Soaring Demand for Electric Vehicles, Lithium-Ion Batteries Creates Environmental Crisis in DRC

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

‘The Lesson from Gaza Is Clear: When Ai-powered Machines Control Who Lives, Human Rights Die’

 
CIVICUS discusses the military use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Gaza with Dima Samaro, a Palestinian lawyer and researcher, and director of Skyline International for Human Rights, a civil society organisation (CSO) that defends digital freedoms and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa. Dima serves on multiple boards focused on civic space and surveillance issues, including Innovation for Change’s MENA Hub, the Surveillance in the Majority World Network and the VUKA! Solidarity Coalition, and volunteers with Resilience Pathways to help Palestinian CSOs counter Israeli efforts to restrict civic space and manipulate public narratives.

The Gaza Conundrum: Multilateralism is failing. Here’s why.

“Multilateralism is not an option but a necessity as we build back a better world with more equality and resilience and a more sustainable world."

Price and Power of Freedom: Celebrating Nelson Mandela International Day

The United Nations celebrated Nelson Mandela International Day in honor of the activist and politician’s lifelong commitment to peace and democracy.

Israeli Airstrikes Inflame Syria’s Humanitarian Crisis

Over the past week, the humanitarian situation in Syria has significantly deteriorated, with tensions between the Druze religious minority and the Syrian military reaching new peaks. On July 16, Israel launched a series of powerful airstrikes on Syria’s capital city, Damascus, in defense of Syria’s Druze population, further spurring regional instability and exacerbating the dire scale of needs.

Intersectional Feminist Leadership Needed to Realise Global Goals

In its 80-year history the UN has never once been led by a woman. As the international community convenes for the 2025 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) to review progress on gender equality and other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this remains a fundamental hypocrisy at the heart of global governance. How can an institution that has systematically excluded women from its highest office credibly champion gender justice worldwide?

From Gaza to Georgia, Human Rights Defenders Pay a High Price for Change. Here’s How You Can Help

Across the globe—from Gaza’s rubble to the streets of Tbilisi—people are standing up for justice, dignity, and basic rights. But far too often, they are paying with their freedom, their safety, even their lives.

A Fractured World Needs Peace, not more Conflicts, for Human Progress

Who in Asia would ask for an Asian NATO? Past attempts to develop Asian security compacts under US leadership have not been glittering successes. The two treaty organisations that the US set up in the 50s to counter the Communist tide, the CENTO and the SEATO, have long dissipated.

Human Rights in an Increasingly Digitizing World

Over the past several decades, digital technologies have transformed nearly every aspect of human life, revolutionizing developments across multiple sectors, including healthcare, education, and commerce, to name a few. However, these changes have also brought forth new concerns surrounding the preservation of human rights in an increasingly digitizing world.

The Emerging Quad 3.0: Prioritizing a Hard Security Agenda

On 1 July, the foreign ministers of the Quad—Australia, India, Japan and the US—convened for the second time this year in Washington, DC. While the first meeting, held just hours after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States, signaled the Quad's significance to the new US administration, the second meeting indicates that the Quad is entering a new phase with a renewed focus on a strategic and hard security agenda, weaning itself away from its non-traditional security priorities. This presents a departure from its previous versions: the first Quad, which collapsed in 2007, centred on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), and Quad 2.0, which was reinstated in 2017, gradually developed a broad public goods agenda.

US Signs Strategic Civil Nuclear Agreement with Malaysia– while Planning a Security Alliance in the Asia-Pacific Region

The US is apparently contemplating the possible creation—either a formal or an informal-- security alliance in the Asia-Pacific region on the lines of the longstanding collective defense pact, the 32-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

To Be, or Not To Be, An Undocumented Migrant

To be, or not to be, an undocumented migrant, that is the question for millions of men, women and children in many less developed countries. “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them” for a better life as an undocumented migrant in a foreign land.

Faith on the Frontlines: New Military Chaplain Programme Reaches Soldiers in Africa

It is a cold morning in eastern Zimbabwe as Lieutenant Colonel Reverend Doctor Samba Mosweu celebrates a glorious moment he has been waiting for all his life.

‘International Demand for Coltan Is Linked to Violence in the DRC’

 
CIVICUS speaks with Claude Iguma, a mining governance expert with a PhD in Social Sciences, who is based in Bukavu, South Kivu province, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

HLPF 2025: Civil Society Is Not A Service Provider – We Are The Frontline Of Transformation

As delegates gather in New York over the coming weeks for the 2025 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), we see this moment as a test. A test of whether world leaders are serious about rescuing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - or content to let the promises of Agenda 2030 drift quietly into irrelevance.

Gender-Discriminatory Nationality Laws are Fueling Poverty & Violence Against Women

Around a quarter of countries still have nationality laws that deny women the same rights as men to acquire, retain, or change their citizenship, or to pass citizenship onto their children or foreign spouses.

Sweet Hope to End Bitter Pills for Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis

Every day, Yondela Kolweni has to hold down her son, who screams and fights when it is time for his daily life-saving TB tablets—a painful reminder of her battle with the world’s top infectious killer disease. “It is a fight I win feeling awful about what I have to do,” says Kolweni (30), a Cape Town resident and a TB survivor. “The tablets are bitter, and he spits them out most of the time, and that reminds me of the time I had to take the same pills.”

WHO, UNICEF Find the World Is Off Track To Meet Childhood Immunization Goals

The latest data highlights that the world is off track to meet the targets set by the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) to achieve 90 percent global immunization coverage for essential childhood vaccines and halve the number of unvaccinated children by 2030.

A Crisis of Contagion and Collapse: Why Cholera Continues To Be a Problem in the DRC

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is grappling with one of its worst cholera outbreaks in recent history, exposing deep systemic cracks in public health, water infrastructure, and humanitarian response, leaving its youngest citizens in peril.

Can the Cali Fund Deliver on Its Billion-Dollar Biodiversity Pledge?

When the Cali Fund was unveiled in February on the sidelines of COP16.2 in Rome, the announcement sent ripples through the global conservation community. For the first time ever, companies that profit from digital sequence information (DSI)—the digitized genetic material of plants, animals, and microorganisms—will be expected to pay into a multilateral fund to protect the very biodiversity they benefit from.

The Risks Artificial Intelligence Pose for the Global South

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly developing and leaving its mark across the globe. Yet the implementation of AI risks widening the gap between the Global North and South.