By Kizito Makoye
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Aug 24 2026 (IPS)

For pastoralists in Arvaikheer — a village in Mongolia’s dry central plains — rain can determine whether there is enough grass for cattle to roam, whether waterholes are replenished and whether families make it through another dry season. But as climate change makes rainfall increasingly unpredictable, even a wet season may no longer provide water and pasture needed to sustain people and livestock.

The challenges being experienced across Mongolia’s drylands are at the centre of discussions at the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) in Ulaanbaatar, where governments are devising measures to tackle menacing drought, desertification and land degradation.

It is against this backdrop that the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has announced plans for a new $140 million initiative aimed at helping countries prepare for drought, strengthen resilience in drylands and reduce the growing risks to ecosystems, food security, water availability, livelihoods and health.

The Drylands and Drought Management Integrated Program will be implemented during the GEF-9 investment cycle from 2026 to 2030. It responds to requests from parties to the UNCCD for the GEF to give greater priority to financing programs related to drought resilience.

The program will focus on helping countries and communities better prepare for, monitor, assess, mitigate and respond to the cascading impacts of drought.

“Investing in healthy land and healthy people means investing in food security, climate resilience, biodiversity, water, jobs, and peace,” said the GEF Interim CEO and Chairperson, Claude Gascon, in a statement. “Through this new integrated program, we will support countries in moving from crisis response toward proactive drought resilience.”

The announcement comes as negotiators at COP17 are discussing an array of measures to tackle drought and land degradation, including financing, private-sector engagement, capacity-building and support for rangelands and pastoralists.

Participants in traditional dress take part in a cultural presentation during the 17th session of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Credit: Anastasia Rodopoulou/ENB-IISD

Rangelands Under Pressure

Rangelands have emerged as a major focus of the Ulaanbaatar talks.

Delegates have been discussing policies and investments for their sustainable management while recognising the importance of rangelands and pastoralist communities in addressing food insecurity, desertification, land degradation, drought, biodiversity loss and climate change.

For pastoralists, the effects of changing rainfall patterns are already devastating.

After rain, parched rangelands can quickly turn green, water sources refill and livestock gain access to fresh pasture. But the COP17 discussions have highlighted how climate change is altering these life-sustaining rains, making them more erratic and intense and reducing their effectiveness through increased runoff.

Land degradation can increase risks to human health, contribute to forced migration and intensify conflicts over scarce resources. It is also closely linked to climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty and food insecurity.

The GEF’s new program, therefore, comes at a time when drought is increasingly treated as a development and livelihood challenge rather than solely as an environmental emergency.

Aftermath of a rain storm at the 17th session of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Credit: Anastasia Rodopoulou/ENB-IISD

Financing Remains a Challenge

But international commitments to increase investment in drylands will face a litmus test to ensure that money reaches communities managing these landscapes.

During an open dialogue at COP17, civil society participants highlighted barriers to accessing funds as one of the challenges facing pastoralist communities, alongside pressures such as mining.

Participants called for better connections between financing and market mechanisms and the diverse local economies of pastoralists. They also urged governments and institutions to integrate targets for land degradation neutrality with pastoralist-designed and community-led initiatives.

That emphasis on local participation is significant for the GEF, which says that under GEF-9, 20 percent of resources across its family of funds are expected to directly benefit Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

Delegates at COP17 have also welcomed the Rangelands Flagship Initiative, a multi-partner global initiative led by Mongolia and the UNCCD. The initiative is built around three areas: knowledge, investment and institutions.

The GEF is supporting its development and coordination through the UNCCD COP17 Legacy Project, a $3.3 million GEF investment implemented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The project is leveraging an additional $8 million in co-financing from Mongolia and IUCN, according to the GEF.

The co-chair consults with the secretary during the Ulaanbaatar International Conference on Combating Desertification as delegates discuss strategies to strengthen global efforts to address land degradation, drought and desertification. Credit: Anastasia Dodopoulou/ENB-IISD

A Wider Investment Push

The new drought program is part of a broader expansion of environmental financing under GEF-9.

The investment cycle begins with an initial programming level of $3.9 billion and is designed to expand investments in nature-positive development, drought resilience and sustainable land management.

Four GEF-9 integrated programs are strongly aligned with UNCCD objectives and are expected to receive more than $800 million in GEF grant funding. They cover food systems, critical forest biomes, blue and green islands and drylands and drought management.

Drought resilience is also being given a more prominent place in the way GEF resources are allocated and measured.

The GEF-9 cycle includes a dedicated objective for implementing national drought plans, a drought vulnerability index in the formula used to calculate resource allocation to countries and new indicators to track improvements in drought resilience.

The approach reflects a growing recognition that drought can insidiously weaken ecosystems, livelihoods and food systems long before it becomes a full-blown crisis, leaving communities more exposed to the next shock.

From Crisis Response to Prevention

The GEF also plans to work with the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership, the Drought Resilience Investment Facility and other initiatives supporting resilience across drylands and rangelands.

During GEF-8, covering 2022 to 2026, the facility approved 50 projects across its family of funds supporting sustainable rangeland management and restoration and pastoralist livelihoods, with a total investment of more than $300 million.

The projects are at different stages of development and, according to the GEF, can complement the Rangelands Flagship Initiative and help take successful approaches to rangeland management and restoration to scale.

The new initiative also places a stronger emphasis on mobilising private capital.

Ten percent of total GEF-9 funding is allocated to a blended finance window, while the overall target is to use 25 percent of GEF resources to help mobilise private sector investment.

For countries vulnerable to drought, the challenge will be converting those financial commitments into practical investments that strengthen water security, restore degraded land and protect the livelihoods of communities dependent on drylands.

At COP17, where discussions on drought, rangelands, financing and pastoralist livelihoods are unfolding simultaneously, the GEF initiative offers a potentially significant new source of funding.

But the experience of pastoralist communities points to a broader question: whether global commitments and financing mechanisms can reach the people managing the land on the ground — and whether investments can arrive early enough to prevent drought from becoming a crisis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the wreath-laying ceremony to commemorate the 23rd Anniversary of the bombing of the United Nations Headquarters in Baghdad. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten.

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 20 2026 (IPS)

World Humanitarian Day celebrates humanitarian workers and the life-saving services they provide under the most complex and often dangerous conditions.

This year, UN leaders are urging the international community to protect humanitarians working in conflict zones and to seek accountability for those who have been injured or killed in their line of duty.

In late 2008, the UN General Assembly designated August 19th as World Humanitarian Day, five years after the terrorist attack at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq, where 22 UN staff members were killed, including the then Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres paid tribute to the fallen UN staffers on the 23rd anniversary of the terrorist attack, remarking that their legacy “lives on in every humanitarian worker delivering assistance amid conflict, disaster and despair”.

Guterres also noted that international humanitarian laws meant to protect civilians and humanitarian workers are being violated “with alarming frequency and impunity”.

According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 2025 set a new record for violence against humanitarian workers, with 712 incidents recorded, in which 350 workers were killed, 322 were injured, 235 kidnapped, and 280 detained. This year alone there have been 136 major incidents, as reported in the Humanitarian Outcomes’ Aid Worker Security Database. It is only indicative of the growing number of incidents against humanitarian workers in recent years. This represents a jump from 300 reported attacks in 2022 to 471 in 2023 and then 634 incidents in 2024.

“Behind those grim numbers… are names. They are colleagues, they are our friends, they are families, and they are the best of us,” said Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, briefs reporters for World Humanitarian Day. Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS

Fletcher spoke to reporters virtually from Ukraine, where he is visiting affected areas of the country, including those subjected to drone attacks in recent days. He warned of their increasing use against civilians and infrastructure. Fletcher described seeing many drones during his visit, including an incident in which he and his team had to run for cover because they were in the vicinity.

Drones are increasingly prevalent in areas with ongoing crises, like Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and Somalia. These weapons, which are controlled by humans but can also be directed by AI, have shaped the way civilians lead their lives and affected humanitarians carry out their work.

They create “a sense of collective anxiety” among civilians and aid workers. Yet, there seems to be little to no impunity for drone attacks or for those who carry out these attacks, who would likely be aware of what they are targeting. Drone technology is also getting cheaper and easier to access, putting them in more hands as parties to conflict experiment with their use.

Fletcher acknowledged that they can be used by aid workers for good, such as delivering vaccines or identifying survivors in emergencies. But otherwise, much of their use in the context of conflict has been “inhumane and reckless”.

“I’ve not been anywhere where drones are so much part of the conversation. Everyone – from the kids I met in shelters, civilians, humanitarians, and my colleagues – can tell the difference between the sound of a first-person-view drone and a fibre-optic drone and the medium-range drones or the loitering munitions, which are such a threat to our work,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher called for the international community, and chiefly Member States, to uphold international humanitarian law and to seek accountability toward the parties involved in conflict, including state actors. Member states can and should take stronger measures to conduct independent investigations.

Fletcher made repeated calls for increased dialogue and reflection on international humanitarian law, including how to protect humanitarian workers from emerging technologies like drones. It should be up to member states and the companies behind these technologies to make sure that it “does not outpace humanity” and it “does not outpace accountability”. He also called for engaging in dialogue with the companies involved in manufacturing and distributing drones so they understand the risks they’re creating.

For those that believe in the United Nations or in the spirit of global solidarity, they also believe that member states still have the will to uphold their responsibilities toward international humanitarian law. “If the world has become so transactional and selfish and inward-looking that member states are no longer able or prepared to do this work, then we really are in a grim dystopian reality,” Fletcher told Inter Press Service.

He added that the public can in turn hold their governments to account. “We need a public demand of their leaders that we manage these risks before it’s too late. And for so many of the people that I work with, my fallen colleagues, for so many of the people who we’re here to serve, it is already too late, I’m afraid.”

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A smoke- free UN corridor. Credit: IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 19 2026 (IPS)

When smoking was common in the corridors of the UN, in the delegate’s lounge and in committee rooms during the 1970s and 90s, the office of the Secretary-General sent a memo that read: “Smoking was Discouraged” in the UN building—sounding far short of a ban.

The Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov (1994-2004), currently the country’s Foreign Minister, left a Security Council meeting and pulled out a cigarette in the presence of half a dozen reporters waiting for him outside the chamber.

As he approached the reporters, one of them told him that the Secretary-General had banned smoking in the building. And Lavrov shot back: “This building does not belong to the Secretary-General. It belongs to member states: he said, as he lit his cigarette.

And Lavrov was dead on target.

The ban on smoking became effective only after the 193-member General Assembly adopted a resolution back in 2008—18 years ago.

Under Resolution 63/8 and Secretariat Information Circular ST/IC/2016/10, the United Nations enforced a complete ban on indoor smoking and the sale of tobacco products across all UN Headquarters premises. Smoking and vaping were restricted exclusively to designated, signposted open-air areas.

• The resolution 63/8, adopted on November 3, 2008, mandated a total ban on indoor smoking and tobacco sales at UN Headquarters in New York, while recommending similar restrictions across all regional and country offices system-wide.
• Information Circular ST/IC/2016/10: This administrative issuance updated and superseded prior circulars (such as ST/IC/2009/29), reiterating strict compliance guidelines for staff, delegates, and visitors regarding the smoke-free workplace mandate.

But apparently there were violations of the ban.

A new circular released last week by the Division of Healthcare Management and Occupational Safety and Health (DHMOSH), which is a division within the United Nations Department of Operational Support (DOS), has reiterated the ban on smoking– and well ahead of the arrival of thousands of delegates who will be at the UN for the General Assembly sessions in mid-September.

“Please remember: terraces, verandas, entrances and other outdoor spaces are not automatically smoking areas. Smoking and vaping should take place only where the area is specifically designated and clearly marked”.

The World Health Organization (WHO), says the circular, states that there is no safe level of exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke and that fully smoke-free environments provide the most effective protection.

Even brief exposure can affect cardiovascular and respiratory health, particularly for people with asthma, cardiovascular disease, other respiratory conditions, or heightened sensitivity to smoke.

Second-hand smoke can drift beyond the person smoking and affect colleagues, delegates, visitors and service personnel who have not chosen to be exposed. Vape aerosol may also contain nicotine, ultrafine particles and other potentially harmful substances; for this reason, vaping is subject to the same UNHQ restrictions.

According to WHO, a UN agency based in Geneva, tobacco damages nearly every organ in the body, causing cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, reduced fertility, weakened immunity and premature death.

• Tobacco kills more than 7 million people each year, including over 1.6 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke.
• All forms of tobacco use are harmful, and there is no safe level of exposure.
• Around 80% of the world’s 1.2 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries
• Nicotine is highly addictive and harmful, particularly for children, adolescents and young adults whose brains are still developing.

The tobacco epidemic, says WHO, is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced, responsible for over 7 million deaths annually as well as disability and long-term suffering from tobacco-related diseases.

Tobacco use is a major risk factor for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, over 20 different types or subtypes of cancer, and many other debilitating health conditions.

All forms of tobacco use are harmful, and there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco. Cigarette smoking is the most common form of tobacco use worldwide. Other tobacco products include waterpipe tobacco, cigars, cigarillos, heated tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco, pipe tobacco, bidis and kreteks, and smokeless tobacco products.

Nicotine is highly addictive and harmful, particularly for children, adolescents and young adults whose brains are still developing. Nicotine exposure during adolescence can affect brain development, including impacts on attention and learning.

Early nicotine use can increase the likelihood of long-term dependence and future use of other nicotine and tobacco products. Nicotine use also increases cardiovascular risk, the WHO warned.

“Around 80% of the 1.2 billion tobacco users worldwide live in low- and middle-income countries (2), where the burden of tobacco-related illness and death is heaviest. Tobacco use contributes to poverty by diverting household spending from basic needs such as food and shelter to tobacco. This spending behaviour is difficult to curb because tobacco is very addictive”.

The economic costs of tobacco use are substantial and include significant health care costs for treating the diseases caused by tobacco use, as well as the lost human capital that results from tobacco-attributable morbidity and mortality.

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Indigenous Peoples' organisations have called for better support for their meaningful participation at COP 17 and across this year’s Rio Conventions gatherings. Credit: Anastasia Rodopoulou/IISD/ENB

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 18 2026 (IPS)

Indigenous communities have long advocated for the environment through the lens of their traditional knowledge systems and cultures. But much more work needs to be done to translate their presence into influence.

A new report from Nia Tero, an international nonprofit that aims to strengthen Indigenous guardianship over ancestral lands and waters, examines the factors that have limited Indigenous Peoples’ influence in global environmental decision-making.

The report, “Beyond Fragmentation: Advancing Coherence, Equity, and Indigenous Leadership Across the Rio Conventions”, was formally launched at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), or COP17, currently underway in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, during a side event focused on strengthening coherence across the Rio Conventions.

The UNCCD is one of three climate frameworks that emerged from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It, along with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is one of the landmark global conventions that address environmental crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification in the modern age.

This year, all three conventions will be hosting climate conferences, starting with UNCCD COP17, which makes it an appropriate occasion to launch the report, according to Margarita Mora, Chief Programmes Officer at Nia Tero.

The goal of the report, Mora told Inter Press Service, is to “encourage Parties, UN bodies, and funders to better support Indigenous Peoples’ meaningful participation here and across this year’s Rio Conventions gatherings”.

Margarita Mora, Chief Programmes Officer, Nia Tero. Credit: Nia Tero

“Launching the report at COP17 helps draw greater attention to the UNCCD, which remains the least known of the three Rio Conventions, and starts a conversation we can carry into the climate and biodiversity COPs later this year,” said Minnie Degawan of the Kankanaey-Igorot, an indigenous group from northern Luzon, Philippines, and the Managing Director, FSC Indigenous Foundation.

The report examines Indigenous Peoples’ recognition and participation in the Rio Conventions. Climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation are all interconnected. These all impact lands and territories, which are “central to Indigenous Peoples’ identity, cultures, and ways of life,” Degawan, the report’s author, told Inter Press Service.

Drawing on expert interviews and surveys with participants, the report reveals what it describes as a fragmented response to these issues. While environmental harms are interconnected, they are governed through their frameworks, institutions and funding streams. This siloed approach to the Rio Conventions presents challenges to Indigenous Peoples. Representatives may be expected to attend multiple conferences where they discuss related issues through different institutional structures. Thus, they address topics like safeguards, territorial governance, and traditional knowledge separately.

Minnie Degawan of the Kankanaey-Igorot, an indigenous group from northern Luzon, Philippines, and the Managing Director, FSC Indigenous Foundation. Credit: SC Indigenous Foundation

The recognition of Indigenous Peoples has seen considerable progress since the Rio Conventions were first introduced. Traditional leaders and activists have advocated for the formal acknowledgement of Indigenous rights in these climate frameworks, their efforts spanning decades. The report notes that this recognition is not consistent across the frameworks.

Neither the UNFCCC nor the UNCCD explicitly referenced Indigenous Peoples or their rights in their original texts. However, subsequent decisions, provisions and ongoing advocacy have strengthened the recognition of Indigenous Peoples, their rights and their participation within the two frameworks. On the other hand, the CBD directly references Indigenous and local communities in its original framework, acknowledging their dependence on biological resources in accordance with traditional knowledge that is relevant to biodiversity efforts.

Since then, Indigenous people’s engagement within the Rio Conventions can be measured in a few ways, including a broader recognition of them as stakeholders within these processes, participation in formal and informal conferences, and a recognition of traditional knowledge in addressing environmental challenges.

While the visibility and participation of Indigenous representatives has increased over the years, this does not necessarily translate into meaningful influence when it comes to decision-making processes. The decisions in these frameworks are largely determined by the States, with insufficient input from Indigenous Peoples at these conferences. Indigenous Peoples still attend climate conferences as observers, with limited influence in formal text negotiations. The influence should “[go] beyond having Indigenous Peoples in the room”, Degawan said.

As she elaborates in the report, Indigenous Peoples’ participation in text negotiation is somewhat limited. Most of their involvement in climate conferences takes place in side events or informal dialogues. This is ironic, given that the report was launched at a side event. Structural barriers such as language constraints, accreditation issues, travel and visa issues and insufficient funding only further limit opportunities.

This is also indicative of a wider issue of the cost of participation. Indigenous representatives are expected to attend multiple meetings, which require extensive investments and resources. This is in service to increasing their visibility, but at present it creates a risk of burnout and a concentration of knowledge and expertise among what is a relatively small group of experienced negotiators and technical experts.

All of these factors emphasise the need to improve conditions for Indigenous Peoples to enact meaningful influence in climate discussions. “It means creating the conditions for Indigenous Peoples to actually shape decisions – from setting priorities and contributing to negotiating texts before they are finalised to influencing how commitments are implemented and financed,” Degawan said.

What Degawan and the report observe is that representatives can build on existing benchmarks within the Rio Conventions and identify where their participation has been stronger, so they can apply these strategies across all three. This would mean building greater coherence among existing structures so that different institutions and actors work together in a way that reflects the interconnected nature of environmental challenges and the realities Indigenous Peoples experience. For their part, Nia Tero are dedicating their efforts to supporting coordinated Indigenous engagement during UNCCD COP17.

“The goal is not to create new benchmarks, but to ensure that progress in one convention can help raise the standard for meaningful Indigenous Peoples’ participation across the others,” Degawan said.

“The real measure of progress is whether participation translates into meaningful influence over negotiations and decisions affecting Indigenous Peoples and ancestral territories. Full, meaningful inclusion of Indigenous Peoples at this and the following Rio Conventions COPs will put the international community – not just Indigenous Peoples – in the best position to achieve humanity’s shared goals for a healthy, prosperous planet,” said Mora.

