UNICEF unloads emergency humanitarian supplies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in response to the Ebola outbreak. The shipment includes protective equipment, hygiene kits, medicines, and medical supplies to support frontline health workers and nearly 100,000 people. Credit: UNICEF/Ndomba Mbikayi

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Oct 16 2026 (IPS)

An Ebola death last week in Kenya is highlighting the urgency of Africa’s public health emergency preparedness and how the continent’s governments are committing their national budgets to the health sector.

The Kenya case is serving as a call to arms in the fight against Africa’s public health emergencies and how locally coordinated efforts are adequately equipped to contain the spread of communicable diseases.

“Health emergency preparedness gives us a head start, and Kenya has put important outbreak control measures in place,” Janabi said in a 6 October media brief, which was in stark contrast to concerns raised in the DRC that life-saving medical supplies only arrived ten days later from neighbouring countries, effectively allowing Ebola to leave a trail of death.

As the disease surges at its north Kivu epicentre in the Democratic Republic of Congo, questions have returned about how the shuttering of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has devastated public health emergency responses across Africa.

Last week, Doctors Without Borders warned that the current Ebola strain was spreading so fast for emergency health workers “it was like fighting a megafire,” further raising concerns over how the DRC and neighbouring countries will tackle the crisis amid increasingly limited resources.

Despite being often cited as having vast mineral wealth, the DRC’s Ebola response has been plagued by an under-funded health sector where international humanitarian agencies are struggling to provide basic medical care.

As the new Ebola strain took root in the DRC’s east, Amadou Bocoum, CARE International’s DRC Country Director, lamented that “with proper funding, we would have had prepositioned stock and begun distributing critical supplies like PPE from day one, but instead, we started with nothing and lost 10 days.”

These funding concerns would be raised weeks later by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) at the 76th Session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa in Addis Ababa in August.

UNECA noted that “Africa’s health financing model remains structurally fragile,” with governments failing to allocate adequate budgets for the health sector.

African governments and other health sector players have already raised alarm over the Trump Administration’s decision to ice the USAID, which triggered a continent-wide shortage of anything from condoms to malaria and HIV/AIDS drugs.

At the WHO Regional Committee conference, UNECA raised concerns that “external health assistance was down almost 30 per cent,” and as Ebola spreads, the effects of that deficit are being felt with catastrophic consequences.

The impact of the reliance on overseas development assistance was made clear by Aboubakri Diaw, who leads UNECA’s Sustainable Financing Initiative, who told the gathering that “Africa does not have a reform deficit. It has a sustainable financed-reform deficit.”

“Health financing strategies sit on shelves. Insurance schemes are legislated but struggling to be capitalised. Benefit packages are defined but not costed into medium-term expenditure frameworks. A reform without a budget line does not constitute a policy,” Diaw said.

Yet it is a commitment African governments made in 2001 at the Abuja Declaration to allocate 15 percent of national budgets to health, but countries have fallen short, with some allocations ranging between as little as 2 percent and 12 percent, according to the World Health Organisation.

To address the public health funding crisis, UNECA says what remains crucial is “a fundamental reset in how African governments and their finance ministries fund health systems” in a continent where millions lack access to and cannot afford basic medical care.

“External aid covered more than 30 per cent of health expenditure, and in some 13 countries the ECA has looked at, households pay more for health than their own governments do,” Diaw said, adding that “many countries on the continent now spend more on servicing debt than on public health.”

Amid these challenges and competing public spending priorities, it is not yet clear how governments will navigate these new public health funding realities, as pressure from international lending institutions for African countries to repay billions of loans still remains.

Analysts however see the funding crisis as part of Africa’s broader political architecture where short-term planning by sitting governments prioritises projects closely linked to the election cycle.

“Governments have to balance health against infrastructure, security, education, social protection and other priorities,” said Pakhani Mhazo, a public health researcher based in  South Africa.

“However, health preparedness often produces benefits that are not immediately visible to voters. For example, if you invest in disease surveillance, laboratories and emergency systems and successfully prevent an outbreak from becoming a crisis, there is no obvious event that voters can see as the result of that investment,” Mhazo told IPS.

Meanwhile, without any clear or immediate sources to fill the funding gaps left by international aid, African governments have their work cut out, and as Claver Gatete, UNECA Executive Secretary, reminded African ministers during the High-Level Forum on Sustainable Health Financing in April this year, “Health is not expenditure; it is investment – in people, in productivity and in prosperity.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Singer-songwriter Yusuf ‘Cat Stevens’ Islam speaks during the closing session of the Global Tipping Points Conference in Kuala Lumpur. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 16 2026 (IPS)

With the city enveloped in a cloak of haze, the urgency of tackling the climate crisis could hardly have been clearer as the four-day Global Tipping Points Conference 2026 drew to a close at Malaysia’s Sunway University on Thursday.

At the conference, speakers stressed the need for humanity to remain within planetary boundaries, or the “safe operating space”.

Crossing these boundaries could have catastrophic consequences, warned Professor Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the conference organisers.

He highlighted the dangers of triggering irreversible changes in major Earth systems. Some of the bulwarks have already been breached, manifesting themselves in the form of collapsed ice sheets, bleached corals, shrinking wildlife habitats and the slow death of rainforests.

Dong Wang’s park in Bangkok. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim

‘Tipping points’ conference brings together climate scientists, activists, and finance gurus; highlights success stories from around the world

All of this threatens food security, causes displacement, damages human health and destabilises economies.

With plenty of reasons to be pessimistic – social and political polarisation, rising inequality and poverty, and wars among them – the message was nevertheless one of urgency rather than despair. “The science has matured, evidence is there… it is time for action… that’s the natural step,” said Sultan Nazrin Shah of Perak.

But there is another side to the tipping-point story.

Professor Timothy Lenton, chair of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter and one of the organisers, spoke about “positive tipping points.” Lenton, who has studied tipping points since the 1990s, argued these could help societies move towards more sustainable futures. Citing Pakistan’s solar boom and Norway’s rapid adoption of electric vehicles, he pointed to transformative shifts that can happen within a relatively short period.

But protecting ecosystems is as important as technologies, said Acehnese forest conservator Farwiza Farhan, while making a compelling case for the protection of the Leuser Ecosystem – a tropical rainforest reserve in Sumatra and one of the last places on Earth where tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutans coexist in the wild.

Others turned to imagining the future. Anab Jain, co-founder of London-based Superflux, described Mitigation of Shock, an immersive installation set in a fictional 2050. Visitors enter an imagined apartment shaped by a future in which some of the most severe impacts of climate change have already occurred. More than 100,000 people have visited it since 2017, she said.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, broadened the discussion to social, economic and political tipping points. If these systems tipped in the wrong direction, he warned, they could trigger a “cascade of devastating consequences.”

Planetary changes and social, economic and political conditions are deeply interconnected, said Sachs, making cooperation essential to averting disaster. He repeatedly pointed to poverty and inequality as forces that could deepen instability but argued that all was not lost. The tools for change – economic wellbeing, social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and peace and cooperation among nations – already exist, he said.

Discussions also covered deforestation, land-use change, governance failures and the rise of artificial intelligence. Turning tools into action, however, requires money, policy and political will.

“But where’s the money?” many asked, urging encouragement for supportive policies and a pipeline of “bankable projects” that protect nature, so that economic incentives favour regeneration over extraction. One such approach came from Dr Ralph Chami, founder of Blue Green Future, who outlined his concept of “regenerative GDP”, i.e. recognising the value of “living nature” and accounting for it on the balance sheet.

Timothy Lenton explaining the positive tipping points. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim

“Why kill the goose that lays the [golden] egg?” he asked, contrasting a living coral reef in the Maldives – which provides a habitat for fish and plays a role in the marine carbon cycle – with a bleached one that can threaten both tourism and fisheries.

But money and markets are only part of the equation. Dr Jemilah Mahmood, executive director of the Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University, insisted on channelling youth energy. “Give them space at policy [discussions], send them to COPs not as tokenism, but let them negotiate. It’s their future,” she said.

As an example of what young people can achieve, Mahmood pointed to Pacific Island law students whose campaign helped bring climate change and human rights before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Their efforts contributed to a landmark advisory opinion in July 2025, clarifying states’ legal obligations on climate change. Climate litigation and the role of legal action in holding governments accountable also featured in the wider conversation.

The highlight of the conference was definitely the success stories from around the world that offered the most tangible hope.

For example, Chinese urban planner Dong Wang, who specialises in sponge cities and ecological planning, shared a low-cost, low-maintenance and replicable project in the heart of Bangkok – the transformation of a former tobacco factory into the 102-acre Benjakitti Forest Park, to which more than 200 bird species have since returned.

Eva Gladek of Metabolic, who spoke about NetZeroCities, showed how 17 old houseboats in Amsterdam were retrofitted with clean technologies and transformed into energy-efficient offices and workspaces.

Mumbai-based Sheela Patel, director of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres, drew on five decades of work with people living in informal settlements to highlight another kind of urban resilience. Through the ‘Roof Over Our Heads’ campaign, women supported by young professionals are helping make homes more resilient to rain, strong winds and extreme heat.

And these efforts are not simply one-off experiments. Patel said the work has been documented and shared, with more than 100 labs established across 20 countries to help communities test and replicate solutions. Gladek, meanwhile, is helping 100 European cities work towards climate neutrality.

The thought-provoking conference had opened on a note of faith, with Sultan Nazrin Shah speaking of humanity’s responsibility to care for the planet, which he said “comes with privilege and obligation” but is “not a burden to be feared”.

It ended on a rather philosophical and spiritual note, with British singer-writer Yusuf ‘Cat Stevens’ Islam urging people to become the change rather than expecting the world to change. “Never stop being a child, as there is light in their eyes and they see hope,” he said, also stressing the need to bring spirituality into education. “Look how the curriculum has been colonised.”

For positive tipping points to hold, science alone will not be enough, concluded Mahmood. It will also need the voices of those whose futures are at stake.

Note: Published with the permission of Dawn.

IPS UN Bureau Report

UN DESA Assistant Secretary-General Bjørg Sandkjær (right) and Rashmi Banga, Chief of the Development Research Branch, brief journalists at UN Headquarters on the launch of the 2026 World Social Report, emphasizing the need for social inclusion as economic, digital, and climate transformations widen existing divides. Credit: UN DESA / P. Vasic

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 2026 (IPS)

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) new report, which addresses the rapid global transformations driven by artificial intelligence (AI), demographic shifts, climate change, and conflict, highlights the widening disparities in employment, social inclusion, and access to services.

The report titled The New Economics of Social Inclusion: Making Transformations Work for All was released on October 5.

Despite decades of progress in income, health, and education that drove development worldwide, the report warns that millions of people risk falling behind. Drawing on data collected over 25 years and across 168 countries, this year’s edition introduces a new Socially Inclusive Transformation (SIT) dashboard, which examines how a nation’s economic, digital, and energy transformations align with social and economic inclusion.

“On one hand, rapid transformations are reshaping our world: digital technologies, artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and the demographic and economic transition,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres during a press briefing at the UN Headquarters coinciding with the report’s release. “On the other hand, these transformations are not working for all. Poverty and deprivation are widespread. Billions are locked out of opportunities because of income, gender, age, disability, ethnicity, or many other fault lines that undermine equality.”

In 2025, UN DESA found that roughly 58 percent of workers were informally employed, while approximately 27 percent of young women aged 15 to 24 were neither employed nor in education or training programs. The same year, UN DESA estimated that around 26 percent of the world’s population, or 2.2 billion, still lacked internet access. Roughly 730 million people lacked access to electricity. The report underscores that even among digitally connected communities, affordability and service quality continue to hinder meaningful participation.

Between 2000 and 2024, the agency reported that more than 50 countries experienced rising income inequality, including in 23 high-income countries. These gaps continue to stifle productivity and weaken community resilience to economic shocks from technological shifts, climate disasters, and geopolitical tensions.

Marginalized groups—including women and girls, youths, disabled persons, migrants, and Indigenous peoples—disproportionately experience limited access to essential resources, economic opportunities, and decision-making processes.

Rashmi Banga, Chief, Development Research Branch, Economic Analysis and Policy Division at UN DESA, stressed that transformations do not automatically translate into inclusion. She noted that none of the top five best-performing countries in transformation, specifically Malta, Ireland, the U.S., Singapore, and China, rank among the top five in inclusiveness, which mainly consist of European countries. The report reveals that numerous African countries continue to fall behind, especially with the proliferation of new digital technologies and the energy transition.

The report highlights the compounding climate crisis as a major driver of social exclusion, noting that approximately 887 million of the 1.1 billion people living in multidimensional poverty are also exposed to at least one major climate hazard. These impacts are most pronounced in regions entrenched in humanitarian crises, where communities have the fewest resources to adapt, significantly threatening long-term economic resilience.

Guterres warned that cascading global shocks, such as the Middle East crisis, are compounding existing threats through rising food, fertilizer, and fuel prices, resulting in more than 100 countries lowering their gross-domestic product forecasts this year alone.

UN DESA also identifies the growing digital divide driven by artificial intelligence as a major threat to social inclusion. While the report shows AI’s potential in enhancing agricultural productivity and generating meaningful gains for rural communities, it warns that significant threats remain. Entire communities with limited affordable, digital connectivity, coupled with insufficient digital skills, risk falling further behind.

Bjørg Sandkjær, UN DESA’s Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination, told reporters that AI often reproduces “biases that exist in the world today” during hiring processes. She warned that this has severe implications for employment, particularly for women.

Banga added that equitable and effective AI governance is critical in preventing these biases and fostering economic and social inclusion. She highlighted India and China as examples of countries implementing AI education into school curriculum, while France has established access to digital infrastructure as a legal right.

Additional data from the report reveals that delaying social inclusion carries a “measurable economic cost.” UN DESA estimates show that if investments in social protection mechanisms are delayed by another decade, countries could face a potential decline in economic output by roughly 12 percent compared to countries that invested early. Conversely, efforts to include young people in employment could raise national GDP by 9.6 percent over the next decade.

“Inclusive societies are more productive, resilient, and prosperous,” said Guterres. “The report urges investments in education, job creation, and skill training, so all people can benefit from technological advancements and the growth of new industries. It calls for inclusive institutions and policymaking to ensure all voices are represented, and it advocates equity-focused approaches to labor markets and taxation to open opportunities for all people, no matter who they are or where they live.”

Banga emphasized that national investments alone cannot achieve adequate social inclusion without strong international cooperation. Multilateral support is pivotal in expanding fiscal space, providing long-term development financing, and widening access to digital infrastructure. Sandkjær called on governments to reframe social inclusion not only as an economic imperative, but as a strategic investment in long-term stability, resilience, and productivity. She also urged for greater integration of social commitments into macroeconomic planning.

“As transformations gather pace, there is no time to be lost by bringing social commitments into the heart of economic policymaking; we can unleash a virtuous cycle of greater inclusion and stronger growth,” said Sandkjær.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Woodlands in nearly every forested country face threats from climate-change-driven fires and deforestation pressures fueled by economic interests exploiting natural resources. Credit: Imran Schah/IPS

By Stephanie Dowlen
MALMO, Sweden, Oct 16 2026 (IPS)

On Monday, governments from across the world will gather in Armenia for COP17, the UN biodiversity summit, to assess progress on the global agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. For anyone who cares about the livability of our planet for future generations, and the richness of life on earth, the stakes could hardly be higher. Policy makers will debate targets, implementation, and the lack of money to protect nature, in particular the failure of developed countries to fulfil their obligations. But there is a more basic question that should put at the center of those discussions: what happens when the financial system governments are counting on to fund nature protection is also financing its destruction?

A new analysis by the Forests & Finance coalition provides an alarming answer. Since 2020, banks have provided $595 billion to companies operating in high-risk agribusiness and metal and mineral mining sectors across tropical forest regions. Of that, $351 billion went to agro-commodities and $244 billion to mining. These are among the primary industries driving deforestation, land degradation, pollution and conflicts with communities across the tropical forest regions of South America, Southeast Asia and Central and West Africa.

The significance of that figure goes beyond the amount of money involved. It exposes a fundamental weakness in the way the biodiversity crisis is being addressed. Governments have committed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to aligning financial flows with biodiversity goals, yet financial institutions remain largely free to finance nature destruction as a risk to themselves rather than as harm they may in fact be helping to cause.

Nature-related risks are not like ordinary financial risks. A bank might assess how drought could affect a company’s revenues without adequately considering whether the company itself helped create that vulnerability by clearing forests, draining wetlands or degrading watersheds. By the time those consequences appear on a balance sheet, an ecosystem may already have crossed a threshold from which recovery is extremely difficult. The report finds that current financial risk frameworks and sustainability policies remain woefully ill-equipped to assess these real-world impacts.

The consequences are already visible in some of the world’s most important forest landscapes. In Brazil, banks have provided $83 billion to the soy sector since 2020, including $6.8 billion this year alone, despite the collapse in January of the Amazon Soy Moratorium, which had been credited with reducing soy-driven deforestation by 69 percent in monitored areas. The withdrawal of major exporters from the agreement removed a critical safeguard and traceability system keeping forests standing, yet banks have not publicly taken a position on its collapse.

Indonesia presents a similarly disturbing pattern. Banks have provided $67.1 billion to the country’s notoriously destructive pulp and palm oil sectors since 2020, including financing for companies associated with repeated breaches of their own commitments to avoid deforestation, peatland development and exploitation. Peat drainage and deforestation leave landscapes less able to retain water and resist fire, increasing the vulnerability of communities to climate extremes.

At the same time, the financial flows behind mining are growing rapidly. Governments and companies are scrambling to secure copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and other minerals needed for energy technologies, while demand is also being driven by geopolitical competition and the expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure. Financing for mining in tropical forest-rich countries increased 55 percent between 2016 and 2025, with lithium financing increasing more than elevenfold and nickel financing by 183 percent.

There is a danger in treating every new mine as part of a clean transition simply because its minerals may eventually be used in low-carbon technologies. Mining in tropical forest regions is associated with ecosystem destruction, pollution, land conflicts, violence and violations of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. A transition that sacrifices some of the world’s most biodiverse landscapes and the people who depend on them is not sustainable, whatever the end product.

What makes this particularly troubling is how little protection many banks actually require before providing this financing. The average score in the report’s assessment of bank policies covering forest-risk agro-commodities is only 25 percent, while 39 percent of banks assessed scored below 20 percent. JPMorgan Chase, one of the world’s largest and most influential banks, scored just 18 percent.

Voluntary commitments have done little to close this gap. Governments now need to establish binding rules requiring financial institutions to conduct meaningful environmental and human rights due diligence across corporate groups and supply chains, disclose where their money is going and what impacts that financing is associated with, and face consequences when they finance severe and unresolved harms.

Financial regulators also need to recognize biodiversity loss as more than a distant environmental concern. Tropical forests underpin food systems, water supplies and economic activity, while their degradation can create cascading risks across economies. Yet there is still no equivalent to the regulatory framework used for financial institutions considered systemically important, even as the degradation of these natural systems threatens consequences that extend far beyond individual companies or projects.

But banks should not wait for governments to act. They can establish clear red lines against deforestation, ecosystem conversion and serious human rights abuses, make those requirements enforceable in financing agreements, independently verify compliance and suspend or terminate financing when clients fail to address serious violations. Those safeguards must respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights, including Free, Prior and Informed Consent, and provide affected communities with meaningful access to remedy.

The choice facing governments at COP17 is therefore not simply how much money to mobilize for biodiversity. It is whether they are prepared to stop the financial system from undermining those investments in the first place.

