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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The period after Armenia’s 2018 “Velvet Revolution” maintains a fragile status which presents both substantial democratic and feminist achievements and rising internal and external international pressures.

Gulnara Shahinian, Founder & Director, Democracy Today

The Women, Peace, and Security agenda in Armenia shows progress through its needs of bigger changes. According to Shahinian, the current National Action Plan of the country demonstrates its participatory approach because civil society members helped create it. Shahinian considers this moment to be the most important time, she said “this is the first time that NGOs have taken part in implementation work. The government accepted the action plan as it was without changes. People who create this method of ownership work together to establish their rights beyond permanent presence to full active involvement. NGOs have shifted from their previous role as side organizations to become key partners in developing public policy,” Shahinian said.

The national action plan, according to Shahinian, established its first dedicated section to address diaspora participation. “They are part of our independent statehood. The knowledge and experience of these people will help to build our future developments. The expanded participation model enables Armenia to handle its domestic and international issues more effectively.”

Women who previously faced restrictions now participate in law enforcement and diplomacy and governance roles. Shahinian explains this as a fundamental transformation, “we passed through not only quantitative changes, but qualitative changes, the quality of roles for women has been changed.” The most pronounced transformation in security concepts shows itself through the changing security definitions which Armenia has adopted. The 2020 conflict with Azerbaijan compelled the country to confront its national identity crisis which particularly affected displaced women who lost their loved ones. Shahinian explains that women began to understand the connection between human security and democracy development for their cities. This brought about new ways for society to approach decision making processes. “Security now extends beyond its previous definition which focused on military aspects to include human rights and protection and fundamental service delivery rights,” Shahinian states.

The increasing number of women who work in defense demonstrates the new trend that exists in society. Shahinian says that women join the military because they choose to do so instead of needing to fulfill any requirements: “Women go to the army because they speak about equality, and equality means responsibility.” She explains that their organization works to create a more compassionate military system which protects people through non-violent methods instead of using weapons.

Armenia’s democratic and feminist development path remains unpredictable, and both its internal factors and external forces will shape its progress. The ongoing Iranian war has created multiple dangers which include trade disruptions inflation and the possibility of people fleeing the country. Armenia stays mostly out of the conflict yet its location exposes the country to potential spillover effects.

The crisis coincides with the timing of Armenia’s scheduled political events. Armenia has made democratic advancements yet the country now experiences increasing difficulties within its own borders. Citizens face restrictions on their rights to protest as authorities use more legal methods against their opponents. Reports of journalist mistreatment and increased police activity during demonstrations.

Certain factors provide grounds for optimistic but careful expectations. A younger generation, Shahinian notes, is deeply committed to democratic values: “They are speaking the language of human rights, they know what freedom means. Women remain at the forefront of these efforts to maintain progress. Women actively participate in community organizing and national policymaking to redefine security and governance practices.”

Armenia’s experience shows a wider lesson because it demonstrates how democracy develops through different paths which cannot be predicted. The process of democracy requires public participation because different forces fight against it while dedicated individuals work to protect and reinvent democratic systems. The country faces a decisive political period which will determine its future based on its ability to build permanent strength through systems that include all people and through ongoing dedication to security based on human needs.

“The only way for Armenia to survive is democracy,” Shahinian emphasizes. “And that’s what we will be fighting for.”

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

IPS UN Bureau

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By Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Mar 20 2026 (IPS)

My Name is Dhaka is a one-minute experimental film portraying Dhaka as a living, breathing entity with a 400-year history. Through a reflective voice, the city recounts its transformations, crises, and resilience. It captures contrasts between pollution and celebration, hardship and hope, revealing a megacity shaped by climate change, migration, and human survival.

I am also one of the world’s climate hotspots. My rivers swell, my heat rises, and my air grows heavier each year. I often rank among the most polluted cities in the world.

I remember the silence of the coronavirus pandemic when my streets suddenly emptied. I remember the fear and chaos of bus bombings during the political unrest of 2013 – 14. And I remember the fall of a fascist regime in 2024.

But I am not only a city of crisis. I am a city of contrasts. I hold stories of child labor and deep social injustice, where many struggle just to survive. At the same time, I celebrate life my streets burst into color during Holi, and my people find joy even in hardship.

Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

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By External Source
Mar 4 2026 (IPS)

 
Women and girls have never been closer to equality.

And never closer to losing it.

In 1995, 189 governments adopted the Beijing Declaration.

A global promise for the equal rights of all women and girls.

On 8 March 2026, the United Nations International Women’s Day theme is clear:

RIGHTS. JUSTICE. ACTION. FOR ALL WOMEN AND GIRLS.

The call is for equal rights, and equal justice, to enforce, exercise and enjoy those rights.

Because progress is still too slow.

At the current pace, closing legal protection gaps could take 286 years.

Rights written into law are not enough.

Justice means those rights must be enforced.

Yet almost 1 in 3 women has experienced physical or sexual violence.

Women hold only 27.2% of seats in national parliaments.

And just 22.9% of cabinet posts worldwide.

Too many women and girls are still denied protection.

Too many are still shut out of power.

Too many are still failed by the systems meant to protect them.

Aligned with CSW70, this year’s UN focus goes beyond symbolism.

It demands full participation in public life.

It demands the elimination of violence.

It demands equal justice.

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The ordinary sounds of Nahid Ali’s home in Khartoum were completely drowned out by the sound of war which began on April 15 2023. Her baby was just 21 days old. The morning started as any typical day for a mother who had just given birth to her baby and needed to nurse her newborn while she took care of her other children. The gunfire began to erupt. The fighting began when two groups started to battle each other in the streets. The fighting which began in her area developed into a destructive countrywide war in Sudan which spread to her street within moments.

Credit: Nahid Ali, Communications Manager, Plan International

As a mother, she could not protect her children from the sound of airstrikes or the fear of hunger. As a humanitarian, she felt the crisis in her bones. “I became one of the people I used to help,” she says. Now, when mothers describe fleeing under fire or struggling to feed their children, she does not simply empathize. She understands. The war which forced Nahid to leave her house has developed into one of worlds worst humanitarian crisis. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 30.4 million people which represents two-thirds of the global population now require humanitarian assistance, including 7 million internally displaced people. Cities have been shattered, communities have emptied, front lines shift, but civilians remain trapped in the wreakage created by this war.

Sudan’s health infrastructure has come crumbling down under the pressure of the conflict. Over 70 percent of the health facilities are not functioning. Hospitals have been bombed, looted, or occupied. Healthcare staff have either fled, not been paid, or have been killed. Disease is rampant in the crowded camps, and lack of medication is the new normal. What was once curable is now fatal.

The situation is being made worse by the effects of the climate change and the economic collapse. The purchasing power has been eroded by the high rates of inflation. The prices of food have skyrocketed. Water is now a luxury. People are not eating for days. The situation is affecting the women, children, elderly, and the displaced the most.

The situation has now spread beyond the borders of Sudan. The conflict has displaced over 2.9 million people into Chad, the Central African Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, and South Sudan. These nations are already dealing with health challenges of their own.

The conflict started in April 2023, as tension between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces transformed into an armed conflict in Khartoum. The conflict has since spread across the Darfur region. What started as a political power struggle has now resulted in the displacement of populations, starvation, and genocide.

In a report released by the United Nations, an Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan established that the “evidence establishes the existence of at least three underlying acts of genocide in Darfur. These are the killing of members of the protected ethnic group, the causing of serious bodily and mental harm, and the deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part.”

The report is based on the situation in El Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur, a town besieged for 18 months before the main attack. The report established the “scale, coordination, and public endorsement of the operation by senior RSF leadership demonstrate that the crimes committed in and around El Fasher were not random excesses of war,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the mission. “They formed part of a planned and organized operation that bears the defining characteristics of genocide.”

Children are at the eye of this storm.

According to UNICEF, there are an estimated 1.3 million children in areas where famine is already taking place. Over 770,000 children are expected to face severe acute malnutrition this year. Many of them will not survive. In the final six months of 2024 alone, there were over 900 grave violations against children reported, eighty percent of them were killings, mainly in Darfur, Khartoum, and Gezira Province. These are just a few of the reported cases, which humanitarian agencies say is just a small fraction of the true extent of the crisis.

The Integrated Food Security Phase classification (IPC) said the thresholds for acute malnutrition were surpassed in two new areas of North Darfur, Um Baru and Kernoi, following the fall of the regional capital, El Fasher, in October 2025 and a massive exodus. December assessments found acute malnutrition levels among children of 52.9 per cent in Um Baru, nearly twice the famine threshold and about 34 per cent in Kernoi.

It is a challenging job to deliver aid to the war-torn areas. The roads are either unsafe or impassable, bureaucratic delays are common too and the armed groups attack aid convoys as well. “Sometimes the assistance cannot even arrive,” Nahid says.

In these places of displacement, Nahid witnesses the toll taken on the human body by the numbers.

“Sexual violence is a tool of war. Many of the women we meet were attacked as they fled their homes. Some were forced to watch as their friends were attacked in front of family members. Some are pregnant, waiting for services that might never materialize.” The trauma these women face is compounded by shame and a total lack of services.

In some communities, the shame of rape leads to the forced marriage of the raped women to the rapist. This provides a context for the child born of rape, it’s a way to give the family a sense of honour. But the damage done by this violence cannot be overstated. The girls who were raped have yet to open up about the violence they experienced, psychosocial services for these women are scarce, safe havens are hard to find and their needs are overwhelming. Children come to the camps alone, separated, orphaned, lost. Some saw their families die. Some crossed through combat zones to escape.

Nahid recalls a six-year-old girl who is always scared, she describes how in Sudan, women wear a traditional attire called the tobe. Whenever the girl sees a woman wearing a tobe, she runs towards her crying, “My mother, my mother.” She hopes against all hopes that this woman is her real mom, Nahid says.

“We need the world not to forget Sudan.” She says this is what she hopes for: more solidarity from the world community, more funding, more pressure on governments.

What keeps her going is the strength she sees all around her. She sees women organizing community kitchens from scratch. She sees families sharing the little food they have. She sees women organizing their own support groups. Sudanese women inspire her most. Many have lost homes, livelihoods, and loved ones, and yet, they still care for children, advocate for services, and hold communities together.

“They have lost so much,” Nahid says. “But they are still standing.”