The report recommends that the convention secretariats move beyond making rhetorical commitments and take practical steps, including improving Indigenous Peoples’ access to negotiating spaces and providing them with more opportunities to input into negotiating texts. These bodies should also strengthen safeguards to ensure Indigenous participation mechanisms are not treated in isolation.

Progress in their participation across the Rio Conventions warrants reflection on Indigenous Peoples’ representation in other frameworks. Within the context of broader structural changes, such as those introduced under the UN80 initiative, there have been questions of consolidating mandates in the name of increasing efficiency in the UN system, which should serve every member of the international community.

Degawan warned that Indigenous representatives are concerned over a potential weakening of the hard-won gains in recognition and formal spaces within the UN system. Any reforms should therefore, she said, build on these gains rather than roll them back.

The full report is available at www.niatero.org/RioReport

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

By Stella Paul
NAIROBI, Aug 18 2026 (IPS)

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

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

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

A Global Review Reveals the Gap Between Commitment and Delivery

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wildlife, Technology and Emerging Governance Challenges

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

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

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

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

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

Business Accountability Under Greater Scrutiny

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

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

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

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

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

Finance Emerges as a Central Political Challenge

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

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

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

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

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

Youth and Gender Advocates Push for More Inclusive Governance

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

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

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

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

Looking Ahead to COP17

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

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

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

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Participants in traditional dress take part in a cultural welcome at the UNCCD COP17 venue in Ulaanbaatar on Aug. 17, 2026, highlighting the cultural diversity of communities whose livelihoods are closely linked to rangelands. Credit: UN photo

By Kizito Makoye
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Aug 17 2026 (IPS)

After moving more than 6,000 km across Eurasia, the Silk Road Caravan has reached Mongolia with stories from pastoralists whose livelihoods are increasingly threatened by drought, degraded land and shrinking access to grazing areas.

Since leaving Türkiye in May, the thud of horse hooves has echoed through landscapes in the Russian Federation, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and China. Along the way, its riders met pastoralists adapting to a harsher climate and deteriorating rangelands. Now their experiences have converged in Ulaanbaatar, where the caravan’s final leg coincides with the opening of COP17 of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Governments, scientists, financial institutions, businesses and civil society have gathered there to address the pressures on the world’s drylands.

The journey has brought an old question into the spotlight: can global efforts to restore rangelands succeed without the knowledge of the people who have managed them for generations?

Delegates in traditional attire gather at the UNCCD COP17 venue in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on Aug. 17, 2026, as the conference brings together pastoralists, Indigenous representatives and policymakers to discuss land degradation, drought and rangeland restoration. Credit: UN photo

For centuries, caravans travelling the ancient Silk Road carried goods, ideas and cultures between distant civilisations. This one has carried stories of communities trying to keep up their land productive and their livelihoods intact as drought and degradation spread across drylands from Eurasia to Africa.

Its arrival on the eve of COP17 highlights the conference’s challenge of turning commitments to land restoration into action on the ground.

Land Degradation

Land degradation and drought cost the global economy USD 900 billion annually and affect 40% of the world’s land and 3.2 billion people. Droughts have increased by almost one-third since 2000 and generate at least USD 300 billion in annual losses, according to UN data.

For Tanzania’s pastoralist communities, Neema Seki, an Indigenous women and youth advocate connected to the Pastoralist Women’s Council, urged world leaders in Ulaanbaatar to guarantee land security for pastoral communities.

“The most rapidly changing aspect is access to land. This by implication affects everything else in pastoral livelihoods. Without land tenure security, livestock health is impacted, mobility is affected, and family food security is affected,” she told IPS.

Her warning is central to the COP17 debate as land degradation increasingly threatens pastoralist women’s rights, livelihoods and mobility.

“In a pastoralist setting, women play a significant role that is oftentimes not stated. If livestock health deteriorates, women are mostly responsible for feeding them, bringing water from far distances to water the ailing or weak livestock,” Seki said.

She added that restrictions on pastoral livelihoods can also create a gendered burden that national climate and conservation policies rarely capture.

“Another aspect is a reality that when the pastoral livelihoods are dismantled by restrictions on access to resources, women oftentimes remain in the land to suffer while men are able to go into cities to look for work while women remain with children at home.”

Mongolian ceremonial guards stand beside the national flag during the opening of UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar on Aug. 17, 2026. The conference is focused on accelerating global action on land restoration and drought resilience. Credit: UN photo

That experience is echoed thousands of kilometres away in Niger, where Abarchi Harouna, a pastoralist leader with the association Nodde Nooto and co-chair of the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists for West and Central Africa, argues that mobility itself is an environmental management tool.

“Mobility is essential to pastoralism because it allows livestock keepers to search for water, pasture and salt wherever they are available,” Harouna told IPS.

For nomadic pastoralists such as Tanzania’s Maasai, restricting traditional migration corridors directly affects livelihoods.

“When governments restrict access to traditional routes and water points, nomadic pastoralists are deprived of pasture, water and salt,” he said.

“This can lead to a pastoral crisis, with significant livestock deaths and even conflicts between farmers and herders.”

Relevance in Mongolia

Similar pressures are evident in Mongolia, where pastoralism is key to the economy, yet nearly 77 percent of the country’s land suffers from degradation. Rangelands cover about 70 percent of its territory and support the livelihoods of roughly one-third of the population, leaving pastoral communities exposed to climate shocks.

Rangelands cover 54% of the Earth’s land surface, support about 2 billion people and provide nearly 70% of global livestock feed and one-sixth of the world’s food. Yet up to half are degraded, particularly in dry regions facing mounting climate pressures.

Harouna challenges a persistent narrative that pastoralism itself is responsible for land degradation.

“Livestock keepers are never responsible for land degradation. This narrative is incorrect. Livestock mobility ensures the health of pastures.”

He points instead to the ecological functions performed by mobile herds.

“Animals carry the seeds of grasses and woody plants from one place to another, thereby enriching biological diversity.”

Manure, he said, fertilises soils, while trampling can loosen compacted ground.

“The knowledge of livestock keepers helps governments and all stakeholders restore degraded land and improve resilience to climate change.

For Seki, a similar knowledge system exists in Tanzania but is increasingly undermined by government policies.

“One of the greatest traditional knowledge practices by pastoralists which is being wrongly discouraged by government policies is pastoral mobility,” she said.

The implications extend to a younger generation that, despite the pressures, has not necessarily abandoned pastoralism.

“Young pastoralists still see pastoralism as the best livelihood system. They are, however, daily confronting the ugliness caused by state-restrictive policies and the climate crisis,” Seki said.

The Economics of Waiting

COP17 organisers are seeking to frame restoration not just as an environmental obligation but also as an economic investment.

The conference estimates that about USD 355 billion is needed every year to combat land degradation and drought, compared with the current investment of roughly USD 77 billion. That leaves an annual financing gap of USD 278 billion.

The private sector currently contributes only around six percent of global finance for land restoration and drought resilience.

Closing that gap will be central to the negotiations.

The conference will explore ways of reducing investment risks and encouraging businesses, financial institutions and governments to finance regenerative landscapes. An initiative linked to the COP has recorded commitments of more than USD 9 billion across more than 210 million hectares.

The argument for investment is strengthened by the potential returns: every dollar invested in drought resilience can generate returns of up to USD 10, while some nature-based solutions can generate benefits many times their cost.

UNCCD Executive Secretary Yasmine Fouad has described the challenge bluntly: “The world does not lack solutions; the challenge is taking them to scale.”

From Commitments to Measurable Results

Mongolia’s Prime Minister N. Uchral has called for a shift “from talk to action, from targets to implementation, and from commitments to measurable results”.

The conference comes at a time when multilateral cooperation faces pressure and the world’s environmental crises grow increasingly interconnected. Land degradation affects food production. Drought intensifies water insecurity. Loss of vegetation contributes to biodiversity decline. Livelihood losses can drive migration and deepen competition over scarce resources.

As the first of the three Rio Convention COPs being held in 2026, COP17 offers an opportunity to connect land policy with negotiations on biodiversity and climate change later in the year.

It is also taking place during the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, giving pastoral communities a prominent place in the global policy calendar.

Seki argues that women and young people should be recognised as custodians of knowledge and resources.

“Women and young people play a great role in the pastoral system. This role extends to forest stewardship and resource management.”

Yet, she said, traditional knowledge often gets sidelined.

“Both women and young people are discouraged by state policies and conservation policies from using traditional knowledge for ecology and nature sustainability.”

COP17’s agenda includes a proposed policy framework on rangelands and pastoralists and the launch of a Rangelands Flagship Initiative aimed at attracting long-term investment into sustainable rangeland management and pastoral livelihoods.

For Harouna, restrictions on livestock mobility potentially affect agriculture, pastoral production and the environment. He warns that declining soil fertility could trigger dismal crop yields, while degraded grazing areas could foster invasive pests, consequently affecting livestock and reducing milk and meat supplies.

Exchange of Knowledge

The Silk Road Caravan’s final journey across Mongolia will take participants from the Gobi Desert to the country’s central forests and grasslands. They are expected to meet nomadic herder families, researchers, local authorities and pastoral cooperatives and visit restoration projects.

The challenge for delegates is to ensure the caravan’s lessons continue beyond the conference.

For dryland communities in Tanzania, Niger and Mongolia, restoration can determine whether livestock survive, families remain on their land, food production continues and ecosystems endure.

As the conference opens under the theme “Restoring Land. Restoring Hope”, its success may depend on whether the afflicted communities living on vulnerable landscapes receive the space, resources and recognition they need to restore and manage them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salvator Nkurunziza, UN Women’s Representative in Sudan

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

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

Fabrizia Falcione, UNFPA’s Representative in Sudan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A poster depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as wanted by the International Criminal Court is displayed in a corridor of the European Parliament in Brussels, June 2026. Credit: Frédéric Pétry/HansLucas via AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Aug 17 2026 (IPS)

In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio pledged to ‘dismantle’ the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Trump administration intends to pressure states into quitting the court, threatening sanctions, travel bans, visa restrictions and ‘increased scrutiny’ of states that receive its funding. At stake is the court’s ability to stand with victims of the gravest of human rights crimes.

Challenging impunity

Established in 2002 following years of civil society advocacy, the ICC prosecutes atrocities, including crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes, when national or regional courts can’t or won’t. It prosecutes individuals, and national leaders enjoy no immunity. It has secured several convictions, including of warlords from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali and Rwanda. Among ongoing cases, former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte awaits trial on crimes against humanity charges. Civil society plays a key role in collecting evidence. Filipino women-led groups, for example, have documented thousands of extrajudicial killings.

The court has 125 members, but the USA is among several powerful states, including China, India, Israel and Russia, that have never joined. US hostility intensified in 2020, when the ICC opened an investigation into crimes against humanity and war crimes in Afghanistan, including those committed by US forces.

A current US campaign could merit the court’s attention. In the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, the US military is bombing boats it claims are being used by drug cartels to smuggle fentanyl and other illicit substances. It started the strikes as a way of building pressure on then Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, but has continued after US forces invaded Venezuela and abducted him, now seemingly with the purpose of communicating US strength and contempt for international rules.

US forces have killed over 200 people. All are civilians, leaving little doubt the strikes are illegal under international law. Last October, a group of UN human rights experts concluded that the strikes amount to extrajudicial executions. UN human rights chief Volker Türk called for an investigation, saying he believed the campaign violated international law. The USA responded by lining up with Israel, North Korea and Russia to oppose Türk’s second term.

The victims include nationals of Colombia, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago, all ICC members. The ICC could investigate any strikes carried out in member states’ territorial waters or against vessels registered with them.

Defending Netanyahu

Donald Trump is also determined to defend his prize ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s said as much, undermining Rubio’s lofty rhetoric about sovereignty. In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for crimes against humanity and war crimes against Netanyahu, former defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas commander Mohammed Deif, later confirmed to have been killed by Israel. Israel doesn’t recognise the court, but the warrants stand because Palestine does.

Netanyahu’s warrant is back in the headlines because he’s due to visit New York for the annual high-level opening of the UN General Assembly in September. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called for his arrest, but the Trump administration has confirmed it will ignore the warrant. This may have fuelled the latest offensive, which goes further than the Trump administration’s 2025 decision to impose sanctions on nine ICC judges and officials. Early in his second presidency, Trump issued an executive order that declared a ‘national emergency’, arguing the court was a threat to the USA and Israel, and pledging sanctions against anyone who takes part in its investigations. The order was used to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Fearing criminalisation, US-based organisations may feel pressured to end cooperation with the ICC. Last year, two US-based civil society organisations pulled out of the ICC’s annual meeting. Civil society is however fighting back. In July, two US groups filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing the sanctions violate constitutional free speech protections.

International system under attack

The Trump administration’s attack on the ICC is part of its broader assault on the international system, and particularly its human rights functions. It’s withdrawing from some bodies, defunding others, trying to bend others to its will, forming alternatives it controls, such as the Board of Peace, and showing outright hostility towards those seen to stand in its way.

The USA isn’t the only one. Three military-run Sahel allies – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – have begun their withdrawal from the ICC, a process that takes a year. They previously quit the Economic Community of West African States, including its Community Court of Justice, leaving victims of human rights atrocities amid jihadist insurgency with no international routes to justice.

Venezuela set the same course under Maduro. Last December, parliament voted to repeal the law ratifying the Rome Statute, the treaty through which states accept the court’s jurisdiction. That path hasn’t changed under US-compliant Interim President Delcy Rodriguez, whose government recently declared its withdrawal ‘irrevocable’. The US government has welcomed the decision, which will deny justice both to victims of Maduro’s repression and the families of Venezuelans killed in boat strikes.

Others have rallied to the court’s defence. A European Union spokesperson said the bloc ‘stands firm’ behind it. Hungary, which under right-wing nationalist Viktor Orbán had committed to pulling out, reversed that decision under its new government.

Time to rally round

The court faces this onslaught while leaderless. On 24 July, member states voted to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan following disciplinary proceedings triggered by a sexual abuse complaint from a former staff member. It’s vital that his replacement be a strong and independent leader who can continue the court’s work.

The ICC is under attack by the Trump administration because of its promise to hold the powerful to account. Its member states must defend the principle that no one is above the law by refusing to bow to US pressure.

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

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

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Credit: Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 2026 (IPS)

Pakistan, one of few South Asian countries to oscillate between democratic governments and authoritarian regimes, is cracking down on journalists, including foreign correspondents covering the political situation in the world’s fifth most populous nation, with an estimated population of over 250 million people and ranking behind India, China, the United States, and Indonesia.

According to one report, Pakistan is technically under a nominal civilian coalition government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, but political analysts and experts describe the actual state as being under “constitutional militarism” or deep military dominance, with the military establishment holding sweeping authority

The government’s crackdown of journalists has triggered criticisms from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists.

Beh Lih Yih, CPJ’s Asia-Pacific regional director told Inter Press Service (IPS): Pakistan is tarnishing its own international reputation by restricting journalists from reporting from large parts of the country.

“The latest attempt to censor media coverage highlights the deteriorating situation of press freedom in the country, which remains one of the most dangerous places for journalists, with high numbers of media killings and enforced disappearances”.

“Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government must withdraw the restrictive measures and immediately stop targeting journalists, whether through detention or questioning. Pakistan must uphold its constitutional and international obligations to protect press freedom if it wants to be taken seriously as a democracy.”

According to the New York Times August 10, the government has imposed new restrictions that require all journalists working for foreign news media to seek permission to travel outside Pakistan’s three major cities.

The rules come after a surge of news media, covering elections in the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir, a disputed region where protesters have been campaigning since early June for more political autonomy.

The Times said reporters in Pakistan have in recent years faced increased censorship and financial pressure, including frozen bank accounts and the suspension of government advertising , forced removal, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment, according to journalists and human rights groups.

In August 2026, UNESCO did not issue a specific statement or direct criticism regarding Pakistan’s latest media restrictions. Instead, a major pushback against Pakistan’s newly enacted Foreign Media Facilitation Guidelines 2026 came from press freedom organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), and Amnesty International.

Meanwhile, the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists has called on Pakistani authorities to withdraw draconian new guidelines requiring journalists working for international media outlets to obtain authorization before reporting outside Islamabad, Karachi, or Lahore, in a move likely to censor coverage of unrest in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The guidelines, reviewed by CPJ, require international and Pakistani journalists who contribute to foreign media organizations, including social media and web-based platforms, to obtain a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the information ministry for “official assignments, especially for work outside Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.”

“The Foreign Media Facilitation Guidelines open the door for Pakistani authorities to further restrict international media coverage, prevent journalists from reporting freely outside Pakistan’s three main cities, and risk exposing them to administrative retaliation,” said CPJ Afghanistan and Pakistan Representative Waliullah Rahmani. “These guidelines mark yet another appalling blow to press freedom in Pakistan, where journalists are already facing an intense crackdown, particularly those reporting on unrest in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.”

The five-page guidelines were introduced days after the government criticized international reporting on elections and protests in Kashmir and accused Al Jazeera of engaging in “yellow journalism,” a term for sensational reporting. Access to Al Jazeera’s website has been restricted.

Authorities can suspend or revoke journalists’ accreditation or media outlets’ for “acts against the ideology, sovereignty, security or public order of Pakistan,” the guidelines say.

Authorities have banned coverage of protests demanding electoral reform in Kashmir, after international outlets reported on police brutality during clashes with demonstrators, and suspended mobile and internet services. International media say that at least 40 people died ahead of the vote, which began on July 27, according to CPJ.

CPJ said the information ministry did not respond to emailed request for comment.

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Sailing container ship. Credit: Unsplash/Kinsey Wang

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 13 2026 (IPS)

Global goods trade reached approximately USD 13.7 trillion in the first half of 2026, up 12.5 percent from the same period in 2025, while services grew 10.5 percent, together adding USD 2 trillion to global trade. While these figures point to continued expansion, much of the increase reflects rising prices rather than stronger trade volumes.

According to UNCTAD’s Division on International Trade and Commodities, disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz have strained energy supplies, increased fuel costs, disrupted maritime logistics, and raised production costs across a wide range of industries. Prices for traded goods rose 3.6 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, accelerating to 5.1 percent in the second quarter. Although merchandise trade continues to expand, UNCTAD’s nowcast, its data and model-driven predictions of global trade over period growth, estimates that trade by value will grow by 4.2 percent in the third quarter of 2026 compared with the same period last year, suggesting that higher prices continue to account for a significant share of trade growth.

This inflation is driven by a roughly 160-day disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, where 25 percent of the seaborne oil trade, 20 percent of global liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), about one-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade, and significant petrochemical supply chains have been almost completely shut off from maritime trade flows. According to the Strait of Hormuz Tracker, roughly 7 ships have transited on August 7, 11.7 percent of traffic compared to normal pre-crisis levels: limiting daily throughput to 1.2 million compared to pre-levels of 10.3 million.

According to Freightos, the cost of a 40-foot equivalent unit (FEU) on a China/East Asia to North America East Coast voyage was roughly USD 9,100 in July, up from USD 4,300 in May. Similarly, on a China/East Asia to North America West Coast voyage it cost USD 7,550 in July, up from USD 2,828 in May.

This drastic price volatility for a FEU reflects the consequences of heightened fuel costs. Both the passages mentioned do not go near the Strait of Hormuz, both thousands of miles away. Yet, the effects of a disruption to the Strait cascade across global shipping. Logistics is the backbone behind every industry, with shipping a FEU becoming more expensive by more than double in multiple passages, the price of the items within those FEU also must rise in price to cover the costs.