The evidence is increasingly difficult to dismiss. Hundreds of billions of dollars are flowing into industries that are rapidly degrading the natural systems on which economies, and the web of life, depend. Governments have already promised to align financial flows with biodiversity goals. Now they need to make that commitment real.

At COP17, following the money would be a good place to start.

IPS UN Bureau

By External Source
Oct 15 2026 (IPS)

 
A safe home is more than a roof over our heads.

It is the foundation of health, security, opportunity and human dignity.

Yet for billions of people, that foundation remains out of reach.

According to UN-Habitat, 2.8 billion people worldwide face some form of inadequate housing.

More than one billion live in slums and informal settlements.

And over 300 million people are homeless.

The housing crisis is unfolding alongside a wider struggle against poverty.

The United Nations estimates that 826 million people will live in extreme poverty in 2026 — surviving on less than three dollars a day.

That’s one in every ten people worldwide.

And having a job offers no guarantee of escaping poverty.

In 2025, 284 million workers were living in extreme poverty.

Meanwhile, 3.8 billion people remain without any form of social protection.

Conflict, climate-related disasters, displacement and rising living costs are placing further pressure on vulnerable communities.

Against this backdrop, the 2026 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty calls for Safe Homes for All, under the theme United for Peace and Human Rights.

The United Nations is urging governments to prioritize adequate housing, mobilize resources and involve people experiencing poverty in decisions that affect their lives.

Because ending poverty means more than increasing incomes.

It means ensuring that everyone has a safe place to live, access to essential services, and the opportunity to build a secure future.

This October 17th, the message is clear:

A safe home is not a privilege. It is a human right.

IPS UN Bureau

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, Zahra Nader was pursuing a doctorate in Women and Gender studies at York University in Canada. Nader had planned to return to Afghanistan to continue her research, possibly teach at Kabul University, and continue exploring Afghan women’s role in political history.

Zahra Nader, Editor-in-Chief, Zan Times

Seeing the freedoms and opportunities that women had enjoyed being stripped away, Nader could not help but do something. A journalist with experience in Afghan newsrooms as well as with The New York Times in Kabul, she knew how dangerous life could be for women journalists under Taliban control.

“I knew who the Taliban are, what they will do if they took over. So I had no illusion about Taliban 2.0 and how the Taliban has changed. We knew they have not changed. And so we started Zan Times,” says Nader. Set up in 2022, Zan Times, is a news agency run by women who investigate human rights abuses under the Taliban government. Operating out of exile, the news agency works in collaboration with journalists operating within Afghanistan, most of them working under pseudonyms to remain anonymous.

“I was here in Canada, safe, my rights are protected, but the rights that I grew up with, the opportunities that I had in Afghanistan, going to school, going to university, are now being denied to millions of women,” Nader says.

According to this report by the United Nations, five years since the Taliban have seized power, women and girls in Afghanistan have been systematically stripped of their rights. De facto authorities have issued more than 100 decrees curbing “education, including one that’s left 2.4 milion girls excluded from secondary education, work and freedom of movement – restrictions now compounded by deep cuts to aid on the ground”. The report states that the unprecedented restrictions have triggered a mental health crisis.

“The results are devastating,” the agency added, stressing that shorter life expectancy, higher risks of maternal death, child marriage and gender-based violence alongside the loss of education, work and freedom of movement have also triggered a mental health crisis.”The systemic erasure of women from public life, including their exclusion from higher education and employment, also removes the visible role models that show what is possible and narrows what Afghan women and girls can imagine for their own futures, this report adds.

For Nader, these are examples of efforts to strip women of their presence in the world around them. Nader refutes the assumption that it is the Afghan culture itself that stops women from getting involved in public affairs and activities. She mentions her personal experience of how she was encouraged by her family to get educated and work as a journalist. “What I really want the world to know about us is that our culture does not prevent Afghan women from joining public life and social activities.” The marginalization of women is not an inevitable or predestined cultural process; it is something that is being imposed on them through specific policies.

One of the groups most visible to suffer from these measures has been women journalists. “Since taking over Afghanistan five years ago, the Taliban have made Afghanistan one of the world’s hardest places for journalists to report,” says this statement by the Committee to protect Journalists. “Women in the media face particularly severe and escalating discrimination. Taliban authorities have banned women’s voices from radio and TV in Helmand, prevented them from attending press conferences, and mandated that they cover their faces when appearing on TV.”

Limitations imposed on women’s dress code and activities have diminished the opportunities for women journalists to perform their duties even more. Taliban’s 2024 Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice includes additional limitations regarding the voice of Afghan women in public space.

Women journalists also encounter limitations on freedom of movement by having to travel with a male guardian in most places. Investigating topics like the education of girls and the wellbeing of women exposes journalists to intimidation and questioning.

Insecurity of income is another problem that women journalists face. Nader argues that women journalists have claimed being offered unpaid jobs, exclusion from staff positions since their presence would make them vulnerable to questioning by Taliban officials, and sexual abuse in job hunting.

Journalists who opt to continue working under such conditions also expose themselves to danger. In the case of Zan Times, journalists working in Afghanistan do so clandestinely, using pseudonyms.

Despite all the restrictions, Afghan women keep finding ways of resisting their marginalization.

Women teachers turn their own homes, bedrooms, and even basements into informal schools, where girls could still get education. Other women organize online classes and educational programs, but the lack of Internet connection and funds is preventing many people from participating.

Women also create private literary clubs, exchange books, and attend meetings of poets. These places enable them to communicate, share knowledge, and stay in touch despite the prohibition of public gatherings.

Nader considers such actions to be strong examples of women’s resistance. The work of women journalists who document cases of violation belongs to this form of struggle since through their activity, Afghan women manage to keep their stories visible in public sphere.Their work is especially important because not only they observe the restrictions imposed on women, but they experience them too.

Nader appeals for increased efforts from the international community in protecting Afghan refugees from any kind of forced return.

Moreover, there should be support for Afghan women, particularly in matters such as education and resettlement. There should also be increased protection for journalists under threat. Accountability is equally significant. Through international legal proceedings, there is a possibility of those who perpetrate persecution being taken to book in the future.

At the end of the day, the situation in Afghanistan, along with that of women’s rights and of press freedom, is that of peace. In order to have peace, you need to have half the country educated and involved into public life. You need to have the other half able to earn money on its own without being afraid of demanding anything. Even if the Taliban managed to establish control over Afghanistan, this is not the same thing as peace.

Afghanistan has been unable to give its women peace because its system relies on their complete isolation from the process of development of the country, their participation, dignity and freedom. Without the establishment of justice and rights for all the citizens, there is no peace. The Afghan women who are still fighting and educating, organising and reporting under extremely tough conditions prove that peace should not be confused as absence of war.

To Nader, the crisis in Afghanistan is an indicator of the vulnerability of women’s rights throughout the world.

“Failure to hear from Afghanistan does not mean that all is well and peaceful. Failure to hear from Afghanistan means that we don’t know what is happening,” Nader says.

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

IPS UN Bureau

Kenia Inés Hernández Montalván. Credit: @CDHVitoria

By Clare Quirk
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Oct 15 2026 (IPS)

Kenia Hernández is an Indigenous Mexican lawyer and human rights defender dedicated to advancing women’s rights and social justice.

Arrested in October 2020, she has faced multiple criminal proceedings that human rights organisations, including CIVICUS, have denounced as politically motivated and linked to the criminalisation of her activism. This piece is the second in our series on the campaign that advocates for the immediate release of unjustly imprisoned or persecuted human rights defenders globally.

Additional reference: Five years of resistance: The case of Kenia Hernández and the battle against the fabrication of crimes 

Additional research and reporting: Cecilia Russell
Note: This feature is published with the support of CIVICUS: Stand As My Witness Campaign.
IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of CIVICUS.

IPS UN Bureau Report

UN Secretary-General António Guterres opens the general debate of the General Assembly’s 81st session on 22 September 2026. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Oct 14 2026 (IPS)

At this year’s highest-profile UN event, Donald Trump publicly mused over his ‘big decision’ about whether to ‘annihilate’ Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as dozens of delegates walked out, branded those who condemn genocide in Gaza ‘moral cowards’.

The UN was established in the devastating aftermath of the Second World War with the explicit aim to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’. Its charter commits all UN members to settling disputes peacefully. Yet at the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level session, held in September, several national leaders used a podium meant for peace and international cooperation to justify and threaten violence.

The bellicose tone of many speeches signalled a broader crisis of multilateralism. Autocrats are throwing their weight around, determined to prove that might makes right, or, as Trump put it when boasting of US control of Venezuelan oil, ‘to the victor belong the spoils’. Such leaders care little for international laws, norms, institutions and processes.

Powerful states are withdrawing from institutions, defunding them, refusing to cooperate and forming rival, more selective and less formal groupings. Nakedly transactional deal-making is replacing collective action, fragmenting the multilateral system. As a rules-based order gives way to something more chaotic, civil society’s opportunities to engage are withering. All this is happening as huge transnational problems mount up, including the climate crisis, economic inequality, impunity for conflict atrocities and the repression of civic space.

The race to succeed Guterres

Against this backdrop, someone new will take the helm. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s second term expires at the end of the year, and states are now choosing his successor.

Civil society is calling for a feminist woman leader who puts human rights first. Yet human rights feature little in the debate. A former UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, has pulled out because straw polls among the 15 Security Council members, a key stage of the process, showed she lacked support.

In each poll, states can ‘encourage’ or ‘discourage’ a candidacy, or express ‘no opinion’. So far, five rounds have proved inconclusive. Former Costa Rican Vice President Rebeca Grynspan has emerged as frontrunner, but the latest poll saw her receive six ‘discourage’ votes compared to three in the round before. No candidate commands overwhelming backing and it’s possible other candidates will come forward.

Civil society is trying to engage, but ultimately states don’t have to publicly justify their decisions. Because the Security Council is central to the process, the final say rests with its five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA, any of which can veto a candidate they dislike. Opaque negotiations are therefore likely to produce a compromise candidate that China, Russia and the USA find sufficiently inoffensive.

As the race heats up, there are signs candidates are avoiding speaking about issues that may be seen as contentious for fear of losing support. States that back particular candidates may decide not to ask difficult questions that could cost them votes. As a result, important matters such as Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the rights of excluded groups are being sidelined. Anyone who sees themselves as a world leader should be taking these issues on, but candidates’ refusal to do so shows how firmly powerful states are calling the shots.

One candidate, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, has been the target of a Wall Street Journal hit piece over comments condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, made in her role as Guyana’s ambassador to the UN. The intent is clearly to encourage the USA to block her.

Civil society expects a global voice of conscience, someone prepared to go further than serving states and willing to speak up on the issues candidates are now avoiding. History shows that, even in difficult times, the personality and leadership style of the secretary-general can make a difference. Whoever prevails will have to steer the UN through crisis and rebuild respect for the institution and the broader promise of multilateralism, and that means putting human rights first.

Access needed

When they next meet, national leaders will have the opportunity to shape the future of development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the set of 17 interconnected goals agreed by every UN member state in 2015, expire in 2030. Next year’s SDG Summit will consider what should come next.

In these difficult times, civil society faces the challenge of asserting a progressive vision and pushing for goals that make a real difference. But civil society remains excluded. It was once again forced to the sidelines for this high-level session. The passes of organisations that have cleared accreditation hurdles and normally have access to UN headquarters are suspended at these annual meetings. This speaks of a broader exclusion. The UN has failed to advance even modest proposals to recognise civil society’s role, such as instituting a UN civil society day or appointing an envoy to coordinate civil society engagement.

Meanwhile, the UN’s funding crisis is further impacting on civil society’s participation. The USA is the chief culprit, owing around US$4.2 billion in contributions. The USA and other powerful states are defunding and sidelining the UN’s human rights functions, which civil society most engages with. The result is job cuts, curtailed mandates and fewer opportunities for civil society participation.

The arrival of a new secretary-general and the debate on new development goals bring not just challenges but also opportunities. To seize them, civil society will need to build stronger coalitions and collaborate more closely than ever. It must engage constructively with the next secretary-general while raising expectations, putting stronger access and partnerships on the table.

A state-centric UN will fail. A UN that hopes to make a difference on big problems, rebuild respect for human rights and win an increasingly contested argument for the value of multilateralism can’t keep excluding civil society. The next secretary-general must champion an open and accountable UN that recognises civil society as an essential partner.

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

A new report on deforestation reflects the persistent gap between global ambitions to conserve and restore forests and enduring practices that continue to destroy them. Credit: UN Climate Change/Diego Herculano

By Umar Manzoor Shah
BERLIN, Germany/WASHINGTON, D.C., USA , Oct 14 2026 (IPS)

The world lost more than 7 million hectares of forest to deforestation in 2025, a modest improvement on recent years but still far from what is needed to meet global forest protection targets by 2030, according to a new assessment of international conservation efforts.

The Forest Declaration Assessment 2026, prepared by a coalition of civil society organisations and researchers and released worldwide on October 14, says deforestation remains stubbornly high despite international commitments to halt and reverse forest loss. The average annual area cleared since 2021 has exceeded 8 million hectares, highlighting the gap between government promises and progress on the ground.

Ivan Palmegiani, senior consultant at Climate Focus and one of the key report authors, told Inter Press Service in an exclusive interview that a key reason deforestation remains so high is that commitments have not been matched by the scale of action needed, and where action has been taken, it has not always been sufficient to deliver lasting impact.

“We have seen what is possible under dedicated political leadership, such as the Lula administration in Brazil, where targeted policies, enforcement, and political will reduced deforestation within a single term. However, these successes remain the exception rather than the norm, and they can be quickly reversed when priorities change.”

He added that at a deeper level, forest commitments have not been translated into the structural transformation in how natural resources are governed and used. Forests, Palmegiani said, continue to face strong economic pressures from agriculture, infrastructure, extraction, and other land uses, while decision-making systems and incentives still frequently favour the powerful few, who are physically and emotionally disconnected from forests, rather than the many who depend on them for their livelihoods, well-being, and cultural identity. “Until our societies, political and economic systems change how decisions about forests and other ecosystems are made, forest loss is likely to remain high despite global pledges.”

Ivan Palmegiani, senior consultant at Climate Focus and one of the authors of the Forest Declaration Assessment 2026. Credit: Supplied

The report also found that at least 65.4 million hectares of forest worldwide lost ecological integrity in 2024 because of human activities. The figure highlights a problem that extends beyond the complete removal of trees. Forests can remain standing while losing biodiversity, carbon storage capacity and their ability to sustain wildlife and local communities.

“Both figures reflect a persistent gap between global ambitions to conserve and restore forests and enduring practices that keep destroying them,” the report says.

The assessment examines progress on forest protection, sustainable production, finance and governance. It finds that some initiatives are moving forward, including efforts to improve forest monitoring and recognise Indigenous land rights. But these developments have not yet produced the scale of change required to reverse forest destruction.

More than 140 countries pledged under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, announced at the 2021 United Nations climate conference, to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.

Five years later, the latest assessment suggests that the world remains far from achieving that objective.

Tropical forests face particular pressure from agricultural expansion, infrastructure development and commercial activities. The report says these pressures are reinforced by weak enforcement of environmental laws and economic incentives that continue to favour activities associated with forest destruction.

‘We No Longer Look at Country-Level Figures’

Tropical Latin America recorded the largest absolute area of deforestation among the regions assessed but also made the most significant progress compared with the 2018-20 baseline. Deforestation there fell by 33 percent in 2025.

Tropical Africa, however, experienced a continued rise in forest loss. Annual deforestation in the region reached about 2.4 million hectares in 2025, comparable to the 2.5 million hectares recorded in tropical Latin America.

Tropical Asia lost approximately 1.6 million hectares of forest in 2025. That represented a 12 percent reduction compared with the 2018-20 baseline, although the report cautions that the underlying causes of deforestation remain largely unchanged.

The assessment describes tropical Asia’s progress as ambiguous. Two consecutive years of modest declines may indicate that the worst recent peaks have passed, but they do not establish that the region is on a sustained path towards forest recovery.

Tropical Oceania was the only tropical region assessed as being on track to meet its 2030 forest goals. Its relatively small share of global tropical forest area and lower current pressure on forests partly explain this difference.

The findings underline how national policies, commodity production and enforcement capacity can produce sharply different outcomes across regions.

When asked which countries have contributed most to this progress and what challenges continue to prevent deeper reductions in terms of deforestation, Palmegiani said, “We no longer look at country-level figures because the global datasets used for our calculations can sometimes misrepresent national trends. In fact, to avoid overstating the precision of the data, we only publish regional and global aggregates for our indicators.”

He added, ”That said, independent analyses and regional initiatives suggest that Indonesia and Malaysia have been important contributors to the decline in deforestation observed across tropical Asia. Despite this progress, the region continues to face significant economic pressures. These include growing demand for critical minerals, particularly nickel, of which Indonesia is the world’s leading exporter, as well as broader economic uncertainty linked to geopolitical conflicts and disruptions in global markets. When these pressures intensify, short-term economic priorities can outweigh environmental considerations, and forests often bear the cost.”

Agricultural Expansion and Commercial Interests

Agriculture remains a major driver of forest loss, with commercial production and growing demand for food, animal feed and bioenergy putting pressure on natural ecosystems.

The report says between 61 and 94% of tropical deforestation linked to commercial agriculture may be illegal. It estimates that environmental crime, including illegal deforestation and timber and wildlife trafficking, generates as much as US$281 billion annually.

Such activities often overlap with other criminal enterprises.

A 2025 study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, cited in the assessment, found links between environmental offences and crimes including drug trafficking, illegal mining and human trafficking.

The scale of these activities presents a major challenge for governments seeking to protect forests while regulating international commodity supply chains.

The assessment also points to gaps in corporate accountability. Companies in sectors linked to forest loss have increasingly adopted sustainability commitments and reporting systems, but disclosure and implementation remain uneven.

Financial institutions have begun to recognise deforestation as an environmental and financial risk. Yet the report says many regulatory frameworks lack detailed guidance on how banks should assess and manage those risks.

More than 60 percent of the countries assessed had yet to establish disclosure requirements covering deforestation-related risks for banks or insurance companies.

The report’s findings suggest that voluntary commitments and corporate reporting need to be accompanied by stronger enforcement and clearer requirements if they are to produce measurable changes in production and investment.

Forest Finance Remains a Major Challenge

The assessment identifies the scale and distribution of finance as another obstacle to forest protection.

Although international funding commitments have increased, financial support for conservation remains difficult to reconcile with the economic incentives that encourage activities harmful to forests.

The report estimates that subsidies linked to the production and use of fossil fuels reached $921 billion in 2024. Emergency measures introduced in 2026 to ease high energy prices could push the global total above $1 trillion this year.

The assessment warns that such subsidies can undermine efforts to shift to less harmful energy sources.

It also highlights the potential benefits of redirecting public support to activities that restore nature.

“Every dollar of agricultural support that is repurposed to support farming practices that restore nature, such as agroforestry, silvopasture, and low-carbon agriculture, can generate up to USD 30 in economic benefits, especially for rural communities,” the report says.

The findings point to an opportunity for governments to reform existing spending rather than rely entirely on new funding.

However, the report notes that international forest finance does not consistently reach the Indigenous peoples and local communities who manage and protect forest territories.

Community-led funding mechanisms can help direct resources towards local priorities, but they remain secondary recipients of direct funding from governments and multilateral institutions.

Indigenous Rights and Participation

The assessment identifies recognition of Indigenous land rights as an important part of effective forest governance.

