In 2025, at least 326 humanitarians were recorded as killed across 21 countries, bringing the total number of humanitarians killed in three years to over 1,010. We recognise, grieve and honour each of our 326 colleagues, and commit the work ahead to their memory.
In 2006, Amina Saida was only two years old when her parents moved to the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya, near the border with Somalia.
At Mazimbu village, not far from Tanzania’s Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Stephano Jaka still remembers the night he trapped and killed a rat that had been feasting on his maize cobs – stored in a meticulously woven basket designed to protect grains from rodents.
Donald Trump ran on a platform of ending wars. After his success in Venezuela, he is intoxicated by his military achievements and is banking on regime change in several countries.
Bangladesh’s first credible election in nearly two decades delivered a landslide win for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its leader
Tarique Rahman, son of a former prime minister, just back from 17 years of self-imposed exile.
Urgent steps need to be taken to rebuild the relationship between citizens and state to stem the decline of democracy globally. Experts point to inequality and political exclusion as two of the biggest drivers for democratic backsliding, with the exclusion of citizens from a role in policy and decision-making spaces leading to ‘hollow citizenship’.
Environmental activists and farmer groups opposed to the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), the world's longest heated oil pipeline, are mounting a last-ditch legal effort meant to stop its construction in a suit they plan to have filed in London, UK, believing that it stands a chance to stop the controversial project despite being at the 78 percent completion stage.
By Easter 2026 it was still not clear when – or how –
the war initiated by Israel and the US against Iran would end. But what was already clear was that it would harm Africa in a number of ways.
CIVICUS discusses Italy’s restrictive immigration policies with Eleonora Celoria, a researcher at FIERI (Forum Internazionale ed Europeo di Ricerche sull’Immigrazione), a research centre on migration, and a member of the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration (ASGI), an Italian legal organisation that defends migrants’ and asylum seekers’ rights through advocacy, public awareness and strategic litigation.
The WTO's 14th Ministerial Conference (MC14), which took place from 26 to 30 March 2026 in Cameroon, was reported as a collapse resulting from the stand-off between Brazil and the United States on the extension of the e-commerce moratorium. This is one screen shot of a bigger unfolding story where the US is attempting to enforce its will on the organization, while some are resisting.
CIVICUS discusses the presidential election in the Republic of the Congo with Ivan Kibangou Ngoy, executive director of Global Participe, a civil society action-research organisation focused on democratic governance based in Pointe-Noire.
New estimates by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) suggest the military escalation in the Middle East, now into its fifth week, may cost economies in the region from 3.7 to 6.0 percent of their collective Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
For the past few weeks, residents living in and around Dal Lake in Indian Kashmir have witnessed “a different phenomenon” as a green sludge has accumulated on the once pristine water. Photos circulating widely on social media triggered a public outcry.
Trump’s Iran war has left the Gulf shattered: US bases turned into targets, economies battered, and the “oasis” myth destroyed. Gulf rulers now confront a harsh reckoning over their reliance on Washington and the uncertain search for a new, fragile security order.
The United Nations was not founded to be comfortable; it was founded to be necessary. Created in the aftermath of catastrophe, its purpose was clear: to maintain international peace and security, to uphold international law, to defend human rights and to promote human dignity and development.
On 19 March, the
Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) did something unprecedented in its eight-decade history: it held a vote. The Trump administration, having spent two weeks attempting to defer, amend and ultimately block the session’s main outcome document, known as the agreed conclusions, cast the only vote against its adoption. That dissenting vote said a lot, as it came from the world’s most powerful government, backed by financial leverage, bilateral reach and a network of anti-rights states and organisations that are making inroads at many levels.
In the month following the reopening of the Burundi-Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border, the humanitarian crisis in the DRC has deteriorated considerably, recently marked by an influx of Congolese refugees returning home, where they face overcrowded conditions and a severe shortage of essential services. This comes in the midst of escalating clashes between rebel groups AFC and M23, and forces affiliated with the Kinshasa government, with drone strikes causing widespread destruction and pushing violence closer to Burundi’s borders, where conditions are most dire.
As the world edges closer to breaching key climate thresholds, Caribbean policymakers, scientists and civil society leaders gathered in Saint Lucia this month to coordinate the region’s position ahead of a landmark global meeting on transitioning away from fossil fuels.
CIVICUS discusses Portugal’s presidential runoff election and the rise of the far-right Chega (Enough) party with Jonni Lopes, Executive Director of Academia Cidadã (Citizen Academy) and a Steering Committee member of the European Civic Forum, an organisation working on civic engagement, democratic participation and the protection of civic space at national, regional and international levels.
Less than six months after Nepal’s Generation Z
rose up in protest, the country has a new prime minister. A 35-year-old former rapper who soundtracked the protests swept to power in a landslide in the 5 March election.
Professor Kaveh Madani of Iran has been named the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize laureate. The award will be formally presented by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in August during World Water Week in Stockholm.