The effects are particularly evident in East Asia, the world’s manufacturing hub and the center of the global semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) supply chain, where demand for AI infrastructure, digital technologies, and electric mobility continues to accelerate. According to UNCTAD, trade in critical minerals increased 38 percent during the first quarter of 2026 compared with a year earlier, and semiconductor trade rose 25 percent, batteries 15 percent, information and communication technology (ICT) products 14 percent, and electric vehicles 11 percent.

Yet despite being geographically distant from the Strait of Hormuz, semiconductor fabrication facilities in Taiwan and South Korea remain heavily dependent on reliable global shipping networks, affordable energy, and petrochemical inputs. As higher fuel prices increase the cost of transporting components between suppliers and manufacturers, and rising electricity, natural gas, and petrochemical prices raise production costs, the value of these high-tech exports continues to climb—even when the volume of goods traded grows far more slowly.

The Strait of Hormuz disruption demonstrates the interconnectedness of the global maritime system. A constriction in this strategic maritime chokepoint raises oil and LNG prices, increasing transportation and industrial energy costs, heightening manufacturing expenses, and ultimately raising the price of internationally traded goods. Consequently, manufacturers in East Asia, importers in North America, and consumers around the world all experience the effects of a disruption occurring thousands of miles away. As these costs accumulate across increasingly interconnected supply chains, the nominal value of global trade rises, even when underlying trade volumes and real economic output grow much more slowly, illustrating that higher trade values do not necessarily represent stronger economic performance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I have spent my life on an island. From the granite hills of Mahé, one can watch the sun rise over an ocean that has fed, protected and defined the Seychellois people for centuries.

James Alix Michel

The horizon no longer glows only with the soft light of dawn. Across Canada, Europe and the Americas, it has glimmered this year with the harsh, reddish hue of wildfire smoke. “The Earth is burning” is no longer a slogan. It is a description of an ordinary Tuesday in Ontario, or a July afternoon in Barcelona.

Consider what has actually happened these past months. Canada has watched more than three million hectares of forest burn this year — an area roughly the size of Belgium — prompting the government to declare its highest level of national fire preparedness and to deploy its armed forces alongside thousands of firefighters. In northwestern Ontario, a single blaze, the Thunder Bay 36 fire, has become the largest ever recorded in that province’s history. Researchers who studied the season found that nearly all of that destruction, some 94 percent of it, occurred in just five weeks, as heat and drought converged.

Across the Atlantic, the story repeats with a different accent. This past June was the hottest ever recorded in western Europe, and the world’s oceans registered their warmest June surface temperatures on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Spain’s Fabra Observatory in Barcelona logged 40.5°C on 8 July, its hottest reading in more than a century of measurements. Germany saw 252 weather stations break all-time records. France recorded its hottest day ever, with a national average temperature of 30°C, and declared a red heat alert across 58 of its departments — nearly the entire country.

I did not grow up believing a nation the size of France could be placed, almost in its entirety, under a single heat emergency. This year, it happened.

In the Middle East the temperature this year has exceeded 52 degrees.

None of this is accidental, and none of it is isolated. It is one planet, one atmosphere, one ocean, responding as any system does when energy keeps being added to it.

I am not a scientist. But I have spent decades in rooms with scientists, diplomats, fishermen and island elders, and I have learned to translate what they know into language anyone can use. Burning oil, coal and gas fills our atmosphere with gases that trap heat close to the Earth, much as a blanket traps warmth against the body. The thicker that blanket becomes, the more aggressively a hotter atmosphere pulls moisture from soil and vegetation — what scientists call rising vapor pressure deficit, and what the rest of us might simply call atmospheric thirst. A thirsty atmosphere turns living forests into dry tinder faster than rainfall can replace what has been lost. At the same time, this extra heat is disturbing the great rivers of wind that once reliably carried cooling weather across a region and moved on. Increasingly, they stall, and heat domes settle over a country for weeks rather than days. When millions of hectares then burn, they release carbon stored for decades, adding still more heat-trapping gas to the air. Fire feeds warming, and warming feeds fire.

It is a loop that does not correct itself. We must correct it.

Small island states are not spectators to this crisis; we are its early warning system. Seychelles does not burn as Ontario or Andalusia does, but our coral reefs bleach and die in ocean heat that barely registers as news elsewhere, and our fishing communities feel shifts in current and temperature years before those shifts appear in a headline.

This is why, a decade ago, my government joined nearly two hundred nations in Paris in agreeing to hold the rise in global temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue every effort to limit it to 1.5°C. That agreement entered into force in November 2016. It remains, imperfect as it is, the clearest promise the nations of the world have ever made to one another about the only atmosphere we share.

We are not keeping that promise quickly enough. Scientific trackers that once projected we would not cross 1.5°C of warming until the middle of this century now estimate, per Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, that we could cross that threshold as early as 2029.

That is not a distant date. Children born this year will not yet be teenagers when it arrives.

I refuse fatalism, because fatalism has never protected a single reef, forest or coastline. What the science asks of us is not mysterious: cut greenhouse gas emissions sharply and immediately, retire dependence on coal, oil and gas far faster than current pledges allow, and invest seriously in the resilience of communities already living through fire seasons, heatwaves and rising seas.

It also asks something specific of leadership. Every government that signed the Paris Agreement carries a responsibility to honor it not as rhetoric for a summit stage, but as a commitment kept in national budgets, energy policy and disaster preparedness. And it asks something of every citizen: to demand of our leaders the urgency the data requires, not merely the urgency that is politically convenient.

The forests burning in Canada, the heat scorching Spain and France, and the reefs bleaching in the Indian Ocean are not separate stories. They are chapters of the same story, and we are the ones still writing its ending.

The Earth is burning. Whether it keeps burning, or whether we finally act as one species sharing one planet, remains, for now, our choice to make.

The author served as President of the Republic of Seychelles from 2004 to 2016 and is a longtime advocate for ocean conservation and the blue economy.

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Increased longevity presents both new opportunities and significant challenges for individuals, families, healthcare systems, and societies. Credit: Shutterstock

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Aug 10 2026 (IPS)

Upon reaching the age of 80, men and women are living longer than ever before. 

These gains in longevity among octogenarians represent a remarkable demographic achievement. The additional years of life provide new opportunities for older adults and their families while also presenting important social, economic, and healthcare challenges for societies.

In 1950, the global life expectancy at age 80 was 4.8 additional years for men and 5.3 additional years for women. Over the following decades, these figures increased steadily, reaching an estimated 7.7 years for men and 9.1 years for women in 2026. This upward trend is expected to continue, with life expectancy at age 80 projected to increase to 8.8 additional years for men and 10.1 additional years for women by 2050 (Figure 1). 

Source: United Nations.

Behind these global averages, however, lies considerable variation among countries. More developed countries, such as Japan and France, have relatively high life expectancy at age 80, with men expected to live an additional 10 years and women approximately 12 years. In contrast, less developed countries, including Nigeria, Niger, and Mali, are at the lower end of the distribution, where both men and women who reach age 80 can expect to live about 5 additional years (Figure 2).

Source: United Nations.

The proportion of the world’s population surviving to age 80 and older has increased steadily over recent decades. In 1950, approximately 0.6% of the global population was 80 years or older. By 2026, that proportion had doubled to 1.2% and is projected to increase further to 2.1% by 2050 (Table 1).

Source: United Nations.

Although octogenarians continue to represent a relatively small share of the world’s population, their numbers and proportions are increasing rapidly, reflecting continued improvements in survival and the ongoing ageing of populations worldwide. 

The proportion of octogenarians in a population varies widely across countries. The highest percentages are found in more developed countries, while the lowest are seen in less developed countries. In 2026, for example, 11% of Japan’s population and 8.1% of Italy’s population are aged 80 years and older. In contrast, the corresponding proportions are 1.1% in India and 0.3% in Nigeria.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), although genetics influence certain aspects of health among people aged 80 years and older, most differences in health outcomes are shaped by physical and social environments, as well as personal characteristics such as sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. 

Reaching advanced age in good health depends to a great extent on maintaining healthy habits throughout life. These include eating a balanced diet, engaging in regular physical activity, avoiding tobacco and drug use, limiting alcohol consumption, and maintaining strong social connections.

The growing prevalence of chronic diseases and the increasing demand for long-term care have important implications for governments, healthcare systems, and families. Meeting the needs of a rapidly expanding population of octogenarians will require increased investments in healthcare, long-term care services, and age-friendly communities

Together, these health-promoting behaviors help reduce the risk of chronic diseases, preserve physical and cognitive functioning, and delay the need for long-term care, thereby improving both longevity and quality of life in old age. 

However, many people in their 80s face significant challenges, including managing chronic health conditions, accessing long-term care, maintaining financial security, and coping with social isolation.

The proportion of adults aged 80 years or older living alone varies considerably across countries, reflecting differences in cultural norms, family structures, income levels, and public support systems. In many developing countries, fewer than 10% of octogenarians live alone, whereas in high-income countries the corresponding proportion typically ranges from 30% to 50%.

Older adults also frequently experience ageism, with stereotypes portraying them as frail, dependent, or a burden to society. Such attitudes can lead to discrimination and may influence public policies in ways that limit opportunities for healthy and active ageing.

Although some octogenarians remain physically and mentally capable well into their 80s, functioning at levels comparable to people decades younger, most experience some decline in physical and cognitive abilities and live with at least one chronic health condition.

The growing prevalence of chronic diseases and the increasing demand for long-term care have important implications for governments, healthcare systems, and families. Meeting the needs of a rapidly expanding population of octogenarians will require increased investments in healthcare, long-term care services, and age-friendly communities.

At the same time, caring for older adults raises important questions about the appropriate balance of responsibility between governments and families. As populations continue to age, determining how these responsibilities should be shared will become an increasingly important policy challenge. 

While governments often expect families to provide the primary care for their ageing relatives, families believe that governments should provide the financial resources, services, and the support needed to meet those care needs. This continuing debate underscores the importance of developing sustainable policies that strike an appropriate balance between public responsibility with family caregiving.

A comprehensive public health response must address the diverse experiences and needs of people aged 80 years and older. Supportive physical and social environments enable octogenarians to continue engaging in activities that are meaningful to them despite age-related declines in physical and cognitive functioning. Such environments include safe and accessible public buildings, age-friendly transportation systems, affordable housing, and community-based health and social care services. 

When adults aged 80 years and older are able to spend their later years in good health and within supportive environments, they can maintain independence, participate actively in family and community life, and enjoy a quality of life comparable to that of younger adults. In contrast, when these additional years are marked by physical frailty, cognitive impairment, and mental health challenges, the consequences extend beyond the individual to affect families, healthcare systems, and society as a whole.

Many octogenarians face complex health and lifestyle challenges arising from multiple chronic conditions, functional decline, and age-related impairments. 

Globally, many adults aged 80 years and older live with a combination of chronic physical illnesses, cognitive impairment, geriatric syndromes, and psychological changes. These often overlapping and interrelated challenges require coordinated, person-centered health and social care that emphasizes disease prevention, continuity of care, multidisciplinary collaboration, and sustained support for both older adults and their caregivers.

At age 80, the major global health challenges for both men and women include heart disease (such as heart attacks and heart failure), dementia (including Alzheimer’s disease), and geriatric syndromes. These syndromes encompass a range of age-related conditions, including frailty, osteoporosis, hearing and vision impairment, urinary incontinence, and an increased risk of falls.

Falls are among the leading causes of injury, disability, hospitalization, loss of independence, and injury-related death among older adults. Age-related loss of muscle strength and balance, vision impairment, medication side effects, cognitive decline, and neurological disorders all contribute to an elevated risk of falling.  

Although many medical conditions affect both sexes, biological differences, lifestyle factors, and women’s longer life expectancy contribute to distinct health profiles for men and women at age 80. 

For women, the principal challenges at age 80 often involve maintaining mobility, preventing fractures resulting from osteoporosis and bone fragility, and coping with social isolation. Because women generally outlive men, they are more likely to be widowed, live alone, and experience loneliness, financial insecurity, and the need for long-term support. 

In addition, women account for a larger share of dementia cases, including Alzheimer’s disease, owing in part to their greater longevity, making cognitive decline an especially important health concern in advanced age. 

Despite these serious challenges, many older adults maintain a positive outlook and a sense of humor.  One observation, often attributed to various older speakers, captures that spirit: “People tell you that you’ll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don’t tell you is that you won’t miss it very much.”

For male octogenarians, the leading health risks often include fatal acute cardiovascular events, metabolic diseases, and serious psychological crises. In many populations, men in this age group also experience higher rates of certain cancers and type 2 diabetes than women of the same age. Among the cancers most commonly diagnosed in older men are prostate and bladder cancer. 

Although depression is diagnosed more frequently in women, men aged 80 years and older have substantially higher suicide rates. These deaths often occur in the context of bereavement following the loss of a spouse, declining physical health, social isolation, chronic pain, or a diminished sense of identity and purpose associated with major life transitions.

Another important issue facing many people aged 80 years and older is their ability to continue driving. Most countries do not impose a mandatory upper age limit for driving. Instead, they require periodic medical evaluations, vision testing, and more frequent driver’s license renewals to determine whether older adults remain fit to drive safely. These measures seek to balance the independence and mobility that driving provides with the need to protect public safety.

A notable exception to this global practice is Peru, where individuals aged 80 years and older are no longer permitted to renew a driver’s license. The policy was introduced as part of the government’s efforts to reduce traffic accidents, reflecting concerns about age-related declines in vision, hearing, reaction time, cognitive function, and physical mobility.

Reaching the age of 80 and living longer than previous generations is a remarkable demographic achievement. It reflects substantial advances in medicine, public health, nutrition, education, and living standards.  

At the same time, increased longevity presents both new opportunities and significant challenges for individuals, families, healthcare systems, and societies.

Meeting those challenges will require policies and programs that promote healthy ageing, support independence, expand access to high-quality health and long-term care, and enhance the quality of life for the growing population of octogenarians.

Many octogenarians worry about losing their independence, developing a chronic illness, becoming a burden to their families, or dying alone. Concerns about the dying process can often be eased when individuals receive compassionate care, remain as comfortable as possible, and have their preferences for medical treatment and end-of-life care respected.  

For many octogenarians, however, death gradually becomes less frightening as it draws nearer. Having experienced the loss of spouses, relatives, friends, and contemporaries, many come to view death not as an unfathomable mystery but as a natural and inevitable part of life. 

This perspective often fosters a deeper acceptance of mortality. Rather than dwelling on fear, many choose to focus on the present, cherish meaningful relationships, and appreciate the time that remains. For some, this acceptance brings a greater sense of gratitude, purpose and peace as they approach life’s natural conclusion. 

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division, and author of many publications on population issues. 

Action Against Hunger holds a commemoration event for the 17 staff members killed in Muttur, Sri Lanka on August 4th, 2006. Credit: Action Against Hunger

By Rotimy Djossaya
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 7 2026 (IPS)

This summer, an ambush on a marked humanitarian convoy in Duk County, South Sudan, left 17 dead and five injured. While the UN called for an immediate investigation, history suggests the victims’ families will wait indefinitely for answers.

We suspended field movements in the area pending a security review, which means communities already facing crisis levels of hunger lost access to life-saving assistance, at least temporarily.

The emblem on a vehicle or a vest once offered protection: a shared understanding, codified in international law, that those delivering food, water, medical care and other basic relief would not be targets of violence. That understanding is breaking down.

In the past three years, more than 1,000 humanitarian workers have been killed, most notably in Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Worryingly, 2024 was the worst year on record with 383 aid workers killed worldwide. That’s more than one each day.

This year, the recent ambush brought the toll to 29 in South Sudan alone — and it is only August. Roughly 90% of those attacked are local and national staff, the people furthest from headlines and closest to the danger.

Twenty years ago this month, seventeen of our colleagues were executed in our office in Muttur, Sri Lanka, wearing shirts that clearly identified them as humanitarian aid workers. It remains one of the deadliest attacks of its kind. Two decades later, despite evidence pointing to the likely responsibility of state security forces, no one has been held accountable. We are still calling for a new, independent investigation.

Rotimy Djossaya, Chief Impact Officer for Action Against Hunger

There is a framework for addressing this. In 2024, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2730, which calls on States to respect and protect United Nations and humanitarian personnel in accordance with their obligations under international law. Last year saw the introduction of the Declaration for the Protection of Humanitarian Personnel, a commitment to uphold international humanitarian law, prevent attacks, and pursue accountability. Over 110 countries have signed on, from every region and political tradition. While the issue still generates broad agreement, it is increasingly polarized, and the declaration’s enforcement is weak.

When a marked humanitarian vehicle is attacked with impunity, the international laws designed to protect humanity become nothing more than abstract targets.

The recent cuts to international aid budgets make a challenging situation even harder. Although it’s not clear that recent funding cuts led directly to any violence, it’s evident that NGOs have far less money to spend on security response management. The 2025 Aid Worker Security Report documented what the funding collapse means for safety: organizations are cutting security positions, communications, and risk analysis, with the danger falling overwhelmingly on local organizations.

In principle, localization is smart, and the humanitarian reset is a chance to build a system that is locally led, globally supported, and more efficient. But it only works if resources move with the risk. Local NGOs are routinely excluded from security funding, training, and data-sharing. They are expected to work in the world’s most dangerous places without the protections international agencies take for granted. They face a difficult choice: abandon some of the people and places they serve or accept greater risk to the safety of their staff.

The aid workers this summer were traveling in a marked humanitarian convoy. Five of them were staff of our local partner, the John Dau Foundation, an organization founded by one of the “lost boys” of South Sudan, who fled unimaginable violence as a child and answered it by building clinics and feeding children in the very county where this attack took place. That people who devoted their lives to healing were met with this violence shows how badly protections for humanitarian workers have eroded. The markings on their vehicle were supposed to shield them, but they did not.

As we mark World Humanitarian Day on August 19 and approach the UN General Assembly in September, the global community and member states must act. They must mandate and fund security allocations directly for local partners, insist on independent investigations for harmed personnel, and enforce UN Security Council Resolution 2730. Commitments on paper only protect lives when perpetrators face consequences. Those who step into the crossfire to feed the world’s forgotten children should not have to pay for that humanity with their lives.

Together, let’s honor those who have served, stand with those who continue to serve, and act for humanity.

Rotimy Djossaya is, Chief Impact Officer at Action Against Hunger.

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Credit: White House/Getty images

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 7 2026 (IPS)

The highly- unpredictable five-month-old US-Iran war has been plagued by on-again, off-again peace agreements — with such monotonous regularity– the conflict seems never ending. But according to several news reports, the US faces a new threat– it may soon run out of key weapons systems.

According to a CNN report, August 5, the US military has used up nearly 80% of its interceptors for a key missile defense system, leaving stockpiles “dangerously low” as mediators work to revive talks between Washington and Tehran.

“Gulf allies are also worried that dwindling US air defense stockpiles could leave them more vulnerable if President Donald Trump escalates the ongoing conflict. Several of those countries rely on US air defense systems and acknowledge the shortage could hinder their ability to intercept Iranian missile and drone attacks.”

Meanwhile the New York Times of August 4 provided a more detailed breakdown, including the US deployment of 1,200 Patriot missiles (out of a military inventory of 2,330) and more than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles, out of 3,000. The US has also deployed more than 1,100 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles out of 4,400 and 190 to 290 Terminal High Altitude Defense or THAAD missiles out of 300, among others

At a Camp David summit last weekend, according to one report, President Trump demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over “extreme munitions shortages”

But as reports of dwindling arms stockpiles continued to spread widely, President Trump publicly denied the possible shortfall. “We have massive amounts of arms”, he wrote on Truth Social. “Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed. Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history.”