At the 2025 United Nations climate conference, known as COP30, an intergovernmental commitment involving 16 countries and one subnational jurisdiction pledged to recognise or strengthen rights over an additional 160 million hectares of Indigenous lands and territories.

The launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility also created a provision reserving 20 percent of country-level payouts for direct transfers to Indigenous and local community organisations.

These developments represent progress, but the report says participation in international policymaking does not necessarily translate into decision-making power.

Indigenous coalitions have stressed that their increased presence at COP30 remained largely consultative. Indigenous peoples still lack formal standing in the United Nations climate negotiations, such as COP 31, which will take place in Antalya, Türkiye, from November 9 to 20.

National climate plans also frequently mention Indigenous peoples and local communities without specifying how they will participate in designing or implementing policies.

A 2026 review of 84 national climate plans found that 61 referred to under-represented groups, including Indigenous peoples and local communities. However, the assessment says most references were descriptive rather than linked to concrete measures.

The report argues that meaningful participation requires more than recognition in policy documents. It requires secure land rights, opportunities to influence decisions and access to the financial resources needed to manage territories.

Environmental Defenders Face Continuing Threats

Forest protection also carries serious risks for people who challenge illegal activities and defend community land.

The assessment cites Global Witness data showing that at least 124 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2025. More than half of the documented killings were linked to land disputes, and nearly three-quarters of the victims were Indigenous people, small-scale farmers or people of African descent.

Front Line Defenders separately reported that at least 358 human rights defenders were killed in 28 countries in 2025. Those working on land, environmental and peasant rights, as well as Indigenous rights, were among the groups that were frequently targeted.

Erin Matson, a lead consultant of Climate Focus and report author, told IPS in an interview that the statistics from Global Witness that we cite each year are always humbling. It’s important to remember that that figure is likely a significant underestimate, as many killings and disappearances go unreported.

Erin Matson, a lead consultant of Climate Focus and one of the authors of the Forest Declaration Assessment 2026. Credit: Supplied

“There are many factors at play, most of which are rooted in governance. The vast majority of environmental defenders are killed over land disputes, for example, when a mining operation encroaches on Indigenous territories. If those Indigenous communities do not have secure, recognised tenure rights to their territories, it makes it that much harder for them to resist operators who are acting illegally.”

She added that, therefore, securing tenure rights is a major step that governments need to enable. Next, Matson added that an environment of corruption and impunity allows actors to literally get away with murder. “In locations where government actors and law enforcement are under the sway and on the payroll of special interests, they will look the other way when people are harmed. Rooting out corruption, therefore, and instituting reforms to corrupted systems is essential. It must be ensured that public officials are paid well for their services so that they won’t be susceptible to corruption in the first place.”

The report identifies weak enforcement, limited government capacity and impunity for powerful actors as major obstacles to effective forest governance.

It also warns that environmental defenders face forms of intimidation beyond lethal violence, including criminalisation, threats and harassment.

Improved technology is helping authorities detect illegal forest clearance. Satellite monitoring, traceability systems and new investigative tools can help identify offences and strengthen cooperation across borders.

In Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, for example, researchers are testing artificial intelligence-powered acoustic sensors designed to recognise chainsaws, gunshots and engines. The technology can alert rangers to potential illegal logging in remote areas that are difficult to patrol regularly.

But the report stresses that improved detection must be matched by fair and effective enforcement. Otherwise, small-scale producers and local communities may carry a disproportionate share of the burden while more powerful actors escape accountability.

The report reveals further that deforestation in 2025 was lower than in much of the preceding decade, and forest finance has increased. Monitoring systems have also improved, while several countries have taken steps towards recognising Indigenous land rights.

But the report cautions against interpreting these gains as evidence of a lasting turnaround.

It says the reduction in deforestation may partly reflect temporary factors, including stronger enforcement in some jurisdictions, changing commodity prices and economic conditions that slowed land conversion.

“These wins should not be mistaken for the transformation still needed,” reads the report.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Medicine is supposed to protect human life and dignity. Yet testimonies from Ukrainians released from Russian captivity reveal a disturbing reality: medical personnel in places of detention have not only denied prisoners necessary treatment but, in documented cases, participated in torture and ill-treatment.

Anna Trushova

The research draws on testimonies from 16 people released from Russian captivity, including former detainees and medical professionals. Their accounts describe the denial of medical assistance, the neglect of serious injuries and illnesses, degrading treatment, and the concealment of evidence of violence. Some testimonies describe medical personnel directly participating in acts of torture.

One of the most troubling findings is the consistency of these accounts. Previous reports have documented abuses by medical staff, but this research systematically examines testimonies alongside the legal and regulatory framework governing medical professionals in Russia. Its findings suggest that the violations cannot be dismissed as isolated misconduct.

Russian medical personnel are bound not only by international humanitarian law and professional medical ethics but also by domestic rules that require them to provide care and to refrain from causing harm. The documented abuses, therefore, raise questions about violations of both international obligations and Russia’s own legal standards.

The consequences extend far beyond the detention facilities. People returning from captivity often require prolonged medical treatment and rehabilitation. Their families, meanwhile, must cope with the lasting effects of imprisonment, serious illness, and loss.

Sofia Krokhmaliuk, whose father, Oleksandr Krokhmaliuk, headed the Azov brigade’s medical service and died in captivity, described the pain of receiving his body back in Ukraine. She said the condition of his remains indicated that he had not died of natural causes.

Another family has spoken about the consequences that can persist after release. Ukrainian serviceman Oleksandr Savov spent more than 1,000 days in Russian captivity and returned home on March 19, 2025. He died of heart failure on November 16 that year, aged 46. His daughter, Anastasiia Savova, has emphasized that release does not mean the end of a crime: its consequences can last for the rest of a person’s life.

These stories demonstrate why the right to medical care in captivity cannot be treated as a secondary humanitarian concern. For people held in conditions where they have little or no access to independent assistance, medical care may be essential to their survival. Its deliberate denial can itself become a form of cruel treatment.

The Center for Civil Liberties’ research adds another dimension by examining the role of medical personnel within this system. It also reinforces the need to document individual responsibility and preserve evidence for future investigations and prosecutions.

Accountability is possible, even when it takes years. Thorough documentation can help identify those responsible, establish patterns of abuse, and provide evidence for national and international legal proceedings. Impunity, by contrast, creates conditions in which violations can continue.

That is why more than 90 Ukrainian organizations and institutions have appealed to the World Health Organization (WHO), urging it to respond to the systematic denial of medical care and the documented involvement of medical personnel in torture and ill-treatment.

The appeal calls for stronger international monitoring of detention facilities, including through cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross, United Nations mechanisms, and independent medical organizations. It also urges support for documenting abuses, identifying those responsible, and securing medical evacuation for severely wounded and seriously ill prisoners of war and unlawfully detained civilians.

The WHO cannot replace international investigators or courts. But its professional authority and international reach can help bring these violations to the attention of the global medical community and strengthen calls for independent access, accountability, and protection.

The immediate priority must be to help those still held in captivity receive the medical care they need. At the same time, the international community must ensure that allegations of medical personnel participating in torture are investigated rather than ignored.

Medicine must never become an instrument of repression. When those entrusted with protecting life become involved in abuse, the response must extend beyond professional condemnation. It must include independent monitoring, effective pressure, evidence preservation, and accountability.

For Ukrainians who remain in Russian captivity, these measures are not abstract questions of ethics or international law. They may determine whether they receive treatment, whether their suffering is documented, and whether they live to return home.

Anna Trushova is human rights defender and communications manager at the Center for Civil Liberties

IPS UN Bureau

Satellite image of the Strait of Hormuz. Credit WikiMedia

By UN Women
GENEVA, Oct 13 2026 (IPS)

An additional 11.7 million women and girls could face food insecurity by the end of 2026, as the escalation in the Middle East and disruption to the Strait of Hormuz drive up food prices and strain livelihoods and household resources, according to a new UN Women analysis published today.

“Food security risks of the Middle East escalation for women and girls” finds that women and girls account for 53 per cent of the projected 22 million additional people who could face food insecurity by the end of the year across 28 countries analyzed. This is in addition to an estimated 208 million women and girls who were already food insecure or undernourished in these countries. These are scenario-based estimates, not forecasts.

“We know, as a matter of fact, that when food becomes scarce, women eat less and last. They often shift to less nutritious diets or skip meals altogether to prioritize the needs of others. Gender inequalities dictate who has access to food and the resources to obtain it. Therefore, investing in women and girls is a sure way of ensuring the well-being of families and communities,” said UN Women Deputy Executive Director Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda.

Disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz are driving up energy, fertilizer and transport costs, pushing up food prices. Combined with potential income and livelihood losses, these rising costs could make food harder to afford. For many women, existing inequalities in employment and access to financial services leave them with fewer resources to absorb these shocks.

More populous countries were found to have the largest numbers of women and girls who could face food insecurity. However, countries such as South Sudan, Sudan, Haiti, Yemen and Palestine face more concentrated risks, as multiple sources of vulnerability overlap.

In South Sudan, the additional number of women and girls who could face food insecurity represents around 14 per cent – or one in seven – of the South Sudanese female population – the highest proportion across the countries analyzed. In Lebanon, the additional number of women and girls who could face food insecurity represents nearly 4 per cent of the Lebanese female population, the second-highest proportion.

In many countries, women and girls make up a higher proportion of people who could face food insecurity. For example, in Afghanistan, women and girls are estimated to make up 60 per cent of people who could face food insecurity; in Yemen, more than 57 per cent; and in Sudan, nearly 56 per cent.

Employment also affects food security. In Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Sudan and Syria, around 80 per cent of women are outside the labour force. In Afghanistan and Yemen, this rises to around 95 per cent, the report notes. Among employed women, more than 80 per cent are in vulnerable employment in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Haiti, Mali and South Sudan.

According to the analysis, access to financial services could provide a buffer, but many women lack access to these services. In Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen, fewer than one in five women owns a bank or mobile money account. This can limit women’s ability to save, receive remittances or cash assistance, or borrow safely when prices rise or incomes fall, increasing reliance on informal lenders, relatives or other household members and potentially putting their safety and protection at risk.

UN Women calls for an integrated response that combines food and cash assistance with nutrition, protection, livelihoods and agricultural support, while ensuring women can access land, credit, services and other productive assets. It also urges resources to be targeted to places where women and girls face multiple, overlapping risks, and delivered at the right time – including ahead of agricultural seasons. Better data are needed to identify where food insecurity is worsening and who is eating less, losing livelihoods, taking on more unpaid care work, or facing heightened nutrition and protection risks within households.

UN Women joins the calls for de-escalation and respect for international law and echoes the Secretary-General’s call to all concerned parties to work towards diplomatic solutions that advance regional and international peace and security.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

A group of UN Staffers outside the Secretariat. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 13 2026 (IPS)

The United Nations has once again revived a longstanding problem that has been left lingering behind closed doors for decades – racism and racial discrimination at the UN Secretariat.

A message sent to UN staffers last week reads: “The United Nations is founded on the bedrock principle that all people are equal in rights and dignity. Racism has no place in our Organization, and we are committed to fighting it on every front”.

“But racism often hides within systems, becoming entrenched through policies and practices that may appear neutral, but in fact reinforce biases and deepen inequities. Bringing these patterns to light is crucial, and for that we need data.”

“That is why, on 17 October, we will be launching a voluntary race data collection initiative. This exercise invites all Secretariat staff to provide information about their race, to help the Organization better identify and address discrimination. It is optional. It is anonymous. And it is one of the best tools we have to discover where action is needed.”

Approximately 3,600 to 4,800 Secretariat staff members, including UN agencies, are based in New York.

Meanwhile, the UN Secretariat in New York, faltered ingloriously last year, as it withdrew its own online survey on racism, in which it asked staffers to identify themselves either as “black, brown, white, mixed/multi-racial, and any other”.

But the most offensive of the categories listed in the survey was “yellow” – a longstanding Western racist description of Asians, including Japanese, Chinese and Koreans.

Subsequently, a non-apologetic message emailed to staffers read: “The United Nations Survey on Racism has been taken offline and will be revised and reissued, taking into account the legitimate concerns expressed by staff.”

Dr Palitha Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section in the Office of Legal Affairs (OLA) told Inter Press Service (IPS) racism today is not overly evident at the United Nations which was founded on ideals that were very much ahead of their times, but an undercurrent of racial superiority and racial bias exists among certain elements of the Organization. This is evident in certain appointments and deep-seated attitudes, even among some delegates.

“Racism in international bodies could be traced even to the founding of the League of Nations where President Woodrow Wilson strenuously opposed the Japanese proposal to incorporate the principle of racial equality in the constitution of the Organization. His vision of international order was hierarchical and implicitly based on a racial hierarchy that placed white, Western nations at the top”.

While the United Nations is staffed by many enlightened individuals, some bias based on race still prevails at the highest levels, he pointed out, despite the organization itself having been headed by two Asians and an African in recent times.

“Curiously certain positions have been held only by Europeans. For example, the position of the UN Legal Counsel has been held only by white Europeans. There are other positions apparently reserved for European countries”.

Some delegates are also still affected by racial prejudices of an unenlightened past.

In a well reported incident, the not-so-white chairman of the WEOGs ( a Western European group) from a Southern European country once told the recently-arrived Australian delegate (an Australian citizen of Asian ancestry) that the developing countries of the Group of 77 were meeting in an adjoining room—(implying he was an Asian at the wrong meeting).

In an Organization created on the high ideals of equality and merit there is no logical reason for reserving certain positions on the basis of race, even sub consciously.

“Having gone a long way in minimizing gender bias, it is time to ensure that all vestiges of racial bias are also eliminated. One way to ensure equality and equity in appointments might be to subject all appointments to an open application process with selections being made by racially and gender mixed panels,” declared Dr Kohona, a one-time Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN, and until recently, Ambassador to China.

Ian Richards, President of the UN Geneva Staff Union told IPS: “We are concerned this is being tackled very much from a North American perspective.”

“Race is only a useful indicator if it is combined with where you grew up, which indicates opportunities or disadvantages in formative years, and where you work now. Each region has its own history and attitudes. We don’t feel this has been taken on board,” he said.

Meanwhile, the circular to staffers also points out that by understanding how colleagues identify their race, we can:

•     Pinpoint areas where racial bias or disparities may exist;

•     Examine institutional factors that may contribute to racist misconduct, underreporting of incidents, or barriers to racial justice; and

•     Develop remedial measures to build a workplace free from racial discrimination.

Staff will be invited to participate by selecting a race category on Inspira. To ensure data protection and maintain privacy, your data will be anonymized and aggregated. It will not be used in connection with any individual human resources management processes, such as recruitment or promotions. It will not be visible to recruiters or hiring managers.

The collection of race data will be managed strictly in line with the parameters outlined in General Assembly resolutions A/RES/80/238 and A/RES/80/243 B, as well as the provisions set out in ST/SGB/2024/3.

The racial categories listed echo the language used in past United Nations staff engagement surveys. An additional question will ask staff if they consider themselves to be a member of a racialized community.

Speaking on condition of anonymity. a former UN staff member expressed concerns about the UN Secretariat Administration’s proposed race data collection initiative, particularly regarding its methodology, suitability for the UN’s diverse global workforce, and safeguards for sensitive personal information.

It was pointed out that a fundamental question remains unanswered: Is the lack of race-disaggregated data genuinely preventing the Organization from addressing racism, or does the real problem lie in the implementation of existing policies, the enforcement of accountability, and the failure to translate commitments into effective action?

This distinction must be established before sensitive personal data are collected on such a scale.

“Any approach to addressing racism and racial discrimination within the UN should also recognize the experiences of affinity groups and other minority and underrepresented communities, whose experiences of exclusion may not be adequately captured by standardized racial classifications”.

The absence of meaningful consultation with staff representatives, together with insufficient clarity regarding the conceptual or empirical basis for the selected racial categories, data protection measures, future use of the data, and independent oversight, further undermines confidence in the initiative.

The United Nations must demonstrate its commitment to equality through action, transparency, and accountability. Collecting sensitive racial data must not become a substitute for enforcing existing protections, addressing substantiated concerns, and correcting discriminatory institutional practices, the former staff member said.

“The ultimate measure of success is not how much data the Organization collects, but whether it can demonstrate that racism has been reduced, accountability strengthened, and the working environment made fairer for all staff”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

The protracted demise of dollar-gold convertibility and associated fixed exchange rates did not end dollar hegemony. With crucial and timely help from political allies, confidence in the dollar system has persisted, albeit much diminished.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

But the BW payments arrangements and the US promise of dollar convertibility to gold were not sustainable. As Robert Triffin noted in 1960, the system was ‘failing by design’ from the outset, which US authorities denied and refused to address.

Vietnam War spending, rising inflation, and a run on US gold reserves forced this decision after allied Western central banks quietly gave up defending the gold-dollar peg in 1968.

Decades later, then-US Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs Paul Volcker revealed he had initiated a Treasury working group in 1969.

As the US balance of payments was already proving unsustainable, suspending gold-dollar convertibility was no longer considered an option to be avoided at all costs.

Portraying the gold peg’s failure as due to arithmetic, not politics, Volcker argued that suspending it involved implementing contingency planning that the group had long considered.

Two days before, Nixon summoned 15 advisors to a secret retreat at Camp David to draft his announcement. He also imposed a 90-day wage-price ‘freeze’ and a 10% tariff on imports.

Thus, Nixon presented the suspension of dollar convertibility to gold as part of a larger economic policy reform package, rather than as the long-overdue default on earlier US pledges.

With his 1972 re-election campaign approaching, Nixon and his Treasury Secretary, John Connally, claimed to be ‘freeing’ US economic policy by ending dollar-gold convertibility and associated fixed exchange rate obligations.

Clearly, Nixon’s mid-August 1971 announcement was not an improvised response to an emergency or even the sudden break he implied, although the Volcker group preferred a more ‘controlled demolition’.

US dollar, others’ problem
When allied finance ministers were negotiating a replacement arrangement in Rome in November 1971, Connally bluntly told them that the dollar was America’s currency but their problem, belatedly confessing to BW’s true nature.

Nonetheless, their December 1971 Smithsonian Agreement still sought to patch things up rather than explicitly abandon the 1944 arrangement and the later efforts to defend it.

The dollar was devalued against gold for the first time since 1934, with its price rising from $35 to $38 an ounce. Trading bands around other currencies were widened to give central banks more flexibility.

Nixon pronounced the 1971 Smithsonian Agreement the most significant monetary arrangement in world history before the dollar was devalued again 14 months later, in February 1973.

National authorities politically aligned with the US had defended it, but eventually stopped paying to maintain the charade. Thus, a year and a half after August 1971, BW was finally buried.

Within weeks, the major currencies abandoned fixed exchange rates altogether, allowing them to float against one another. Although the transition to floating rates was not smooth, it has survived, with modifications, ever since.

But the ‘settlement gap’ time lag under floating exchange rates is so problematic that international banking regulators have long sought to reform the way cross-border currency trades are cleared.

Charade over?
Although BW is now long gone, the dollar system has proven durable. The end of gold convertibility was not fatal to the dollar’s role at the centre of world finance.

Instead, the end of the BW dollar-gold convertibility obligation removed one constraint on it. After the final break with gold in 1973, the dollar was only backed by US government promises.

Gold’s formal demonetisation was confirmed with the 1976 Jamaica Accords when IMF member governments quietly amended its charter to strip the precious metal of any official role.

Freed from its earlier BW obligation to redeem dollars with gold, the US has financed its trade, current account, and fiscal deficits, as well as foreign and domestic government spending, with ever more dollar debt.

