asked whether the issue of AI in the military-nuclear nexus would be discussed during the NPT conference, Nakamitsu noted that the integration of AI in the nuclear command and communications channel is “beginning to be discussed on different platforms”, and further consultations would also be held in Geneva this year. The NPT conference may not be the forum for further discussions around this issue or regarding AI governance in the military context. However, this is something that state parties recognise will require investigation, including when it comes to placing guardrails on the use of AI in the military domain.

“There is an increasing awareness that when it comes to nuclear weapons’ command and control, obviously humans have to retain oversight,” Nakamitsu told Inter Press Service.

The challenges facing the international world, particularly in the context of the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, are placing “significant stress on the treaty,” according to Nakamitsu.

But it is also what makes the NPT review conference and its outcomes all the more relevant. A shared understanding that nuclear proliferation will only lead to further instability and insecurity is what will push member states to engage in critical dialogue over the next four weeks. This must also yield a shared commitment to uphold the principles of the NPT by the end.

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Global Summit on Indigenous Peacebuilding is scheduled to take place April 25-26 at the United Nations. Credit: International Peace Bureau: Disarmament for Development

By Binalakshmi Nepram
WASHINGTON DC, Apr 24 2026 (IPS)

About 132 wars are happening in the world today, displacing 200 million people. 80 percent of these conflicts are happening in sensitive biodiversity areas where Indigenous Peoples live.

An estimated 476 million Indigenous Peoples in the world, living across 90 countries and territories, speaking a majority of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages, represent 5,000 different cultures, faiths, and ways of life.

Currently many wars across the world are fought on land where Indigenous Peoples live. Indigenous Peoples live often in contested border areas on the front lines of violent conflict, insurgency, and organized crime with devastating humanitarian impact.

We remember all the lives that we have lost in our territories. We remember the wisdom which will get us through this that and will pave the way for healing people, for peace, and the one planet we all co-habitat together. Peace, not wars, will be the pathway.

Peace-making efforts are usually negotiated at high political levels where Indigenous Peoples are rarely represented. Relations between states and Indigenous Peoples must always be remembered if some of the world’s longest-running conflicts are to be solved.

The protection of peace, peoples and planet cannot be complete if Indigenous Peoples are left behind as also stated in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that nations around the world have pledged at the United Nations– to be achieved by 2030.

Any peace-building efforts in global conflicts must therefore involve and include Indigenous Peoples. The world of today needs meaningful peacebuilding that works for all.

Indigenous Peoples have their own traditions, culture, and spiritual practices that help to resolve violence and build local peace. While often highly successful, Indigenous People’s efforts are underappreciated by the peacebuilding community or ignored entirely in formal peace processes.

Two years ago, we started mapping some of the root causes of these violent conflicts that are currently happening, and we tried to analyze what is happening in the world today. This is what we this is what we found that to mitigate violent conflicts happening in our world today it is imperative that we understand what is happening in territories where Indigenous Peoples live and work with them to provide solutions.

Indigenous women across cultures and nations have also evolved, extraordinary forms of nonviolent protest and mechanisms to confront decades of militarization, weaponization and structural violence that have marked their lives for decades. We must put them in the forefront of national and global peacebuilding efforts.

Indigenous Peoples have lived for centuries with violence in their lives, yet the resilience that they showed in the face of entrenched violence is note-worthy.

Indigenous Peoples have since time immemorial evolved innovative ways of peacebuilding. We acknowledge the Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee People as well as Loiyunmba Shinyen of Manipur, Indigenous forms of governance and constitution making that evolved in the 12th century in America as well as in Asia and in many other parts of the world.

We recognize the extraordinary role of Indigenous women, our mothers, grandmothers, and ancestors who have forged innovative peacebuilding methods against all odds.

Indigenous Peoples have been trying to engage with the United Nations since the 1970s to resolve, mitigate and prevent violent conflicts. We noted that the first time that special attention was paid to Indigenous Peoples by the peace area of the United Nations was in connection with the peace process in Guatemala in the year 1995 in the UN General Assembly Agenda Item 42 A/49/882 dated 10 April 1995.

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) adopted in 2007 contains several articles that are very relevant to preventing conflict. 17 years since the adoption of UNDRIP, conflict in Indigenous lands and territories has increased more than ever. We are now in the search to find new solutions and pathways.

The issues of peace were excluded from the formal original mandate of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and it was only in May 2016 that the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) designated conflict, peace, and resolution as the special theme for its fifteenth session.

Two years ago, to address the issue, we organized the First Global Summit on Indigenous Peace building. The Summit was held in Washington DC on 11 & 12 April 2024 and brought together 120 Indigenous Peacebuilders from over 30 countries. Following the Summit, an International Declaration on Indigenous Peacebuilding was adopted and signed, and the Global Network of Indigenous Peacebuilders, Mediators and Negotiators was born.

Following the Summit, we worked with UN member states which led to a UN General Assembly Resolution on Indigenous Peacebuilding adopted in December 2024.

At the First International Declaration on Indigenous Peacebuilding adopted in April 2024, it was resolved that the Summit will be held every two years until we reduce conflicts in Indigenous territories by 50 percent.

We are therefore meeting for the Second Global Summit on Indigenous Peacebuilding that is bringing together over 200 extraordinary Indigenous Peace builders – Indigenous Elders, Women, Leaders and youth, from 80 countries belonging to seven socio-cultural regions of the world on 25 and 26 April 2026 in New York City alongside the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

The Global Summit is to empower us, to understand what is happening in the world, share Indigenous approaches to peace building, share knowledge, studies, science, research, practices to enable us to work to mitigate violent conflict. The Summit is held in the hope that future generations will help in healing people and the planet.

The aims of the Second Global Summit on Indigenous Peace Building are to find ways to implement the First International Declaration on Indigenous Peacebuilding adopted on 12 April 2024, reflect on 20 Years of UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and call to the UN and member states for an International Decade on Indigenous Peacebuilding, 2027-2037.

The Summit will also see the launch of Global Indigenous Mothers March for Peace, Healing and Unity that will commence from the Summit and go on for two years non-stop in areas around the world which are in conflict and will culminate at the Third Global Summit on Indigenous Peacebuilding in 2028.

Binalakshmi Nepram is Founder-President of Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Peace

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