Professor Simon Adams, Academic Chair of Human Rights, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murdoch University, Australia told Inter Press Service (IPS):, “Trump’s war of choice against Iran has not only impacted weapons stockpiles, it has depleted the ability of some politicians in Washington DC to see people and places on a map as more than targets and annoyances that can impact petrol prices.

Iran is a country of 90 million people and not just the Strait of Hormuz. From the 120 schoolgirls who were killed in an airstrike in Minab to the latest civilian casualties, too many innocent people have died. No more blood should be spilled.

Ongoing threats by President Trump to bomb Iran into the Stone Age and annihilate Iranian civilization constitute an open threat to commit war crimes, he said.

Meanwhile Iran’s rulers continue to publicly hang protesters and deny Iranians their fundamental human rights, said Adams, former President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture – a leading international human rights and humanitarian NGO.

The only people who are ‘winning’ this senseless war are weapons manufacturers, oil companies and supporters of theocracy and authoritarianism in both Iran and the United States, declared Adams.

Meanwhile some of the agreements that fell by the wayside include:

• April 2026: An initial short-term, two-week ceasefire was brokered by Pakistan, which was later extended indefinitely before breaking down into intermittent fighting.
• June 15, 2026: President Trump and Iranian officials announced that a framework for an interim peace deal and memorandum of understanding (MOU) had been reached to end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
• June 17, 2026: The two nations formally signed the agreement—often referred to as the Islamabad Memorandum—establishing an expanded ceasefire and kicking off a 60-day window to negotiate a final, comprehensive peace treaty.

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Woman milks a cow in northern Mongolia. Credit by Katiekk, Shutterstock

By Solange Bandiaky-Badji
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 6 2026 (IPS)

This is supposed to be the year the world finally sees and recognizes pastoralists. The United Nations has designated 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, bringing long-overdue attention to communities who have sustained some of the world’s most fragile and important landscapes for generations.

Yet right now, the world is on fire… quite literally. All eyes are on the wildfires in France, Spain, and Canada. California is coming up on wildfire season. And scientists are predicting the strongest El Niño in history.

As climate-fueled disasters become more frequent and severe, now is an important moment to learn from pastoralists, whose traditional knowledge, adaptive land management practices, and deep understanding of living with climate variability have helped sustain people and landscapes through centuries of environmental change.

In August, governments will gather in Mongolia for COP17 of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17), where rangelands, land degradation and climate resilience will be central to the global agenda.

This will be the first UNCCD COP since the e.stablishment of the Caucus of Indigenous Peoples and the Caucus of Local Communities—hard-won victories at COP16—with “Land and People Day and tenure rights included formally on the COP17 agenda.

Dr. Solange Bandiaky-Badji is Coordinator and President of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI)

Yet the scale of what is at stake is enormous. Rangelands cover more of the Earth’s surface than any other land use type, and up to 500 million people directly rely on pastoralism for their livelihoods. These lands are central to food security, biodiversity, climate resilience, and the survival of communities across Africa, Asia, Latin America and beyond. Yet pastoralists remain among the least protected and understood land stewards in the world.

This year of recognition must become more than a symbolic milestone. Unless governments and institutions use this moment to move from visibility to rights, pastoralists will continue to be praised in speeches while being pushed further to the margins in law, policy and investment.

Resilience Is Not Invulnerability

Pastoralists are incredibly resilient. Across drylands, savannahs, mountains and rangelands, they have adapted to shifting seasons, scarce water, and fragile ecosystems through sophisticated systems of mobility, customary governance, and ecological knowledge. Their way of life is one of the world’s most climate-adapted livelihood systems. But resilience should not be confused with invulnerability.

At a New York Climate Week event last year focused on Indigenous pastoralist knowledge and nature-based solutions, pastoralist leaders described the reality their communities face every day. One speaker from the Sahel spoke of droughts, severe flooding and wildfires that continue to destroy livelihoods and cost lives. She recalled stories from her grandmother about struggling to find even a grain to eat in order to survive and warned that extreme weather is threatening their lives.

While Climate change is intensifying the pressures on lands and livelihoods that were already under strain, it is only part of the story. Pastoralists are also being squeezed by policies and development models that misunderstand and overlook how their systems work and focus on a narrative that pastoralists are a threat to ecosystems. Their livelihoods depend on mobility, but many legal frameworks are built around fixed land ownership and permanent settlement. Their governance systems are collective and customary, but many governments recognize only formal administrative structures. Their territories include grazing corridors, water points and seasonal routes, but these are rarely treated as essential infrastructure. Even where policies exist focusing on pastoralism, they often do so from restrictive approaches that only center pastoralists as part of a chain of production or tourism exploitation.

The Gap Between Recognition and Rights

A recent analysis by the Rights and Resources Initiative across Kenya, Niger, Tanzania, Mongolia, Nepal, Bolivia and Peru found a persistent gap between recognition on paper and protection in practice. While governments may acknowledge pastoralist land access in some form, mobility—the foundation of pastoralist livelihoods—is rarely protected in law. Among the countries studied, Niger stands out as the lone exception explicitly recognizing mobility as a fundamental right. The legal gap among the rest of the countries has real consequences.

Across regions, rangelands are being fragmented by agricultural expansion, infrastructure projects, extractive industries, conservation restrictions, carbon initiatives and green energy projects. These pressures are often presented as development or climate solutions. But when they are imposed without pastoralists’ full participation and consent, they deepen inequality, fuel conflict and weaken the very systems that have protected rangelands for generations.

Invisible in Data, Invisible in Policy

That exclusion is also statistical. Pastoralists are too often missing from the data systems that shape national priorities, development financing and climate policy. When governments do not accurately count pastoralist communities, map their mobility routes, measure their economic contributions, or document the pressures they face, their needs and contributions remain invisible. When communities are invisible in the data, they are often invisible in budgets, laws and global commitments.

This is especially alarming given the scale of pastoralists’ contributions. In Africa, pastoralists produce much of the continent’s milk and a significant share of its meat. They sustain local markets, support rural economies, manage vast rangelands and carry knowledge that is essential to climate resilience and biodiversity protection. Yet their contributions are rarely matched by legal protection, public investment or meaningful political representation.

Women face even greater barriers. Pastoralist women are central to livestock economies, food systems, households and community resilience. But they are often excluded from land ownership, mobility rights, leadership and formal decision-making. Any serious effort to strengthen pastoralist systems must address women’s rights directly, not as an afterthought.

Tenure Redefined

At COP17, land tenure returns to the agenda as a standing policy item, carried forward from previous sessions alongside rangelands and pastoralists. That is progress. But tenure conceived as titles, boundaries and fixed parcels cannot secure people whose security depends on movement. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) already names transhumant, nomadic and semi-nomadic communities as rights holders and requires states to protect their land rights, an obligation that cannot be met by extending sedentary tenure models to mobile peoples. Pastoralist tenure must be redefined: adaptive, embedding mobility, recognizing shared use, seasonal occupation and overlapping claims and anchored in customary governance. For pastoralists, secure tenure is flexible tenure.

The Solutions Are Clear

The good news is that pastoralists are not waiting for the world to act on their behalf. They are organizing. There is a growing movement across Africa, Asia and Latin America. They may be communities separated by continents and colonial borders, but they are connected by shared histories, livelihoods and struggles.

First, governments must recognize pastoral mobility as a legal right. Movement is not a weakness of pastoralist systems; it is what allows communities to manage climate variability, protect ecosystems and sustain livestock in changing conditions.

Second, states must protect the physical infrastructure of pastoralism, including grazing corridors, water points, dry season reserves and seasonal migration routes. These are as essential to pastoral economies as roads and ports are to national economies.

Third, customary governance systems must be legally recognized and supported. Pastoralist communities have long managed land, water and conflict through local institutions that are adapted to their realities. Replacing these systems with rigid, top-down frameworks weaken both rights and resilience.

Fourth, pastoralist women must have equal rights to land, mobility, resources and leadership. Climate resilience cannot be built while half the community is excluded from decisions that affect them and shape our collective future.

Finally, climate finance, conservation funding and development investments must reach pastoralist communities directly and respect their rights. Projects that restrict access to land without consent or compensation undermine both livelihoods and global environmental goals.

COP17 in Mongolia is an opportunity to turn this year of recognition into a year of action. Governments should arrive prepared not only to discuss rangelands, but to listen to the people who know them best. Pastoralists must be at the table as rightsholders, experts and partners.

The world cannot meet its goals on climate resilience, food security, biodiversity or land restoration while ignoring the communities already holding these systems together.

This is the year of pastoralists. Now it must become the year the world finally recognizes their rights.

Dr. Solange Bandiaky-Badji, is President and Coordinator, Rights and Resources Initiative

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Credit IMF Photo/Nicholas Karlin

By Kristalina Georgieva
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 4 2026 (IPS)

My first meeting in Buenos Aires began with an unexpected gift. Economy Minister Luis Caputo presented me with an Argentine national team jersey bearing my name and the number 10—Lionel Messi’s iconic number.

It was a fitting start to my first official visit. When Messi finally lifted the World Cup in Qatar, he was 35 years old—an age when many footballers have already retired. His triumph was the culmination of years of perseverance, setbacks, and relentless dedication. It underscored how great achievements require persistence—and can take longer than expected.

Economic transformation follows a similar path. Restoring stability is difficult. Making it endure is even harder. The greatest rewards come only after years of persistence.

That stuck with me during my visit to Argentina this week. Everywhere I went, I encountered people looking beyond today’s challenges and asking what their country could become over the next decade.

For a country that has spent much of its recent history focused on the next crisis, shifting attention to a longer horizon was, I found, to be the most encouraging sign of all.

Impressive stabilization

Only two and a half years ago, Argentina faced one of the most difficult economic moments in its modern history. The government was running constant deficits. Inflation exceeded 200 percent. The economy was contracting. Poverty had climbed above 50 percent. Families watched the value of their wages and savings fall. Businesses found it difficult to plan beyond the next few weeks.

Today, the picture is markedly different.

Argentina has delivered two consecutive years of primary fiscal surpluses for the first time in 15 years. The economy is growing. Inflation has fallen to around 30 percent. Poverty has declined. The central bank is rebuilding international reserves. Sovereign borrowing costs have fallen.

All three major credit rating agencies have upgraded the country. In addition, more than $45 billion in investment projects have already been approved under Argentina’s large investment incentive framework. The pipeline under development is more than twice that size. These achievements reflect the commitment to stability and determined policy actions by Javier Milei’s administration and, above all, the perseverance of the Argentine people.

From stability to growth and opportunities

Stabilization gives a country back something that isn’t easily measured: time. When families believe prices will remain stable, they start to save instead of simply protecting themselves against inflation. When businesses believe policies will remain predictable, they invest for years rather than months. Banks extend longer-term credit. Governments can focus on improving institutions instead of responding to the next emergency.

In other words, stability extends a country’s time horizon. I know how transformative that can be because I experienced it in my own country.

When Bulgaria suffered hyperinflation and a banking crisis in the 1990s, my mother’s lifetime savings disappeared almost overnight. I kept my own modest savings in dollars, in a tin box hidden in the cupboard. Restoring stability required difficult reforms, stronger institutions, and persistence over many years.

The results did not appear immediately. But because Bulgaria stayed the course, confidence gradually returned. Investment increased. People found work. Living standards improved. Earlier this year, Bulgaria adopted the euro—a milestone that would once have seemed impossible.

The lesson was not simply that stabilization can succeed. It was that its greatest rewards emerge only with time.

That challenge is even greater today. The global economy is becoming more uncertain. Trade patterns are shifting. Geopolitical tensions remain elevated. Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries and labor markets at remarkable speed. Capital is increasingly selective, flowing to countries that combine sound policies with predictable institutions.

In this environment, macroeconomic stability is not merely desirable—it is a prerequisite for attracting investment, creating jobs, and remaining competitive.

Unleashing potential

I saw that opportunity very clearly at the fast-developing Vaca Muerta oil and gas fields, in Neuquén province. That Argentina enjoys world-class natural resources has long been known. Yet Vaca Muerta shows that it also has talented engineers, entrepreneurs, and public and private leaders committed to developing them. And it is doing so at a moment when the world is looking for secure and reliable energy supplies.

Vaca Muerta is only one example of a broader opportunity. Mining investment is accelerating, knowledge-based services export nearly $10 billion annually, and agriculture remains among the world’s most competitive sectors. Beyond its natural resources, Argentina boasts world-class entrepreneurs, strong universities, and exceptional human talent.

The next phase is to ensure that these opportunities spread across the broader economy.

That message came through clearly in my discussions with business leaders. They welcomed the country’s renewed stability and growing investor confidence, while emphasizing the importance of reducing barriers to investment and broadening the recovery across more sectors.

It also came through in two very different conversations.

On my first morning in Buenos Aires, I met Marina, a makeup artist who kindly helped me get ready for the day ahead. She told me she works three jobs and that life remains difficult. Yet she also told me she hopes the country stays the course. Her circumstances have not changed overnight. What’s changing is her confidence that progress can last.

I later met renowned tango dancer Mora Godoy. Beyond her celebrated career, she has built a dance school and offers scholarships to young people who otherwise might never have the chance to learn.

Different stories, different professions—but both reflected the same belief that investing today can create opportunities tomorrow.

I heard that same longer-term perspective from students. Their questions were not about the next six months. They were about artificial intelligence, innovation, leadership, and Argentina’s place in the global economy. They wanted to know how their country could compete—not just next year, but over the coming decades.

Across these conversations with business leaders, workers, and students, I heard a common, encouraging message: Argentina is beginning to look beyond the next crisis to the opportunities ahead.

In the end, success will not be measured only by lower inflation, stronger reserves, or healthier public finances. It will be gauged by whether more businesses invest, small and medium-sized enterprises expand, workers find better jobs and higher wages, and more Argentines see the benefits of economic growth in their daily lives.

The next steps

That same long-term perspective guides the IMF partnership with Argentina.

Our role is to support the policies and institutions that make lasting stability possible. The government’s proposal for a stronger and more independent central bank can help ensure that progress on inflation endures. A durable fiscal responsibility framework, with clear rules and strong institutions, can help future governments preserve today’s hard-won gains. These reforms allow families to plan, businesses to borrow and invest, and governments to look beyond the next crisis.

Argentina’s economic transformation will also take time. The country has laid the foundations for a more stable future. The challenge now is to stay the course—to keep building the institutions, confidence, and opportunities that will allow today’s progress to become lasting prosperity.

Kristalina Georgieva is Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Washington DC.

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President Trump has blamed trade liberalisation advocated by globalists for US deindustrialisation. Instead, his own weaponisation of economic policies, instruments and institutions purport to ‘make America great again’ (MAGA).

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

While rejecting globalists’ claim that trade liberalisation enhances growth, employment and incomes for all, his own ‘America First’ policies are slowing the world economy, including the US.

Post-war trade policy
The US has dominated international relations and institutions, including multilateral economic governance, since World War Two (WW2). The US Congress rejected the 1948 Havana Charter proposing the International Trade Organisation (ITO).

Selective trade liberalisation was key to the ‘neoliberal’ Washington Consensus, which has been recommended, if not required, by multilateral economic institutions from the 1980s.

Meanwhile, the neoliberal era has been associated with slower, more volatile growth than the post-war Keynesian ‘Golden Age’ of the first quarter-century after WW2.

The West pushed for the World Trade Organization (WTO) to consolidate the international economic order on a neoliberal basis. The 1994 Marrakech Agreement establishing the WTO left little room for development policy initiatives.

For many in the West, neoliberal trade liberalisation ended with the first Trump presidency from 2017. However, the reversal had begun earlier in the 21st century, especially after the 2008-09 global (actually Western) financial crisis.

However, Trump should be acknowledged for brazenly weaponizing international trade and investment instruments against the rest of the world, including US allies.

Hegemony
Free trade advocate Jagdish Bhagwati showed that anything less than trade multilateralism, including plurilateral and bilateral free trade agreements, is sub-optimal and unfair.

Compromises, including those promoted by international financial institutions and the OECD, have, instead, strengthened US and Western hegemony.

Postwar decolonisation of Asia and Africa has seen discontent grow in multilateral institutions, prompting selective Western undermining of multilateralism after the Cold War.

Unable to ensure the WTO’s dispute settlement system consistently protects and advances its interests, the US has paralysed it by blocking key appointments since the Obama presidency.

Collective assertiveness by developing countries in multilateral fora has mitigated some adverse consequences of international economic integration under Western auspices.

Partial and uneven trade liberalisation has constrained Global South industrialisation. Recent deindustrialisation has reduced manufacturing’s share of national output in many developing countries.

Little new manufacturing capacity has developed in Africa beyond some minimal import-substituting and resource-processing activities protected by high transport costs.

Divide and rule
Economic concessions, such as trade preferences, to developing countries have been used to divide the Global South, including the ‘least developed countries’ and ‘small island developing states’, effectively weakening their collective negotiating strength.

Trade liberalisation has also reduced tariff revenue, especially important for the poorest developing countries, where it often accounted for up to half of total tax collected.

Additional taxes, typically from consumption or income, have never compensated for tariff revenue losses due to trade liberalisation. This has undermined their already weak fiscal capacities, often requiring them to borrow even more.

Promoting food agriculture in supposedly ‘land-abundant’ African countries was supposed to make them more food-secure and even export-competitive but there is no evidence this has happened.

Developing nations have long unsuccessfully asked the Global North to eliminate agricultural subsidies, tariffs, and non-tariff import barriers that protect their output.

This would make food production in developing countries more competitive. But rich countries have long insisted that developing countries must first ‘reciprocate’, e.g., by eliminating their manufacturing tariffs.

Structural adjustment has also undermined agricultural infrastructure and smallholder productivity in many developing countries. Meanwhile, lower farm subsidies in Europe have raised many food import prices in the South.

Gains from trade?
Purported gains from trade liberalisation are often either merely theoretical or one-time gains from static understandings of comparative advantage, with no cumulative potential.

Claims of gains from trade liberalisation presume internationally competitive productive and export capacities capable of generating a strong positive supply response.

Such preconditions are unlikely in most developing countries, especially the poorest, and need to be developed, typically by protecting against external market pressures.

Most studies of realistically achievable outcomes of WTO Doha Round negotiations from 2001, including those for the World Bank, projected net losses for most developing economies, except for a few Asian economies.

There is also no robust evidence of trade liberalisation significantly reducing poverty and hunger. Developing countries, especially the poorest ones and those in sub-Saharan Africa, would be worse off.

One may well ask why developing countries have to be bribed with ‘aid for trade’ if it is in their own best interests to commit to trade liberalisation, multilateral or otherwise.

Worse, trade liberalisation has made sustainable development nearly impossible by significantly reducing policy options for aspiring developmental states, especially for trade, industrial, investment and technology policies.

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Credit: Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash

By James Alix Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Aug 3 2026 (IPS)

Earlier this year, I called publicly for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining, arguing that it is not a rejection of progress, but a commitment to sound science.

I made that appeal because I believed governments meeting this year at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) would finally choose caution over haste. Watching the results emerge from Kingston, Jamaica, over these past weeks, I must admit to real disappointment.

But I want to be equally clear: disappointment is not defeat, and there is still every reason for hope.

The 31st session of the ISA concluded its work in Kingston with the Council ending two weeks of negotiations on 24 July without adopting the long-debated Mining Code. Unresolved issues, ranging from environmental safeguards and liability to inspection, compliance and benefit-sharing, remain exactly that: unresolved.