The world has increasingly financed the growth of US debt as the dollar remains the main currency in which most international trade, especially in commodities, is priced and settled.

The IMF had policed fixed exchange rates and gold-dollar convertibility for over two decades after the war. It has since changed roles to oversee floating exchange rates, selectively serve as ‘lender of last resort’ and manage sovereign debt crises.

International oil transactions were mainly settled in ‘petrodollars’, due to an arrangement with Saudi and other Gulf producers to use oil sales revenue to buy US Treasury securities.

The status quo is now based on others’ willingness to hold dollars. But growing concerns about US willingness to honour its commitments have caused governments to consider alternatives. But dollar hegemony has weathered such recent storms so far.

IPS UN Bureau

The awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to distinguished South African jurist and international judge Navanethem “Navi” Pillay is about more than just the recognition of an exceptional individual in the global fight for justice.

Navi Pillay-Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

Pillay’s recognition affirms the conviction that international law, however imperfectly applied, remains indispensable to a peaceful world.

Making history

It is a proud moment for South Africa. She becomes the fifth South African to receive this honour, following resistance leader Chief Albert Luthuli in 1960, religious leader and activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984, and former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk in 1993.

She is the first South African woman to receive the peace award. Her prize is a further break with its historical tendency to mostly honour “highly educated white men from Europe and the US”.

Similar to her South African predecessors, the struggle against apartheid and white minority rule features as a crucial element of her contribution. However, there is an important difference. While Mandela became a global symbol of reconciliation, Pillay took the lessons of South Africa’s struggle into the international arena. There she became leader and institution builder in her own right.

She had the daunting task of being one of the very first international judges responsible for forging into being international institutions intended to ensure that those responsible for the gravest human rights violations are held accountable.

She was on the first bench of judges of both the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the United Nations (UN) following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) from 2003 to 2008.

Her personality and drive endowed these fledgling institutions with gravitas and legitimacy. Through her pioneering contributions, she has come to personify the global quest for accountability.

The Navi Pillay I know

As a scholar of international human rights law, I first met Pillay when she was president of the Rwanda tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania. She struck me then, and over time continued to impress me, as someone remarkably approachable. Humble, unassuming and generous with her time, she is also often described as courageous, principled, and unwavering.

I smiled when, in her characteristically down-to-earth reply to the Nobel committee praising her courage, she insisted she was merely applying her independent legal mind to the stark principles of justice.

When I first met her, I was with a group of human rights students from the University of Pretoria visiting Tanzania to observe proceedings. Judge Pillay’s demanding schedule prevented her from spending much time with us during the day. Yet she offered to meet us at her hotel that evening. To our surprise, she arrived driving herself, without a chauffeur or an entourage. She spent many hours answering questions and discussing the work of the tribunal.

Similar encounters continued over subsequent years. To me, these moments revealed her understanding of human rights institutions not as remote structures, but as belonging to people. This included young Africans who she hoped would one day help shape their future.

From apartheid to global justice

Pillay’s story is held together by a central belief, whether in response to apartheid in South Africa, genocide in Rwanda or the occupation of Palestinian territory: that law can restrain abusive power, protect victims and hold the powerful to account. She simply applied it on a bigger stage each time.

Born in 1941 in Durban, to a family of Indian Tamil origin, Pillay experienced racial and gender discrimination first-hand. Despite this, she built a legal career. In 1967 she became the first woman of colour to establish a legal practice in her province.

Like many lawyers opposed to apartheid, she sought to use the very legal system that sustained injustice to challenge its abuses. She represented political activists, exposed torture and challenged the treatment of political prisoners.

She was also involved in the Women’s National Coalition, which helped shape the equality provisions of South Africa’s democratic constitution. These prohibit discrimination on grounds including race, sex and sexual orientation. After apartheid ended, Mandela in 1995 appointed her as a High Court judge.

Rape as a crime against humanity

Later that year she took up office in Tanzania, where one of her most enduring global contributions came in the Rwanda tribunal’s landmark 1998 judgement.

During the trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu, accused of the slaughter of thousands, Pillay and another judge questioned witnesses about sexual violence. They helped bring these experiences into the open and contributed to the amendment of the indictment to include rape.

The result was a judgment that recognised rape as a crime against humanity. It established that rape and sexual violence could also constitute acts of genocide.

The decision constituted the first conviction for genocide by an international criminal tribunal and the first conviction of an individual for rape as a crime against humanity by such a tribunal. This opened the way for greater accountability for crimes committed disproportionately against women and girls.

As Pillay put it:

From time immemorial, rape has been regarded as spoils of war. Now it will be considered a war crime.

Human rights within the UN

From 2008 to 2014, Pillay served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the first woman from the global south to hold this position.

It required a different form of leadership. Rather than deciding cases as a judge, she had to engage governments, confront violations and persuade states to honour their international obligations. During her tenure, she managed to steer the UN’s human rights work through turbulent times, including the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and civil war in Syria. Her voice was a steadfast pillar of clarity: human rights could not be sacrificed to economic expediency, national sovereignty or political convenience.

Her tenure coincided with significant advances within the UN. She was a consistent advocate for the rights of equality based on sexual orientation and gender identity, anti-discrimination laws, and proper recording of hate crimes.

In 2001, her home city, Durban, hosted the UN’s World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The Durban Declaration set an international agenda against racism and xenophobia. It also acknowledged slavery as a crime against humanity.

Although she had no official role in the 2001 conference, as UN high commissioner she was closely involved in the subsequent review process. She defended the declaration against misrepresentation. She emphasised its condemnation of antisemitism, remembrance of the Holocaust and recognition of Israel’s right to security.

Despite boycotts by several western states, including the US, she helped steer the 2009 Durban Review Conference towards a consensus reaffirming the declaration, supported by 182 states. Her role exemplified her determination to overcome division and backlash without compromising fundamental human rights principles.

Pillay’s term was also characterised by a distinctive contribution to women’s rights by championing the recognition of preventable maternal deaths as a human rights issue, rather than merely a public health concern. Under her leadership, the UN Human Rights Office developed groundbreaking guidance in 2012 requiring governments to address discrimination, maternal healthcare and accountability for avoidable deaths.

Palestine and genocide

More recently, she took up her last official UN duty as chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel. The commission’s investigations and findings, including on the war in Gaza, have generated considerable controversy and strong criticism, particularly from Israel and the US.

Her dedication to this task illustrates an essential feature of her work: the application of legal principles becomes most difficult, and most necessary, when politically powerful actors reject scrutiny.

A time when hope is needed

The timing of this award is therefore particularly telling. It comes as, only days earlier, US president Donald Trump had called the ICC “evil” and urged all its members to resign. Responding to the prize, the US imposed sanctions on the ICC.

By honouring a former ICC judge, the Nobel committee chose to defend the very institutions that are now “under attack”, with their judges “sanctioned”.

The award also comes amid Israel’s growing international isolation. Pillay and her team concluded in 2025 that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

The commission’s findings do not constitute a binding judicial determination. But they do represent a significant contribution to documenting alleged atrocities and advancing the pursuit of accountability, despite intense political opposition.

Even as Pillay recently celebrated her 85th birthday, she may soon have another word on genocide. Since 2019, she has been sitting as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in the case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar concerning alleged genocide against the Rohingya. Following a public hearing in January 2026, a judgment in this case is expected later this year, or in early 2027.

Her Nobel Prize does not suggest that international justice has triumphed. But it reminds us that the structures built to advance it remain worth defending. Recognising Pillay is an affirmation of what has been achieved, but also about what must not be lost.

Frans Viljoen – Professor of International Human Rights Law, SARChI Chair in International Constitutional Law, University of Pretoria

This story was originally published by The Conversation.

IPS UN Bureau

Photos of the Rasuwa flood missing line the walls of the Teaching Hospital, Tribhuvan University. Credit: Brandon Kohrt

By Diwash Gahatraj
KATHMANDU, Oct 12 2026 (IPS)

Nearly three decades ago, in the final stretch of Nepal’s civil war, Dr Brandon Kohrt sat with parents whose sons had been conscripted as child soldiers and never returned.

Nobody could tell them what had happened, whether their sons were alive somewhere, whether they were dead, or even where to begin looking. That absence of an answer, Kohrt says, never really left those families. It is the same absence now facing thousands of households across Nepal, after catastrophic floods swept away entire communities.

On August 26, floods and landslides tore down the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river valleys in Nepal’s Rasuwa district, killing well over a thousand people and leaving thousands more missing, one of the deadliest natural disasters in the country’s recent history.

Kohrt has spent nearly 25 years in Nepal, long enough to watch the country move through this same unresolved grief again and again, first during that war, then after a devastating earthquake, and now, once more, before a wall of missing-persons photographs at Kathmandu’s Teaching Hospital.

Only a small fraction of the recovered bodies have been identified so far. These missing men and women are not just numbers — they add up to a history that stretches back decades in Nepal to that same conflict and the earthquakes that followed it, when entire families waited years for people who never returned. Tracking these disappearances and the psychological toll they leave on families and Nepali society at large has occupied Kohrt ever since.

Kohrt is a professor of psychiatry, global health, and anthropology at George Washington University and has served since 2006 as a technical advisor to the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization Nepal.

Much of his work centres on ambiguous loss, the specific, suspended grief that comes when someone is gone but there’s no body, no confirmation, and nothing to mourn against. The term was coined in the 1970s by Pauline Boss, an American family therapist who began studying it through the wives of US soldiers missing in action in Vietnam, women who couldn’t say for certain whether they were married or widowed.

Boss found the condition wasn’t confined to one culture or one kind of disaster. Researchers have since studied it among families of the disappeared during Argentina’s military dictatorship, families of migrants lost crossing borders in Europe and Africa, and among the families with whom Kohrt sat decades ago. He has worked directly with Boss for over a decade and has applied her framework in Nepal for years before this disaster ever struck.

In the weeks since the floods struck, that gap between the dead and the missing has filled with people. Nepali families search alongside Indian, American, Ukrainian, and Malaysian families thousands of miles away, all waiting on the same uncertain word.

IPS spoke with him about what that grief looks like this time, what’s changed for him after his years of returning to the same wound, and what he’s learned, watching people find ways to keep living without an answer.

Dr Brandon Kohrt, professor of psychiatry, global health, and anthropology at George Washington University and technical advisor to the Transcultural Psychosocial Organisation, Nepal.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: For readers encountering the term for the first time, what is ambiguous loss?

Kohrt: It’s an important psychological concept, and I want to say at the outset, it is not a mental illness. It’s something anyone can go through. It’s when you still have the psychological sense of someone’s presence in your life, typically a loved one, but there is no physical evidence of either their life or their death. There’s no phone call, no video, nothing to prove they’re still living. But there’s also no body, no proof that they’re deceased.

Nearly every culture has rituals around a body that help us mourn and accept a loss. When there’s no body, we’re stuck in emotional limbo, caught between hope and despair. Some people jump right away to accept their loved one is gone, even without confirmation. Others maintain hope beyond even expectations of reality. We’re all on a different spectrum, and it’s very personal, very individualised. Ambiguous loss is also a real risk factor for what we call complicated grief, a longer, more psychologically difficult kind of mourning, with a higher risk of depression and anxiety.

With 6,145 people still missing in Nepal and only a fraction of recovered remains identified, that state of unresolved uncertainty isn’t abstract. It’s the present condition of thousands of families right now. IPS asked Kohrt how Nepal has faced this same experience before.

IPS: You’ve now worked in Nepal through the Maoist conflict, the 2015 earthquake, and this flood. What connects them?

Kohrt: I first came to Nepal in 1996, right at the start of the civil war. Toward the end of it, I worked with an organisation here, TPO Nepal, on the mental health needs of former child soldiers. Some of those parents never found out what happened to their children. Ambiguous loss was part of the psychosocial reality here even then, decades before this flood, and those families often carried an added burden – communities sometimes treated them with suspicion or blame simply for having a missing relative linked to the conflict, something families searching after this flood aren’t facing in the same way, since so many communities have been affected together.

After the 2015 earthquake, most bodies were recovered, and families were able to do funeral rites, but there are still villages, not far from where this disaster has struck now, where landslides buried people who were never found. This isn’t Nepal’s first experience with this exact kind of unresolved loss in some of these same communities.

A house damaged by the Rasuwa flood. Credit: Brandon Kohrt

IPS: In Nepal specifically, are there rituals that help families cope when there’s no body?

Kohrt: There’s a ritual called Kush Kriya, using grass to essentially perform a substitute funeral when there’s no body. It’s very helpful, but people need to be ready for it. Some may feel like they haven’t exhausted every possible avenue to find their loved one, and they’ll refuse to do it. There’s also a different ritual, Bakal Garne, more like a promise or a wish, maybe to a temple, maybe releasing fish into a river. That one doesn’t require accepting death. You can do a Bakal Garne hoping for your loved one’s safe return or simply hoping to find their body so you can do the cremation you need to do.

Even without an old ritual to lean on, Kohrt says, people still need something to actively do.

IPS: You mentioned people in Nepal are giving DNA samples right now, sometimes more than one, in different countries. What does that process do for a family psychologically?

Brandon Kohrt: Providing a DNA sample has a symbolic meaning that goes beyond its forensic purpose. You’re taking a piece of yourself and giving it in hopes of finding your loved one. Even if the result never confirms anything, the act itself becomes almost another form of ritual. People need to feel active and engaged, rather than passive and helpless.

That instinct, to act rather than wait, is something Kohrt has watched play out across every disaster he’s worked through in Nepal.

IPS: Does arriving at a disaster site feel different to you now than it did 25 years ago, or does something in you brace the same way each time?

Brandon Kohrt: With the earthquake, you could walk through neighbourhoods and see and touch the destruction right in front of you. But with the flood, when I arrived in Nuwakot, I could see some destroyed buildings and others submerged in mud. What you can’t see are all the buildings, bridges, vehicles, and people that were taken by the flood and washed away. This is much more a disaster of absence than a typical disaster of ruins. This will be something much more common with climate change-related disasters, where places gradually and abruptly disappear.

Professionally, the biggest difference is going from being hands-on in the response to being more of a supportive observer. Foreign expertise really isn’t needed anymore; there’s such a strong local Nepali mental health emergency response community now, from psychiatrists to community psychosocial workers.

One colleague, who I first hired at TPO Nepal twenty years ago, is now leading donor coordination and setting out a vision for what’s needed over the next three years. If foreign aid and development is successful, you should get to a point where disaster response is led locally, like we’re seeing in Nepal now.

IPS: You described the photo wall at Teaching Hospital. What does it do to you personally, standing there again?

Kohrt: It was really difficult standing in front of the wall of photos. What is so hard is thinking that behind each photo there are so many family members and friends wondering what happened to this person. Some are holding out hope; some are trying to accept the loss and move toward grief. Each face represents someone who was a sister, a mother, a daughter, a friend, a neighbour, or a coworker to all these other people. For every face we see, there are scores of people suffering.

A house damaged by the Rasuwa flood. Credit: Brandon Kohrt

IPS: Do you find yourself getting better at holding this kind of grief over the years, or does it stay just as hard each time?

Brandon Kohrt: I would say I am better at connecting with grief, acknowledging and sharing in others’ grief. A year after the earthquakes, I was in Nepal when one of my brothers died in the United States. I didn’t make it home in time to see his body before he went to the hospital morgue and was cremated.

I remember how hard it was grieving without having seen his body. That pales in comparison to the ambiguous loss thousands of families in Nepal are experiencing as the search for bodies continues. But it’s something that comes up for me when I talk to grieving families and hear their stories. It cracks open a window to allow the flow of empathy.

IPS: After all these years, what have you learned about how people manage to keep living when there is no answer forthcoming?

Brandon Kohrt: It’s how people move on. People have an incredible ability to carry a lot inside of them – pain, loss, unfulfilled hope, and grief – and keep moving forward in life. A lot of what people went through with the flood will be something they carry with them psychologically, but day-to-day survival requires focusing on taking care of children, caring for elderly relatives, and finding a new place to live. This shouldn’t be confused with recovery or resilience. It’s just getting by, which so many people do after a disaster. What good psychosocial and mental health support does is be available for those moments when some of that pain and grief can surface so that when people are ready, they have that support waiting for them.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Religious leaders, representatives of international organizations and Kazakh officials gather for the 24th Secretariat meeting of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions at the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation in Astana on October 7, 2026. The gathering reflected Kazakhstan’s longstanding efforts to turn interfaith dialogue into practical international cooperation. Credit: The press service of the congress.

By Katsuhiro Asagiri
ASTANA, Kazakhstan, Oct 12 2026 (IPS)

In a world increasingly divided by war, political distrust and competing ideologies, Kazakhstan has spent more than two decades pursuing an unusual diplomatic undertaking: keeping representatives of different religions in conversation.

Erlan Karin, Vice President of Kazakhstan and Head of the Secretariat of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, addresses the 24th Secretariat meeting at the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation in Astana on October 7, 2026. He emphasized the role of spiritual diplomacy in building trust and complementing conventional diplomatic efforts. Credit: Congress Press Service

“Spiritual diplomacy can play a special role,” he told participants. “It doesn’t replace political talks. But it complements them and keeps channels of communication open where diplomatic dialogue is difficult.”

The remarks came at the 24th meeting of the Secretariat of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, held on Oct. 7 at the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation.

The official participant list named 38 representatives of religious communities, international organizations and Kazakh government institutions, reflecting the forum’s religious and geographical diversity.

Founded in 2003 at the initiative of Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Congress initially brought 17 delegations from 13 countries to Astana.

It has since developed into an international forum that convenes major gatherings every three years while maintaining contact through its Secretariat.

Pope Francis participated in the seventh Congress in 2022, alongside the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Al-Tayeb. The eighth Congress, held in September 2025, brought together religious and international representatives around the Astana Peace Declaration.

For Kazakhstan, situated between Russia and China and pursuing relations across competing centers of power, the Congress has become one expression of its wider diplomatic approach: providing a meeting place for governments, religions and civilizations that do not always share political interests.

Kazakhstan’s Legacy of Interfaith Dialogue. This illustration traces the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions from its founding in 2003 under President Nursultan Nazarbayev to the historic 2022 gathering attended by Pope Francis and Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb, and the adoption of the Astana Peace Declaration in 2025 under President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Together, these milestones reflect Kazakhstan’s enduring efforts to promote interfaith dialogue, mutual understanding and global peace. Credit: AI-generated illustration/INPS Japan

But its participants are increasingly asking how such encounters can influence events outside the conference hall.

Father Laurent Basanese of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. He emphasized the Vatican’s longstanding commitment to the initiative and the importance of translating interfaith declarations into sustained cooperation.

Father Laurent Basanese, representing the Holy See’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, reminded delegates that the Vatican had supported the initiative since its founding.

He recalled Pope Francis’ participation in 2022 and emphasized the continuing work required after declarations are adopted.

The credibility of such statements, he said, ultimately depends on the willingness of their signatories to keep working together.

That concern was echoed by Mohamed Abdelsalam, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Elders, who warned that principles left unimplemented risk becoming little more than words on paper.

“A declaration that is not implemented loses its functionality,” he said, according to the meeting transcript.

The appeal for continuity also came from the United Nations.

Nihal Saad, director of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, thanked Kazakhstan for its sustained efforts to promote cooperation across cultural and religious boundaries.

Mohamed Abdelsalam, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Elders. He emphasized the need to translate interfaith declarations into concrete action for peace and human fraternity. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

The challenge with AI, she said, was ensuring that ethics were “built into the design of AI systems rather than as an afterthought.”