Sania Farooqui is an independent journalist, host of The Peace Brief, a platform dedicated to amplifying women’s voices in peacebuilding and human rights. Sania has previously worked with CNN, Al Jazeera and TIME.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By External Source
BOGURA, Bangladesh, Jan 19 2026 (IPS)

Once a lifeline of northern Bengal, Bangladesh’s Karatoya River now drifts through Bogura as a fragmented, polluted channel, where climate change and human neglect quietly reshape livelihoods, memory, and everyday life.

Flowing through the heart of Bogura, the Karatoya River bears the weight of a long, visible decline. Once one of northern Bengal’s major waterways, the river today appears narrowed, stagnant, and burdened with waste; its surface is calm, and its crisis is deeply rooted. This short documentary observes the Karatoya as both a physical landscape and a lived presence, shaped by climate stress, urban encroachment, pollution, and disrupted flow.

As dry seasons lengthen and rainfall grows erratic, the river’s natural ability to renew itself collapses. Farmers struggle to irrigate, former fishers lose their livelihoods, and urban communities live beside a river reduced to a drain and a health hazard. The film, utilizing quiet visuals and personal memories instead of statistics, contemplates the loss that occurs when a river gradually disappears from daily life.

Recent dredging efforts offer momentary relief, but the film asks a deeper question: can a river survive without collective care?

Biography of Directors

Md. Rowfel Ahammed (born 1997) and Md. Sadik Sarowar Sunam (born 2007) are emerging filmmakers from Bogura, Bangladesh. Rowfel is an MSS student in Sociology at Government Azizul Haque College with a strong interest in film, art, and photography. Sadik is a 12th Grade student at TMSS School and College, drawn to creative learning and new experiences. Both completed a Workshop on Documentary Filmmaking organized by the Bogura International Film Festival under the supervision of documentary filmmaker and photographer Mohammad Rakibul Hasan. Through this workshop, they made their first documentary film, “Karatoya” (2026), exploring environmental change and local stories from Bogura.

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By Mario Osava
NITERÓI, Brazil, Dec 29 2025 (IPS)

“We moved from a context of socio-environmental exclusion to one of environmental justice,” said Dionê Castro, coordinator of the Sustainable Oceanic Region Program which led Brazil’s largest nature-based solutions project.

Having won national and global awards, the Orla Piratininga Park (POP) built 35,000 square meters of filtering gardens and improved the water quality of the Piratininga lagoon, in the oceanic south of Niterói, a municipality in metropolitan Rio de Janeiro, across the Guanabara Bay.

The project, named after the late Brazilian environmentalist Alfredo Sirkis, began in 2020, and aims to environmentally restore an area of 680,000 square meters on the lagoon’s shores whose waters cover an area of 2.87 square kilometers.

At the heart of the project are the treatment systems for the waters of the Cafubá, Arrozal, and Jacaré rivers, which flow into the lagoon. Sedimentation and pollution were deteriorating the water resource and the quality of life in the surrounding area.

A weir, which receives the river flow, a sedimentation pond, which removes solid waste, and the filtering gardens make up the chain that partially cleans the water before releasing it into the lagoon, reducing environmental impacts, in a process called phytoremediation.

The gardens are small reservoirs where aquatic plants called macrophytes are planted, which feed on the nutrients from the pollution, explained Heloisa Osanai, the biologist specialized in environmental management of the Sustainable Oceanic Region Program (PRO Sustainable).

Three polluted water treatment stations are in the neighborhoods crossed by the rivers, based on natural resources, “without the use of electrical energy, chemicals, or concrete,” explained Castro, the coordinator of PRO Sustainable.

Furthermore, some macrophytes produce abundant flowers. Only native Brazilian species are planted, with priority given to biodiversity, added Osanai.

Along with these water treatment systems, 10.8 kilometers of bike paths, 17 recreation centers, a 2,800-square-meter Eco-Cultural Center, and other environmental works with social goals were built.

The bike path, generally along a pedestrian sidewalk, caters to physical and leisure activities but is also a factor in protecting the lagoon shoreline by blocking urban occupation and real estate invasions, explain the officials.

The area where the water system was built at the mouth of the Cafubá river was highly degraded by an open-air dump and flooding. A reformed “belt channel,” in some sections also reinforced by macrophyte islands, corrected the waterlogging.

On the other side of the lagoon, 3.2 kilometers of bioswales improve the drainage of rainwater. They are trenches with pipes, stones, and other materials, plus vegetation, that accelerate drainage and prevent pollutants from reaching the lagoon.

The main result, according to Castro, reconciled the local population with the lagoon. The old houses that “turned their backs on the lagoon” are joined by new buildings facing the water, some with balconies overlooking the new landscape, said Mariah Bessa, the engineer in charge of hydraulic aspects of the project.

The local population was highly involved in the design and construction of the new environmental and social facilities that transformed the lagoon shoreline. This led to new attitudes, such as not littering on the ground or in the water and preventing others from doing so, according to Castro.

The Ecocultural Center promotes permanent environmental education, with films, children’s games, audiovisual resources, and a large space for visits and classes.

“We moved from a context of socio-environmental exclusion to one of environmental justice,” said the coordinator of PRO Sustainable.

By External Source
Dec 22 2025 (IPS)

Multiple shocks defined 2025: conflict, climate breakdown and shrinking democracy.

Multilateral institutions were tested as never before.

At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, governments argued over words while the planet heated.

Yet amid the pressure, countries agreed on steps that kept global climate cooperation alive.

A new Just Transition Mechanism promised a fairer shift to a green economy.

It pledged to protect workers, women and Indigenous peoples as fossil fuels are phased out.

Island nations warned that promises without finance mean rising seas and vanishing homelands.

Pacific voices called for stronger funding for Loss and Damage.

Across the system, humanitarian budgets were cut just as needs exploded.

Conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan and Myanmar pushed millions toward famine.

In many crises, lifesaving food support was reduced or halted for lack of funds.

Global alliances like CIVICUS warned that conflict, climate chaos and democratic backsliding are converging.

They cautioned that institutions built for cooperation are struggling as powerful states turn inward.

Civil society responded with proposals to put people—not geopolitics—at the centre of the UN.

At COP30, Global South leaders elevated Indigenous and Afro-descendant voices in climate talks.

They argued that dignity, fairness and planetary protection must guide a new world order.

Gen Z movements demanded those values on the streets of South Asia and Africa.

Young protesters challenged corruption, dynastic power and widening wealth gaps.

In several countries they were met with bullets, repression and mass arrests.

Researchers noted a common story: frustration with entrenched elites and “business as usual”.

When conflict and climate disasters collide, children’s education often disappears first.

Initiatives such as Education Cannot Wait and the Safe Schools Declaration fought to keep classrooms open.

Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean showed how storms can erase decades of progress in a night.

Billions of dollars in damage underscored how vulnerable economies are to climate extremes.

UN agencies warned that without urgent action, millions of children could be pushed into poverty by 2030.

Science bodies like IPBES stressed that climate change, nature loss and food insecurity are inseparable.

Global research networks worked to equip small-scale farmers for climate resilience and stable incomes.

Spiritual leaders also used their platforms to call for peace, climate action and an end to war.

From Gaza to Ukraine and beyond, moral voices insisted that civilians must never be targets.

Marking 80 years since the end of the Second World War, survivors renewed the vow: “never again”.

The message from 2025 was stark but clear.

The old order is straining—but new visions are emerging from communities on the frontlines.

Civil society, young people and Global South leadership are sketching a different future.

One rooted in justice, shared prosperity and protection of the planet.

The coming year will test whether the world is ready to listen.

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By External Source
Dec 10 2025 (IPS)

In a world of turbulence and doubt, one promise remains.

In 1948, nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It named dignity, freedom and equality as rights for everyone, everywhere.

Yet too often, power, profit and prejudice push those rights aside.

Civilian deaths in conflict rose sharply again in 2024.

Every 12 minutes, a civilian is killed in war.

Every 14 hours, a human rights defender, journalist or trade unionist is killed or disappears.

One in five people say they experienced discrimination in just one year.

By the end of 2024, over 120 million people were forcibly displaced from their homes.

Almost three-quarters of humanity now live where civic freedoms are tightly restricted.

From Gaza to Haiti, Sudan to Myanmar, civilians pay the highest price.

736 million women—almost one in three—have suffered physical or sexual violence.

Each year, 16 days of activism link violence against women to Human Rights Day.

Young people are demanding futures free from addiction, climate chaos and hate.

Their marches, open letters and strikes keep the promise of rights alive.

Against this backdrop, human rights are not abstract ideals.

They are our everyday essentials.

In the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the homes that shelter us.

In fair work and equal pay, safe schools and free, independent media.

Human rights are POSITIVE, ESSENTIAL and ATTAINABLE—when we act together.

On 10 December 2025, we mark Human Rights Day: Human Rights: Our Everyday Essentials

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Plagued by drought, farming families living within the boundaries of the Dry Corridor in eastern Guatemala have resorted to rainwater harvesting, an effective technique that has allowed them to cope

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN LUIS JILOTEPEQUE, Guatemala, Nov 21 2025 (IPS)

Plagued by drought, farming families living within the boundaries of the Dry Corridor in eastern Guatemala have resorted to rainwater harvesting, an effective technique that has allowed them to cope.

This enables them to obtain food from plots of land that would otherwise be difficult to farm.

Funded by the Swedish government and implemented by international organizations, some 7,000 families benefit from a program that seeks to provide them with the necessary technologies and tools to set up rainwater catchment tanks, alleviating water scarcity in this region of the country.

These families live around micro-watersheds in seven municipalities in the departments of Chiquimula and Jalapa, in eastern Guatemala. These towns are Jocotán, Camotán, Olopa, San Juan Ermita, Chiquimula, San Luis Jilotepeque, and San Pedro Pinula.

“We are in the Dry Corridor, and it’s hard to grow plants here. Even if you try to grow them, due to the lack of water, (the fruits) don’t reach their proper weight,” Merlyn Sandoval, head of one of the beneficiary families, told IPS in the village of San José Las Pilas, in the municipality of San Luis Jilotepeque, Jalapa department.

The Central American Dry Corridor, 1,600 kilometers long, covers 35% of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people. Here, over 73% of the rural population lives in poverty, and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to FAO data.

As part of the project, the young Sandoval has taken action to harvest rainwater on her plot, in the backyard of her house. She has installed a circular tank, whose base is lined with an impermeable polyethylene geomembrane, with a capacity of 16 cubic meters.

When it rains, water runs off the roof and, through a PVC pipe, reaches the tank they call a “harvester,” which collects the resource to irrigate the small garden and fruit trees, and to provide water during the dry season, from November to May.