Governments including France, Costa Rica, South Africa, Mexico, Germany, Palau and Brazil rightly insisted these gaps must be closed before any commercial mining is contemplated. That the Authority could not bridge them after fifteen years of negotiation tells its own story about how far science and governance still lag behind commercial ambition.

James Alix Michel

That pressure has an external source too. The United States, which is not a party to the Law of the Sea Convention and sits outside the ISA altogether, has continued to advance its own unilateral licensing process for the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, the vast Pacific seabed that holds the largest concentration of exploration contracts on Earth. Five applications are already on record, with reports suggesting more may follow. When a single state can simply step outside a multilateral framework and issue permits for a shared global commons, it does not just threaten the ocean floor; it threatens the very idea that humanity can govern anything collectively. That, to me, is Kingston’s deeper failure: not that a code went unfinished, but that the multilateral system protecting our common heritage was tested, and did not hold as firmly as it should.

And yet.

I have spent much of my life in rooms where the odds seemed stacked against the ocean, and I have learned that setbacks in these negotiations are rarely the last word. There is real cause for hope in what else happened in Kingston.

When four deep-sea mining companies sought observer status at the Assembly, dozens of governments pushed back, and the decision was postponed rather than rushed through. Vanuatu brought forward an agenda item on “Ensuring Adequate Scientific Understanding to Support Informed Decision-Making,” precisely the argument I have been making since earlier this year: that we cannot regulate what we do not yet understand. And crucially, the Council did not simply walk away. It agreed a roadmap for further work, inviting states and observers to submit written proposals on the outstanding issues by 1 October 2026. The door to a properly safeguarded process remains open. It has not been slammed shut.

Most encouraging of all is the growing number of nations refusing to be rushed. When I first raised this call earlier this year, more than 40 countries had already backed a moratorium or precautionary pause. Today that number stands at 45, including seven Pacific nations, alongside outright bans by France and by Palau and New Caledonia within their own waters. They are joined by more than 70 companies, 82 financial institutions representing some €24 trillion in assets, and over 900 scientists from more than 70 countries, all saying the same thing: we do not yet know enough to proceed safely.

This is not an anti-mining movement. It is a pro-science movement. Nobody serious is arguing that the world will never need these minerals, or that the seabed must remain untouched forever. What I am arguing, and what the evidence increasingly supports, is that decisions with potentially irreversible consequences for ecosystems we have barely begun to map should not be made under commercial or geopolitical pressure. Scientists directly observed less than a tenth of the size of Belgium’s worth of deep seafloor before these negotiations began. This year’s IUCN Red List found that 62 percent of molluscs known only from hydrothermal vents are now at risk of extinction, many of them identified within the last decade. We are still discovering what we might destroy, and we are only beginning to understand the deep seabed’s role in storing carbon and regulating ocean chemistry.

I say this as someone who has governed a small island nation whose entire future is tied to the health of its ocean. Seychelles did not treat marine protection and economic progress as opposing forces. Through marine spatial planning protecting thirty percent of our waters, and the world’s first sovereign blue bond, we showed precaution can be financed and delivered without halting development. That experience is precisely why I believe a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining is a down payment on progress, not a brake on it.

Small island developing states cannot afford to gamble with the ocean systems that feed us and anchor our economies. I say this with humility: Seychelles has banned deep-sea mining in its own waters under our Marine Spatial Plan, yet is not among the 45 nations formally backing the international moratorium. That gap between what we protect at home and what we champion abroad is one I hope Seychelles, and others like it, will now close.

So my message to fellow leaders, particularly across Africa and the small island states that depend most on healthy oceans, is this:

Kingston’s disappointment is real, but it is not the end of the story. Forty-five nations have already shown that caution and ambition can coexist. I urge every government that has not yet done so, especially those still weighing their position ahead of the October deadline for written proposals, to add its voice to that growing coalition. This is not about obstructing progress; it is about demanding the evidence that ensures whatever progress we make does no lasting harm to the seabed we all share. I also urge regional bodies, from the African Union to Pacific and Caribbean groupings, to adopt common positions, so no single small state stands alone against powerful commercial interests.

The common heritage of humankind deserves patience as much as ambition. Kingston reminded us how much work remains. It also reminded us how many are still willing to do it.

James Alix Michel is the former President of Seychelles (2004-2016), Founder of the James Michel Foundation and the University of Seychelles, and a global advocate for the blue economy, ocean conservation and climate resilience.

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For the last few years, Artificial intelligence has been making increasingly intrusive demands for our attention.

It burst onto the scene like a child prodigy, enthralling us with feats of brilliance. With consummate ease, it removed drudgery from our tasks and began helping us achieve our personal and workplace objectives.

Daud Khan

As is the case with adolescents, there have been calls to set rules and regulations on AI, applying appropriate limits on what AI can and cannot do. The aim being to allow us time to deal with its immediate impacts on, for example, the jobs market, on media and communication, and on its military use.

But would government imposed regulations solve the problem? The answer is no for several reasons.

Firstly, there is the siren call of easier access to vast stores of knowledge, top quality writing skills and polished images and infographics. It is hard to resist the temptation to delegate boring tasks to AI, such as drafting emails that respond to routine messages. From there it is a slippery slope towards AI writing our university or job applications, office memos, or manuals and instructional content. However, these are tasks that define who we are and how others perceive us. And this reliance on AI kills creativity, individuality and human relations – there is no longer a turn of phrase or a spelling mistake that makes the message special.

Thomas McMahon

Secondly, AI Psychosis is becoming a pervasive disruptor of social relations. AI models are purposely designed for “engagement farming” – a fancy term for hooking people into an ever-increasing reliance on these services. It achieves this through sycophantic responses that feed one’s ego or anxieties, releasing endorphins and creating a craving for more.

We can now access gratifying, yet wholly synthetic, social interactions at our fingertips via chatbots. Consequently, we risk crafting individualised reality bubbles that are unchecked by the social norms we experience in the real world. Will it become easier and more pleasurable to interact with an intelligent machine to fulfill our need to talk, to discuss books, or for emotional engagement without fear of rejection – at any time of day or night?

Thirdly, if we allow machines to shape our thoughts and emotions, we risk destroying diversity of opinion, crushing creativity and resulting in a unified, monolithic narrative that is controlled by the megacorporations providing these AI services.

Pope Leo XIV expressed this concern in his recent encyclical where he warned of “the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance”.

Lastly, it is essential to consider how the mismanagement of AI has the potential to drive a further wedge between rich and poor populations. The Pope cautions us of being misled by “a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations”.

Increased focus is being placed on the impact of data centers within local communities, given their inordinate usage of electricity and water and the constant noise pollution these facilities generate. At full capacity, processing a daily 10 billion Gigabytes of data, a 100 MW data center consumes up to 2.4 million KWh of electricity and 2 million litres of water per day – more than a small city.

The human brain can process 74 Gigabytes of data while sipping a tiny 0.3 KWh of electricity (260 calories or 12% of total daily energy intake). Our bodies require a daily ration of 2.5 litres of water to function normally. Contrast this with preparing a 100-word email using ChatGPT, where each prompt-and-response interaction consumes the water in a standard 500 ml bottle. Even from a strictly environmentally-conscious viewpoint, surely it would be better to use our brains for this instead?

However, whatever our concerns, the genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back – we must learn to use AI properly. We need to better understand its limitations and where it delivers greatest impact, given the resources required.

AI should not be seen as a substitute for human expertise but instead complementary to it. Indeed, the more expertise one has in any given field, the more valuable a contribution AI makes. Experts can better formulate more pertinent questions and redirect the conversation should the AI meander off course. Experts also detect errors more easily in what may appear to be perfectly valid responses.

It is essential that we encourage people, particularly our young people, to continue learning and perfecting their chosen crafts, ignoring the wild marketing claims that various professions have been largely solved by AI already. The more knowledge and expertise the younger generation can build, the more judiciously and selectively they can deploy AI in their work and for society’s future benefit.

Daud Khan is a retired UN staff based in Rome. He has degrees in economics from LSE and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from Imperial College London.

Thomas McMahon is a Data Engineer who specialises in developing bespoke AI systems for UN agencies.

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Rohingya refugees cross the Naf River on a makeshift raft while fleeing violence in Myanmar, on their way to Bangladesh. Credit: UNICEF/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin

By Mohammad Zaman
VANCOUVER B.C., Canada, Aug 3 2026 (IPS)

The Rohingya crisis remains one of the most enduring humanitarian and political failures in South and Southeast Asia. Since the 2017 mass expulsion from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, Bangladesh has hosted more than one million refugees in Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char, while Myanmar has failed to create conditions for safe return. What began as an emergency response has hardened into protracted displacement marked by statelessness, insecurity, aid dependency, and diplomatic fatigue. Repatriation is repeatedly presented as the preferred durable solution, yet every major attempt has failed because the core political question remains unresolved: the Rohingya cannot safely return to a state that denies them citizenship, protection, and equal belonging.

In 2017, only months after the largest influx, Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a bilateral Memorandum of Arrangement. It promised a time-bound repatriation process, but it was non-binding, weakly enforced, and silent on the guarantees most essential to return: citizenship, freedom of movement, property restitution, and independent monitoring inside Rakhine. Bangladesh, facing demographic, environmental, and political pressure, needed a pathway to reduce the burden of hosting refugees. Myanmar, by contrast, had incentives to delay, control, and symbolically manage the process without addressing the legal and security conditions that caused the exodus.

Three major repatriation efforts since 2017 reveal the same pattern. Attempts in 2018 and 2019 collapsed because refugees refused to return without credible guarantees of safety, citizenship, and dignity. A China-facilitated initiative in 2023 proposed a pilot return of several thousand people and arranged verification visits by Rohingya representatives to Rakhine. It also stalled. Cyclone damage, renewed fighting, and widening armed conflict made even limited returns impractical. More importantly, refugees remained unconvinced. Their reluctance was not resistance to return; it was a rational response to risk. Returning to fenced villages, transit camps, or controlled areas without rights would merely convert exile in Bangladesh into containment in Myanmar.

Dr Mohammad Zaman

The political problem is both domestic and regional. Domestically, Myanmar’s state-building project has excluded the Rohingya by portraying them as outsiders rather than citizens. Without recognition of Rohingya identity and legal status, administrative repatriation will remain cosmetic. Regionally, the crisis is shaped by strategic interests. China has mediated because stability in Myanmar affects its investments and influence, but its diplomacy has emphasized state-to-state negotiation more than rights-based accountability. India has balanced humanitarian concern with security and geopolitical interests, while ASEAN has struggled to move beyond cautious consensus and non-interference. Western governments have condemned atrocities and supported accountability efforts, but sanctions and legal cases have not changed conditions on the ground. The result is a fragmented diplomatic landscape in which no actor has combined sufficient leverage, consistency, and political will to compel Myanmar toward a rights-based solution.

Bangladesh’s position is increasingly difficult. Its initial humanitarian generosity has become a long-term national burden. The camps place pressure on land, forests, water, public services, and local labour markets. Security concerns have grown as trafficking, armed activity, and criminal networks exploit a population with limited mobility, education, and livelihood opportunities. Declining humanitarian funding has deepened frustration: reduced food rations, health services, and education increase despair and encourage dangerous onward movement by sea to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, where conditions are often insecure. Yet Bangladesh’s legitimate burden cannot justify premature repatriation. Any return must be voluntary, safe, rights-based, and dignified.

A critical analysis must also recognize the limits of humanitarianism. Aid keeps people alive, but it cannot resolve statelessness or political exclusion. The international response has often separated relief, justice, and diplomacy into disconnected tracks: humanitarian agencies sustain survival in Bangladesh; lawyers pursue accountability; diplomats negotiate repatriation frameworks; and development actors support host communities. Each track is necessary, but together they have not formed a coherent strategy. The Rohingya have too often been treated as beneficiaries rather than political stakeholders. A durable solution requires their participation in defining return conditions, monitoring mechanisms, citizenship pathways, education policy, and community security arrangements. The newly formed Rohingya Repatriation Committee has to address all of the above in finding a sustainable solution.

The road ahead must be realistic rather than rhetorical. Repatriation should remain the long-term objective, but only when it is safe, voluntary, dignified, and sustainable. This requires verifiable changes inside Rakhine: citizenship or a credible pathway to citizenship, freedom of movement, access to services, restoration or compensation for property, and protection from military, police, and armed-group abuse. Any future framework must include independent international monitoring with meaningful access to return areas. Diplomacy must also adapt to Myanmar’s altered conflict map by engaging relevant actors without legitimizing abuses or abandoning principles. Bangladesh will need pragmatic but principled engagement with the junta, the Arakan Army, regional powers, and international organizations.

Meanwhile, the camps in Bangladesh cannot remain waiting rooms for an indefinitely delayed return. Refugees need education, skills training, legal protection, and limited livelihood opportunities to prevent social deterioration and prepare for eventual reconstruction in Rakhine. These measures should not be framed as local integration against Bangladesh’s wishes, but as human-capital preservation and crisis management. International burden-sharing must become concrete: donors should sustain aid, expand resettlement for vulnerable cases, support host communities, and coordinate pressure on Myanmar. Accountability mechanisms should continue because impunity is one reason repatriation remains unsafe.

Ultimately, the Rohingya repatriation crisis is not a logistical failure but a political one. Buses, refugee lists, reception centres, and pilot projects cannot substitute for rights, security, and recognition. Bangladesh seeks relief, Myanmar seeks control, regional powers seek stability, and donors seek a manageable humanitarian file. The Rohingya seek what repatriation is supposed to mean: return to their homeland as citizens with dignity. Until diplomacy is anchored in that principle, repatriation attempts will continue to produce announcements without arrivals, agreements without trust, and roadmaps without roads. The way forward requires pressure, patience, and a shift from counting potential returnees to building the conditions under which return becomes a restoration of justice rather than an act of desperation.

Dr. Mohammad Zaman is an internationally recognized expert in resettlement and development. He has contributed many op-eds on the Rohingya crisis. Dr. Zaman’s recent edited book (co-editors Robert Anderson and Kawser Ahmed) is titled Rohingya Stories: History and Geopolitics in a Multipolar World (Springer, 2025).

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Time and again, evidence has shown that proactive investments in anticipatory action, preparedness and mitigation can reduce the negative impacts of extreme weather events while minimizing economic losses. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, US, Jul 29 2026 (IPS)

Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations put out an alert, warning countries around the world about an impending new El Niño  phase that is expected to significantly increase the likelihood of drought, heat waves, storms, and flooding and pose major risks to agriculture across multiple regions.

But this is not surprising, as in recent years, including 2026, droughts, storms, tornadoes, heat waves, and flooding have become increasingly frequent and severe.

These erratic and extreme weather events have resulted in the loss of lives, caused billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure, while inflicting devastating consequenses to crop production, food security, and agriculture, a sector that supports millions of livelihoods, provides employment, and contributes significantly to national economies in both the United States and globally.

Countries need to invest in developing anticipatory action plans, strengthen early warning and forecasting systems, and equip citizens and at-risk communities with practical solutions and mitigation strategies they can implement before these catastrophic weather events happen

The question then becomes, how can countries including the United States best prepare for these devastating extreme weather events that have such negative impacts on agriculture and food security?

First and foremost, countries need to invest in developing anticipatory action plans, strengthen early warning and forecasting systems, and equip citizens and at-risk communities with practical solutions and mitigation strategies they can implement before these catastrophic weather events happen.

Doing so is a win–win for everyone. Time and again, evidence has shown that proactive investments in anticipatory action plans, preparedness and mitigation reduce extreme weather events negative impacts while minimizing economic losses.

Complementing these forecasting systems would be the need for countries to develop national preparedness plans with the goal to protect food and agricultural supply chains from production through to consumption, before, during, and after extreme weather events.

Countries should also promote a culture of preparedness by encouraging its citizens, farmers, and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector to take anticipatory action before weather events happen. For example, in 2025, the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged producers to prepare for the hurricane season.

Taking anticipatory actions by farmers and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector can vary depending on resources and expected weather events. For example, if heatwaves and droughts are forecast, farmers can take anticipatory measures including planting drought tolerant crop varieties and using other innovative drought solutions. When flooding is expected, farmers can plant flooding tolerant varieties.

In parallel and beyond preparedness, countries must encourage farmers to adopt regenerative agriculture practices including cover cropping, reduced till and no till farming, crop rotations, pest management conservation system, mixed cropping and other soil health building strategies.

Collectively, these practices enhance soil health, improve water retention and ultimately strengthen agricultural crops’ ability to withstand heatwaves, drought, flooding and other extreme weather events.

Notably, agricultural research continues to reveal other effective approaches including harnessing beneficial soil microbes to improve crop production while strengthening plant resillience to droughts and other biotic and abiotic stressors.

Importantly, there is a continued need to invest in research and development. To stay ahead of the increasing weather events and their devastating impacts on agriculture, countries must continue to invest in science by funding research. Sadly, many countries continue to cut the federal budgets allocated for research and development beginning with the United States. This needs to change.

When scientists are funded and investments are made, researchers can continue to research not only the impacts of these weather events but also potential innovative solutions to address these challenges.

Alongside investing in research there is the need to invest in extension. Extension is the arm that allows for the last mile of research to be effective, since extension people work with communities to transfer research and to share the research discoveries.

Agricultural extension work with farmers to provide advice throughout the growing season suggesting changes and strategies farmers should take to ensure that crops survive the weather brought about challenges.

Finally, continued collaboration across sectors and countries is necessary to confront weather associated challenges impacting agriculture.

This includes forging creative partnerships that engage governments, federal and state funding agencies, research institutions and researchers in both public and private institutions, universities, growers, extension experts and agents, NGO’s and philanthropists.

Coordinated collaborations will go a long way to ensure that extreme weather events have minimal impacts on agriculture and food security.

At a time when unpredictable extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe, investing in developing anticipatory plans, early warning and forecasting systems, as well as developing preparedness plans and creative and innovative ways to disseminate available information, solutions and strategies to growers will go a long way in improving agricultural productivity while strengthening our ability to sustainably grow crops and meet our food security needs both today and in the years to come.

Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 29 2026 (IPS)

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (Republican of Kansas) rose to public attention in the 1950s with his allegations that hundreds of “Communists” had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies.

Fast forward to 1971.

Addressing a class of post-graduate students at the Columbia University’s School of Journalism in 1971, one of the Professors was explaining the red-baiting that took place during the late 1950’s when Senator McCarthy, in his crusade against Communism, led a series of investigations and Congressional hearings to reveal—imaginary or real—of Communist infiltration into the US government.

There was hysterical paranoia about “reds” and “Communists” in the deep state. The slogan was “Reds under the Beds”.

The extent of McCarthyism was evident, he said recounting an anecdote, when there were two groups of demonstrators – the pro Communists and anti- Communists—staging protests and counter protests in Times Square in the heart of New York city

The word “Communism” was dreaded—but perhaps only anti-Communists were tolerated during the witch hunt under McCarthyism.

When the demonstrations got unruly, the cops dragged some of the protestors from the streets and bodily threw them into Police vans (called paddy wagons) when one of them pleaded: “I am anti-Communist. I am anti-Communist”.

And the cop shouted back: “I don’t care what goddam brand of Communist you are”.

Meanwhile, when Zohran Mamdani was elected the 112th mayor of New York City last November, he was the city’s first Muslim and South Asian American mayor, and at 34, its youngest leader in over a century.