Her remarks placed the Congress within a wider international debate over how technological progress can remain accountable to human values.

Turning Principles Into Projects

Kazakhstan’s latest effort to give the forum a practical role produced two documents adopted at the meeting.

One addresses the contribution of religions to combating climate change. The other establishes 11 ethical principles for using artificial intelligence in religious contexts.

Both emerged from proposals advanced by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev at the 2025 Congress.

Gulsana Kozhabay, who heads the International Center for Interfaith and Interreligious Dialogue, explained that the climate document had been developed with contributions from 26 religious representatives, diplomats and experts.

Nihal Saad, director of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. Credit: The Astana Times

The AI code, refined through an interreligious commission of 24 participants, addresses human dignity, freedom of conscience, religious information and the dangers of algorithmic manipulation.

Contributors included representatives of religious traditions extending far beyond Central Asia, among them Japanese Shinto representatives and Chinese Taoist leaders.

The meeting also considered a different kind of cooperation.

Yerzhan Ashikbayev, Kazakhstan’s first deputy foreign minister, presented a joint initiative with the Holy See: a charter protecting the rights and dignity of children with incurable diseases.

Kazakhstan and the Holy See had agreed on the charter’s text during a separate colloquium in Astana on Oct. 2–3. The Secretariat subsequently supported efforts to advance it internationally.

“When medical science reaches its limits, our human responsibility does not end,” Ashikbayev said in his prepared remarks.

The charter emphasizes palliative care, relief of suffering, parental participation and support for children and their families.

Yerzhan Ashikbayev, Kazakhstan’s First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He presented a joint Kazakhstan–Holy See initiative to protect the rights and dignity of children with incurable diseases. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

The Next Test for Spiritual Diplomacy

None of these initiatives removes the political difficulties surrounding international cooperation.

The two ethical documents are advisory and create no legal obligations. Their influence will depend on whether religious institutions, governments and technology companies act on their recommendations.

These efforts also reflect the security challenges facing Central Asia.

As developments in Afghanistan continue to affect regional stability, Kazakhstan has worked with the United Nations to combat terrorism and prevent violent extremism.

Against this backdrop, Kazakhstan’s ability to sustain an international platform for dialogue among religious leaders of different traditions for more than two decades has become a distinctive feature of its diplomacy, linking regional security concerns with a commitment to religious diversity and mutual understanding.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Karin called for work on a proposed Global Movement for Peace, intended to strengthen cooperation among religious leaders and give spiritual diplomacy a more practical international role.

The pyramid-shaped Palace of Peace and Reconciliation in Astana, Kazakhstan, hosted the 24th Secretariat meeting of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions on October 7, 2026. The landmark symbolizes Kazakhstan’s longstanding commitment to promoting interfaith dialogue, mutual understanding and global peace. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

A draft concept and phased plan are to be prepared for consideration in 2027, ahead of the ninth Congress in 2028.

It remains a proposal, not an established peacebuilding mechanism.

But the assignment reflects an important shift in Kazakhstan’s approach: from demonstrating that religious leaders can meet despite their differences to asking what they are prepared to accomplish together.

After 23 years, the country has demonstrated an ability to keep the conversation going.

The next test is whether that conversation can help change the world beyond Astana.

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

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

A mother and her child stand in the wreckage of their destroyed home in Toamasina, Madagascar, following a devastating cyclone. Credit: UNICEF/Tsiory Ny Aina Andriantsoarana

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 2026 (IPS)

New figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) project that the impending 2026-2027 El Niño cycle could be one of the strongest on record. Marked by unusually wet and dry conditions, this cycle is forecast to trigger a host of extreme weather events, threatening the health, security, education, and development of over 347 million children worldwide.

“For children, El Niño is far more than a weather pattern. It can mean increased displacement, malnutrition, water shortages, and disease outbreaks. Children are also at risk of schools closing, while families could experience added financial hardship,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, emphasizing that anticipatory action is critical in protecting communities from climate shocks in the coming months.

Nearly half of the world’s children—roughly 1.1 billion—are already exposed to at least three overlapping climate hazards, including droughts, extreme heat, and floods. The impending El Niño cycle could affect children and communities across nearly 100 countries and territories between October and December 2026.

Rohini Sampoornam Swaminathan, UNICEF Statistics and Monitoring Manager, tells IPS that children are uniquely vulnerable because of their early developmental stage and dependence on essential services and caregivers. This significantly limits their ability to withstand climate shocks, especially as basic services begin to disappear when extreme weather hits.

“Communities may not have fully recovered from one shock before another one strikes, causing the impacts to compound over time,” she said.

The Asia-Pacific region is projected to face the heaviest toll, with roughly 190 million children estimated to be at risk. Substantial populations are also critically vulnerable across East and Southern Africa, with 41 million children vulnerable to climate shocks, alongside another 41 million in Latin America and the Caribbean. Approximately 22 million children are similarly vulnerable in Europe and Central Asia, followed by 20 million in the Middle East and North Africa, and 20 million in West and Central Africa.

El Niño’s regional impacts are expected to vary significantly and could compound pre-existing humanitarian crises. Swaminathan underscored that climate shocks that are manageable in some areas can become pronounced humanitarian crises in others.

Tropical nations—such as Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and the Philippines—are forecast to face unusually dry conditions, driving weaker agricultural outputs and severe water scarcity. This, in turn, could elevate rates of acute malnutrition and adverse health outcomes among children.

Conversely, communities in the Greater Horn of Africa could face alarmingly high levels of rainfall, particularly in Somalia, where there is a greater risk of riverine and flash flooding. Children in this region are especially vulnerable to outbreaks of water-borne diseases.

Between 2016 and 2023, weather-related disasters displaced more than 20,000 children daily. Swaminathan stressed to IPS that regions facing wetter climates could experience exacerbated displacement as floods push more communities far from their homes and into crowded, temporary shelters, which amplifies protection risks.

In protracted conflict or crisis zones such as Chad and Afghanistan, El Niño poses a direct threat to survival for children. Already bearing the burdens of extreme hunger, displacement, and an overwhelming lack of access to essential services such as protection, these children have no safety net when climate shocks ravage their communities, as they are already on the brink of collapse.

Beyond physical hazards, UNICEF’s findings highlight that disruptions to schooling are among the most alarming consequences of the impending cycle. Severe droughts and floods threaten widespread school closures, declining attendance, and rising dropout rates. In 2025 alone, extreme weather patterns interrupted education for an estimated 171 million students globally.

Swaminathan warned that climate-induced disruptions to schooling carry profound risks for children’s safety, exposing them to heightened risks of violence, exploitation, and child marriage. Girls bear the brunt of these impacts, often taking on family caregiving roles that can lead to compromised health and nutrition, as well as limited access to essential services. “When girls leave school, they are often less likely than boys to return,” she noted.

UNICEF estimates show that every US $1 invested in disaster risk reduction and prevention efforts can yield up to $15 in saved recovery costs. Yet less than 1 percent of humanitarian funding is allocated for anticipatory action, even with months of warning and massive projected losses.

The agency continues to call on governments, donors, and partners to invest in lifesaving anticipatory intervention before peak impacts hit vulnerable communities. UNICEF highlights building climate resilience, securing essential services, and guaranteeing humanitarian access as key priorities in its response.

Swaminathan underscored that children with disabilities, who already face persistent barriers in education, healthcare, and nutrition, must be considered in disaster preparedness. She emphasized that inclusive planning is essential in addressing structural inequalities and ensuring every region is adequately prepared.

“Despite efforts to plan for disasters, most resources are mobilized only after the damage occurs, and the focus is often on the immediate response phase of a crisis,” said Swaminathan. “With forecasts providing months of warning, UNICEF is urging governments, donors, and partners to act before needs escalate by investing early and before impacts peak. Building resilience is not only about infrastructure and early warning systems, but also about strengthening the services and institutions children rely on and addressing the inequalities that make some communities far more vulnerable to climate shocks than others.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Children in Gaza wait in the hope of receiving food. Credit: UN News

By UN Women
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 2026 (IPS)

Since October 2023, 50,000 women and girls in Gaza have been killed or seriously injured.

• UN Women estimates that nearly 50,000 women and girls in Gaza have been killed or severely injured since the onset of war in October 2023 [1], amounting to one in 21 Gazan women and girls losing their life or living with lifelong disabilities [2].


• More than 38,000 women and girls have been killed and 11,700 severely injured, the result of Israeli airstrikes and land military operations.

• While most of the casualties recorded took place during the first two years of the war, women and girls continue to be targeted despite a ceasefire agreement entering into effect in October 2025. Two hundred seventy-seven women and girls are among those who have been killed in Gaza over the past year.

Nearly every woman and girl in Gaza is displaced.

• More than 150 evacuation and movement orders have been issued across Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces since October 2023, forcing nearly one million women and girls from their homes – nearly every woman and girl in Gaza.

• The majority of women and girls in Gaza live in tents or in the ruins, with no privacy. In conditions that are incompatible with survival and dignity, women and girls are caring for children, the sick, the injured, and for the elderly, cooking and cleaning without the basic means to carry out these responsibilities.

• Women are being forced to deliver babies in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, putting their lives at risk. At the same time, the number of miscarriages reached almost 4,000 in the first six months of 2026, triple the number recorded during the last six months of 2025.

The number of widows and those assuming the role of head of household in Gaza has doubled since October 2023.

• Nearly one in four households in Gaza – an estimated 86,290 households – is now reportedly headed by a woman, compared to the pre-October 2023 rate of one in nine.

• For women-headed households, the impact extends beyond the grief of losing a husband, father or other loved one. Many are now carrying sole responsibility for providing for, protecting, and holding their families together in increasingly devastating conditions.

Despite the ceasefire, women and girls in Gaza continue to face severely limited access to food, shelter, safe water, and hygiene supplies, alongside ongoing hostilities and insecurity.

• Intense and widespread bombing has leveled homes, businesses, hospitals, schools, and shops, making it extremely hard for women and girls to access essential services and basic goods.

• Restrictions on humanitarian access and bombardment continue to cause immense suffering. Between July and December 2026, an estimated 702,000 women and girls are projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3+, crisis or worse), with devastating effects on their health, including the risk of malnutrition [3].

The steepest recorded decline in aid is threatening a lifeline to women and girls in Gaza: women’s organizations.

• UN Women surveyed women’s organizations working on the frontlines of the response in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Thirteen of the 14 organizations surveyed reported that the level of need among women and girls has increased since 2025. All organizations surveyed had seen an increase in gender-based violence, poverty, and mental health distress since 2025. Thirteen of the 14 organizations had seen an increase in child marriage.

• At the same time, 13 of the 14 organizations surveyed by UN Women reported that they do not have the capacity to meet the growing needs of women and girls. To cope with the lack of funding, nearly two thirds of the organizations told UN Women they had been forced to put women and girls on waiting lists or turn them away.

UN Women is on the ground in Gaza. We work with women-led and women’s rights organizations to provide lifesaving and critical support to women and girls, including protection services and gender-based violence case management, legal aid, mental health and psychosocial support, and emergency cash and livelihoods assistance.

From fitting women and girls with prosthetics and offering counselling to survivors, to ensuring that the humanitarian response is shaped by the experiences and perspectives of women and girls, our support is helping them to stay afloat. But women and girls in Gaza need peace.

UN Women calls for the ceasefire in Gaza to be fully implemented. We call for international law to be upheld, accountability for violations, and the protection of women and girls and all civilians. Humanitarian assistance must reach those in need – at scale and without obstruction. Women and girls must be placed at the centre of response and recovery efforts.

[1] The proportion was calculated by combining women and girls killed or injured (38,000 and 11,700, respectively).

[3] UN Women estimate based on the IPC Gaza Strip Special Brief, published 13 August 2026. The estimated 702,000 women and girls facing acute food insecurity at crisis-level or worse (IPC Phase 3+) during July–December 2026 is calculated by applying PCBS’s 2025 female population share (49.7 per cent) to the IPC projected caseload of 1,412,421 people. The calculation assumes proportional representation of women and girls across IPC phases and is rounded to the nearest thousand.

IPS UN Bureau

By Madhu Rao and Tyson Miller
SINGAPORE, Oct 9 2026 (IPS)

When governments gather in Yerevan this month for the 17th UN Convention on Biological Diversity, they will weigh a promise nearly 200 countries adopted six years ago: to effectively conserve at least 30 percent of land, inland waters, and sea by 2030. Achieving the ambitious 30×30 target is essential to sustaining the systems humanity relies on for survival—including crop pollination, purification of water and air, and climate regulation—as well as the biodiversity that underpins food production, fisheries, and tourism.

Unfortunately, the world is not on track to achieve this target. Moreover, the emphasis on the quantitative dimension of the 30×30 target has often overshadowed its more critical objective: ensuring that areas of high biodiversity value are protected, conserved, and connected through effective and equitable management.

The struggle to deliver on international commitments reflects a fundamental challenge. The Global Biodiversity Framework requires countries to halt and reverse biodiversity loss while pursuing economic growth, and businesses are increasingly expected to mitigate nature-related impacts. The ongoing expansion in infrastructure, mining, and the energy transition places additional pressure on biodiversity-rich ecosystems, creating difficult trade-offs that must be carefully managed.

The fundamental question remains: how do we reconcile economic development with meeting biodiversity commitments?

A new analysis of tropical countries contains insights vital to answering that question. Most importantly, it found that oil and gas concessions overlap nearly 61 million hectares—roughly two and a half times the size of the United Kingdom—of protected and conserved areas. Mining concessions overlap another 43 million hectares. Such conditions can turn protected and conserved areas into ‘paper parks’: places protected in law but vulnerable to extractive industries in practice.

What the Maps Reveal

The analysis examined a wide range of some of the world’s most vital ecosystems and the industrial pressures closing in on them—oil and gas, mining, industrial logging, and large-scale agriculture—across the Amazon, Central America, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia, with further examples from the Global North. The report focused on the tropical forests and marine ecosystems that not only harbor irreplaceable biodiversity but also remain at the center of conflicts between extraction and conservation.

Senegal, for example, is close on paper to protecting 30 percent of its territory, yet oil and gas blocks cover 99 percent of both the country’s protected areas and identified Key Biodiversity Areas. The remaining undisturbed forest in Cambodia largely lies inside protected areas, yet a fifth of those areas face mining concessions and most contain land of interest to oil and gas companies. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, nearly three-quarters of the ambitious new Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor overlaps with oil and gas blocks included in a recent licensing round.

This contradiction between conservation in policy and extraction in practice can also be seen in high income countries. The United States has opened Bears Ears National Monument to mining and is threatening new oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the UK also allows fossil-fuel companies to drill in protected areas.

There is further tension. Some of the mining pushing into protected areas is for minerals fueling the energy transition. Securing a stable climate and securing nature are both essential, and one should not be pursued by quietly sacrificing the other.

We need to consider not only how much additional territory must be brought under protection by 2030, but whether areas already counted as protected and conserved are genuinely conserved, effectively managed, and delivering meaningful biodiversity outcomes.

The Path Forward

High-integrity implementation of 30×30 means prioritizing places that matter most for biodiversity and ensuring they remain ecologically intact, connected, effectively conserved, and equitably governed. It means upholding Indigenous Peoples’ and local community rights and protecting these places from incompatible extractive and large-scale industrial activities.

There are four critical components. The first is the mitigation hierarchy, which calls for avoiding harm whenever possible before considering other measures. Areas of highest biodiversity value, including strictly protected areas, should be no-go zones for extractive industry.

The second is policy coherence. A protected area sits with a ministry of environment while a mining concession sits with a ministry of mines or energy, and unless biodiversity is built into the decisions of every economic sector, the two will keep colliding.

The third is biodiversity-inclusive spatial planning, which enables governments to clearly recognize where nature is protected and where development can proceed. Protect here, develop there.

Finally, effective and equitable governance, including rights-based approaches, is essential. Indigenous peoples and local communities steward some of the world’s most intact and biodiverse lands, including many areas of global importance for biodiversity. Their rights, knowledge and leadership are central to effective conservation.

With only four years left, the commitment worth making in Yerevan is durable protection for the areas that matter most, so they remain intact, connected, and free of the industries that would undermine them. We must make sure that 30×30 is not a promise that only exists on a map, but is a pathway to true biodiversity protection for our collective survival.

Madhu Rao, Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and Tyson Miller, Executive Director of Earth Insight

IPS UN Bureau

Ore containing copper, cobalt, and nickel, critical minerals that power the use of emerging technologies. Credit: Unsplash/Paul-Alain Hunt

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 8 2026 (IPS)

The demand for critical minerals is accelerating as world powers scramble to stay on top of emerging technologies. Meanwhile, the environment and frontline communities are paying a steep price.

Such was the basis of the discussion held by the Oakland Institute on September 30, during their webinar: ‘How War and AI Fuel the Critical Minerals Race‘. The event convened experts and frontline activists to examine how artificial intelligence (AI) drives mineral extraction, transforms war technologies, and affects communities entrenched in protracted conflict.

Building on the Institute’s July report, RUSH: Global Scramble for Minerals Wages War on People and Planet, the event highlighted the correlation between rising military spending and the proliferation of AI systems. Panelists stressed that as the demand for critical minerals reaches new peaks, frontline communities bear the brunt of adverse environmental and social impacts.

Anuradha Mittal, founder and Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, noted that military operations account for less than 10 percent of total critical mineral use. Despite this, she warned that the global AI “boom” and increasing competition between world powers over strategic supply chains could trigger a sharp rise in extraction.

Expanding data centers will demand increasingly higher quantities of critical minerals, including copper, gallium, indium, palladium, magnesium, tungsten, germanium, and tantalum. Mittal projected that by 2030, data centers could require an additional 512,000 tons of copper, alongside a 37 percent increase in germanium and an 85 percent increase in gallium by 2033.

She highlighted the United States military-industrial complex as a specific area of concern, describing it as an “AI-first warfighting force.” Under the Trump administration’s proposed 2027 defense budget, military spending would reach a record high of 1.5 trillion USD, nearly twice that of 2023. As the U.S. races to counter China’s dominance across global supply chains, extraction, and processing, the Trump administration has enacted rapid measures to secure minerals internationally.

“Since 2025, the (Trump) administration claims to have signed 38 mineral agreements with countries ranging from Ukraine, India, the DRC, the Philippines, UAE, Australia, Argentina, and Saudi Arabia…Competition with China is bolstering this strategy,” said Mittal. “The Department of War has allocated 75 billion USD to AI-driven programs and another 9 billion to data centers, while the Pentagon requested 13.4 billion dollars in 2026 for autonomous systems. This has driven the U.S. to start stockpiling minerals as strategic assets.”

Other panelists detailed how the impacts of the critical minerals race extend far beyond the global scramble for resources. Frontline communities are not only subjected to environmental degradation, but those in conflict zones are routinely exploited by tech and defense corporations as testing sites for novel military technologies before they are introduced to global markets.

Leila, representing the U.S.-based and Palestinian-led advocacy group Adalah Justice Project (AJP), warned that Gaza has served as an “enormous blueprint for AI-powered war,” noting that Israeli companies have historically used the enclave to test emerging technologies relating to surveillance.

“We have facial recognition drones, different kinds of spyware companies that can hack into phones, and all kinds of AI-assisted targeting programs that, of course, we really learned about through the last couple of years in the genocide,” said Leila. “These tools were developed and tested by Israeli companies in real time, and then sold to the world as sort of ‘battle-proven.’”