In the garden, Sandoval and her family of 10 harvest celery, cucumber, cilantro, chives, tomatoes, and green chili. For fruits, they have bananas, mangoes, and jocotes, among others.

They also have a fish pond where 500 tilapia fingerlings are growing. The structure, also with a polyethylene geomembrane at its base, is eight meters long, six meters wide, and one meter deep.

Another beneficiary is Ricardo Ramírez. From the rainwater collector installed on his plot, he manages to irrigate, by drip, the crops in the macro-tunnel: a small greenhouse next to the tank, where he grows cucumbers, tomatoes, and green chili, among other vegetables.

“From one furrow I got 950 cucumbers, and 450 pounds of tomatoes (204 kilos). And the chili, it just keeps producing. But it was because there was water in the harvester, and I just opened the little valve for just half an hour, by drip, and the soil got well moistened,” Ramírez told IPS with satisfaction.

En español: Video: La sequía en el este de Guatemala se alivia con la cosecha de agua de lluvia

By External Source
Nov 18 2025 (IPS)

 
I greet the particular Churches of the Global South gathered at the Amazonian Museum of Belém, joining the prophetic voice of my brother Cardinals who have taken part in COP 30, telling the world with words and gestures that the Amazon region remains a living symbol of creation with an urgent need for care.

You chose hope and action over despair, building a global community that works together. This has delivered progress, but not enough. Hope and determination must be renewed, not only in words and aspirations, but also in concrete actions.

The creation is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat. One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes. To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to ignore these people is to deny our shared humanity. There is still time to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5°C, but the window is closing. As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to act swiftly, with faith and prophecy, to protect the gift He entrusted to us.

The Paris Agreement has driven real progress and remains our strongest tool for protecting people and the planet. But we must be honest: it is not the Agreement that is failing, we are failing in our response. What is failing is the political will of some. True leadership means service, and support at a scale that will truly make a difference. Stronger climate actions will create stronger and fairer economic systems. Strong climate actions and policies, both are an investment in a more just and stable world.

We walk alongside scientists, leaders and pastors of every nation and creed. We are guardians of creation, not rivals for its spoils. Let us send a clear global signal together: nations standing in unwavering solidarity behind the Paris Agreement and behind climate cooperation.

Let this Amazonic Museum be remembered as the space where humanity chose cooperation over division and denial.

And may God bless all of you in your efforts to continue caring for God’s creation. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.

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By External Source
Nov 13 2025 (IPS)

 
Violence against women is a human rights emergency in every country.

One in three women worldwide experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime.

Most survivors are harmed by an intimate partner.

Every ten minutes, a woman or girl is killed by a partner or family member.

Around sixty percent of female homicides are committed by partners or relatives.

In 2023, an estimated 612 million women and girls lived within 50 kilometres of conflict, and their risk skyrockets.

Conflict related sexual violence is used strategically, and reports are rising.

The 2025 UNiTE theme calls us to end digital violence against all women and girls.

Studies indicate that between sixteen and fifty eight percent of women and girls face technology facilitated abuse.

Seventy three percent of women journalists report online violence, and one in four receive threats of physical harm.

Online abuse silences voices, distorts public debate, and often spills into offline harm.

Data matters, and the UN is strengthening global measurement of femicide to make every case count.

Many countries have laws, but real protection requires enforcement and survivor centred services.

Prevention works when we change harmful norms, fund services, and hold perpetrators to account.

Wear orange, speak up, and support survivors during the 16 Days of Activism from November 25 to December 10.

Media and audiences can help by using verified data and amplifying frontline voices.

On November 25, 2025, we mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Act now! For rights, for safety, and for equality for all women and girls.

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By External Source
Nov 4 2025 (IPS)

From the 10th to the 21st of November 2025, the 30th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP30) will be hosted in Belém, Brazil.

The world gathers in the Amazon’s gateway city to chart a course for climate action.

This edition of COP is more than a summit. It is set in the heart of the Amazon, the “lungs of the Earth,” symbolising the link between forest protection and climate justice.

Here, nearly 198 countries under the UNFCCC will negotiate climate policy, financing, adaptation and mitigation.

At the center, the goal to limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels remains the guiding star of the Paris Agreement and the COP process.

Yet current commitments put us far from that trajectory. The upcoming global stocktake and new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) will be scrutinized here in Belém.

One of the defining agenda items is climate finance. At COP29, parties agreed to a US$300 billion per year target by 2035 for developing countries. But civil society and many Global South delegates call this “insufficient,” as the real need runs much higher.

For example, in 2022, developed nations pledged about US$116 billion – yet only USD 28 to 35 billion was delivered; nearly two-thirds of that came as loans, often on commercial terms.

Belém offers another unique spotlight: tropical forests and Indigenous rights. The Amazon Basin remains the epicenter of global forest loss. Brazil alone accounted for roughly half of all tropical forest degradation in the basin in recent assessments.

Indigenous leaders and civil society insist that the emerging “Loss & Damage” fund and climate finance models must recognize rights, agency and self-determination—not just top-down flows.

Innovation and technology transfer are also on the table: the UNFCCC has opened submissions for climate technology innovations that will be showcased at COP30.

And the Brazilian COP30 Presidency has launched more than 30 thematic days for inclusion and implementation – a shift toward action-oriented gatherings.

What does success look like in Belém?

Strong, visible commitments on new or enhanced NDCs aligned with the 1.5 °C goal. A credible roadmap from USD 300 billion to USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035 for climate finance.

Operationalization of the loss and damage fund with meaningful access for the most vulnerable. Forest finance instruments that reward conservation and respect Indigenous stewardship.

Belém is more than a meeting place. It is a moment of choice—for equity, ambition and the planet’s future.

When the delegates leave Belém, the proof will not be in the words. It will be in the changed pathways: more finance flowing, forests standing, and carbon dropping. The world will be watching.

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By External Source
Oct 22 2025 (IPS)

 
We are in a climate emergency.

The Earth is already over 1.3 °C warmer than pre-industrial times.

2024 was the hottest year ever recorded.

More than 150 climate disasters struck the world last year.

Extreme weather displaced over 800,000 people.

Wildfires and floods now define the new normal.

We are failing the 1.5 °C goal unless we act now.

COP30 is coming to Belém, Brazil, in November 2025.

But talk is not enough.

We must shift systems, not just carbon.

From blind targets to equitable transitions.
From fossil lock-in to regenerative energy.
From climate policy at arm’s length to climate justice at the core.

Every fraction of a degree matters; now more than ever.

Women, Indigenous Peoples, and low-income communities pay the highest price.

We need mass decarbonization, climate finance, and rights-based adaptation.

We need unity across sectors, borders, and generations.

The choices we make today will decide the severity of tomorrow.

October 24 | International Day for Climate Action.

Act now. For Justice. For Survival.

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By Orlando Milesi
SAN ANTONIO, Chile, Oct 17 2025 (IPS)

Maritime transport is key for Chile, which has 34 free trade agreements with countries and blocs of nations, one of the broadest trade networks in the world with access to over 86% of the global gross domestic product (GDP).

In 2024, this South American country surpassed US$100 billion in exports for the first time, mostly of copper, forest products, fresh fruits, fish, and organic foods. In turn, it imported US$78.025 billion, mostly diesel oil, clothing, accessories, and footwear.

Faced with growing trade, experts predict enormous port demand by 2036 in this long and narrow South American country squeezed between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean.

To avoid a collapse in 10 years, the San Antonio Outer Port project will triple the capacity of Chile’s main route for the exit and entry of products.

San Antonio currently handles 29% of the tonnage of maritime foreign trade, 34% of exports, and 71% of Chile’s imports by value.

The high agricultural and mining production from Chile’s central area, which contributes 59% of the country’s GDP and is home to 63% of its 19.7 million inhabitants, passes through this port.

The outer port will allow for the movement of six million containers thanks to two new port terminals, 1,730 meters long and 450 meters wide, with eight new berthing fronts for state-of-the-art container ships.

The total estimated investment for the project is US$4.45 billion, which will be financed by the government and by international companies applying for concessions.

The first months of 2026 will be key for awarding the dredging works, the construction of the breakwater, the protective infrastructure for the new port, and for learning the authorities’ decision on the environmental impact of the San Antonio Outer Port works.

Measures will be taken to mitigate that impact, including the protection of two wetlands located on port land and support for the work of fishermen in nearby coves. To decarbonize, the port project will also use energy produced from renewable sources.

San Antonio, 110 kilometers west of Santiago and south of the historic port of Valparaiso, which it has surpassed in relevance, is aiming for a revival by promoting the largest port infrastructure project in Chile’s history.

It currently provides 10,200 direct jobs to port workers with an average monthly income of US$1,110.

San Antonio aims to consolidate its ninth place among the largest ports in Latin America and expand its role in the movement of cargo to and from Asia and the Americas.

Its managers also seek to show that infrastructure development can be harmonized with the protection and improvement of environmental conditions through a project that is a model of sustainability.

By External Source
Oct 15 2025 (IPS)

 
Poverty is not just scarcity. It is exclusion, stigma, and invisibility.

Poverty is not a personal failure. It is a systemic failure. A denial of dignity and human rights.

Families in poverty often endure intrusive surveillance, burdensome eligibility checks and systems that judge, not
support.

Single mothers, Indigenous households, marginalized groups face increased scrutiny, suspicion and separation.

Over 690 million people live in extreme poverty.

Nearly half the world lives on less than USD$6.85 per day.

Around 1.1 billion people suffer multidimensional poverty.

Two-thirds of people in extreme poverty are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Progress has slowed and the path to 2030 is fragile.

Social and institutional maltreatment is structural.

It lives in rules, routines and default practices.

When people avoid help because of fear, the system has already failed them.

This year’s “International Day for the Eradication of Poverty” calls for three fundamental shifts:

From control to care:
– Designing systems based on trust, not suspicion.
– Reducing punitive conditions and simplify documentation.

From surveillance to support:
– Prioritizing family-strengthening: income support, childcare, housing, mental health and justice

From top-down to co-created solutions:
– Including families in design, budgeting, delivery and evaluation.

Supporting families strengthens many goals:
– Poverty Reduction
– Health & Wellbeing
– Quality Education
– Gender Equality
– Decent Work and Social Protection
– Reduced Inequalities
– Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

“Too often, people living in poverty are blamed, stigmatized, and pushed into the shadows.” – UN Secretary
General, António Guterres.

2030 is looming. We must act now.