But Mamdani, who describes himself as a “democratic socialist” has been repeatedly accused of being a “communist” by political opponents, most notably President Donald Trump and conservative media commentators.

The mayor has been dismissed by Trump and various Republicans as a “100% Communist lunatic” during and after the mayoral race, to criticize his left-wing platform.

But with more democratic socialists being elected at two House primaries and a fistful of legislative races, the communist label has been viciously used against all “socialists”—and may be used by Republicans against Democrats ahead of the mid-term elections.

Which triggers the question: is this the beginning of a new McCarthyism era, which was rooted in the 1950s?

James E. Jennings, President of Conscience International, told Inter Press Service (IPS): Donald Trump has taken advantage of the ignorance of his MAGA followers to gain and hold power for a corrupt class of Billionaires.

He has succeeded by altering the meaning of words to suit his purposes and using them as weapons, a political skill as old as time. Now, he is throwing the word “Communist” at his Social Democrat and Democratic Socialist opponents who are not at all Communists. All these niceties are lost on his supporters.

“Communism insists on state ownership of property. Social Democrats advocate government regulation of the marketplace and property rights for the benefit of all, while Democratic Socialism takes this a step further, urging the abolition of capitalism.”

Trump and his cadre of Republican sycophants must stop confusing people with hateful epithets that are no way accurate. Everybody should read Orwell’s 1984 and reject Trumpism, because semantics do in fact rule political discourse. Confucius was right: The rectification of things is the naming of things, said Jennings

Trump’s obfuscation, he pointed out, is about concentrating power and wealth. But as early as 1776 Virginia established itself as a Commonwealth, the idea of shared prosperity for the benefit of all. Property was not to be concentrated in the hands of rulers.

“No man,” they said, is entitled to “exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges.” Pennsylvania’s Constitution also forbids the “Advantage of any single man, family, or set of men.” Massachusetts and Kentucky followed suit. Those ideas are not Communist. They simply advocate equality and opportunity for all, declared Jennings.

Speaking at Mount Rushmore July 4, while commemorating the country’s 250th birthday, Trump described his political opponents as “godless”, “evil” Communists.

The New York Times said he used the word “communism” so many times, “you might have thought the Cold War was still on”. It was a bigger threat than Pearl Harbor and 9/11, Trump was quoted as saying.

According to a report in the Times July 27, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has added over 7,000 new members.

The political philosophy of DSA includes rising taxes on the rich, guaranteed free medical care for the poor, a freeze on rising rents on public housing, raising the minimum wage and shortening the work week. The mayor also plans to open 5 New York city-owned grocery stores with 30 percent discount on produce, meat, bread and milk. And on foreign policy, the DSA has taken a strong stand for Palestinian statehood.

Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy and national director, RootsAction told IPS the core of the repression being spearheaded by (Secretary of State Marco) Rubio is that the people now running the U.S. government hate democracy and want to stamp out as much of it as they can.

Freedom of speech is at the center of democracy – they need each other – and the witch-hunt being mounted by the Trump regime is methodical.

“ There are many differences between the current wave of repression and the McCarthy era at America’s mid-century, but the very real continuity involves the wielding of government and media power to intimidate and stoke the fires of fear. The goal is to engender passivity and subservience,’ he said.

Much of liberal-leaning America, notably the administrations of many colleges, quickly buckled under pressure to crack down on nonviolent campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza and U.S. support for it.

That dynamic, said Solomon, began in late 2023 and become powerful during 2024, in the last year of the Biden presidency. The common responses from college administrators were forms of authoritarian actions, aiming to cause self-censorship and preemptive obedience – in other words, suppression of First Amendment rights. This process became more extreme after Trump regained presidential power.

“Issuing lists of supposed subversives was a key tactic of the McCarthy Era. It sowed fear, and the result involved poisonous crops of stifled public discourse and fearful silences,” Solomon pointed out.

“Similar dynamics are now underway. But many people and organizations are refusing to accept the repression, and there are reasons to hope that nonviolent emphatic resistance can be effective in mitigating the damage to civic life”, declared Solomon, author of “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.”

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Credit: United Nations

By Amitabh Behar
DELHI, India, Jul 29 2026 (IPS)

On 15 September 1953, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India was elected the eighth president of the UN General Assembly — the first woman to hold the UN’s second-highest position. Since then, only four women have followed her, most recently the current president, Annalena Baerbock. Since its founding, the UN has had nine Secretaries-General. All men. Now, 81 years after the UN’s founding, we have a historic opportunity to correct that record. It is time to entrust the UN leadership to a woman of the Global South who shapes a more inclusive, effective and forward-looking UN.

The stakes extend far beyond symbolism. In the coming weeks, attention will turn to the Security Council, where the informal straw polls will effectively determine who emerges as the next Secretary-General, before it forwards its recommendations to the General Assembly for appointment.

Of the six candidates currently in the race, four are women, Michelle Bachelet, Rebeca Grynspan, María Fernanda Espinosa and Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett. Their credentials leave no doubt that the UN has highly qualified women ready to lead. The choice facing UN member states, and especially the Permanent Five is therefore not whether a woman can lead the organisation, but which candidate is best placed to pull multilateralism back from the brink, revers trends of conflict and inequality, uphold international law, and restoring confidence in cooperation as a force for justice and human dignity.

That is no small task. The next Secretary-General will need to provide principled leadership to advance the interests of people whose voices are excluded from global decision-making, while defending the UN’s independence from its most powerful members. Trygve Lie, the first Secretary-General, once called the job “the most impossible job in the world.” This quote has rarely been proven righter than today.

The organisation the next Secretary-General inherits is not in good shape. A recent poll found that just 4% of people in the Global South believe the UN has sufficient authority in global governance; 44% blamed the concentration of power among the Permanent Five in the Security Council. Yet the same poll affirmed the need of the UN in this context with its enduring value as the only universal forum where all member states can address shared challenges — and the need for a Secretary-General who listens to people.

That points to four non-negotiable commitments that should anchor the next Secretary-General’s agenda: representation, participation, accountability and the right to self-determination. Among these four commitments accountability matters most urgently to stop impunity. Committing to it means real reform of a Security Council where the Permanent Five too often act as judge and jury: prioritising prevention, curbing the veto, strengthen the equality of all Security Council members in decision-making so advancements to global peace cannot be blocked, limiting the “penholder” system that lets the P5 monopolise drafting, and putting civilian protection at the centre of every peacekeeping effort.

Ultimately, addressing these structural challenges will require a broader conversation about the future of the UN Charter itself, including serious consideration of Article 109 as a pathway for reviewing whether the Organization’s founding framework remains fit for purpose in today’s world.

Translating these commitments into people’s lives means concrete action in a few key areas: Inequality must finally move to the centre of the UN agenda: billionaire wealth has hit a historic $18.3 trillion and only 16% of the Sustainable Development Goals remain on track. Establishing an International Panel on Inequality, modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will be a vital next step in tackling the inequality emergency.

Civilian protection and defending international humanitarian law must be non-negotiable to dismantle systems of impunity, at a moment when dozens of people fall into humanitarian emergency every minute. And with the world badly off track on the Paris Agreement, the next Secretary-General must build on Antonio Guterres’ legacy and continue pushing to make a just transition away from fossil fuels — backed by real climate finance — a defining political priority.

The next Secretary-General must put a feminist vision at the heart of the UN. This means confronting a rigged, sexist, and racist economic order that prizes endless growth over the care of people and the planet, and backing the Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth. And none of this will happen if civil society is sidelined and fundamental rights -including digital ones – are not protected while Artificial Intelligence keeps expanding without control. The UN’s legitimacy depends on hearing from the people it was built to serve — the Charter’s founding principle of “We the Peoples” — especially as civic space shrinks worldwide including in the UN.

In her inaugural address as UNGA president, Pandit said the world “must learn to cooperate effectively in safeguarding peace and in raising standards of living.” Seventy-three years on, as multilateralism strains under the weight of its own contradictions, that sentence has lost none of its urgency.

Leading the UN of tomorrow might be the hardest job in the world. But as Lie also said, the harder the task, the greater the reward. It is time for structural change — and for a woman of the Global South to lead it. We cannot afford to miss this opportunity. The coming weeks, and the opening of the 81st session of the General Assembly, will show whether world leaders are ready to seize it

Amitabh Behar is Oxfam International’s Executive Director

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PAHO Director calls for expanded access to innovations such as oral and injectable PrEP, rapid testing, and HIV self-testing, while strengthening early diagnosis and timely treatment initiation to advance HIV elimination. Credit: PAHO

By Pan American Health Organization
RIO de JANEIRO, Brazil, Jul 28 2026 (IPS)

The Region of the Americas has more tools than ever before to prevent, diagnose, and treat HIV, yet many of them are still not reaching everyone who needs them, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Director Jarbas Barbosa said during the opening session of the International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2026).

Dr. Barbosa emphasized that expanding access to innovations such as oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), long-acting injectable PrEP, rapid testing, and HIV self-testing, together with strengthening early diagnosis and ensuring timely treatment initiation, will be essential to accelerate the elimination of HIV as a public health problem in the Region.

In his remarks, Dr. Barbosa highlighted that the Americas have repeatedly demonstrated that ambitious public health goals can be achieved through cooperation, scientific evidence, and strong health systems. He noted that the Region has eliminated polio and rubella and that several countries have eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV, achievements that provide a strong foundation for accelerating progress toward HIV elimination.

Credit: PAHO

He further stressed that achieving this goal will require combining innovations in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment with political leadership, equity, and close collaboration with communities.

Dr. Barbosa also noted that countries in Latin America and the Caribbean now finance 92% of HIV investments through domestic resources, representing one of the highest levels of domestic funding for HIV programs globally and demonstrating the Region’s sustained commitment to HIV response.

“The question before us is no longer whether we have the tools to end HIV as a public health threat. We do. The question is whether we can ensure that those tools reach everyone who needs them, regardless of where they live, who they are, or the circumstances they face,” said Barbosa. “Innovation only changes lives when people can access it.”

According to the latest available data, AIDS-related deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean declined by 46% between 2010 and 2025. In 2024 alone, access to antiretroviral treatment prevented an estimated 117,000 AIDS-related deaths. Access to PrEP also increased substantially, from 35,000 people in 2020 to more than 326,000 in 2025.

Despite this progress, significant gaps in access and coverage remain. Approximately one in three new HIV diagnoses is still made at a late stage of infection, and nearly 900,000 people living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean are not receiving treatment.

Reducing HIV-related mortality and addressing advanced HIV disease will be among PAHO’s key priorities at AIDS 2026. Although tools to prevent and treat HIV have improved substantially, late diagnosis, delays in treatment initiation, and challenges in retaining people in care continue to contribute to preventable deaths and to the burden of co-infections such as tuberculosis, which remains the leading cause of death among people with advanced HIV disease.

Against this backdrop, PAHO unveiled new initiatives aimed at accelerating HIV elimination across the Region.

As part of its agenda at AIDS 2026, PAHO launched the Alliance for HIV Elimination in the Americas, a new regional platform designed to advance progress toward HIV elimination by 2030 through stronger collaboration among governments, communities, international organizations, academia, development partners, and the private sector.

The Alliance is part of PAHO’s Disease Elimination Initiative and seeks to strengthen political leadership, expand equitable access to innovation, and promote sustainable investments to accelerate HIV elimination across the Americas.

PAHO is also advancing the Path to HIV Elimination in the Americas, an evidence-based framework that will help countries measure progress, identify remaining gaps, and demonstrate achievements on the path toward HIV elimination.

“If we maintain political commitment, protect the investments already made, and place equity at the center of every decision, ending HIV as a public health threat will be within our reach,” Barbosa said. “No country will achieve this goal alone.”

The PAHO Director warned that financial pressures, shifting political priorities, and persistent inequalities could jeopardize hard-won gains.

He reiterated that achieving HIV elimination will require strengthening people-centered health systems, expanding access to PrEP and other innovations, integrating HIV services with tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infection services, working alongside communities to reduce stigma and discrimination, and sustaining the domestic investments that have enabled steady progress across the Region.

Throughout AIDS 2026, PAHO will advance these priorities through a series of high-level events focused on HIV elimination, advanced HIV disease, and equitable access to innovations for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

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Three years of declining hunger have answered one question: Progress is possible. The question now is whether governments will scale what works before conflict, climate shocks and financial retreat erase it. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Máximo Torero
ROME, Jul 27 2026 (IPS)

Here is a fact that should interrupt the world’s drumbeat of bad news: Hunger fell again in 2025.

For the third consecutive year, fewer people faced chronic hunger. The total declined to an estimated 645 million, 14 million fewer than in 2024 and 43 million fewer than at the 2022 peak. Moderate or severe food insecurity fell by 86 million, to 2.1 billion from 2024 to 2025.

The number remains a profound collective failure. But the decline challenges the fatalistic assumption that conflict, climate change and economic instability make rising hunger inevitable. When governments align social protection, agricultural investment and economic policy, they can bend the hunger curve.

Countries making the greatest gains offer no single formula, but they do offer a common lesson. Their histories differ, but their choices share key features: social protection that preserves purchasing power; investment that raises agricultural productivity; rural roads, irrigation and market infrastructure; and policies connecting small scale farmers to expanding food markets. Hunger falls when these policies reinforce one another

Asia’s hunger is now about one quarter below its 2015 level. Latin America and the Caribbean has also moved below the rate recorded a decade ago. In Africa, the rate declined for the first time in nearly a decade, from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20 percent in 2025.

Africa’s progress is fragile. Rapid population growth kept the number of hungry people at about 309 million. Yet even this small reversal is significant, especially because bilateral development assistance to sub Saharan Africa fell 26.3 percent in 2025 and is projected to fall again this year.

Countries making the greatest gains offer no single formula, but they do offer a common lesson. India cut hunger from 21.1 percent in the mid 2000s to 9.8 percent; Senegal from 15.8 percent to 5.3 percent; Rwanda from 31.8 percent to 22.6 percent; and Peru from 17.9 percent to 5.7 percent. Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Guyana now report rates below 2.5 percent.

Their histories differ, but their choices share key features: social protection that preserves purchasing power; investment that raises agricultural productivity; rural roads, irrigation and market infrastructure; and policies connecting small scale farmers to expanding food markets. Hunger falls when these policies reinforce one another.

The danger is that governments will read three years of improvement as permission to retreat.

The Middle East conflict and disruption of the Strait of Hormuz are already raising energy, fertilizer and transportation costs. The strait is critical not only for oil and liquefied natural gas but also for sulphur, fertilizers and other farm inputs. Decisions made now could determine whether this shock becomes a much larger food price crisis within six to 12 months.

Climate is the second threat. El Niño is strengthening, with an 81 percent probability of becoming a very strong event late this year. That does not guarantee crop losses, but it raises the odds of damaging heat and rainfall patterns across major producing regions.

The third threat is cutting even more humanitarian and development financing when vulnerable countries most need resilience. Aid cuts do not make costs disappear. They transfer them to food importing governments, humanitarian agencies and households already spending most of their income on food.

But preventing hunger is only the first test. The harder challenge is helping people eat well.

About 2.69 billion people, roughly one third of humanity, still cannot afford a healthy diet. In Africa, the share is 66.6 percent. Calories alone are not enough. A diet that prevents hunger does not necessarily prevent anaemia, child stunting, obesity or diabetes.

The economics explain why. Starchy staples provide about half the calories in a healthy diet but only 13 percent of its cost. Fruits and vegetables provide roughly 5 percent of calories but account for 16 percent of the cost. Animal source foods provide 13 percent of calories but consume 28 percent of the budget. Calories are relatively cheap. Nutrients are expensive.

Much of that expense accumulates after food leaves the farm. New analysis for the 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World indicates that 70 to 75 percent of the cost of a healthy diet arises in storage, processing, transportation, wholesale and retail. Poor roads, inadequate cold storage, unreliable electricity and post harvest losses turn nutritious perishables into luxuries.

That should change how governments spend. They already provide $540 billion to $635 billion a year in agricultural support, much of it concentrated on a few staples. Supporting staples alone can pull land and investment away from fruits, vegetables and other nutrient dense foods. Governments should redirect more support toward horticultural productivity, cold chains, irrigation, rural roads, storage, energy and competitive markets.

They must also get the sequence right. Expanding school meals, food vouchers and other demand programs without increasing supply can raise prices. Investment in farms and supply chains must precede, or accompany, policies that stimulate demand.

Three years of declining hunger have answered one question: Progress is possible. The question now is whether governments will scale what works before conflict, climate shocks and financial retreat erase it.

The next frontier is not just cheaper calories. It is making healthy diets affordable.

Excerpt:

Refugees fleeing violence in Ethiopia's Tigray region cross the Tekeze River into Sudan in November 2020. Credit: UNHCR/Hazim Elhag

By Elizabeth Tan
GENEVA, Jul 27 2026 (IPS)

Seventy-five years after the Refugee Convention was opened for signature on 28 July 1951, it remains the foundation of the international refugee protection system and one of the most consequential international legal instruments ever adopted.

Born in the aftermath of the Second World War, it codified a simple but powerful principle: people forced to flee persecution, conflict or violence must be able to find safety and protection.

No society is immune to war, persecution or sudden upheaval. The Convention was built on that universal truth: that people forced to flee must be protected.

Over the past seven and a half decades, it has been a lifeline for people fleeing conflicts and persecution, from post-war Europe and wars of national liberation across Africa, to the Indochina wars and military dictatorships in Latin America, to more recent crises in Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and Sudan.

A total of 149 States are parties to the Convention, its 1967 Protocol, or both, making it one of the most widely supported international legal frameworks. Together, the Convention and its Protocol define who is a refugee, set out refugees’ rights, and establish the standards of treatment States have agreed to uphold. The core principle of non-refoulement – prohibiting the return of people to a place where they would face persecution, torture or other serious harm – is recognized under customary international law, which applies to all countries, whether or not they have signed the Convention.

Importantly, the Convention has proven to be a living instrument, retaining its relevance in responding to contemporary challenges. Through evolving State practice, court decisions and guidance from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, it has supported protection responses to issues such as gender-based persecution, forced recruitment and risks that may be compounded by climate impacts where these intersect with conflict, persecution or other serious harm.

In a world experiencing record levels of crisis and instability – with more than 130 armed conflicts recorded worldwide in 2025, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross – some 41.6 million refugees remained uprooted. Even amid increasingly polarized debate, public support for asylum remains strong, with around two-thirds of people surveyed this year by Ipsos across 29 countries supporting the right of those fleeing war or persecution to seek refuge.

The global asylum system, however, is under strain. Nearly 70 per cent of refugees are hosted by low- and middle-income countries, many of which face their own economic and development challenges. Seven in ten refugees live in exile for five years or more.

Some argue that the Convention is no longer suited to today’s globalized world of mixed movements and overstretched asylum systems. We disagree. The Convention remains the framework that allows States to distinguish those who need international protection from those who do not, while ensuring that no one is returned to persecution, torture or other serious harm. Fair and efficient procedures to determine refugee status, protect refugees, reassure host communities and preserve confidence in asylum. UNHCR is ready to redouble its work with States and partners to ease capacity constraints and ensure decisions are accurate and as swift as possible. Those who do not need refugee protection should not be granted asylum and can be returned, safely and in dignity. That, too, is part of a credible asylum system.

At the same time, border management must remain anchored in protection. We are concerned by practices that restrict access to asylum, including pushbacks, denial of access to territory and forced returns. The Convention provides a framework for States to manage borders while protecting people with a well-defined need for international protection.