Leila also stressed the urgency of the Deadly Merger, a legislative proposal in the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to expand the integration of the U.S. and Israel’s military technology, intelligence, and surveillance systems. AJP posits that the Merger could intensify violence against Palestinians, drive heightened surveillance in the U.S., and impose a “new techno-fascist world order.”

Katerina Canyon, Executive Director of Peace Economy Project—a non-profit organization that advocates for the redirection of military spending toward human needs—introduced the concept of a “peace economy”, where critical resources are used to strengthen healthcare and social infrastructure rather than fund military operations.

Canyon stated that rare earths, lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and other critical minerals are not only necessities for the proliferation of AI but also are cornerstone resources for the green energy transition. She emphasized that a peace economy must prioritize an equitable environment for civilians over military defensives.

“For nearly fifty years, our organization has challenged militarism and asked what would happen if public resources were directed toward human needs rather than preparation for war,” said Canyon. “My core argument is simple: critical minerals are not politically neutral. The same mineral can become part of a wind turbine, an electric bus, a medical device, or a missile guidance system. Geology does not make that distinction; policy does, government budgets do, procurement decisions do, and industrial strategy does.”

“So the real question is not simply whether we need critical minerals; it is what kind of economy are we building around them,” she continued. “A peace economy starts with a different definition of security. One centered on whether people have safe communities, have healthcare, clean energy, transportation, housing, and a livable environment.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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

The seven candidates, still in the running for the post of UN Secretary-General (SG), have so far faced a barrage of questions, mostly from delegates and the news media.

But some of the more politically-sensitive and heavily-loaded questions, have been avoided — either intentionally or by accident– primarily because the answers could trigger a veto from the P-5.

Do you subscribe to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies at the UN? If so, will you help implement this policy, which excludes gender empowerment, and is strongly advocated by the Trump administration?

Is the Russian invasion of Ukraine a violation of the UN charter? And is Russia responsible for war crimes in Ukraine?

Thomas G. Weiss, Presidential Professor Emeritus, Political Science, Director Emeritus, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, the CUNY Graduate Center, told Inter Press Service (IPS) the absence of probing questions from governments is easier to understand than from journalists who should be shedding light on and exposing the relative degree of spinelessness in candidates.

“The last two SGs demonstrate that what passes for acceptable among the P5 is not what the UN requires. The planet requires boldness and a willingness to speak truth to power. Alas, what gets a candidate elected and what is required are two different things,’ he pointed out.

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Secretary-General CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations (CSOs) and activists, told IPS practically speaking, in order to successfully navigate the present political minefield, it could be considered wise for candidates to steer clear of questions they deem contentious.

But what does that say about the process for the appointment of the next Secretary General? he asked.

“The United Nations is supposed to be the conscience of the world. So, in principle answering a question on the value of diversity and equity or calling out the reality of complicity in genocide and war crimes by powerful states should not be so hard for someone who aspires to be the leader of the world body”.

Unfortunately, traditions have taken hold where senior UN officials see themselves more as bureaucrats beholden to the representatives of states – some of whom don’t even conduct free and fair elections – rather than as servants of the peoples of the world in whose name the UN was established, said Tiwana.

“The UN draws its legitimacy from its founding values. It is our hope that whoever is appointed will break the mold. Crucially, it is time for a woman to head the UN and govern it with feminist leadership values of consensus building, courage, power-sharing and radical inclusion. At the same time, they should be able to hear and feel deeply for victims of the very violations the UN was established to prevent,” declared Tiwana.

Richard Gowan, Director for Global Issues and Institutions, and a longtime UN watcher at the Brussels-based Crisis Group told IPS there is an old saying that “politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose.”

But aspiring UN Secretaries-General don’t even get to campaign poetically. They have to tread extremely carefully to avoid offending the veto powers. This leads them to make lowest common denominator statements and avoid hard topics, he said.

“That means these races are disappointing for UN watchers and boring for journalists. However, at the end of the day the world’s top diplomat must be diplomatic, so the race is all about showing who can be most tactful not most brilliant”.

It is worth saying that even the best UN leaders did not say much that was exciting during the campaign phase. Dag Hammarskjold, U. Thant and Kofi Annan all took office without making waves.

Hammarskjold, he pointed out, was famously prone to periods of introspective silence even once he was in office. So, I don’t think that out-spokeness is necessarily a decisive criterion in this race, he declared.

Meanwhile, the seven official candidates running to succeed António Guterres as the next UN Secretary-General (starting January 1, 2027) are listed below, alongside former candidate Michelle Bachelet who withdrew from the race:

IPS UN Bureau Report

The effects of torture and ill-treatment seen on Oleksandr Savov, a Ukrainian marine who took part in the defence of Mariupol after his release from Russian captivity. Credit: Anastasiia Savova

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Oct 7 2026 (IPS)

More than 60 Ukrainian organisations have issued an appeal to the World Health Organisation (WHO) to help stop the torture of Ukrainians held in Russian captivity.

Ahead of International Doctors’ Day on October 5, the groups, including the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organisation the Centre for Civil Liberties (CCL), issued an appeal to the WHO, calling on it to draw international attention to systematic violations of the right to medical care for Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians illegally detained by Russian forces.

The appeal follows the release of a report, ‘Anatomy of Torture: Testimonies on Torture and Ill-Treatment by Medical Personnel in Russian Captivity’, by Ukrainian NGOs, including testimonies from released POWs and illegally detained civilians, which its authors say points to, among others, the systemic denial of medical care to detainees and the direct participation of medical staff in their torture and ill-treatment. In some cases this has resulted in the deaths of POWs and detained civilians.

The groups behind the appeal believe it will increase public awareness of the treatment of detained Ukrainians and put pressure on international organisations to take concrete action to stop it.

“It is important to draw attention to the fact that the denial of medical care and the involvement of medical personnel in cruel treatment are not isolated incidents but form a systemic problem. We expect international organisations not only to respond with statements but also to take concrete action,” Nataliia Yashchuk, Senior War Consequences Officer at CCL, which co-produced the Anatomy of Torture report, told IPS.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion more than four and a half years ago, there have been repeated reports of ill-treatment of POWs and civilians held in Russian detention facilities, including some that allege war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against detainees.

But the Anatomy of Torture report documents specifically how Ukrainians held in Russian penal institutes have been, and continue to be, victims of torture by medical staff.

Yashchuk told IPS that the group’s systematic analysis of dozens of testimonies demonstrated that these were not isolated incidents but instead a recurring pattern of behaviour by medical personnel in different detention centres, suggesting it was a systematic practice.

This is backed up by the fact that some of those who provided testimonies for the report were doctors and medics themselves and therefore especially qualified to identify the deliberate and systematic nature of the ill-treatment they suffered, its authors say.

“Our objective [with the report] was…to demonstrate the systemic nature of the problem,” Yashchuk said.

The report includes testimony from former Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) who were subjected to torture by doctors and nurses at facilities – CCL estimates there are up to 300 locations where Ukrainians are being held – across Russian-occupied territories and Russia itself.

The abuse included not just denial of healthcare but also beatings, electric shocks, death threats from medical staff, and being forced to stand in one spot for 16 hours and being made to beg for help before being tortured again.

Sergii Doroshenko, a former paediatrician who was serving as head of an army medical unit when he was captured by Russian forces in Mariupol in spring 2022, spent 1030 days in captivity at various detention centres across Russia.

He told IPS he was held in inhumane conditions in detention centres where medical supplies or personnel were sometimes non-existent, and any request for medical help was met with refusal. At others he and any other medical personnel detained were allowed to help their own wounded, but only using whatever they could scavenge themselves, such as any bandages, tourniquets, or other materials they happened to have.

Doroshenko said that in one penal facility where only unpurified water was available to prisoners, 800 people had intestinal illnesses at the same time. He and others used stripped bark from prison grounds, which they then brewed into a drink to slow down or curb such outbreaks.

“There were episodes when people lost consciousness from dehydration and received no treatment, because there were no medicines at all,” he said.

He also describes how at another detention centre when he and others sought medical help, “instead of pills, we were treated with electric shocks …it was the treatment for everything — for toothache, for injuries from beatings, for joint pain, for fever, for coughing.”

Meanwhile, in some cases medical personnel actively participated in torture.

He said his worst experience was during his last year of captivity when he was sent to a correctional colony in the Republic of Mordovia in the Russian Federation.

“There, the doctor personally took part in the torture and was perhaps the cruellest of all the staff at that colony,” said Doroshenko. He was nicknamed “Doctor Death” because after his torture sessions, several people had to undergo surgical operations.

“There was also the deliberate withholding of medical care by medical staff. Even when they saw that we had temperatures of 39–40°C, when people had a fever and fell into a kind of intermediate state between consciousness and unconsciousness, even then, they did not permit any treatment, not even a rest from the torture.

“For example, from my own experience, I had a very high fever, and for about four or five days I sought help daily, and in response received beatings and electric shocks, but my condition was so bad that a rash covered my entire body, from my face to my heels, and afterward I had peeling, shedding skin… I never received a single pill, not a single antipyretic treatment — nothing but beatings,” said Doroshenko.

He added that Russian propaganda intentionally demonised medics, which made prisoners like him a special target for torture.

Meanwhile, his presence in captivity was officially confirmed only two and a half years after his capture. Groups like Amnesty International have pointed out that POWs have been deliberately cut off from the outside world, often for years, and a lack of transparency over their whereabouts has allowed for their torture and even unlawful killings to continue with total impunity.

“The Russian Federation only officially confirmed my presence in captivity after two and a half years. Before that, they did not officially acknowledge that I was their prisoner, meaning that if I had been killed or tortured to death somewhere, they would bear no responsibility for it,” said Doroshenko.

“Only about six months before my release did they confirm that they indeed held a certain Sergii Doroshenko in captivity, and thereafter, the frequency of torture decreased significantly, the beatings decreased significantly — they started, so to speak, to take a bit of care of us, fearing that we might die from the torture,” he added.

Other groups have also documented incidents of torture of Ukrainians by Russian medical staff.

A report released late last year by Human Rights Watch (HRW) suggested medical personnel enabled or were apparently complicit in torture, staff at the group told IPS.

Yulia Gorbunova, associate director for Ukraine at HRW, told IPS that the report’s findings and ongoing monitoring showed incidents of Ukrainian POWs being denied basic treatment and pain management at detention facilities in Russia and Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine despite suffering from severe combat wounds or after being injured during interrogations.

“From the moment of capture and throughout their detention, former POWs described medical care at every stage as inadequate, often abusive, and routinely withheld or delayed. Treatment for combat wounds, torture injuries, or contagious diseases like tuberculosis and scabies was typically restricted to basic antiseptics or mild painkillers.

“In addition, these facilities are operated under conditions that actively degrade physical health. Ukrainian detainees (POWs and civilians) endure severe overcrowding, chronic starvation, unsanitary conditions, and a lack of clean water, leading to rapid physical deterioration and untreated health issues,” she said.

Another recent report by Ukrainian NGOs included similar findings.

Russian authorities have repeatedly denied that any Ukrainian POWs or civilians it holds are subject to ill treatment or torture.

However, reporting from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, among others, has shown that Russia has consistently refused to grant independent monitors access to POW detention sites.

This means that there are no official records of injuries and illnesses resulting from the ill-treatment and torture of detainees.

The Anatomy of Torture report includes an analysis documenting how the reported treatment of detainees by Russian medical staff is a violation of not just international rights treaties such as the Geneva Conventions but also the World Medical Association’s International Code of Medical Ethics.

When IPS contacted them, WHO officials were not available to speak about the Ukrainian organisations’ appeal.

A spokesperson for the ICRC did not comment on the specific allegations in the Anatomy of Torture report but said the group was “concerned by any reports of ill-treatment of those in captivity or detention.”

“Under international humanitarian law, all people deprived of liberty, be they combatants or civilians, must be treated humanely. Care for their life, dignity and wellbeing is paramount. The 1949 Geneva Conventions contain specific rules governing conditions of detention, including access to proper hygiene standards and medical care and treatment. In all cases, the provision of medical care must comply with the applicable standards of medical ethics,” the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, some victims of the torture and ill-treatment recorded in the report are speaking out to help bring those responsible to justice.

When Oleksandr Savov, a Ukrainian marine who took part in the defence of Mariupol, returned to his family after almost three years in various Russian detention centres, his daughter, Anastasiia, was glad to be reunited with her father but shocked at his physical state. She knew from his almost skeletal frame that he had suffered while in captivity.

She told IPS that when he had been captured, he had no injuries nor illnesses. But when he was released, he had tuberculosis, broken ribs, chronic ulcers, and lymphoedema. He was unable to straighten one leg and doctors told him he would need a knee replacement.

He also had mental health problems, including night terrors, panic attacks during air raids, and a paralyzing fear of silence or queues.

After seeing doctors and realising the full extent of his injuries he began to think about what had happened to him and fellow captives and the fact that it was medical staff who had inflicted such suffering.

“He couldn’t understand how doctors could be so cruel to other people,” Anastasiia said.

He told her what they had done to him, including not just refusing to provide medical care when he needed it, but torture with electric shocks.

Savov died of heart failure in November last year, eight months after he was released. He was 46. After his death, doctors in Ukraine found that his heart had been damaged following a heart attack he had suffered in captivity.

He spent his final months visiting hospitals and documenting his memories in a notebook for the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Anastasiia has since founded a community for the families of captive marines and continues to speak out in support of detained defenders and returning soldiers. She has also filed a complaint with the ICC over her father’s torture.

She says that, like her father, she believes that speaking out publicly forces Russia to ease conditions for those still detained.

She also says that she wants to see the people who tortured her father and others brought before a court and held accountable for their actions.

“These medical staff are part of a system of torture in these prisons because when people ask for medical help, for instance, like when my father did, they come, and they just laughed in their faces and recorded videos of them on their phones instead of helping them,” she said.

She added it is imperative investigations into these people take place, or “this torture and ill treatment won’t end.”

This was also her father’s wish before he died.

“After he was released from captivity, my father did a lot of interviews with journalists and human rights defenders, and once he was asked whether he felt anger towards the people who had tortured him. He said that at that moment, he felt nothing about them, but he wanted the torture to stop. The thought that those kinds of things were going on at the same time he was talking to those journalists really upset him. He couldn’t understand why there was no one in the whole world who could do anything about it,” she says.

Doroshenko said people involved in the torture of Ukrainian detainees should face “something like the Nuremberg trials”.

“The conduct of the doctors, the medical staff, and even ordinary guards at these penal facilities was a deliberate violation of the Geneva Convention and a deliberate use of torture, and therefore they should be subject, as war criminals, to judicial investigation and, following that, judicial punishment in accordance with the court’s decision. These are people who have lost their humanity, who have become beasts, and who have no right to be in society. A doctor has no right to torture others,” he said.

Some doctors allegedly involved in torture of Ukrainian captives have already been identified, and earlier this year the EU sanctioned Galina Mokshanova, the head of the medical unit of Penal Colony No. 10 in Udarny, Russia, for human rights violations.

Ensuring justice and accountability is vital not just for victims and their relatives, Yashchuk said.

“This research is about documenting crimes but also the urgent need for effective international mechanisms capable of saving the lives of those who remain in captivity,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Credit: Tosin Olowoleni

By Saheed Babajide Owonikoko
YOLA, Nigeria, Oct 7 2026 (IPS)

Following the mass abduction of 46 pupils and teachers in Oyo State, south-west Nigeria in 2026, the authorities attributed the attack to the Ansaru terrorist group. Key suspects were prosecuted and handed prison terms. But this was not the first time terrorist groups had engaged in mass abduction of school pupils in Nigeria. Peace and security researcher Saheed Babajide Owonikoko explains what factors could have motivated the Ansaru terror group to stage that attack and what lessons Nigeria should take away from the incident, which lasted 56 days.

What can Nigeria learn from the mass kidnap of school children in Oyo State?

The lessons can be deduced from the differences between the incident and others that have taken place in Nigeria.

The first striking difference is that northern Nigeria was previously the centre of kidnapping incidents in Nigeria. As of 1 June 2026, there had been 31 mass school kidnapping incidents involving over 2,530 people in Nigeria since the 2014 Chibok incidents.

Terrorists had struck before in south-western Nigeria. Also, criminal kidnappings on the highway had taken place, but not a mass school kidnapping. The Oyo State school kidnapping is the first in the southern parts of Nigeria. The lesson is that terrorism is expanding beyond the traditional areas known for activities of terrorist groups.

Another difference is that the victims included children as young as two years. Most previous Nigerian mass school abductions targeted older students.

The third is that it involved multiple schools. My contact in Ogbomosho said three schools were attacked.

This suggests the vulnerability of civilian populations and institutions in areas previously regarded as less exposed to terrorist kidnapping. The targeting of particular groups, especially schoolchildren and other populations whose abduction is likely to generate public pressure, also provides terrorists with a strategic advantage. Such attacks will be easy to execute by the group and can trigger public outrage, protests and demands for government action. They could put pressure on authorities to negotiate or make concessions.

Victims have now been “released” or “rescued”, most probably without concession to any of their demands, and some people linked to the incidents have been put on trial. But the ease with which the group carried out the attack exposes the vulnerability of the south-west and other non-traditional theatres of terrorist kidnapping to sudden attacks, particularly where security presence and response capacity remain limited.

Concentrating security in volatile areas may not be the solution, as terrorist groups will always take advantage of vulnerable areas.

What factors motivated this kidnap?

Criminal bandits and terrorists are responsible for most of the high-profile kidnapping incidents in Nigeria. However, while bandits kidnap mostly for money, terrorists mostly kidnap for more strategic reasons.

The 15 May 2026 armed attack against schools in Oriire Local Government of Oyo State, leading to the abduction of over 40 people, most of whom were pupils and teachers, was carried out by The Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa, popularly known as Ansaru. Since its breakaway from Boko Haram in 2013, Ansaru has acquired the trademark of being involved in high-profile kidnapping and hostage-taking, sometimes with the support of bandits.

Ansaru’s involvement in the Oyo State kidnapping was confirmed by the group’s demands. The group listed its demands as follows:

• • 1 billion naira to be paid to one account in the Benin Republic

• • the Oyo state government should release their members from prison

• • Toyota Hiluxes

• concession of some Oyo state laws in favour of the bandits (land and sharia law).

The second item is particularly informative. In August 2025, Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s national security adviser, announced the arrest of two key Ansaru leaders – Mahmud Muhammad Usman, the amir (leader) and Mahmud al-Nigeri, the deputy and chief of staff.

They are currently standing trial on terrorism charges. For a long time, Ansaru remained silent due to the leadership vacuum left as a result. Their strategic importance made the group stage the Oyo kidnapping incidents.

In one of my previous articles, I warned that, given the importance of these two leaders, they might attempt to secure their release through a prison break or resort to a high-profile kidnapping or hostage-taking operation, either in retaliation for their detention or as leverage to demand their release.

What makes the south-west vulnerable to these kinds of attacks?

The choice of Oyo State and the kidnapping of pupils are also strategic. Oyo State is vulnerable because of its proximity to the North Central and North East through savannah woodlands, wildlife reserves and riparian vegetation.

Movement from North Central and North West to the south may also be caused by low security expectations and reduced military pressure there.

A reduction in expertise due to the arrest of Mahmud Muhammad Usman and Mahmud al-Nigeri also affected Ansaru’s operational effectiveness in high-intensity security terrain, making the south more attractive.

Ansaru usually targets high-value civilians, including expatriates, well-to-do individuals and humanitarian workers. They kidnapped schoolchildren because of their vulnerability and also because it can spark public outrage that may force the government to give concessions.