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By Ben Malor
NEW YORK, Sep 30 2025 (IPS)

DANGER – WARNING – ALARM: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Maria Ressa is warning that lies are being weaponized deliberately to manipulate people around the world. Big, profit-oriented, and technology-enabled companies are now disregarding or trampling over the sanctity and veracity of facts and information to speed up disinformation, (using AI) in ways that quickly erase truth and leave people manipulated.

Even democratic elections are getting manipulated to the extent that some 72 per cent of the world is now living under illiberal or authoritarian regimes that have been “democratically” elected. Journalism, fact-checking, and public trust are under attack from this deliberate subversion of information integrity.

Enjoy this interview I conducted with Ms Ressa, (produced, directed and edited by my UN News and Media colleagues, Paulina Kubiak and Alban Mendes De Leon).

Ben Malor is the Chief Editor, UN Dailies, at UN News.

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Wars and oppression leave behind not just rubble and graves. They leave behind invisible wounds, profound trauma carried by survivors. And most often, women carry the largest burden. They are targeted not only because of their gender, but because surviving and leading threaten structures based on patriarchy and domination.

Mozn Hassan

“Violence against women is never accidental,” Hassan explains. “It is systematic. It’s about control, silencing, and making sure women do not have the tools to stand up, to resist, to create alternative futures.”

In this report by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the percentage of women killed in armed conflict doubled in 2024, accounting for 40 percent of all civilian casualties. “Over 600 million women and girls live in conflict-affected areas, a 50 percent increase since 2017.” The report points out that nearly every person exposed to a humanitarian crisis suffers from psychological distress, and 1 in 5 people go on to develop long term mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. “Only 2 percent get the care they need”.

The matter of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) has been brought up during the previous two reviews of the UN peacebuilding architecture (2020 and 2024) mentioned in this report of the International Peace Institute, “a peaceful society cannot exist if psychological impacts of war (such as grief, depression, stress and trauma) are left unaddressed in individuals, families and communities.”

Hassan has been a pioneer in the application of narrative exposure therapy (NET) among women in refugee camps and war zones. In contrast to other therapy models that concentrate on one-on-one psychological treatment, through NET she pushes for collective healing ans solidarity.

“Narrative exposure therapy is one of the tools of community psychology. It puts collective trauma-informed therapy higher than individual approaches,” she explains. “Being within collective spaces brings sharing of experiences, solidarities, and makes the community itself resilient. They can go through this afterward by themselves, they don’t need another, more educated person in a power dynamic over them.”

The approach, according to Mozn, has shown to be successful in dealing with Syrian, Palestinian, and Lebanese women in refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey. Through five- or six-day workshops, participants narrate and re-narrate their stories, building strength on each other while creating knowledge and data on the realities of war.

Hassan remembers how women in camps, frequently from various ethnic or religious minorities, drew strength not just from sharing their own experiences but from hearing others. In this way, they developed resilience where there should have been none. “But when it’s collective, people are not left alone with their pain. They gain tools, they gain solidarity, and they gain resilience.”

Hassan points out that trauma is not a monolithic experience: “Studies show that only 20–25% of people who face trauma develop PTSD. One of the misconceptions has been that everyone who experiences trauma must have PTSD, it’s not true. Collective approaches make interventions more applicable and save resources, which are always limited for women.”

Above all, NET has given strength and mechanisms to these women to move forward. “Trauma doesn’t happen overnight, it’s an accumulation. Healing is the same. It’s not about saying: I was sick, and now I’m healed. Healing is a process. When you are triggered, you shouldn’t go back to the first point. You can have your own tools to say: I don’t want to be this version of myself while I was facing trauma,” she reflects.

For Hassan, one of the key questions of feminist peacebuilding is why women are so typically assaulted in war, revolution, and even in so-called peacetimes.

“We must stop thinking about peacebuilding only in the traditional way, only when there is open war,” she argues. “Patriarchy, militarization, securitization, and societal violence are all forms of violence that normalize abuse every day. Stability is not the same as peace.”

She points to Egypt as an example. While the country has not witnessed a civil war like Syria or Sudan, it does have systemic gender-based violence: “Egypt has more than 100 million people, half of them women. Official statistics say domestic violence is more than 60%, sexual harassment more than 98%. Femicide is rising. This is the production of collective trauma and acceptance of violence.”

The 2011 revolution, she remembers, brought these dynamics into sharp focus: “What we saw in Tahrir Square, the gang rapes, the mass assaults, was the production of societal violence. Years of harassment and normalization led to an explosion of gender-based violence that was then denied.”

Hassan’s warning is stark: the absence of bombs does not mean peace. “As long as you are not bombed by another country, people say you don’t need peace because you live in peace. But the absence of war is not peace.”

Healing, for Hassan, cannot be separated from politics and accountability. She rejects the idea that healing means forgetting.

“Forgiveness or letting go needs a process. Many people cannot sit at the same table with those who hurt them personally. But maybe it’s not our generation who will forgive. Maybe we can at least leave to others a better daily life than we lived,” she says.

Accountability, she argues, is a requirement for stability. “You couldn’t reach stability while people are thinking only about revenge. Collective healing in Egypt is important, but it also needs accountability, acceptance, and structural change.”

She also criticizes the tendency to depoliticize feminist movements: “Our definition of politics is not only about being in parliament. It is about feminist politics as tools for change everywhere. Too often feminists were pushed to say ‘we are not political.’ That sidelined many women who were engaging directly in politics.”

In spite of repression and trauma, Hassan says that women remain incredibly resilient. What they need most is recognition and tangible support to rebuild their lives and societies.

“The amazing tools of women on resilience gives me hope. I saw it so clearly with Syrian women, leaving everything, rebuilding societies, changing everywhere they go. Their accumulation of resilience is what gives me hope,” she says.

However, Mozn is wary of the narrative that glorifies women’s strength without addressing its costs. “We shouldn’t have to be strong all the time. We should be free, and lead lives where we can just be happy without strength and grit. But unfortunately, the times we live in demand resilience.”

Mozn Hassan’s words make us question what peace actually is. It is not merely ceasefires or agreements, but a challenge to deal with patriarchy, violence, and trauma at its core. Healing is political, accountability matters, and rebuilding with women is imperative. As she says: “Maybe it’s not our generation who will see forgiveness, but we can try to leave to others a better daily life than we lived.”

Her vision is both sobering and optimistic: peace will not be arriving tomorrow, but as long as women keep building resilience and insisting upon self-respect, the way to it is not yet closed.

Sania Farooqui is an independent journalist, host of The Peace Brief, a platform dedicated to amplifying women’s voices in peacebuilding and human rights. Sania has previously worked with CNN, Al Jazeera and TIME.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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This year marks half a century since the start of Lebanon’s civil war in 1975 – a conflict that lasted 15 years, killed over 150,000 lives, and resulted in as many as 17,000 missing. Decades later, the legacy of that war is still everywhere: in the silence of classrooms without history books, in families who never knew what happened to their missing loved ones, and in violence made mundane in all parts of society.

Lina Abou-Habib

And yet, today, much of Lebanon’s younger generation has no real knowledge of what happened. There is no state history book of the civil war in the nation, leaving a void in collective memory.

“One of the most striking moments I’ve had with my students at AUB was when I asked them, ‘What is the Taif Agreement?’” Lina says, referring to the Saudi-brokered accord that formally ended the war. “Most of them didn’t know. When they searched for visuals, their first observation was this: there were no women in the room. Not a single one.”

And that absence matters. Women’s experiences of the war, and their understanding of peace were excluded from the official record. After the war, Lebanon’s parliament passed a general amnesty law, which granted immunity to political parties and leaders for wartime practices and absolved individual and group militia members for sexual violence, murder, torture and forced disappearance. “After the war, there was a general amnesty law, which basically told everyone to ‘turn the page’ and move on – without justice, without accountability, and without healing,” Lina explains. “This amnesty institutionalized impunity.”

The consequences, she says, are far-reaching. “If men who committed heinous crimes during the war walked away free, then why wouldn’t impunity extend into other spheres? If someone can get away with mass murder, then femicide or gender-based violence becomes ‘no big deal.’”

This normalisation of violence permeates everyday life, from the political sphere to domestic. It teaches citizens, particularly women, that accountability is not something they can expect. Impunity has been succeeded by a culture of silence – a wilful forgetting that allows the wounds of war to remain unhealed. “Impunity doesn’t just happen politically, it’s also personal,” Lina reflects. “To normalize it at the national level, you need to go through a kind of intentional amnesia. But of course, you can’t truly forget. You internalize trauma, and when you don’t heal it, you pass it on.”

Without truth, without accountability, trauma is passed down generations. Families whose relatives disappeared still do not know where they were buried, or whether they survived. Entire communities grow up with questions that remain unanswered.

It was in this silence that the women in Lebanon got together to become guardians of memory, collectively forming the Committee of the Families of the Disappeared, a movement led primarily by mothers, sisters, and wives of those who went missing during the war.

“Of the 17,000–18,000 people still missing in Lebanon, 94% are men,” Lina notes. “But it’s women who have led the search for truth. And that truth-seeking is not about revenge. It’s about recognition. It’s about the right to know.” For these women, truth is not a weapon but its dignity. They echo similar struggles in Latin America, the Balkans, and Africa, where women have been at the forefront of truth-telling and reconciliation movements. Even years after the war, Lebanon remains highly militarized. Weapons are common, often associated with masculinity and control.

“Peace and carrying arms cannot coexist,” Lina says bluntly. “They are fundamentally incompatible – it’s an oxymoron.”

She emphasizes that weapons are never neutral. “Who carries weapons? Who decides who should be protected and who is a threat? Guns are not neutral – they are tools of power, of dominance.” For women, patriarchy contributes to militarization. Violence against women in war is often dismissed as private, hidden, or silenced – and war only makes it worse. “War doesn’t stop gender-based violence. It amplifies it. Bombings don’t stop rape. Displacement doesn’t stop domestic violence. On the contrary, it exacerbates it.”

This reality is not an exception in Lebanon. Everywhere, from Sudan to Libya, women are still subjected to rape, sexual slavery, and femicide as instruments of war. And too many times, their suffering goes unnoticed. Other countries that endured mass violence – from Rwanda to the former Yugoslavia to Latin America – have built transitional justice processes around one central truth: you cannot rebuild without memory.