These pressures are compounded by severe funding shortfalls. With UNHCR funded at only 31 per cent as of the end of June, essential services for people forced to flee – including extremely vulnerable groups – are being constrained.

Marking the 75th anniversary of the Convention, UNHCR is calling for renewed commitment to the institution of asylum, stronger international cooperation and greater support for refugees and the communities that host them. Through a series of dialogues in 2026 – taking place at local, regional and global levels, and involving governments, civil society, refugees, the private sector and other stakeholders – we are working to identify practical ways to strengthen protection and advance solutions.

Seventy-five years on, the Convention is a test of our collective resolve today to protect those forced to flee and to keep asylum available for those who need it.

Elizabeth Tan is UNHCR’s Director of International Protection and Solutions

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The Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War brought together more than 200 of the world’s most authoritative figures on peace and artificial intelligence. Here the 'The Rome Declaration for a Disarmed and Disarming Peace' was signed in the main council chamber in Rome's city hall Campidoglio. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

By Ariel F. Dumont
ROME, Jul 24 2026 (IPS)

After two days of debate at an international conference devoted to the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI), nuclear war and global security, Nobel laureates, former heads of state and government, scientists, human rights defenders, religious leaders and representatives of civil society adopted a joint declaration, calling for it to be based on human dignity.

Inspired by Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas and signed in the halls of the Capitol, Rome’s city hall, this text states that artificial intelligence cannot be left solely to military or commercial interests. It also calls for international cooperation based on human dignity, the development of global AI governance and the continuation of efforts towards nuclear disarmament.

As major powers are investing increasingly substantial sums in the development of AI, participants considered that humanity stands at a genuine crossroads. The choices that will be made will have a decisive impact not only on tomorrow’s geopolitical balances but also on the future and place of human beings in a world where decisions could increasingly be entrusted to artificial intelligence.

This point was highlighted by Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, the master of ceremonies of this meeting, organised by the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War, who described it as historic.

The declaration, named “The Rome Declaration for a Disarmed and Disarming Peace”, was signed on Thursday, July 16.

For Rome’s mayor, “the crucial issue, both at the global and local levels, is technological development, which must be inspired by fundamental ethical principles: respect for individuals, equality among human beings and democratic responsibility in the name of the common good.”

Gualtieri also stressed that today, more than ever, “the world needs an international coalition capable of promoting a new model of development combining economic growth, social justice, human rights and environmental protection”, thus echoing Pope Leo XIV’s call for “a disarmed and disarming peace”.

A few hours earlier, Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, had warned against the development of autonomous weapons.

“The idea that decisions to kill could be made by machines is repugnant to us.”

Delegates at the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War pose in the main council chamber in Rome’s city hall Campidoglio. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

According to Callamard, the danger does not lie in an artificial intelligence that would suddenly become conscious but rather in the decision to delegate to it responsibilities that belong exclusively to moral judgement.

“It is not that the machine decides that it will become the boss; it is we who programme these systems,” she explained.

For the head of Amnesty International, the growing integration of AI into military operations represents a major change. These systems can already analyse enormous quantities of data, identify targets and recommend strikes, while gradually reducing the need for human intervention.

Beyond autonomous weapons, the Callamard reminded the world that it must pay close attention to the implications of the progressive integration of AI into what the military calls, in its jargon, the “kill chain”, meaning the process from target identification to the conduct of an operation.

“Even when a human being officially retains the final decision, the growing dependence on automated systems profoundly changes the way military operations are prepared and conducted,” Callamard stated, adding that these technologies rely on immense volumes of data that may themselves be altered.

“Analyses and recommendations can be biased because they are based on data that themselves carry these biases. We must remain attentive to the risks arising from erroneous or discriminatory decisions in contexts where the consequences can be irreversible.”

Another danger: the multiplication of force. Thanks to artificial intelligence, a single operator could simultaneously supervise dozens, or even hundreds, of drones or other autonomous systems, considerably increasing military capabilities.

“These technological developments are taking place within a broader context of strategic competition between states. We are living in a period when many governments are seeking military hegemony,” Callamard concluded.

Beyond military issues, several speakers also insisted on the geopolitical consequences of this technological revolution. Romano Prodi, former president of the European Commission and former Italian prime minister, estimated that the growing rivalry between the United States and China considerably complicates the emergence of genuine international regulation.

In an increasingly fragmented world, Prodi warned, no nation will be able to address alone the challenges linked to artificial intelligence, global security or the control of ever more powerful technologies.

These words anticipated the essence of the final declaration, according to which international cooperation is now an indispensable condition for preventing artificial intelligence from fuelling a new arms race and widening geopolitical fractures.

The discussions also focused on the economic and social consequences of this technological revolution. In the world of work, the sudden arrival of AI is already raising many concerns, particularly regarding the professional future of younger generations and the profound transformation of several professions in the coming years.

The programme brought together a number of leading international figures, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Chief Advisor to Bangladesh Muhammad Yunus; Yoshiyuki Nagaoka, Executive Director of the Office of Public Affairs at Soka Gakkai; Filipino journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa; Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard; and several scientists and nuclear experts.

Research published by King’s College London shows that a study carried out on hundreds of millions of job advertisements across 39 countries reveals an average 6.1% decline in job offers in professions most exposed to automation, while the remaining positions require increasingly specialised skills.

Ultimately, what will remain of this conference and of the Rome Declaration? The main point to remember is that participants accept the development of artificial intelligence and do not believe it should frighten us. On the contrary, they consider that this technology can become a powerful driver of progress – provided, however, that it remains at the service of humanity. The ball is therefore in the court of states and their leaders, who must above all place human dignity at the forefront.

The real question is no longer only what artificial intelligence will make possible, but rather what limits societies and humanity as a whole will choose to set for it before the imperatives of power permanently override collective responsibility.

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

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Investments in jobs, basic services and community infrastructure can reduce the pressures that drive displacement in Myanmar. Credit: UNDP Myanmar

By Norimasa Shimomura
YANGON, Myanmar, Jul 24 2026 (IPS)

When asked what development looks like today, a community leader in Kalaw township points to these fields. Once destroyed by a typhoon, they are now productive again. What began as emergency food assistance in the first month was followed by UNDP support in the community—seeds, training, debris removal, support to microbusinesses and small infrastructure—backed by the Republic of Korea, Norway and Switzerland. One year on, the fields sustain three annual production cycles—rice and flowers—with more resilient practices and higher yields. “This is what development looks like to us,” he says.

Communities in Myanmar today are not facing a single crisis. They are facing many, and layered on top of one another, recurring over time. Conflict, insecurity, economic uncertainty, market volatility and climate- and disaster-related shocks do not occur in isolation. Global crises are placing added pressure on already-stretched humanitarian and development financing. Together, these dynamics reinforce one another, creating a cycle that is harder to break. These protracted, compounding crises are reshaping the country’s social and economic fabric and putting communities under enormous stress.

Myanmar shows why separating humanitarian action from development no longer fits reality. Relief keeps people alive, but it will not on its own restart livelihoods, steady local services, increase risk preparedness or reduce the pressures that drive displacement. The smarter play is to link emergency support to a continuum of recovery, stabilization and longer-term development, backing community systems and local markets so today’s spending also buys a more durable future.

A crisis that feeds on itself

Myanmar is fragmented: conflict in too many areas, economic freefall in others, and climate shocks across the country—from floods and droughts to rising temperatures and environmental loss. But these pressures are connected. When livelihoods collapse, people move. When insecurity rises, local economies contract. When disasters hit, already-fragile services give way. Families then face hard trade-offs; taking on high-interest debt, moving to precarious urban fringes, attempting risky migration, or turning to illicit markets.

For many, participation in informal, and sometimes criminal economies is less a choice than a last resort. Others flee, often towards cities such as Yangon. But urban areas are already under strain. In peri-urban Yangon, poverty rates are estimated to be around 50 percent, and new arrivals stretch housing, services and jobs further, deepening vulnerability and inequality. Women shoulder this burden most heavily, with women-headed households in peri-urban areas more likely to have lower incomes, depend on precarious and poorly paid employment, and facing heightened safety concerns.

This is how the crisis sustains itself. Conflict and violence breed insecurity; insecurity forces people from their homes and pushes some into illicit economies; displacement fractures livelihoods and the resulting economic hardship reinforces instability. And so the cycle continues.

The limits of a humanitarian-only response

Myanmar has received humanitarian aid for decades. It remains essential. People need immediate support for food, shelter and protection. But the challenges Myanmar faces today are not only humanitarian. They are structural and long-term. When support can only be planned and financed in short cycles, it can help people survive, but without enabling them to rebuild livelihoods, restore services or reduce future risk. This can create dependence on humanitarian aid without a clear exit.

The question is no longer whether humanitarian support is needed—it clearly is—but whether it is sufficient on its own, and how development can help build resilience. To break the cycle, investments must also focus on recovery, livelihoods, risk preparedness, access to finance and local systems. The bridge between humanitarian action and development must be deliberately built. UNDP in Myanmar has designed a new phase of its Community First Programme backing community-led solutions that can absorb shocks now while laying foundations for medium- and longer-term development.

Where the bridge matters most

There are three areas where this bridge is critical.

By combining community-based approaches with more targeted economic interventions, it is possible to offer a more comprehensive response in a protracted crisis. Credit: UNDP Myanmar

First, livelihoods and early recovery. Investments in jobs, basic services and community infrastructure can reduce the pressures that drive displacement. When people have viable ways to earn a living, they are less likely to move out of necessity. This also reduces the burden on humanitarian systems and can be an immediate stabilizing factor.

Second, local systems and community capacity. Even in constrained contexts, support to community-level structures can have a powerful effect. It enables people to manage their own recovery, strengthens local decision-making and builds a sense of ownership. It helps communities to think longer term and create some community wealth. These are the building blocks of future governance.

Third, economic alternatives to illicit activity. When large parts of local economies in some regions operate in grey or black markets, the implications go beyond livelihoods, they affect national and regional security. Creating alternatives—through job creation, support to small businesses and financing—gives people options. It reduces reliance on illicit networks, lowers risks of exploitation and opens pathways for more sustainable economic activity. These directly affect stability within Myanmar and across its borders.

Navigating a complex funding landscape

Despite the clear need to bridge humanitarian and development approaches, funding structures often work against it. In Myanmar, much of the available funding is still categorized as humanitarian. This creates challenges for organizations with strong development expertise, which must adapt their language and delivery models to fit short-term funding criteria.

At the same time, partner expectations are evolving, but not always consistently. Some continue to fund purely humanitarian outputs. Others expect development impact from humanitarian interventions. Still others fund development but want to demonstrate humanitarian impact.

This creates a fragmented landscape: humanitarian funding for humanitarian results, humanitarian funding seeking development impact, development funding framed as humanitarian and, more rarely, development funding investing directly in long-term results.

Navigating this requires flexibility and clarity of purpose. Development actors must be able to articulate the longer-term impact of their work, even when operating in a humanitarian context. The value lies precisely in that distinction: connecting immediate interventions to sustained recovery and future stability.

A window of opportunity

There are signs of change. Some partners are beginning to recognize that continued investment in short-term relief, without parallel investments in recovery and livelihoods, is not sustainable.

This creates an opportunity. By combining community-based approaches with more targeted economic interventions—jobs, enterprise development, access to finance, climate and energy solutions—it is possible to offer a more comprehensive response in a protracted crisis context, one that addresses both immediate needs and underlying drivers of crisis. But this window may not remain open indefinitely. As other actors reposition and global priorities shift, the space for shaping this agenda could narrow.

Looking ahead

Myanmar’s challenges are complex but the direction of response is clear. Humanitarian aid remains indispensable. But on its own, it cannot break cycles of crisis that are structural and self-reinforcing.

Bridging humanitarian action and development is how people regain agency. It is how communities stabilize. And ultimately, it is how countries begin to move beyond crisis—not just survive it.

Norimasa Shimomura is UNDP Resident Representative in Myanmar.
Source: UNDP

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The reef surrounding Namotu Island, Fiji, has experienced serious coral bleaching caused by increasing ocean temperatures. Credit: Beau Pilgrim / Climate Visuals

By Kizito Makoye
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Jul 23 2026 (IPS)

Every morning, as the Indian Ocean retreats from the reef off Zanzibar’s Jambiani village, Chiku Chande steps into the knee-deep lagoon carrying bundles of seaweed seedlings. Years of farming these waters have taught her about every channel and coral outcrop. But lately, the corals that once glowed in brown and gold have become chalky white.

“You don’t need anyone to tell you these changes,” Chande tells IPS. “We see it with our own eyes. The coral has lost its colour.”

Like many families in Jambiani, the 48-year-old grandmother depends on the reef. It shelters her seaweed farm from crashing Indian Ocean waves, supports fish stocks and brings tourists to the village. As the corals bleach and slowly die, she worries about the future.

Chande has watched the reef change year after year. Scientists say her observations mirror what is happening across the world’s tropical oceans.

Scientists long regarded El Niño – the natural warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that disrupts weather patterns globally – as the main driver of mass coral bleaching

A new study led by Climate Central and published in Oceanography concludes that human-induced climate change has driven every global coral bleaching event over the past four decades. The researchers found greenhouse gas emissions have warmed the oceans so much that El Niño now acts mainly as a trigger rather than the root cause.

“Our study shows that without climate change, coral bleaching would be a rare and isolated event, and global mass coral bleaching simply would not occur,” says Andrew Pershing, Climate Central’s chief programme officer and the study’s lead author.

2026-2027 projected bleaching risk map. A report published in Oceanography argues that nearly every global coral bleaching event over the past 40 years would not have occurred
without human-caused climate change. Credit: Oceanography

Corals bleach when unusually warm water forces them to expel the microscopic algae that provide most of their food and give them their vibrant colours. If temperatures quickly return to normal, corals can recover. But prolonged heat starves them and can kill entire reef ecosystems.

To determine how much of that warming came from human activity, researchers compared today’s sea surface temperatures with computer simulations of a world unaffected by greenhouse gas emissions. They then assessed whether bleaching would still have occurred under those cooler conditions.

Their analysis showed that every global bleaching event since 1998 – including those in 1998, 2010, 2014-2017 and the ongoing event that began in 2023 – required human-caused warming to push ocean temperatures beyond bleaching thresholds. Although El Niño coincided with many of those events, the study found they would not have become global bleaching episodes without decades of warming driven by fossil fuel emissions.

Women seaweed farmers in Zanzibar’s Jambiani village receive guidance while tending seaweed farms in the shallow lagoon, where warming seas have also left nearby coral reefs increasingly bleached. Scientists say human-caused climate change, rather than natural climate cycles, has driven every global mass coral bleaching event on record. Credit: Muhidin Michuzi

The findings have particular implications for Tanzania.

The country’s 1,400-kilometre coastline, which includes the reefs surrounding Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia islands, supports fisheries, tourism and thousands of coastal livelihoods. Healthy reefs also protect beaches and coastal settlements by absorbing up to 97 percent of incoming wave energy, reducing erosion and storm damage.

As reefs deteriorate, fish populations decline, tourism suffers and coastlines become increasingly vulnerable to flooding and erosion.

Similar pressures are happening across tropical reefs worldwide. Although coral reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean floor, they support roughly a quarter of all marine species and generate an estimated US$2.7 trillion annually in ecosystem services through fisheries, tourism and coastal protection. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network estimates the world lost about 14 percent of its coral between 2009 and 2018 as repeated marine heatwaves left reefs too little time to recover.

Recent ocean temperature records suggest the pressure is intensifying.

According to the Copernicus Marine Service, June 2026 was the warmest June on record for global sea surface temperatures, while marine heatwaves covered about 82 percent of the world’s oceans by the end of the month. Because the oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe, increasing the likelihood of coral bleaching.

The Climate Central researchers project that by 2028 human-caused warming will outweigh El Niño’s influence in every coral reef region worldwide. Bleaching, they say, will increasingly reflect persistently warmer oceans rather than unusually strong natural climate cycles.

Using the same attribution methods, the researchers also assessed bleaching risk during the developing 2026-2027 El Niño. They found that while the climate pattern could still trigger bleaching in some regions, human-caused warming would account for most of the risk, particularly in the southern Caribbean, the Pacific coasts of Central and South America, and parts of East and Southeast Asia.

Globally, the monthly average sea-surface temperature for the extra-polar ocean (60°S–60°N) was the highest for June, exceeding the previous record set in June 2024 by just 0.01ºC. This partly reflected the development of strong El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Credit: ECMWF/Copernicus Climate Change Service

The study challenges the long-held assumption that bleaching is mainly a response to natural climate cycles. Researchers say bleaching can no longer be viewed as an occasional event linked to natural climate cycles; scientists say it is increasingly becoming a recurring consequence of steadily warming oceans.

“By isolating the effect of climate change, our study shows that the fate of reefs is closely tied to how much carbon pollution goes into the atmosphere. Protecting reefs from overfishing and pollution is very important. We need as many thriving reef areas as possible. Even during severe events, there are often pockets of coral that persist. These areas can be the source for recovery in the short and long term,” Pershing tells IPS

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that even if global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, up to 90 percent of the world’s coral reefs could disappear by mid-century. At 2 degrees Celsius of warming, losses could reach 99 percent.

Chande does not speak in terms of climate attribution. She only knows the reef looks different from when she began farming seaweed. Researchers say the bleaching she has witnessed reflects a much deeper shift: oceans that have steadily warmed over decades because of greenhouse gas emissions.

“When I was younger, the corals were full of colour and fish,” she said. “Now everything looks white. I worry about what is happening to the sea,” she says.

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Credit: Mauricio Morales Source UNESCO

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Jul 23 2026 (IPS)

Under a new rule proposed by the Department of Homeland Security, the duration of “I visas” for foreign media will be slashed from renewable multi year periods—often up to five years—to a maximum of 240 days, and just 90 days for Chinese journalists. Renewals would no longer be a routine administrative step tied to continued employment and compliance with the law, but a discretionary privilege the government can grant or withhold at will.

Turning Journalist Visas into a Weapon

The Foreign Press Association and other media organizations have warned that such a regime will make it “impossible” for correspondents to do their jobs: they cannot build sources, understand the country’s complex politics, or maintain anything resembling a family life if their legal status expires every few months and is constantly subject to political whim. The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States rightly calls this a “flagrant attack on press freedom” designed to chill coverage by making unfavorable reporting a potential visa liability.

An Assault on the Spirit of the First Amendment

Formally, the First Amendment binds Congress, not consular officers or immigration regulators. But in substance, the proposed rule is a direct affront to the First Amendment’s core principle: that a free press must be able to scrutinize those in power without fear of retaliation.

By conditioning a journalist’s ability to live and work in the United States on repeated, discretionary renewals, the administration is creating precisely the climate of self censorship that the First Amendment was meant to prevent. If a reporter knows that a critical story about the president or his allies might translate into a denied extension, the line between immigration policy and political reprisal evaporates.

This is not a hypothetical danger. The rule expressly allows the government to scrutinize the “content” a journalist is covering when deciding whether to grant an extension, opening the door to ideological filtering of who gets to report from the United States. That logic is indistinguishable from the methods long used by authoritarian regimes that the United States has historically condemned.

A Tool for Selective Punishment

The proposal also creates a ready made instrument for selective punishment of journalists from countries with which the Trump administration has tense or adversarial relations. The singling out of Chinese journalists for especially harsh 90 day limits is an explicit signal that Washington is prepared to wield visa policy as a geopolitical stick, not a neutral administrative tool.

Once this precedent is established, nothing prevents the administration from tightening the screw further on reporters from other states whose governments it wishes to pressure—or punish. The result would be a two tiered press landscape in which journalists from favored countries enjoy relative stability, while those from disfavored states face constant uncertainty and the implicit demand to “behave.”