Does this incident have any implications for the ongoing debate on state policing in Nigeria?

According to the government account, the rescue of the schoolchildren and their teachers was achieved through a prolonged, intelligence-led, multi-agency operation. Although the outcome shows state security institutions can mount a coordinated response, it raises questions about whether such resource-intensive operations can be sustained and replicated in similar incidents.

More fundamentally, the operation illustrates the reactive character of the response. Security agencies mobilised resources after the abduction rather than preventing the attack or detecting the threat earlier. This is where the debate over the state police is very important. One of the major problems with Nigeria’s security landscape is the centralisation of the security apparatus, leaving the federating units at the mercy of the federal government to deploy security forces.

To reduce the vulnerability of civilians everywhere in Nigeria, the police institution should be federalised. This will ensure that a minimum level of protection exists for everyone, wherever they live in Nigeria.

Saheed Babajide Owonikoko is Researcher, Centre for Peace and Security Studies, Modibbo Adama University of Technology

This story was originally published by The Conversation.

IPS UN Bureau

An IPES-Food report warns that workers in the global food system face high exploitation in keeping the world fed. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Oct 6 2026 (IPS)

A new report reveals widespread labour exploitation among food system workers, warning that keeping the world fed comes at the cost of human dignity.

More than 1.4 billion people work in the food industry – the largest employer in the world – and are the most abused, according to a report, Food Work: The workers behind our food and the exploitation they face, published this week by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).

The global food system exploits more workers than any other economic sector, and the report notes that this exploitation is not accidental but rather ingrained in a business model that keeps labour cheap while maximising profits.

Abuse All Round

“Often hidden from view, food workers face low pay, wage theft, forced labour, human trafficking, discrimination, sexual violence, dangerous working conditions, and exclusion from social safety nets,” the report found.

“From farmworkers, fishers, and slaughterhouse staff to delivery drivers, restaurant and supermarket employees, and domestic workers, labour abuse is rife at every link in the food chain.”

The report highlighted that migrants, women, refugees, and racialised workers are funnelled into the worst conditions, where speaking up risks job loss, deportation and blacklisting.

IPES-Food co-chair Olivier De Schutter said what was most surprising about the findings of the report was the deep hypocrisy of governments concerning migrant farmworkers. With many countries relying heavily on migrant labour, especially for fruit and vegetable production, as witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic, governments often grant migrant workers short-term, seasonal stays.

“These workers are routinely subject to forms of exploitation and abuse that would be unimaginable if they were natives – housed in poor conditions, paid poverty wages, and working in often dangerous conditions,” said Olivier De Schutter, a former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

De Schutter argued that because migrant workers were considered unskilled, they were treated like second-class workers and that they had no or minimal connections to the communities in countries that host them; they barely complained in cases of abuse.

This practice is a form of trafficking in human beings, except that it’s legal and officially encouraged, De Schutter told IPS.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the gross value of global agricultural production is estimated at just over $5 trillion, while the World Bank estimates agricultural value-added at about $3.2 trillion.

The global food system is valued at more than $8 trillion, yet those who produce and market the food survive on poverty wages, which calls for a change.

De Schutter identified three mutually reinforcing challenges which include loopholes in the current legislation which does not apply minimum wage or on working hours, poor law enforcement and the difficulty of organising workers where unions are discouraged or even repressed.

“Governments routinely take the position that, where workers are informal, labour legislation does not apply, and labour inspectorates have no role to play,” he said, describing this situation as absurd.

‘It’s like saying that if you don’t have a driver’s licence, you can ignore the traffic rules. In fact, international human rights law requires that basic labour legislation be extended to informal workers and that incentives be given to employers to register their workers to ensure informality does not pay and that formalisation instead be rewarded.”

IPES-Food co-chair Olivier De Schutter. Credit: IPES-Food

Systemic Exploitation

“Unfair employment arrangements, off-the-books work, and lack of basic job security all combine to entrench worker vulnerability,” he said. “Governments directly enable this abuse through legal carve-outs that explicitly exempt food and farm workers from basic protections on wages, workplace safety, and union rights.”

The report highlighted that even where protective laws exist, weak public enforcement and pervasive informal employment leave millions of workers unprotected.

Migrant workers are essential to today’s food systems, yet they face some of the highest rates of workplace abuse, wage theft, forced labour, injury, and death, the report noted.

Worsening Conditions

Compounding these structural abuses, a dangerous convergence of emerging forces was making food work increasingly hazardous and exploitative.

“Climate change is becoming a workers’ rights crisis,” said Mamadou Goïta, IPES-Food panel expert. “Farmworkers already face poverty wages, toxic pesticides, and gruelling conditions. Now climate change is turning up the heat and making their work even more dangerous.”

Goïta said governments were still failing to guarantee workers even basic, lifesaving protections like shade, rest, and drinking water.

“The people producing our food should not have to risk their health or their lives to earn a living,” said Goïta.

The impacts of extreme heat and drought are usually measured in lost crops and harvests. But the human toll on the world’s 928 million agricultural workers was also mounting, with heat stress being the most common health threat facing farmworkers, the report noted.

The consequences of health threats include dizziness, vomiting, and exhaustion from heat stroke and kidney disease. In the US, farmworkers were 35 times more likely to die from heat stress than other workers.

Agricultural regions across Africa, the Americas, and southern Europe now experience up to 50 more days of dangerous heat each year than in the 1970s. In Africa, 93% of workers were exposed to dangerous heat, most of whom work in food systems, said the report.

The report warned that while climate change was exposing workers to extreme heat, severe weather and toxic wildfire smoke, corporate power was suppressing wages, undermining collective bargaining, and shifting risks onto workers, which meant prioritising shareholder returns over decent work.

“At the cutting edge, digital technologies are creating new frontiers of exploitation: gig-based platform work, automation, algorithmic management, and workplace surveillance are isolating workers, intensifying productivity pressures, increasing injury rates, and eroding worker bargaining power,” said the report.

Organise or Agonise

But workers are fighting back. They are forming unions and cooperatives, staging strikes, litigating for rights, and building alliances to demand comprehensive labour standards that recognise their worth and dignity.

The report shows that comprehensive labour standards, living wages, and the right to collective bargaining can shift the world’s largest workforce from the food system’s most invisible victims to resilience.

The report emphasised that in achieving lasting transformation in the food systems industry, there must be a strong policy and power shift across five key priorities. These include building the power of workers by strengthening trade unions and expanding collective bargaining. In addition, legal carve-outs for food and farm workers must be eliminated and equal rights for migrant workers guaranteed.

Policies that criminalise migrants must be scrapped, while employer-tied visa schemes must be dismantled to guarantee equal labour rights and social protections regardless of status, the report said, urging for a curtailment of corporate power so that companies are held accountable for labour abuses throughout their supply chains.

“The people who feed the world deserve safe, fairly paid, and dignified work,” said the report. “Food systems must never depend on low wages, hazardous conditions, or invisible labour. Achieving this requires changing who holds power, who profits, and who bears the costs.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

By James Alix Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Oct 6 2026 (IPS)

One night, many years ago now, on a remote beach in the outer islands of Seychelles, I sat in the darkness and watched a green turtle come ashore. She had waited for the heat of the day to leave the sand. Under a sky crowded with stars, she hauled herself slowly above the tideline, dug with a patience no human hand could match, and laid her eggs. Then, in the small hours, she turned back toward the water. She did not hurry. She paused once, as though listening, and then made her slow, unhesitating way down the sand, back to a home older than any I could imagine.

James Alix Michel

We, the human beings watching from the shore, are the ones who wonder.

This, I have come to believe, is the deepest source of the trouble we now find ourselves in. Not our tools, not our economies, not even our numbers, though all of these press hard upon the living world. The deepest source is an older mistake: the unexamined assumption that we stand outside nature, deciding its fate. That the Earth is a stage and we are its principal players, and that everything else, the reef, the forest, the migrating whale, the green turtle, is scenery, resource, or backdrop.

The truth is far more humbling. We are not the authors of nature. We are its late arrivals.

Consider the arithmetic of belonging. The Earth is some four and a half billion years old. Life appeared here almost four billion years ago. Coral reefs were already ancient when the dinosaurs walked. Forests had been breathing for hundreds of millions of years before the first upright ape rose on the savannah. The calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon that composes almost everything we are, was forged in stars that lived and died long before this planet existed. To imagine ourselves separate from nature is not merely a philosophical mistake. It is a physical impossibility.

We Seychellois have a particular reason to understand this, for we are late arrivals twice over. Our granite islands are among the oldest islands on Earth, the only oceanic islands made of granite: fragments of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, left behind in the middle of the ocean when India drifted away some sixty-five million years ago. For almost all of that immense time, no human foot touched them. The turtles came, and the seabirds, and the giant tortoises. We came only in 1770, when a small party of Europeans, Africans and Indians stepped ashore on Sainte Anne. Others followed, from Africa, from India, from China, from Europe, some by choice and many, let us never forget, in chains. From that meeting of peoples, in scarcely two and a half centuries, a nation was born.

And something remarkable happened. A people with no ancestral memory of these islands learned, within a few generations, to belong to them. Our grandparents learned to read the sea as others read books. They gave thanks to the ocean before setting out and again on returning, and spoke of it as one speaks of a mother. Their kinship was not inherited; it was learned. That, to me, is among the most hopeful facts I know: belonging can be learned.

There is a school of thought, gathering strength in our time, that invites the whole of humanity to learn it too. Some call it biocentrism, the recognition that life in all its forms carries moral weight. Others call it deep ecology, the insistence that the human being is one strand in a vast web, not the loom on which the web is woven. The American conservationist Aldo Leopold put it most simply, many decades ago: we must learn to think “like a mountain.” The names matter less than the instinct behind them: that the living world is not a possession, and that our first duty to it is not extraction but attention.

This is why the environmental struggle feels to me, at its deepest level, like a spiritual struggle as much as an economic one. The numbers we use to measure our crisis are necessary and true, but they cannot on their own move the human heart. What moves the heart is the recognition that we are kin to what we are losing. That the coral bleaching in a lagoon is not a distant statistic but family. That the night sky above the nesting beach is not decoration but a memory of our own origin.

I do not offer this as sentiment. I offer it as strategy. For decades we have tried to persuade humanity to protect the Earth by appealing to self-interest. The argument is true, but it has not been sufficient. Self-interest is a thin thread from which to hang the future of a planet. What is needed now is the older and stronger thread of kinship. And kinship, once acted upon, is answered. On Aldabra, where green turtles were once taken in great numbers, decades of patient protection have allowed the nesting population to multiply several times over. The sea, it seems, is ready to forgive us, if we are ready to belong.

James Alix Michel, is Former President of the Republic of Seychelles

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

OECD PISA education performance: change in scores between 2009 to 2025, and 2025 scores.

By Isabel Ortiz and Antonia Wulff
BRUSSELS / GENEVA, Oct 5 2026 (IPS)

The results of the OECD PISA 2025 report point to the marked deterioration of results in countries whose education systems were once considered exemplary. PISA assesses how students aged 15 apply skills in reading, mathematics, and science to real-life situations, and the latest report contains the lowest averages ever measured in all three subjects across the OECD (as illustrated in the graph above). Public debate has rushed to blame the use of AI and social media, but the deterioration long predates them. In many countries, this decline has unfolded alongside years of austerity cuts and growing pressures on public education systems, including public spending, teacher pay and working conditions, staffing and the capacity of schools to provide quality education.

Isabel Ortiz

Austerity reforms in education include reduced public budgets, wage restraint for teachers and school staff, recruitment freezes, staff reductions, heavier workloads, and the privatization and commercialization of education. Fiscal consolidation led half of OECD countries to cut or freeze teachers’ salaries after 2010; between 2008 and 2012 teachers’ real wages fell in 16 of the 30 countries for which data is available, and by more than a quarter in Greece. Finland cut 1.5 billion euros from education during 2011 to 2018, and – among many other damaging cuts – closed and merged schools. In the United States, spending per pupil fell roughly 7% after the financial crisis, and rigorous research shows these cuts lowered test scores and college attendance.

Antonia Wulff

Privatization and commercialization compound the damage. More than 350 million primary and secondary students worldwide are enrolled in private institutions, and the enrolment share of government-funded private schools has risen since 2000 in many countries. UNESCO’s global review is blunt: the apparent superior performance of private schools is largely attributable to the socio-economic advantages of the student population.

These trends reflect political choices: what governments choose to fund and what they choose to cut. When education systems are asked to do more with less, the consequences are felt in classrooms. Fewer teachers, heavier workloads, weaker pay and conditions, and less capacity to provide every child with a quality public education. The question is not whether we can afford to reverse this decline but whether governments are prepared to prioritize the investment that public education requires.

The money was never missing, it is a question of priorities. Governments mobilized US$10 trillion to rescue banks in 2009, and in the four years since the invasion of Ukraine, the world has spent more than $10 trillion on the military, with NATO members each pledging to spend 5% of GDP on this by 2035, exceeding the share that most devote to education. Today, debt-service payments exceed education expenditure in Colombia, Costa Rica, Hungary, Mexico, Poland and Türkiye, among other countries, meaning again that governments are prioritizing paying off private creditors, banks and defense over children. New revenues are within reach: from progressive taxation, taxing windfall profits (e.g. from oil) to a 2% minimum tax on the wealth of billionaires which would raise $2.5 trillion over a decade. The G20 has, meanwhile, already committed to cooperating on taxing the super-rich.

Austerity was a policy choice and so are public services for people’s prosperity. Through sustained investment in public education, decent pay for qualified teachers, and equitable learning conditions, OECD countries could once again set the example and invest in educating their children to expand opportunity for the next generation.

Isabel Ortiz, Director, Global Social Justice, was Director at the International Labor Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, and a senior official at the UN and the Asian Development Bank.

Antonia Wulff, Director of Research, Policy, and Advocacy, Education International.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

Social Democratic Party leader Magdalena Andersson speaks at the Social Democrats’ election night party in Stockholm on 13 September 2026. Credit: Jonas Ekstromer/TT News Agency/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Oct 5 2026 (IPS)

Four years ago, Sweden’s far right became the power behind a right-wing government. This time, it expected further gains and cabinet seats. But voters turned against it. In the 13 September general election, support for the far-right Sweden Democrats fell for the for the first time in the party’s history. Four days later, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson resigned, leaving the way clear for the centre-left Social Democrats to negotiate a coalition. But the Sweden Democrats’ defeat will prove hollow if the next government maintains the hostility towards migrants that has come to characterise Sweden’s politics.

The Sweden Democrats originated in the country’s violent neo-Nazi movement. Established parties long refused to cooperate, but the centre-right Moderate Party broke the firewall in 2019, when it announced it was willing to work with it. In the 2022 election, the Sweden Democrats came second with 20.5 per cent of the vote. The Moderate Party came third but was able to form a minority government. The Sweden Democrats didn’t receive cabinet seats, but entered into a formal agreement with the governing parties, which relied on its votes.

Having brought the Sweden Democrats into the political mainstream, Kristersson went further in April, when he said his aim was to form a majority government with the Sweden Democrats and promised them cabinet posts, potentially giving them control of immigration policies. The announcement made clear how central to Swedish politics the Sweden Democrats had become.

Hostility written into law

The Sweden Democrats framed its hostility towards migrants as a defence of the country’s envied living standards, underpinned by its extensive social welfare system. This time it promised to ‘make Sweden Sweden again’, in a campaign marked by instances of blatant Islamophobia.

Sweden saw a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers and migrants in 2010, particularly from war-torn Syria. Political parties and media have repeatedly blamed migrants for crime and economic and social problems.

As the Sweden Democrats picked up electoral support, established parties adopted increasingly anti-migrant policies to try to see off the political threat. The same thing has happened in other European countries, with the same effect. Mainstream parties legitimised the anti-migrant agenda and brought the far-right challenger into the political mainstream, while voters tended to prefer the original to the copy. In Sweden, conditions for migrants have worsened under successive governments.

Restrictive policies preceded the 2022 government, but intensified under it. Ahead of the election, the government passed a new set of anti-migrant laws. These removed any route to permanent residency for people with asylum status, offering only temporary residency permits. They introduced a broadly defined ‘good behaviour’ clause that allows authorities to refuse residency permits for non-criminal offences and revoke permits already granted.

On top of this, what’s commonly called the ‘snitch law’ obliges some categories of public employees to report people they suspect of being undocumented migrants. This may deter migrants from using essential public services, such as healthcare, for fear of being reported. Because the law is broad and vague, it will also encourage self-censorship, as migrants may feel less able to take part in protests or speak out online. This effectively creates a two-tier system for civic freedoms and risks introducing a default racial profiling system. Troublingly, other EU countries are reportedly watching how Sweden’s hostile new laws play out, with a view to copying them.

A fragmented result

Crime and migration were campaign issues, but didn’t dominate the debate, as voters also focused heavily on the economy, education and healthcare. After many years at the top of the agenda, migration may be receding as a political issue, revealing the Sweden Democrats as having little else to offer. The party’s four four years of sustaining a government also made it harder to run an anti-establishment campaign, while a scandal linking a party official to Russia may also have cost it.

Results point to a further political fragmentation. The Social Democrats also lost seats, recording its lowest vote share in over a century, while smaller parties gained support, with the Green and Left parties particularly attracting young voters.

The two major political blocs are holding coalition negotiations. Neither faces an easy task. A four-party coalition led by the Social Democrats would command 176 seats, just above the 175 needed for a majority, while a four-party coalition on the right would claim only 173. But significant policy differences mean agreement can’t be taken for granted. Determination to keep the Sweden Democrats out may galvanise the four into an agreement but may not be enough to sustain it in the long term.

Even if the Social Democrats prevail, a significant change of direction on migrants’ rights is unlikely. The party has expressed support for many recent anti-migrant policies. The political rhetoric may soften, but the situation could mirror that of neighbouring Denmark, where the Social Democrats, having long adopted anti-migrant policies, retained power in the March election despite having its worst result in over 120 years.

A chance to change course

Progressive voices urgently need to start making a more positive case that tells human stories and asserts the human rights of migrants, and that builds understanding of the causes of migration and appreciation of the benefits migrants can bring, from the public service jobs Sweden’s social welfare service relies on to the economic contributions migrants make.

Sweden’s civil society must be heard. Civil society organisations are providing practical help to migrants and going to the courts and European bodies to challenge the worst impacts of regressive laws. They know what’s needed to curb the hostility, make Swedish society fairer and restore the country’s hard-earned global reputation as a human rights champion.

The Sweden Democrats’ loss of support shows there’s nothing inevitable or unstoppable about the rise of the far right. If Sweden’s next government listens to civil society instead of continuing to imitate the far right, it has a chance to show Europe that it’s possible to roll back the far right’s agenda.

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

A community health worker examines a pregnant woman inside her home while family members look on, highlighting the growing challenges mothers face as extreme heat and climate-related pressures strain access to healthcare in vulnerable communities. Credit: Wellcome

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SUVA, Fiji & SRINAGAR, India, Oct 5 2026 (IPS)

Extreme heat is increasingly threatening pregnant women and newborn babies around the world, with almost all maternal health professionals surveyed across five continents saying they have cared for women or infants whose health was affected by high temperatures.

The findings, released as climate ministers gathered in the Pacific ahead of the COP31 climate summit, provide an extremely distressing picture of how global heating is affecting maternity wards, delivery rooms and newborn-care units.

A survey of 1,001 healthcare professionals in Australia, Brazil, India, the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe found that 98 percent had personally cared for a pregnant woman whose health they believed was adversely affected by extreme heat.