“You cannot move forward without truth,” Lina stresses. “You didn’t get to write a new constitution or form a new government without first addressing what had happened – without naming the pain, the crimes, and the people who suffered.” But the truth does not come easily. Power, she warns, is patient. “The powers that be will always try to wait you out. That’s exactly what has happened in Lebanon. They’ve just been waiting for the families of the disappeared to die – to literally disappear, one after another.”

The lesson, then, is perseverance: truth-telling must outlast systems of denial.

Despite Lebanon’s collapse in recent years, economic crisis, political stagnation, and social disillusionment, Lina sees a moment of possibility in recent political change. “If any real change is to happen, this is our window. And I fear we won’t get another one,” she says. The change requires bold steps, “Disarming unlawfully militarised groups; dismantling corruption; building a just and inclusive legal system; and strengthening independent civil society”. “These are not small asks,” Lina admits. “But this is what real peace looks like. Not just the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.”

Ultimately, Lina’s hope lies in Lebanon’s resilient civil society, a multi-generational network of activists, academics, feminists, and everyday citizens who refuse to give up. “The true actors of peace – the real builders of peace – are elsewhere,” she says. “Peace simply won’t happen if everyone isn’t included – especially not if women’s voices are excluded.”

Sania Farooqui is an independent journalist and host of The Sania Farooqui Show. She is soon launching her new podcast, The Peace Brief, a platform dedicated to amplifying women’s voices in peacebuilding and human rights.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By External Source
Aug 5 2025 (IPS)

 
Artificial Intelligence is changing how we live, learn, work – and who gets heard.

It holds promise for humanity but, without safeguards, it risks becoming a new tool of domination.

For Indigenous Peoples, the stakes are not abstract – they are ancestral, material, and urgent.

Indigenous knowledge, images, languages and identities are already being used to train AI systems.

Much of this is happening without consent, consultation, or benefit-sharing.

In 2023, researchers identified over 1,800 AI training datasets containing Indigenous cultural content.

Most without evidence of Free, Prior and Informed Consent.

This is not inclusion – it is extraction in digital form.

When AI systems absorb Indigenous content without consent, they replicate colonial logic through code.

The dangers are not only cultural – they are also territorial and environmental.

AI requires data centers, rare earth minerals, and immense electricity – often sourced from Indigenous lands.

Over 54% of critical mineral projects worldwide are located on or near Indigenous territories.

In Chile, AI-optimized lithium mining threatens Atacameño water sources and sacred lands.

The environmental costs of AI include toxic e-waste, land degradation, and resource depletion.

When built without Indigenous participation, AI becomes a force multiplier for dispossession.

Meanwhile, Indigenous Peoples are excluded from decisions about AI governance, ethics, and policy.

They are rarely consulted – yet deeply affected.

But Indigenous Peoples are not passive victims in this story.

In New Zealand, Māori-led teams are using AI to revitalize te reo Māori.

In the Arctic, Inuit communities use AI to monitor ice patterns and adapt to climate change.

In Polynesia, Indigenous reef monitors combine traditional knowledge with machine learning to protect marine ecosystems.

These efforts show what AI can become – when rooted in rights, culture, and consent.

Indigenous Peoples have called for digital sovereignty, ethical frameworks, and funding for culturally-led innovation.

They must be co-creators of AI, not its collateral damage.

The future of AI is not just a technological question – it is a question of justice.

On August 8, join the global conversation. Defend rights. Shape futures

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Bernhard Waase, director of Renig, a subsidiary of the Salvadoran company El Granjero, where chicken manure from eight farms is converted into biogas. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 5 2025 (IPS)

El Granjero, the second-largest egg producer in El Salvador, invested US$2.5 million in 2017 to build a biogas plant, proving that there is a solution to the thorny issue of environmental pollution caused by most poultry companies in the country.

It also showed that the investment can yield financial benefits, as the biogas generates electricity that is fed into the national power grid.

The biogas plant, located in Jayaque, a district in southwestern El Salvador, is managed by Renig, the subsidiary created by El Granjero to handle its biological waste.

In 2018, Renig began processing the 200,000 tons of chicken manure and other organic waste produced annually from the eight farms that El Granjero operates in the southwestern part of the country, housing around one million birds.

The plant’s biodigester, with a capacity of 5,300 cubic meters, is 92 meters long, 17 meters wide, and five meters deep.

“I thought biodigesters were the most suitable because they solved the environmental problem immediately, but there was also at least a possibility of being profitable,” Bernhard Waase, director of Renig, told IPS during his visit to the plant.

The environmental pollution caused by the poultry sector has been a source of tension for rural communities living near the farms established in their territories.

According to data from the Salvadoran Poultry Association, the country’s poultry sector produces approximately 1.2 billion eggs and 155 million kilograms of chicken meat annually.

The production of biogas is complex. Bacteria are living organisms that, depending on the conditions inside the biodigester, can behave differently and affect gas production, Melissa Ruiz, in charge of the digester and secondary processes, explained to IPS.

“The digester works like our stomach, and the bacteria are very sensitive to the elements we provide them, just like us. If we suddenly eat a lot of meat or an unbalanced diet, our stomach reacts, and we feel sluggish or get sick. The same happens with the digester,” Ruiz elaborated.

The biodigester at the Renig plant began producing biogas in 2018 but only started generating electricity in 2021. That year, after winning a government tender for biogas production, it began generating and injecting 0.85 megawatts into the national grid through the power distributor Del Sur.

Waase said that, in environmental terms, the plant has achieved its primary goal—preventing pollution—which is already a reason for celebration and pride, as few large companies in the poultry sector have taken this step. Specifically, in the egg industry, El Granjero is the only one that decided to make this investment.

However, financially, expectations have not been fully met.

“From an environmental standpoint, it has been a total success, but financially speaking, it’s much more complicated. We haven’t lost money in any year, but we’re nowhere near the return we had envisioned,” he stated.

The Vanishing Childhood

By Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
NARAYANGANJ, Bangladesh, Jul 23 2025 (IPS)

Nikli Upazila, located in the Kishoreganj district of Bangladesh, is part of the haor region, a vast wetland ecosystem characterized by bowl-shaped depressions. This unique geography subjects the area to significant climatic challenges, particularly recurrent flooding. The haor region, including Nikli, experiences a subtropical monsoon climate with distinct wet and dry seasons. During the monsoon season, heavy rainfall often leads to extensive flooding. Flash floods have become increasingly unpredictable and severe in recent years, causing substantial damage to agricultural lands and affecting the livelihoods of local communities. These people, trapped by water and driven by poverty, journey from the Haor to brickfields, where their lives become an endless cycle of hardship.

Agriculture, especially boro rice (a kind of a rice) cultivation, is the primary livelihood for many residents of Nikli. However, the unpredictability of flash floods poses a significant threat to crop yields. The high seasonality of the haor-based economy forces local people to remain out of work for a considerable period, leading to food insecurity. Faced with these challenges, many families from Nikli engage in seasonal migration to urban and peri-urban areas such as Dhaka, Savar, Narayanganj, and Munshiganj. They seek employment opportunities in sectors like brickfields, where both adults and children often work under strenuous conditions. The city is expanding and this migration is not just a means of income but a survival strategy to cope with the economic hardships imposed by environmental vulnerabilities.

The migration of entire families, including children, to work in brickfields highlights the severe socioeconomic pressures faced by communities in Nikli. While this migration provides temporary financial relief, it also exposes individuals, especially women and children, to exploitative labor practices and adverse living conditions. Moreover, the absence of family members during significant portions of the year disrupts community cohesion and affects the social fabric of the region.

The cyclical nature of flooding in Nikli Upazila, compounded by the lack of local employment opportunities, necessitates seasonal migration as a coping mechanism for many families. Addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted approach, including improved flood management, diversification of local livelihoods, and the implementation of social protection measures to reduce the necessity for distress-driven migration.

Migrants from the flood-prone haor region, like her, seek survival in the hazardous conditions of brick kilns after recurrent flash floods devastate their agricultural lands. Their journey from waterlogged villages to smoke-filled industrial landscapes is one of resilience and hardship.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

An elderly migrant laborer from the flood-prone haor region of Nikli, Kishoreganj, stacks bricks in a kiln in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. Recurrent flash floods have destroyed his agricultural livelihood, forcing him into the backbreaking work of the brickfields. Cloaked in dust and framed by the smoke of industrial chimneys, his presence reflects the quiet resilience and enduring hardship of climate-displaced communities.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Amid smoke-belching chimneys, migrant workers women and men from the flood-devastated haor region pass sunbaked bricks down a human chain in a brickfield in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. Climate-induced displacement has driven these families from their waterlogged farmlands into the grueling labor of the kilns. Their synchronized movements, though born of necessity, reflect both survival and solidarity under harsh industrial skies.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

A laborer, his face and body cloaked in red dust, balances a heavy stack of baked bricks on his head inside a brick kiln in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. Originally from the climate-stricken haor region, he is one of many who migrate seasonally in search of survival. The symmetry of his burden mirrors the unyielding weight of economic desperation and environmental displacement.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Surrounded by dust and decay inside a brick kiln in Narayanganj, two children—siblings of migrant workers from the flood-hit haor region lean into each other, their foreheads touching in quiet connection. In a world shaped by displacement and labor, their moment of tenderness stands in stark contrast to the harshness around them, echoing a fragile sense of care and continuity amidst upheaval.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

A young man leans against the scorched walls of a brick kiln in Narayanganj, his face marked by dust and determination. Wearing a football jersey far from any field of play, he is among the thousands who migrate each year from Bangladesh’s flood-prone haor region, where the intensifying impacts of climate change rising temperatures, erratic monsoon patterns, and recurring flash floods have made agriculture increasingly untenable. Once a farmer’s son, he now survives by toiling in the suffocating heat of the kilns, his gaze a quiet reminder of the futures being reshaped by a warming world.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

A young girl flashes a radiant smile while helping her mother push a heavy cart of raw bricks in a kiln in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. Behind the smile lies a story shaped by climate catastrophe her family, once farmers in the flood-ravaged haor region, was displaced by unpredictable monsoon floods worsened by climate change. Now, in the dusty heat of the brickfields, survival is a collective effort where even childhood is burdened with labor.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Covered in dust and sweat, laborers in a Narayanganj brickfield balance stacks of bricks on their heads, their bodies bearing the weight of both labor and survival. These workers, many of whom migrated from flood-stricken haor regions, endure grueling conditions to earn a living. The reddish haze of dust fills the air, a testament to the relentless toil in this harsh, unforgiving landscape.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Under the shadow of a towering chimney, men, women, and even children pass bricks hand to hand in a relentless chain of labor at a brickfield in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. These workers, many displaced by climate-induced floods in the haor region, endure extreme conditions in search of survival. The unity in their movements reflects both resilience and struggle, as smoke billows above, symbolizing the cost of their toil.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