Collateral Damage to US Society and Industry

The damage, however, would not be confined to newsrooms. International coverage of the United States is a critical artery for sectors that depend on global visibility and confidence, including finance, higher education, entertainment, sports, tourism, and cultural institutions. If it becomes prohibitively expensive or logistically impossible for foreign outlets to station correspondents in the US for more than a few months, many will simply relocate their hubs elsewhere.

That relocation carries a cost: fewer nuanced stories about American democracy, markets, universities, and culture, and more reliance on second hand or adversarial narratives. For a country that still claims leadership of a “free world,” deliberately undermining the global visibility of its own society is more than self defeating; it is profoundly hypocritical.

Undermining Treaty Commitments and Global Standing

There is an additional, often overlooked dimension: these restrictions risk clashing with US obligations under the UN Headquarters Agreement and related arrangements governing access for foreign journalists covering the United Nations. New York is not only an American city; it is the seat of an international organization whose work depends on open media access from all member states.

For decades, Washington has rightly insisted that host states of international institutions must guarantee access to the press and avoid politicizing visas. If the United States itself begins to weaponize journalist visas, it hands every authoritarian government a ready made excuse to do the same, eroding what remains of an already fragile global norm.

What Must Be Done

This proposal is not inevitable. It is a regulatory measure that can be challenged, delayed, and ultimately defeated through a combination of legal action, congressional oversight, diplomatic pressure, and public mobilization. Media organizations, civil liberties groups, universities, and US industries that depend on international coverage should submit formal complaints, petition Congress to block implementation, and prepare litigation arguing that the rule is arbitrary, discriminatory, and incompatible with the constitutional protection of a free press.

Foreign governments and international bodies, including the UN, should make it clear that undermining foreign press access in the United States will invite reciprocal restrictions on American journalists abroad—further isolating US audiences from the world. And American citizens, who ultimately bear the cost of an information starved public sphere, must insist that their government not abuse immigration law as a backdoor censorship tool.

It is no accident that Trump, who is openly hostile to independent media, now seeks to transform visas into levers of control over who may report on it. If this rule stands, it will not only harm thousands of foreign journalists and their families; it will further entrench a creeping authoritarianism in America that fears scrutiny above all else, and that is precisely why it must be stopped.

Dr Alon Ben-Meir is President, Institute for Humanitarian Conflict Resolution

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Excerpt:

In 2025, 13.5 million ‘zero-dose’ children did not receive vaccinations in their first year. More than half of these children live in fragile, conflict-affected or vulnerable countries, where immunization may be disrupted due to a number of factors. Credit: UNICEF

By Shuli Wong
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2026 (IPS)

Despite growing up and working in vastly different geographic regions and environments — one shaped by decades of armed conflict and political instability, and the other by remote, hard-to-reach areas — both Sagal and Johao encounter children daily who have never been vaccinated. Sagal and Johao are members of UNICEF’s Global Youth Health Advisory Group, where they advance children’s health by shaping UNICEF’s strategies, policies, and campaigns, while working directly in their own countries to connect community realities to global conversations about children’s health.

Sagal, 23, lives in the Darul-Salam district in Mogadishu, Somalia, where she works as a junior doctor in maternal and child health. Sagal’s passion lies in promoting vaccine confidence, addressing health misinformation, and empowering the youth to become advocates for healthier communities, she told Inter Press Service. While global vaccine coverage is improving, Sagal describes Somalia’s situation as “still very difficult.” Somalia has one of the lowest vaccination rates due to years of conflict, and while coverage is improving, “not all children are reached equally and a child’s chance to get vaccines depends on where they live, especially in unsafe or hard-to-reach places.”

Johao, 14, lives in Ecuador’s Amazon region, where he has seen firsthand the realities of why children in rural, remote, and isolated areas struggle to get vaccinated. Johao has hands-on volunteer experience in infectious disease research and community health projects and is also a part of U-Report, GeneraciónMÁS, and FixMyFood networks in Ecuador. The biggest challenges Johao encounters when it comes to childhood vaccination campaigns, he told Inter Press Service, are “reaching communities with limited infrastructure, overcoming transportation difficulties, and ensuring that accurate information reaches families before misinformation does.” Both conflict-affected and hard-to-reach areas face their own challenges, but what is particularly difficult in remote communities is “isolation and limited access to essential services.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines “zero-dose” children as those who lack access to or are never reached by routine immunization services, which is measured as children who have never received their first dose of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP). According to the annual WHO-UNICEF Estimates of National Immunization Coverage (WUENIC), 90 percent of infants globally received at least one dose of a DTP vaccine and 85 percent completed the three-dose series in 2025. However, in 2025, an estimated 13.5 million zero-dose children did not receive a single vaccine in their first year of life, and an estimated 7.3 million infants received their first DTP vaccine but dropped out before receiving their first measles dose. Globally, more than half of all zero-dose children live in fragile, conflict-affected or vulnerable countries (FCV) where immunization programs are affected by political instability, insecurity, and underfunding.

The Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) Mid-Term Review, identified FCVs as “one of the greatest challenges to achieving global immunization goals.” In Somalia, Sagal explained how “most zero dose and dropout children live in places that are unsafe, far away, or completely unreachable. These children face many problems at the same time, including, no vaccines, poor nutrition, very few health services, and almost no social support.”

Sagal, 23, a Somalian junior doctor and member of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group. Credit: UNICEF

The situation is similar in Ecuador, where Johao explained, “children who have never received vaccines often live in remote rural or Indigenous communities, where transportation is limited and access to health services can be difficult.”

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell emphasized that while vaccination rates have bounced back since dropping during the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of children are still left vulnerable due to displacement, poverty and war.

“We must reach every child, and we must rebuild trust where it is fraying. No child should suffer from a disease that a simple vaccine can prevent,” said Russell.

WHO and UNICEF have identified the urgent need to counter the spread of misleading information and erosion of trust, which has led to a surge in vaccine hesitancy and anti-science sentiment. In particular, IA2030 called for tailored support in FCV settings to “promote nuanced and context-specific advocacy messaging and approaches, and foster trust through sustained community engagement.”

Aside from logistical access, there are other factors that determine people’s decisions to get vaccinations. Sagal shared that in Somalia people forgo vaccinations for a variety of reasons, including fear of vaccine side effects or rumors that vaccines cause infertility. In Ecuador, Johao detailed how some families lack clear information regarding vaccination schedules and have vaccine concerns influenced by misinformation, with these “barriers affecting their trust in and ability to access health services.”

As a member of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group, Johao, 14, speaks to the experiences of children in Amazon communities in Ecuador. Credit: UNICEF

In FCV and hard-to-reach settings, mistrust surrounding vaccines is driven by multiple complex and multifaceted aspects, including misinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, religious opposition, low health literacy, sociodemographic factors, and the politicization of vaccines that undermines science.

Both Sagal and Johao’s work sits at the intersection of access and trust. As members of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group, Sagal and Johao are not only bringing vaccines to children who would otherwise be missed, but doing so in contexts where the social and political conditions that make vaccination difficult are the same conditions their communities live with every day.

When it comes to rebuilding trust and reaching children in FCV settings, youth advocates’ “presence and credibility help [them] enter spaces where formal systems cannot,” Sagal said. “Youth advocates speak the same language and come from the same communities, [so] families trust us more than big institutions.” In Somalia, she explained, youth advocates help to rebuild trust in fragile areas by “reaching other young people quickly, communicating in a natural and friendly way, fighting misinformation fast, and mobilizing communities faster than traditional actors.”

Across settings, culture, language, and traditions strongly influence health decisions. Johao noted how “vaccination messages are more effective when they are communicated respectfully and acknowledge local knowledge and beliefs.”

In order to reach the IA2030 goal and ensure vaccines reach everyone, everywhere, at every age, WHO and UNICEF have put forth four concrete actions. These actions include strengthening immunization programs in FCV settings, countering false and misleading health information to support vaccine uptake, increasing and sustaining global funding for immunization programs, and investing in stronger data and disease surveillance systems.

Sagal and Johao’s lived experiences highlight the dire need for these actions. From Sagal’s experiences, zero-dose children “need health and nutrition support delivered in ways that work in fragile and dangerous environments.” As members of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group, Johao explained that to effectively help their communities, “we need access to reliable information, training, resources, and opportunities to work closely with health professionals and community leaders.”

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2026 (IPS)

A proposal to restrict US visas to foreign journalists assigned to cover the US has triggered a strong protest from the New York-based Foreign Press Association (FPA).

The FPA says it is dismayed by the US administration’s proposals for restricting international press visas. The shortened duration of the press “I” visa would make it impossible for overseas press to maintain consistent coverage of the US, let alone staff a bureau.

The likely administrative backlogs and possible politically motivated visa denials fly in the face of the First Amendment in the US and challenge international media standards.

“The demand for frequent visa renewal obviates any chance that correspondents could maintain any kind of family life, let alone to develop the network of sources and resources essential for professional journalism.”

“The benefits of free press coverage stand in their own right. However, we should also point out that many essential US industries depend on international media coverage.”

Markets, education, entertainment, STEM, sports, and culture are just some examples of industries where companies and institutions could decide to relocate to more cosmopolitan and accessible countries, the FPA said.

The administration rule changes reducing the length of stay for foreign journalist (I) visas to 240 days and 90 days for Chinese journalists harm the international media’s ability to cover the United States. Journalists, who have spent years building relationships and developing a deep understanding of the U.S. economy, people, culture, and politics, would join the millions whose ability to travel to and work in the U.S. is challenged by the administration’s policies.

According to the US State Department, media (I) visas are for representatives of the foreign media, including members of the press, radio, film, and print industries. The media representative must be traveling temporarily to the United States to work in their profession. The individual may only participate in informational or educational activities, essential to the foreign media function.

Activities in the United States while on a media (I) visa must be for a media organization with a home office outside of the United States. Activities in the United States must be informational in nature and generally associated with the newsgathering process and reporting on current events.

Since at least the Second World War, the FPA pointed out, the State Department has set an example for other countries with its untrammelled welcome for the foreign press and its consistent defense of First Amendment rights. The flurry of reflexive xenophobia represented by these proposals reverses all those decades in a way that clearly does not take account of the needs of the press, nor indeed of the USA.

“Many of us can testify to the professional development of journalists from more restrictive countries like China when exposed to a more open press here, which makes it even more illogical that the proposals impose additional restrictions on Chinese media”.

“We recall that the Headquarters Treaty with the United Nations and other international bodies commits the host country, the US, to facilitate entry to press from member countries to cover the work, and cannot see any provisions to ensure that this international treaty obligation is fulfilled. Once again this suggests that these proposals were rushed through without consideration of the realities, and we can testify, with no consultation with the media affected”.

Ian Williams, President, Foreign Press Association of the USA, told Inter Press Service (IPS), “It’s worse than a crime; it’s a screw-up (mistake), as Napoleon’s general didn’t say… They have lumped journalists in with the overall category of foreigners and acted with reflexive xenophobia—perhaps exacerbated because if there’s any group they hate more than foreigners, it’s journalists.”

The proposals, he said, show no sign of intelligent appreciation of the role of journalism or journalists, and they have produced no statistics for journalists and the alleged threat to security or immigration. Their arguments and proposals are an exercise in knee-jerk prejudice, a reflex that operates without the intervention of the intellect.

“One also wonders whether they have given any thought to American interests. Whatever you think of their social utility, NYSE and NASDAQ depend on global media for international investors,” he said

Similarly, as one would expect from a bunch of Philistines with no professional experience, by bundling the media, along with educational visas, they may have muddied the waters. Higher education has a heavy dependence on foreign tuition income, and they will fight back politically and in the courts, maybe joined by the Murdoch Press, which has regularly imported reactionary talent from abroad.

“Ironically one thinks of the foreign press personalities who have come into the USA—people like Rupert Murdoch, Andrew Neill, Douglas Murray, Conrad Black, Andrew Sullivan, and Stuart Varney—and furthered the conservative cause here, but that is not who they are thinking about,” declared Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents’ Association (UNCA).

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, President, Institute for Humanitarian Conflict Resolution, told IPS that by conditioning a journalist’s ability to live and work in the United States on repeated, discretionary renewals, the administration is creating precisely the climate of self-censorship that the First Amendment was meant to prevent.

If a reporter knows that a critical story about the president or his allies might translate into a denied extension, the line between immigration policy and political reprisal evaporates, he said.

“This is not a hypothetical danger. The rule expressly allows the government to scrutinize the “content” a journalist is covering when deciding whether to grant an extension, opening the door to ideological filtering of who gets to report from the United States. That logic is indistinguishable from the methods long used by authoritarian regimes that the United States has historically condemned,” said Dr Ben-Meir

The proposal also creates a ready-made instrument for selective punishment of journalists from countries with which the Trump administration has tense or adversarial relations. The singling out of Chinese journalists for especially harsh 90-day limits is an explicit signal that Washington is prepared to wield visa policy as a geopolitical stick, not a neutral administrative tool, he pointed out.

Once this precedent is established, nothing prevents the administration from tightening the screw further on reporters from other states whose governments it wishes to pressure—or punish.

The result would be a two-tiered press landscape in which journalists from favored countries enjoy relative stability, while those from disfavored states face constant uncertainty and the implicit demand to “behave,” he declared.

Dr. Ben-Meir said foreign governments and international bodies, including the UN, should make it clear that undermining foreign press access in the United States will invite reciprocal restrictions on American journalists abroad—further isolating US audiences from the world.

And American citizens, who ultimately bear the cost of an information-starved public sphere, must insist that their government not abuse immigration law as a backdoor censorship tool.

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Global Nobel Laureates at the Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War held last week in Rome. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan.

By Ariel F. Dumont
BORGO LAUDATO SI’, Italy, Jul 21 2026 (IPS)

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” By bringing the supercomputer HAL 9000 to life in his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, American director Stanley Kubrick created one of the most powerful symbols of the fear of artificial intelligence (AI) escaping human control.

Fifty-eight years later, that question is more relevant than ever. It was precisely this issue that brought together more than 200 international figures for three days of discussions in the exceptional setting of Borgo Laudato Si’, located within the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, where Pope Leo XIV is currently staying.

Organised by the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War, the conference set out to reflect on “the future of international security, the governance of emerging technologies, disarmament and the building of an economy of peace”.

Yoshiyuki Nagaoka, Executive Director, Office of Public Affairs at Soka Gakkai. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

The programme brought together a number of leading international figures, including former Italian Prime Minister and former President of the European Commission Romano Prodi; Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Chief Advisor to Bangladesh Muhammad Yunus; Yoshiyuki Nagaoka, Executive Director of the Office of Public Affairs at Soka Gakkai; Filipino journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa; Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard; and several scientists and nuclear experts.

The assembly was officially opened by Monsignor Fabio Baggio, under-secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

In his welcoming address, he immediately established the central thread of the discussions by stressing that “peace is not simply the absence of war but an order founded on justice, mutual trust, respect for the rule of law and the inviolable dignity of every human being.”

The central idea was clear: regulating artificial intelligence has become imperative if peace – and ultimately humanity’s very survival – is to be preserved. AI is now integrated into military systems, dramatically increasing the risks of proliferation, cyber warfare and high-intensity conflicts, with the potential to undermine global stability and respect for ethical principles.

Although the speakers sometimes differed in their analyses, reflecting their diverse backgrounds, they all converged on one essential conclusion. Artificial intelligence should not be feared, but that certainly does not mean it should be given free rein until it becomes another HAL 9000. On the contrary, most participants stressed the urgent need to establish safeguards before potential abuses become impossible to control.

Karen Hallberg, Argentine physicist and president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

This concern was voiced in particular by Karen Hallberg, the Argentine physicist specialising in condensed matter and president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. AI, she argued, is a “dual-use” technology, much like nuclear energy itself. While nuclear fission has led to extraordinary advances in energy production and medicine, it has also made atomic weapons possible.

“Artificial intelligence has the same ambivalence. It can certainly contribute to scientific research, medicine and even the monitoring of international commitments. However, its integration into nuclear weapons systems could usher in a period of dangerous uncertainty,” she warned.

Hallberg also stressed that one of the greatest risks would be to allow algorithms to intervene in processes related to the command and control of nuclear weapons – for instance, analysing satellite imagery, interpreting military situations or contributing to decisions whose consequences could prove irreversible for the future of humanity.

“I am not afraid; I am concerned. And it is precisely this concern that should give us the determination to act before it is too late,” she said, calling on governments to apply the precautionary principle before technology outpaces political regulation and leads to an irreversible drift.

A concern that Nagaoka shares, albeit from a different perspective, is that artificial intelligence is not inherently dangerous. Everything, he argued, depends on how humanity chooses to use it.

“The question ultimately comes back to humanity itself, which has the choice of becoming either more selfish or more compassionate.”

Nagaoka placed particular emphasis on the responsibility of younger generations, who are growing up in an environment where digital tools occupy an ever greater place and where the risk of isolation continues to increase. Humanity’s greatest challenge, therefore, is not to reject AI but to learn how to use it without abandoning the uniquely human capacity for judgement.

Peace is not simply the absence of war but an order founded on justice, mutual trust, respect for the rule of law and the inviolable dignity of every human being.
“We must preserve our conscience and our wisdom when making decisions,” he said, reminding participants that education and critical thinking will remain the best safeguards against a technology capable of influencing both individual and collective choices.

“I recently heard on television the story of an 86-year-old Japanese woman faced with the painful decision of ending life support for her seriously ill husband. She chose to seek advice from ChatGPT rather than from her family.”

For Nagaoka, the issue is not to condemn such a choice but rather to reflect on these new forms of dialogue emerging in societies where machines may increasingly become trusted interlocutors at the most important moments of human existence.

This reflection on human responsibility echoed the concerns raised by Maria Ressa, winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her defence of freedom of expression and her fight against disinformation.

Throughout the discussions, she repeatedly highlighted the risks AI poses to the future of democracy, including the accelerating spread of false information, the large-scale manipulation of public opinion and the concentration of power in the hands of a limited number of technology companies.

“AI is not simply an issue of innovation. It concerns the very functioning of democratic societies,” Ressa insisted.

But it was undoubtedly Yunus who delivered the conference’s most far-reaching criticism by shifting the debate onto economic ground. The Bangladeshi economist, founder of the Grameen Bank and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize offered a profoundly humanist critique that challenged the very foundations of AI’s use within contemporary capitalism.

“The main problem is not simply the possible disappearance of certain jobs, but the growing concentration of wealth,” Yunus said.

Artificial intelligence, he warned, risks reinforcing a model in which a handful of companies control technologies, data and income, while an ever larger share of the population is excluded from economic participation.

“It could deprive people of their livelihoods, their dignity and their ability to remain independent,” he argued.

The future, he said, cannot be an economy in which artificial intelligence replaces human beings. Instead, it must be based on participation, entrepreneurship and the sharing of opportunities.

His message to political leaders around the world was unequivocal: AI must not become an instrument for concentrating power but rather a tool placed at the service of everyone.

And now what? At the end of these discussions, one certainty emerges: there can be no turning back. Artificial intelligence is now part of our world. Humanity should not fear it, nor should it regard it as tomorrow’s greatest enemy. But several fundamental questions remain unanswered: Who will control this technology, according to what rules, and in the service of what kind of society?

More than half a century after HAL 9000, the real threat may not be that a machine could become human. It may be that human beings gradually renounce what defines them most: their capacity to decide, to judge and to assume responsibility for their own choices.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

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