In the sweltering heart of a brick kiln in Narayanganj, Bangladesh, a chain of men and women many displaced by climate-induced flooding in the haor region pass bricks hand to hand, cart to cart, with rhythmic precision. Their synchronized labor sustains a city’s expansion while their own homes sink under water year after year. The smoke rising from the chimney behind them mirrors the slow burn of environmental injustice that forces thousands into this grinding cycle of survival.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Displaced men and women from Bangladesh’s climate-hit haor region haul carts overloaded with raw bricks inside a kiln in Narayanganj. With their farmlands submerged season after season due to erratic flash floods, they have no choice but to migrate for survival. In this tightly choreographed world of labor, the boundary between exhaustion and endurance fades—brick by brick, they build not just cities, but the story of a nation navigating climate crisis.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

A woman pushes a heavily loaded cart of bricks with all her strength as her male counterpart pulls from behind in a kiln in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. Once farmers in the haor wetlands, now rendered uninhabitable by intensified monsoon flooding and erratic climate patterns, they have become climate migrants trading green fields for red dust. In this unrelenting choreography of labor, survival is carved into every gesture, every step forward in the sweltering heat.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

A woman, her face covered in dust, offers a resilient smile amid the harsh realities of brickfield labor in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. Behind her, another woman strains to push a heavy cart loaded with bricks. Like many migrant workers from the flood-ravaged haor region, they endure backbreaking work under the sun to support their families. Their strength and determination shine through, even in the toughest conditions.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

A woman strains to push a heavy cart loaded with bricks, her hands gripping the worn metal frame as dust clings to her skin in a brickfield in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. Behind her, men balance stacks of bricks on their heads, while a young child, her face marked by dirt and exhaustion, watches the scene unfold. This is the reality for many families who migrate from flood-ravaged haor regions, where survival means enduring relentless labor in the burning sun.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Kneeling on sunbaked earth, a migrant laborer from Bangladesh’s haor wetlands balances a stack of bricks on his head inside a kiln in Narayanganj. Once dependent on farming, he was forced to abandon his village after repeated flash floods amplified by climate change wiped out his crops and home. Now, in a world built of dust and survival, he carries the burden of a collapsing environment on his shoulders, one brick at a time.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Mohammad Saown, a teenage boy from the flood-affected haor region of Bangladesh, pauses for a moment atop a stack of bricks in a kiln in Narayanganj. Like many children of climate-displaced families, Saown now spends his days working instead of attending school. Seasonal flash floods, worsened by climate change, forced his family to leave behind their village and seek survival in the unforgiving world of brickfields. His quiet smile belies a childhood shaped by hardship and resilience.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Children from flood-affected families in Bangladesh’s haor region find moments of joy while living near a brickfield in Narayanganj. Displaced by climate-induced flooding that devastates their agricultural livelihoods, these families migrate annually to brickfields, where life is defined by hardship and strenuous labor. Despite their circumstances, the children’s play reflects resilience and hope amidst challenging conditions.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

After hours of relentless labor under the blazing sun, a young brickfield worker washes away the dust and fatigue with a splash of cold water. Behind him, the worn concrete wall bears silent witness to the daily rituals of survival. Originally from the climate-ravaged haor region of Bangladesh, he is among thousands who now endure punishing heat, poor sanitation, and long hours in kilns like this one in Narayanganj pushed by floods, held by necessity.
Narayanganj, Bangladesh – 17 February 2025
Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

— VIDEO —

By External Source
Jun 25 2025 (IPS)

 
The Commonwealth Climate Access Hub responds to the needs of its member countries, including their most vulnerable people to build resilience and climate-smart communities.

The hub, which started with USD 10 million ten years ago, now has supported countries to unlock close to USD 500 million in climate finance and has half a billion dollars worth of projects in the pipeline.

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By Sania Farooqui
BENGALURU, India, Jun 25 2025 (IPS)

It has been 33 years since peacebuilding was formally recognized within the United Nations system, by the then UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, who defined it as a long-term structural work aimed at preventing the recurrence of violence, setting the stage for the UN’s ongoing efforts to address the root cause of conflict and not just its consequences. “Post-conflict peacebuilding is the action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict,” Boutros-Ghali said.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, Founder of International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN)

“Our entire system for peace and security was designed for interstate war. Wars today are often internal, asymmetrical, and increasingly state-non-state indistinct,” Sanam says. The change has outpaced mechanisms meant to manage it.

While the UN and the other multilateral institutions are still at the center, Sanam points out their shortcomings. “When great powers violate the rules, no one can hold them back,” she states. The fragility of international standards has been made clear by the immobility of international institutions in the face of aggression by the great powers, and that has has exposed the weakness of international norms.

“If we did not have the UN, we’d need one now”, Sanam says. However, she stresses that transformation is desperately needed, not just for institutions but also for mentality.

She argues that there is a clear choice: adopt inclusive, people-centered peacebuilding that leverages the legitimacy and abilities of actors closest to the ground or stick with a top-down, formulaic approach that hasn’t worked to address current crises.

“Today’s challenges include but are not limited to rising geopolitical tensions among nuclear-armed major powers, a seemingly inevitable climate catastrophe, technological changes that have the potential to remake every aspect of life, and the increasing powers and capabilities of non-state actors to reshape sub-national, national, and international affairs,” states this research by the Atlantic council.

The 2024 Multilateralism Index Report by International Peace Institute states that it is widely acknowledged that the multilateral systems are facing a series of crisis, and that international action in response to the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar, and beyond has been largely confined to humanitarian assistance rather than peacemaking.

According to the report, and the surveys it conducted, majorities of people in most countries still have favourable views of the UN, want their country to be more involved in the UN, and believe the UN has made the world a better place. Majorities also agree that the UN promotes human rights, peace, democracy, action on infectious diseases and climate action. At the same time, perceptions of the UN varied widely by region, from strong support in Northern Europe and southeast Asia to low levels of trust across much of Latin America and the Middle East.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the former president of Liberia, spoke about “Liberia’s story” in a video message during a recent event at the UN Headquarters commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC). She said that it was a story of suffering, but also of hope.

The former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner stated, “a country that was once brought to its knees by a protracted struggle now stands as a testament to what is achievable when national will is matched by international solidarity.” “Liberia’s journey to peace could not be walked alone,” she stated, highlighting the role played by the international community through the UN and its peacekeeping Mission UNMIL, the African Union, the European Union, the regional bloc ECOWAS, and other organizations.

The United Nations peacebuilding architecture – which comprises of the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), and the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) marks its fourth review this year which is mandated by general Assembly resolution 75/201 and Security Council Resolution 2558. This review comes at a time of significant geopolitical divisions and escalating risks of conflict in many parts of the world, underscoring the urgent need to act on recommendations from current and past reviews.

“If I were in charge, I’d take this moment of UN reform as a real opportunity,” says Sanam. The opening line of the UN Charter, “We the people of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, holds immense power. She argues that now is the time to put women, peace and security at the center of global peacemaking. “These agendas came from war zones. Women and youth are the most affected and also the most active in peacebuilding.” Sanam envisions peacebuilding as an ecosystem where the UN, states, international players, and local actors are all necessary, as each has a specific role to play. “Peace is a choice, but it’s a choice that takes courage, commitment, and creativity. It takes hearing from those too often ignored and believing in the ability of local actors to drive change,” Sanam says.

With more conflicts than any time in the last 30 years, and a record number of displaced persons worldwide, the stakes could not be higher. This conversation is not merely a breakdown of what is wrong – it’s a call to reimagine what peace could be, and who gets to build it.

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

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

By External Source
Jun 2 2025 (IPS-Partners)

 
Plastic pollution is choking our planet.

An estimated 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year.

Less than 10% is ever recycled.

Over 23 million tonnes end up in lakes, rivers and oceans annually.

Plastic never truly disappears. It breaks down into microplastics.

These invisible particles are now in our food, our water and even our bodies.

Studies have found microplastics in human blood, lungs, and placentas.

The most vulnerable communities are hit hardest.

Marine life is suffocating.

Coastal economies are eroding.

Food systems are at risk.

We can’t recycle our way out of this crisis.

We need to rethink the system, by reduce, reusing and redesigning.

By 2040, plastic waste could triple if we do nothing.

But we can cut plastic pollution by 80% if we act now.

World Environment Day 2025 calls for a future free from plastic pollution.

A future where circularity replaces waste. Where innovation replaces single use.

Where policy, industry, and people work together.

We are the generation that can break free from plastic.

Let’s not waste this chance.

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By External Source
May 29 2025 (IPS-Partners)

 
In a world where headlines warn of rising seas, dying reefs, and vanishing species, it’s easy to think the story ends in loss.

But what if the frontlines of climate change were also frontiers of hope?

From the Galápagos to the Seychelles, from New Zealand to Palau, islands are writing a different story.

One of resilience.

Of revival.

Of resistance.

While global systems stall and fracture, island communities are forging ahead.

Spearheading ecological restoration with precision and urgency.

Not as victims. But as innovators.

By restoring native ecosystems from ridge to reef, these communities are showing the world what climate justice looks like in practice.

And the results speak for themselves:

On Palmyra Atoll, the removal of rats led to a 5,000% increase in native trees. That canopy now shelters a coral reef where manta rays thrive.

On Kamaka Island, a bird unseen for a century has returned home.

These aren’t isolated miracles. They are replicable models.

That’s why, this June, global leaders, scientists, and community voices will gather in Nice, France for the United Nations Ocean Conference.

It’s more than an event. It’s an opportunity.

An opportunity to scale island-led solutions. To fund restoration at the source. To center Indigenous knowledge in global policy.

To listen. To learn. To act.

The Island-Ocean Connection Challenge is just one initiative showing us the way.

Fifty partners. Twenty ecosystems. One vision. To holistically restore 40 island-ocean systems by 2030.

This is not just environmentalism. It is climate justice. It is biodiversity justice. It is food security. Cultural continuity. Economic innovation.

And it’s led by the very communities who have long known the rhythms of land and sea.

There is power in local action to shape global futures.

In amplifying the voices of those living the solutions.

And in supporting the work that safeguards rights, restores ecosystems, and renews hope.

The Sea of Islands Can Rise Again. Not with the tide, but with resolve.

Join us at UNOC3 in Nice, or follow the movement. Support the science. Back the communities. Amplify the solutions.

Because investing in islands today means securing the oceans of tomorrow.

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By External Source
May 2 2025 (IPS-Partners)

 
Freedom of the press is facing growing threats across the world.

Authoritarian regimes still imprison, silence, and kill journalists.

But today, elected governments are doing the same.

In 2024, over 550 journalists were imprisoned worldwide. 124 of them in China alone.

Since October 2023, at least 155 journalists have been killed in Gaza, Lebanon, and Israel.

Many were clearly identifiable as journalists – and targeted.

Sudan has become a death trap for reporters caught in civil war.

In Pakistan, Mexico and Bangladesh journalists were assassinated for their work.

Independent media face financial and political attacks.

This year, the U.S. gutted funding for Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Free Asia.

Autocratic leaders applauded.

Meanwhile, trust in traditional media is collapsing.

In the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, China scored 75% trust in media. The UK scored 36%.

Yet China ranks 172nd out of 180 on the Press Freedom Index.

AI is adding new risks: Amplifying disinformation, censorship, and surveillance.

Recent studies show 51% of AI-generated news responses have major factual issues.

Misinformation spreads faster and easier than ever.

UNESCO warns that AI, without safeguards, could crush free expression.

This year, World Press Freedom Day focuses on “Reporting in the Brave New World: The Impact of
Artificial Intelligence on Press Freedom and the Media.”

AI offers powerful new tools for journalism – but without ethical safeguards, it threatens press freedom itself.

And without journalism, democracy stands on shifting sand.

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Cristian Castillo benefits from a rainwater harvesting system installed on his nearly one-hectare plot in Paraje Galán, a rural village of 400 families in the western Salvadoran district of Candelaria de la Frontera. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
CANDELARIA DE LA FRONTERA, El Salvador, Apr 7 2025 (IPS)

In Central America’s Dry Corridor, climatic conditions hinder water and food production because rainfall in this ecoregion—from May to December—is less predictable than in the rest of the isthmus.

Cristian Castillo knows this firsthand. The young Salvadoran farmer had just planted tomatoes on his small plot of land, less than a hectare in size, when the hand-dug well he planned to use for irrigation ran dry.

“I had a well, but due to (earth) tremors, the (aquifer’s) veins closed up, and the water stopped flowing,” Castillo told IPS, standing beside his home and field in the rural village of Paraje Galán, a community of 400 families in the Candelaria de la Frontera district, western El Salvador.

But with or without tremors—common in this country of six million people—it’s not unusual for wells to dry up in the Dry Corridor due to prolonged droughts during the rainy season. Without water, there’s no way to grow crops or raise cattle and pigs, which are vital for the survival of local communities.

Stretching 1,600 kilometers, the Dry Corridor covers 35% of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), over 73% of the rural population in this belt lives in poverty, and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity.

Central America, a region of seven countries with a combined population of 50 million, faces deep social inequalities.

Aware of the harsh climatic conditions in the Dry Corridor, around 25 municipalities in the neighboring countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador formed the Trinational Border Association of the Lempa River in 2007. This regional, non-governmental initiative promotes sustainable development projects in their territories.

One such project encourages rainwater harvesting techniques, helping families build collection tanks to irrigate their crops.

Castillo is among those who benefited from the construction of one such tank, with a storage capacity of 10 cubic meters, equivalent to 50 large drums.

“I’ll pump all the collected rainwater to the upper part of the property where the tomato crop is,” explained Castillo, 36.

In the neighboring village of Cristalina, still within the jurisdiction of Candelaria de la Frontera, the Trinational Association was one of the organizations that helped install a potable water distribution tank that now serves about a hundred families who previously lacked this service.

“We had hand-dug wells here, but they weren’t enough anymore. When the (water) project came, we were overjoyed because we would finally have water available all the time,” Cristalina resident Gladis Chamuca, 57, told IPS.

By Mario Osava
MANAUS, Brazil, Mar 5 2025 (IPS)

Electricity is essential for the well-being and prosperity of traditional riverside communities in the Amazon, as demonstrated by the experience of the Santa Helena do Inglês community, located on the right bank of the Negro River in northern Brazil.

Energy security is equally crucial. In 2012, the 30 local families benefited from the “Light for All” program, a government initiative that installs cables and poles to bring electricity to poor and isolated communities across the country.

However, traversing hundreds of kilometers of Amazonian forests poses constant risks. Falling trees, harsh weather, and lightning have frequently left riverside residents without power.

For Lucilene Ferreira de Oliveira, a 39-year-old mother of eight and a cook at the Vista Rio Negro Inn who also prepares snacks and ready-made meals at home, being without electricity for three, four, or five days is devastating. It means no fresh or frozen food, no internet, and the inability to meet other basic needs.

The solution was to supplement the grid power with a solar plant consisting of 132 photovoltaic panels and 54 lithium batteries. This project, driven by the non-governmental Amazon Sustainable Foundation (FAS), chose Santa Helena as a model for other isolated riverside communities.

Reliable electricity has enabled the promotion of ecotourism, favoured by the region’s lush natural beauty and its proximity to the Anavilhanas Archipelago, a national park with stunning views, and Manaus, the capital of Amazonas State, home to 2.2 million people and a hub for business and tourism.

The Vista Rio Negro Inn, with its eight rooms, is a community-based enterprise that employs six local women for cooking and other tasks, divided into two teams that alternate every four days. It is managed by Keith-Ivan Oliveira, and has a communications assistant, 16-year-old Elizabeth Ferreira da Silva, who is also a distance-learning student.

Reliable electricity has enabled the promotion of ecotourism, favoured by the region's lush natural beauty and its proximity to the Anavilhanas Archipelago, a national park with stunning views, and Manaus, the capital of Amazonas State, home to 2.2 million people and a hub for business and tourism
Electricity has made internet access possible, enabling virtual classes. Students no longer need to travel to Manaus, which is only accessible by boat. A fast boat takes 90 minutes to cover the 64-kilometer distance. “Now they only need to go to Manaus to take exams,” Oliveira celebrated.

Before ecotourism, commercial fishing was the primary source of income. To support this, the government designated the area encompassing Santa Helena and 18 other riverside communities as the Negro River Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS) in 2008, covering 103,086 hectares.

The RDS is a conservation area that allows traditional residents, such as Amazonian riverside communities, to sustainably utilize natural resources.

The establishment of the reserve granted exclusive fishing rights to the local residents in the adjacent stretch of the Negro River, which had previously been subject to exploitative practices by fishing companies. Now, nearly all local families own boats with a cargo capacity of up to five tons, except for one with an 18-ton capacity.

However, fishing is only permitted during specific months for each species to avoid disrupting reproduction and fish availability.

The RDS emerged from a movement by riverside residents to secure their rights as traditional communities after 11 locals were imprisoned for illegal logging. A lengthy negotiation process with the Amazonas State authorities led to the creation of the conservation area with controlled extractive activities.

Communities can harvest timber but must adhere to approved forest management practices and limits.

An ice factory, in its final stages of construction, is expected to boost the productivity and income of Santa Helena’s fishing activities. It will have a daily production capacity of three tons and will make the community independent of ice suppliers from Manaus.

A newly installed solar plant with 84 photovoltaic panels will provide the necessary electricity for ice production.

In addition to cost issues, riverside residents often lost fish due to ice shortages or delays in obtaining it. With the factory, ice will no longer be a limiting factor for fishing and will instead generate income for the entire community, while also creating five permanent jobs and the potential to assist neighboring communities.

“The river is life, but it doesn’t work without energy” says Nelson Brito de Mendonça, president of the Santa Helena community.

However, the river – or rather, its waters – also dictates the lives of the riverside residents. A severe drought over two consecutive years devastated fishing and forced the inn to suspend operations between August and December 2024.

The river, which usually reaches the doors of the inn, receded hundreds of meters until the waters gradually began to return to their normal levels late last year, thanks to the arrival of rains. What has yet to return are the tourists, but the residents hope they will come back soon.

The two solar plants are part of a program by the Amazon Sustainable Foundation (FAS), which aims to consolidate and promote sustainable development models for Amazonian riverside communities.

Another example is a community in the municipality of Carauari, a seven-day boat journey from Manaus, where an 80-panel solar plant is being used to boost the production of oils from native Amazonian fruits, such as andiroba (Carapa guianensis) and murumuru (Astrocaryum murumuru).

By External Source
Mar 4 2025 (IPS-Partners)

 
In 2025, our world remains deeply unequal.

Women earn, on average, 20% less than men globally.

Only 26.8% of national parliament seats are held by women.

Over 600 million women and girls are affected by war—a 50% increase in the past decade.

Every 11 minutes, a woman or girl is killed by a family member.

Women perform three times more unpaid care work than men.

Less than 20% of the world’s landholders are women.

At the current pace, it will take 134 years to close the global gender gap.

In Afghanistan, nearly 1.5 million girls have been barred from secondary and higher education since 2021.

The Taliban have issued over 70 decrees restricting Afghan women’s rights, defying international conventions.

UNESCO is amplifying Afghan women’s voices in 2025, hosting an international conference in Paris.

UNESCO is increasing support for alternative learning solutions for Afghan girls.

Investing in women could boost global GDP per capita by 20%.

Expanding care services could create nearly 300 million jobs by 2035.

Educating girls could add $10 trillion to the global economy annually.

The theme for International Women’s Day 2025 is “For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.”

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

It’s time to accelerate progress for women’s rights and gender equality.

Together, we can create a world where no woman or girl is left behind.

Join us in taking action for ALL women and girls.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

By External Source
Jan 31 2025 (IPS-Partners)

 
George the Pinta Island tortoise and Martha the passenger pigeon achieved fame as ‘endlings’ – the last individuals of their species. Their passing is tragic, but can their fate perhaps help us to protect other threatened species?

In this final episode of Season 4, Brit interviews Dr. Alexander Lees, from Manchester University in the UK, who has been working on Amazonian conservation issues for more than 20 years and has a particular interest in birdlife. Brit also hears from Joanna Lilley, a poet who uses verse to capture the beauty and tragedy of endlings.

To find out more about IPBES, head to www.ipbes.net or follow us on social media @IPBES.

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By External Source
Dec 28 2024 (IPS-Partners)

 
The world’s troubles deepened in 2024. Civilians bore the brunt of war.

Violence in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Haiti, and more displaced over 100 million people worldwide.

Over 70% of those killed in Gaza were women and children, according to the UN Human Rights Office.

With critical infrastructure in ruins, an estimated 1 million children are now displaced, according to UNICEF.

In Sudan, 10 million people were displaced by conflict in 2024.

2024 became the hottest year on record, with global temperatures 1.4°C above pre-industrial levels.

Over 2 billion people experienced extreme heatwaves this year.

At COP29, leaders failed to reach a breakthrough on climate finance.

Developing nations are still waiting for the $100 billion pledged annually since 2009.

Floods in the Sahel displaced 2 million people.

Southern Africa’s drought put over 20 million at risk of food insecurity.

Efforts to protect biodiversity also fell short.

1 million species remain at risk of extinction, warns the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

But hope emerged from renewable energy.

Solar and wind capacity increased by 25% globally, pushing emissions toward a long-awaited peak.

The world now has 281 million international migrants, with remittances exceeding $800 billion annually, boosting economies in low-income nations.

Gender violence remains a global crisis.

Nearly 1 in 3 women worldwide experience abuse, according to UN Women.

Women human rights defenders were targeted and silenced.

In 2024, over 30 journalists were killed covering conflict zones.

Gaza saw the highest number of journalist deaths in three decades.

Haiti’s crisis worsened, with over 700,000 people displaced by gang violence.

Small farms provided 80% of food consumed in Africa, highlighting their critical role in food security.

New breakthroughs in malaria vaccines are expected to save over 10 million lives by 2050.

In Bangladesh, mass protests ousted corrupt leaders.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus hailed the movement as a triumph of “ordinary people’s power.”

The world may feel like a runaway train heading for disaster, but collective action can slow it down.

2024 highlighted our vulnerabilities, but it also reminded us of humanity’s capacity for resilience.

When people unite, they can spark real, transformative change.

Organizations, activists, and individuals are working tirelessly for a better tomorrow.

Every step forward, no matter how small, brings us closer to hope.

2024 tested us all, but it also showed us that change is possible.

2025 is a blank canvas.

Together, let’s paint a brighter future

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By Emilio Godoy
MERIDA, Mexico, Dec 23 2024 (IPS)

When he promoted the Maya Train (TM) in 2019, then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who ruled Mexico between 2018 and October this year, stated that the railway line would be an engine of development for the southeastern Yucatan peninsula.

The three states of the peninsula – Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatan – were offered spaces for craftspeople and ecotourism in the stations, as well as the transfer of thousands of tourists, the promotion of alternative tourism and the creation of jobs.

But one year after three of the five established routes began operating, there is little evidence of the promised benefits.

It is true that more international tourists have arrived at airports in Merida, the capital of the southeastern state of Yucatan, or tourist destinations such as Cozumel in neighbouring Quintana Roo, between January and September, compared to the same period in 2023.

However, in Cancun, the peninsula’s tourist hotspot, with one station, those arrivals fell 1.5%, making it difficult for experts to attribute the higher overall tourist arrivals to the TM.

Between December 2023 and last August, the TM carried 340,622 passengers, at a rate of 1,425 per day, according to official figures. Cancun, Merida, Playa del Carmen, Valladolid and Palenque, which has an archaeological site, account for 80% of the passengers.

Mayan craftsperson Alicia Pech does not know the railway, says she has no money to travel, that more people have not arrived and that sales are low.

The train, intended for tourists, curious users and the local population, among whom it arouses little enthusiasm, is empty at the larger stations, Merida or Cancun, and fares are low at the smaller ones.

As in other stations, Maxcanu, part of section 3 that runs between Calkini (Campeche) and Izamal (Yucatan) has eight empty shops with signs such as ‘Food’, ‘Community Tourism’ and ‘Mayan Handicrafts’.

The same thing happens in Valladolid, part of section 4 that connects Izamal with Cancun, and in the Merida-Teya station, also on route 3, there are two food shops, one that offers TM souvenirs, a car rental place, and another one that advertises a future bakery.

José Rodríguez, originally from Cancn, was disappointed because the difference in cost compared to land transport is low and because of a one-hour delay he had on his commute to Merida.

Of the 34 planned stations, only 26 are operating, as Sedena is still tending the last two sections between Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in Quintana Roo, and Centenario, in Campeche.

To increase revenues and minimise losses, President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office on 1 October, plans to expand it to Puerto Progreso, on the Yucatan coast north of Merida, to move cargo.

The Mexican government has known since 2022 that the mega-project would increase the budget. The Cost-Benefit Analysis Update, prepared that year by a private Mexican consulting firm, concluded that the cost would go from two to four times its original cost.

But the TM will continue to consume money, as the 2025 budget proposal includes a budget of US$2,173 million, added to the delay of the project and a total cost overrun that already exceeds US$15 billion.

Ressembling moon craters, Brazil's micro-dams - barraginhas in Portuguese - have become a successful solution for storing water and preventing soil erosion in rural areas. Credit: Luciano Cordoval

By Mario Osava
SETE LAGOAS, Brazil, Dec 11 2024 (IPS)

They look like attempts to copy the moon’s surface, in some cases, as craters multiply in the grasslands. But they are actually micro-dams, barraginhas in Portuguese, which have spread in Brazil as a successful way to store water and prevent soil erosion in rural areas.

The creator of the project encouraging these holes is Luciano Cordoval, an agronomist who works for the state-owned Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) in Sete Lagoas, a municipality of 227,000 people in the state of Minas Gerais, central Brazil.

He recommends the barraginha should be 16 metres in diameter and deep enough to hold 1.2 metres of water. Its earthen edges rise 80 centimetres above the water level, with a spillway for the excess. In practice, these dimensions vary greatly.

The Barraginhas Project, promoted by Cordoval from Embrapa in Sete Lagoas, which is mostly dedicated to maize and sorghum research as one of the company’s 43 units, was directly involved in the construction of some 300,000 micro-dams, estimates the agronomist.

But the innovator believes that in all they reach two million throughout the country, as many institutions, companies and municipalities have adopted the innovation, recognised as a social technology, and spread it on their own initiative.

Cordoval’s intense training activity contributes to this, calling the disseminators of his barraginhas, who stand out in various regions of Brazil, his “clones”. The agronomist also promotes exchanges among municipalities, in which groups that have already built many micro-dam farms pass on their knowledge.

These micro-dams are suitable for land with a low slope. Embrapa recommends not to build them on slopes steeper than 15%.

For steeper slopes, Cordoval suggests another way of retaining water, which he called “contour lines with cochinhos”, i.e. ditches that follow the contour lines but are interrupted by a succession of water tanks in the form of troughs, which in Brazil are called cochos de agua.

Large landowners and small farmers recognise the benefits of these ways of retaining rainwater. In many cases, water shortages disappeared, springs were revived and with them small watercourses.

Antonio Alvarenga, owner of 400 hectares in Sete Lagoas, is an exemplary case of pioneering. He built his first 28 micro-dams with support from Cordoval in 1995, two years before Embrapa’s Barraginhas Project was formally launched.

He continued to build them and estimates to have added “more than 100” to the initial 28. The farm of degraded and dry land was totally modified. The recovery of the water table has allowed him to have an “artificial” 42,000 square metre lagoon and to quadruple the number of cattle on his property.

The water retained in the micro-dams feeds the water table that makes the lagoons viable and recovers the wells that are the source of drinking water for millions of rural families in Brazil. This is proven by photos that show the water level in the wells rose a little after the construction of the barraginhas.

The success of the micro-dams is especially evident on degraded land, which is estimated to exceed 90 million hectares in Brazil, mainly due to extensive cattle farming.

The aim is to restore moisture in a large part of the country, affected by deforestation, agricultural expansion and other human activities.

Climate change aggravates water scarcity in a wider territory, especially in the Semi-Arid, which covers 100 million hectares in the interior of the Northeast region, and in the Cerrado, Brazil’s savannah-like region, which extends over 200 million hectares.

In addition to micro-dams, contour ditches and other forms of rainwater harvesting reduce the erosion that impoverishes the soil and silts up rivers in Brazil.

A type of barraginhas, generally smaller in size, which also proliferate in Brazil, are built alongside roads as a way of preventing erosion.

By External Source
Nov 11 2024 (IPS-Partners)

 
Climate change continues to pose an existential threat to humanity.

Recent science estimates that we may have less than six years left to change course.

This intensifying climate emergency is being seen everywhere in heatwaves, droughts, floods, fires, and hurricanes.

April of this year was the world’s hottest month on record – the 11th consecutive month to set a new temperature high.

And while we are witnessing mass coral bleaching from Australia to Kenya to Mexico, East Africa and Brazil have been devastated by floods – killing hundreds and displacing hundreds of thousands.

Few scientists believe we will manage to keep within the internationally agreed target of limiting post-industrial era temperature increases by 1.5C.

This year’s COP29 UN Climate summit will be hosted in Azerbaijan – the petro-state still committed to fossil fuel production.

Indeed, the government’s share of oil production was a staggering $19.3 billion in 2022 – surpassing the entire public spending budget of that year.

But who will pay for the economic and physical damage brought by climate change?

The IMF calculates that global fossil fuel subsidies amounted to $7 trillion in 2022 – about 7% of global GDP.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, $2.4 trillion was spent on military costs and weapons in 2023.

“Climate justice” was a key theme at COP28, where countries agreed to help climate vulnerable communities.

Voluntary pledges by developed countries have amounted to $700 million – a drop in the ocean, as the UN estimates the costs of climate-related losses will range from $160-$340 billion a year by 2030.

Reaching net zero emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases by 2050 means they must halve by 2030.

The UK, a global leader in cutting emissions, is backsliding on its commitments, and there is danger other powerful allies will withdraw from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.

Corporate giants of fossil fuels and their political allies tell us that the 2050 zero emissions target is too much too soon.

Asking us to adjust our sights, they point at China – the world’s biggest polluter.

But China’s solar installations in the first quarter of 2024 were up by 34%.

Their wind installations were up by nearly 50% on the preceding year.

If China can maintain such green energy growth, then it is possible that global emissions may start to fall later this year or next.

G20 nations have been much too slow to increase their climate ambitions.

The start of a downward trend would be a historic moment that could shift the dial on what societies and our political leaders can think of being possible.

By contrast, a recent report by the United Nations Development Program highlights the less privileged showing resilience in the face of death:

93% of Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States have submitted climate pledges or plan to do so.

More than 40 nations have started actively reducing their emissions. The big question is how quickly can we reduce?

Todd Stern, former special envoy for climate change under Barack Obama, believes net zero by 2050 is possible.

It’s extremely difficult and will require huge changes to the world economy.

But it is possible.

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