Some 99 percent said they had cared for a foetus or newborn whose health, in their professional judgment, had been affected by extreme heat.

Almost three-quarters, 73%, said heat-related cases or complications affecting pregnant women had increased over the previous five years. The proportion rose to 76% when health workers were asked about complications involving foetal health, childbirth or newborn babies.

The survey was commissioned by the global health foundation Wellcome and conducted among obstetricians, gynaecologists, doctors, midwives, nurses and other maternal-health professionals between September 17 and October 1.

The findings were released in Fiji at the launch of Birthright, a global campaign seeking greater protection for pregnant women, babies and healthcare workers as temperatures rise.

Speaking at the event, United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said climate change was creating a new and potentially deadly risk around pregnancy and childbirth.

“The picture is clear and very disturbing: as extreme heat worsens, pregnancy and birth are now a new faultline in the global climate crisis, and one which is potentially fatal,” Stiell said.

“This faultline must not become another deep chasm of climate-driven suffering, inequality and injustice.”

The survey offers detailed evidence of what healthcare professionals say they are already witnessing.

Among pregnant women,

• 25% reported seeing muscle cramps or muscle aches that they believed extreme heat had contributed to or worsened
• 24% reported severe fatigue, sleep problems or a reduced ability among pregnant women to carry out daily activities
• 23% reported breathing difficulties or worsening respiratory symptoms
• 23 percent reported pregnancy complications requiring additional monitoring or treatment, while an equal proportion reported hypertensive disorders, including pre-eclampsia
• More than one in five reported mental distress, anxiety or stress linked to heat
• 21% said they had encountered severe maternal illness requiring medical attention or hospital care
• 20% reported dizziness, fainting or loss of consciousness, while 19 percent reported preterm contractions, labour or birth
• Nearly 18% said they had observed pregnancy loss or stillbirth in circumstances where, in their professional judgment, extreme heat had contributed to or worsened the problem.

The survey did not attempt to establish that heat alone caused individual complications. The responses provide information about the professional judgment and clinical experience of the healthcare workers questioned.

Protect Life at Its Most Fragile

The findings involving babies were similarly worrying.

• 36% of health professionals reported dehydration or heat-related illness among newborns during the pregnancy-related care they provided
• 34% reported low birth weight or restricted foetal growth
• 33% had observed breathing, feeding or temperature-regulation difficulties
• 28% said babies required additional monitoring, treatment or neonatal care, and a similar proportion reported preterm birth
• During the newborn period, 38% of respondents reported low birth weight or restricted growth
• 36% reported dehydration or heat-related illness, and another 36% reported breathing, feeding or problems regulating body temperature
• Almost 30% said heat-related conditions resulted in babies needing additional monitoring, treatment or neonatal care
• 9% percent reported stillbirth or neonatal death during the newborn period in cases where they believed extreme heat had contributed to or worsened the condition.

Stiell said the findings showed that rising temperatures could no longer be treated simply as an environmental issue.

“The climate policy process is measured in degrees, targets and finance,” he said. “But a deep test of climate action is far simpler: whether we protect life at its most fragile.”

He said the world was entering conditions for which many health systems had not been designed.

“We are in a new, hotter world, as the world continues to burn planet-heating fossil fuels, overwhelmingly in G20 economies,” Stiell said.

“The last eleven years smashed records.”

He said rising temperatures meant “rising danger in pregnancy”, citing evidence linking extreme heat to premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight and maternal complications.

A healthcare worker cradles a newborn baby at a maternal health facility, illustrating frontline efforts to protect mothers and infants amid mounting concerns over the impact of extreme heat on pregnancy, childbirth and newborn health. Credit: Wellcome

No One Is Immune

The survey also revealed significant differences between countries.

Zimbabwean health workers were among those reporting the sharpest increases.

Eighty-five percent of respondents in Zimbabwe said heat-related cases or complications affecting pregnant women had increased during the previous five years. The figure was 79% in Australia, 74% in Brazil, 66% in the United Kingdom and 62% in India.

When respondents were asked about foetal or newborn health, 89% of Zimbabwean health professionals reported an increase in heat-related cases or complications. The corresponding figure was 79% in Brazil, 78% in Australia, 68% in the United Kingdom and 66% in India.

The results suggest that the effects are being felt across countries with very different climates, incomes and healthcare systems.

Concern was also widespread.

More than 92% of all respondents said they were concerned about the impact of extreme heat on the health and well-being of pregnant women in the areas where they worked and 90% expressed concern about foetal health during pregnancy and childbirth, as well as the health of babies during the newborn period.

Zimbabwe recorded some of the highest levels of concern, with 97% of respondents concerned about foetal and newborn health.

Stiell said no country or family could consider itself completely insulated from the risk.

“No one is immune,” he said. “But the risks and impacts are not shared equally.”

The survey showed that extreme heat was also disrupting the healthcare systems expected to protect women and infants.

• 29% of health workers said they had seen increased urgent or emergency presentations during extreme heat
• 28% reported difficulties safely storing or using medicines, supplies or medical equipment
• 27% said pregnant women and their families found it harder to travel to or access healthcare
• 25% reported increased demand for advice, monitoring or treatment, while another quarter reported staff illness, fatigue or a reduced ability to work safely
• 24% had experienced interruptions to electricity, water, cooling systems, medical equipment or other essential services
• A similar proportion reported healthcare services becoming overburdened or having insufficient capacity
• Nearly one-quarter said temperatures inside healthcare facilities had become unsafe or uncomfortable.

The findings highlight a basic problem in responding to extreme heat. Advising pregnant women to stay cool may be of little practical value when families lack air conditioning, cannot afford electricity, work outside, or live far from medical services.

“‘Staying cool’ is simply not an option when there is no cool place to go,” Stiell said.

“A safe birth is already too often shaped by geography, income and access to care. Without action, extreme heat will widen that injustice.”

The survey asked health professionals what most limited pregnant women’s ability to protect themselves and their babies.

• 26% cited limited awareness or understanding that extreme heat could affect health during pregnancy
• 24% cited the need to work outdoors or in hot conditions
• About 23% pointed to limited support from family or the wider community
• The same proportion cited limited access to cooling or air conditioning
• 23% identified the cost of electricity, water or other protective measures.

Other barriers included existing health conditions, inadequate access to safe drinking water, homes that were difficult to keep cool, lack of employer support and difficulties travelling to healthcare facilities.

Only 0.4 percent said no factors limited women’s ability to protect themselves from extreme heat.

Stiell said such conditions meant that climate change risk was increasingly intertwined with inequality.

“Someone working outdoors, living in unregulated housing, travelling far to a clinic, or relying on facilities without water, power or cooling, cannot be protected by advice alone,” he said.

Harm that is not counted is too easily ignored

For Pacific Island countries, the issue is particularly sensitive.

Many small island states have contributed only a tiny fraction of historic greenhouse gas emissions but face rising sea levels, intensifying storms, heat and pressure on food, water and health systems.

“Here in the Pacific, climate change is no abstraction,” Stiell said.

“It is felt in homes, villages, farms, fisheries and clinics, in journeys for care, and in the availability and cost of food, water, power and transport.”

The Fiji event was held as ministers and climate officials gathered for the pre-COP meeting hosted by Australia and Fiji from October 5 to 8.

The meeting is intended to advance negotiations ahead of COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, and give greater prominence to Pacific Island perspectives and climate solutions. Tuvalu was hosting a leaders’ event as part of the Pacific meetings.

Despite the growing risks, the survey suggests many healthcare workers believe they need more support to respond effectively.

• An overwhelming 92% said they wanted additional training and resources to help pregnant women during periods of extreme heat.
• 55% said clearer national or international guidance on protecting pregnant women from extreme heat would help them perform their jobs better
• When asked what would most improve their ability to protect women and babies, 33% selected practical information and materials for pregnant women and families
• 31% called for improvements to buildings, cooling, ventilation, water or electricity
• 29% wanted stronger referral pathways and better coordination between health services
• A similar proportion called for improved data and surveillance on heat, pregnancy and newborn health, as well as better local heat alerts and communication
• 28% said more staff, time or funding during periods of extreme heat would help
• 28% called for greater community outreach to people who may otherwise be difficult for health services to reach.

Stiell urged governments to make maternal and newborn health an explicit part of national climate adaptation and heat-response strategies.

“What is not named in a plan is too often not funded, not measured and not protected,” he said.

He outlined three priorities.

The first was to make pregnancy and newborn care part of national adaptation, health and extreme-heat planning.

That would require resilient clinics, dependable electricity and water supplies and properly trained health workers.

The second was to convert scientific evidence into direct protection, including improved guidance, professional training, heat alerts, safer medical facilities and health systems prepared before extreme weather strikes.

The third was better monitoring.

“Harm that is not counted is too easily ignored,” Stiell said.

“As temperatures rise, data must show where risks are growing, which interventions work, which communities are exposed, and where finance and technology support is needed.”

The survey found broad support among health workers for stronger policy action.

• 81% agreed that without further action, extreme heat would increasingly endanger maternal, foetal and newborn health during the next five years
• 82% said protecting pregnant women and babies from extreme heat should become a higher priority for health-system leaders and policymakers
• Another 82% agreed that better evidence on heat, pregnancy and newborn health would help drive effective action.

Stiell linked the issue to broader international climate finance negotiations.

He said commitments on adaptation finance agreed at COP30 in Brazil needed to be implemented and called for governments and the international financial system to help mobilise $1.3 trillion annually for developing nations.

“For small islands and other nations that did practically nothing to cause this climate crisis, it underscores the need for support at scale,” he said.

He also pointed to the Belém Gender Action Plan and Belém Adaptation Indicators as mechanisms that could help governments measure climate-related health risks and build more resilient health services.

Stiell praised Türkiye’s COP31 presidency and Australia, which is serving as President of Negotiations, for putting health on the agenda ahead of the Antalya summit.

For Stiell, the issue ultimately goes beyond climate-negotiating language.

“I am a parent, but I cannot pretend to know what it feels like to carry a pregnancy through those conditions,” he said.

“Mothers, midwives, doctors, nurses and families speak from lived experience. We should listen.”

The survey suggests those voices are already delivering a clear warning.

Pregnant women are struggling with heat exposure. Babies are requiring additional care. Health workers are seeing more complications. Facilities are facing pressure on electricity, water, medicines and staff. And many doctors, nurses and midwives say they lack the training and resources they need.

“Pregnancy should be a time of hope,” Stiell said. “But for millions, it is becoming a time of anxiety, as climate impacts fill everyday life with risk.”

He ended with an appeal for governments to treat protection of mothers and babies as a basic test of climate policy.

“A changing climate must never be accepted as a reason pregnancy and birth become less safe,” he said.

“A newborn’s healthy start must never depend on a family’s ability to escape the heat.”

“This work is urgent, deeply human, and we all share the responsibility to drive it forward together.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

At the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, experts explored how renewable energy can ease the burden on farmers. Here Shifra Ainomugisha poses beside a solar-powered irrigation system in Uganda. She was named the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year for the development of AI and solar-powered agricultural technologies. Credit: Solar Farm Uganda

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
KIGALI, Oct 2 2026 (IPS)

Post-harvest losses, particularly in rural areas, threaten the gains Africa is making in agricultural production and export capacity.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, up to 40% of farm produce is lost because of a lack of cold storage, according to industry players.

Highly perishable farm produce, like fruits and vegetables, can go as high as 70%.

With agriculture accounting for one-third of the Gross Domestic Product and employing over 60%, such a loss threatens jobs and the livelihoods of millions of people.

Farmers in Africa grapple with a lack of reliable refrigeration, an underdeveloped cold chain and unreliable power storage, leaving harvests to heat and spoilage.

Poor road networks and limited refrigerated transport options also worsen the situation. Farmers transport fruits long distances to processing centres under non-ideal conditions, resulting in losses.

Renewable Energy Offers an Opportunity

At the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, experts are exploring how renewable energy can ease the burden on farmers who often turn to diesel generators to cool their farms’ fresh produce.

Olamide Niyi-Afuye, Chief Executive Officer at Africa Minigrid Developers Association (AMDA), an industry association working to improve the operating environment for mini-grids, said the biggest gap is not awareness but aggregation and intentional market design.

“We already see individual examples of mini-grids powering agro-processing, cold storage and other productive activities,” he said.

“The challenge is that these are still too often treated as individual projects rather than part of a scalable commercial model.”

Mugwe Manga, a Climate Finance Lead at Financial Sector Deepening Kenya (FSD Kenya), an independent trust supporting micro and small enterprises, said energy presents a tremendous opportunity for smallholder farmers to capture more value from what they produce.

“Solar, increasingly combined with battery energy storage, is particularly important because it is modular, increasingly affordable and can be deployed relatively quickly in rural areas,” he said.

“Solar-powered irrigation, cold storage, drying, milling, cooling and agro-processing can reduce post-harvest losses, increase productivity, improve product quality and allow farmers to sell into higher-value markets.”

Manga said energy can become an important enabler of both climate resilience and higher farmer incomes.

“The productive use of energy for cold storage, solar-pumped irrigation, and agro-processing is critical to value capture, climate resilience, and adaptation that will strengthen smallholder farmers,” he said.

Nigeria, one of Africa’s largest economies, lost between $2.3bn and $3.3bn to post-harvest inefficiencies in 2025, according to industry players.

The food wasted due to poor storage and transport networks amounted to up to 40 million metric tonnes.

South Africa loses an estimated 10.3 million tonnes of food annually, about 19% of its fresh produce, according to a 2021 report titled Waste Research Development and Innovation Roadmap Research.

Funding Cooperatives Is a Better Funding Model

Renewable energy offers reliable and accessible solutions to cold storage and processing problems in Africa, but funding remains a major challenge.

Though prices of solar panels and batteries shipped from China have been declining in recent years, current prices remain high for many farmers, particularly smallholders in rural areas.

With low capital amid limited access to grants and loans, many cannot afford solar-powered agro-processing and cold storage facilities.

Experts said that clean energy is the cheapest technology to deploy when farmers work together.

“Due to the capital expenditure of some of these, it is important for farmers to organise themselves and come together as a collective in order to take advantage of economies of scale and the power of aggregation that can use energy for all, as opposed to rolling out these solutions to individual smallholders that may not be cost-effective,” said Manga.

Niyi-Afuye said there is a need to bring energy developers and agribusinesses together much earlier, aggregate demand across agricultural value chains, and structure projects around credible productive loads from the outset.

“The opportunity is to stop treating energy and food systems as two separate investment cases and start building bankable opportunities at the intersection of both,” he said.

Manga said one of the key lessons from distributed energy is that the economics are often stronger when players move away from financing individual assets for individual farmers and instead aggregate demand.

“Farmers can organise through cooperatives, producer organisations, aggregators or rural enterprises and invest in shared infrastructure that serves many producers,” he said.

“This creates economies of scale, improves asset utilisation and creates a stronger and more predictable revenue base.”

Manga said aggregation also makes these projects more attractive to financiers by reducing transaction costs and perceived risk.

“Rather than lending against hundreds of individual smallholders, investors can finance a productive asset with an identifiable operator, clear cash flows and an aggregated customer base,” he said.

Niyi-Afuye said the better model is to aggregate projects into investable portfolios, combine commercial capital with appropriate credit enhancement and risk-sharing mechanisms, and increase access to patient, local-currency financing.

“Financing infrastructure in dollars while the underlying customers earn in Nigerian Naira or Kenyan shillings creates a structural mismatch,” he said.

Pratik Patel, Bureau Chief for East and Southern Africa at AfriCatalyist, a global development advisory firm headquartered in Senegal, said a public-private-producer partnership is the model that can make renewables affordable.

“Instead of a cold storage facility or cold chain operator trying to stand alone as a single commercial enterprise, it’s embedded in a collective plan that covers the full journey from farm to table, production, aggregation through farmer cooperatives, storage, processing, and market access, with clear roles and coordination at each stage,” he said.

He said the approach matters for financing because it gives investors what a standalone facility cannot, such as a defined use case, identified long-term clients, and a credible route to market.

“When responsibility for each link in the chain is assigned to the actor best suited to manage it, the plan becomes legible and de-risked, which is what ultimately builds investor confidence,” he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Shehnaz Ali from Rahim Yar Khan, Pakistan, has been living with a fistula for 16 years. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct 2 2026 (IPS)

“You’re living a life drained of joy,” is how Shehnaz Sher Ali describes her “perpetually wet and stinky” existence. “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” says the 35-year-old, who travelled by bus for more than 12 hours with her husband from their village in Rahim Yar Khan, Punjab, changing diapers whenever possible to keep the smell from reaching the fellow passengers.

For 16 years, she had lived with urine dribbling, unaware that it was treatable with a relatively simple surgical procedure.

She developed an iatrogenic fistula—caused by a surgical injury during a Caesarean section—and is among the estimated two million women living with untreated obstetric fistula worldwide.

Shehnaz got married at the age of 18 and conceived soon after. At full term, her obstetrician suspected a complication for which she underwent a Caesarean section, but the baby was stillborn. The doctor then told the young couple she would not be able to conceive again.

That was not all. She soon realized she was leaking urine.

The doctor assured her it would stop within weeks. It never did, despite three months in hospital trying to repair the leak.

“After spending so much on my operation, being told I could never have children, and then living with the urine leakage, my husband divorced me. I was damaged goods, a liability, and he didn’t want to spend any more money on me.”

She returned to her parents’ home and, a few years later, married Ali, twice her age and already married with three daughters.

“He knew about my condition but married me because he needed someone to care for his paralyzed wife and their three daughters.”

But now, her life is beginning to change.

Fistula Ward at Kooh Goth Hospital, where cats are allowed to roam free. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

Center of Hope

She is being treated at the best facility for treatment of fistula—the Koohi Goth Women’s Hospital (KGWH), run by the Zafar and Atia Foundation Charitable Trust (supported by numerous Pakistanis both abroad and within the country), in Karachi’s Landhi neighborhood.

“A relative found out about it a month back, and my husband brought me to it immediately,” she said.

Dr. Shershah Syed, who founded KGWH, was Pakistan’s first gynaecologist and obstetrician to train in genital tract fistula (both rectovaginal and vesicovaginal fistula) repair. He describes these as among the “worst and most devastating childbirth injuries” a woman can endure.

In 1993, Syed trained at Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital under renowned surgeons Dr. Reginald Hamlin and his wife, Dr. Catherine Hamlin, who provided free obstetric fistula repair in Ethiopia. Two years later, as medical superintendent of the government-run Sobhraj Maternity Hospital, he began actively repairing fistulas.

Since KGWH began operations in 2007, it has treated “more than 3,200 women and trained 30 master trainers,” said Dr. Sajjad Ahmed Siddiqui, its fistula project manager.

In 2025, UNFPA’s Asia-Pacific office designated KGWH a Regional Center of Excellence for fistula care after it trained surgeons from Bangladesh, Nepal, and Afghanistan. It was already the national referral and surgical training hub.

“We want to treat 800 women annually while providing psychosocial support, literacy, and skills training to help them reintegrate and become economically empowered,” says Dr. Jameel Ahmed, sexual and reproductive health specialist at UNFPA Pakistan. “But with global funding constraints and rising iatrogenic fistula cases, we are unsure how much reintegration support we can provide.”

KGWH’s work has also extended beyond its walls.

Syed, who is a medical advisor to the Fistula Foundation, organizes free surgical camps with the help of trained surgeons in remote Sindh government hospitals, bringing treatment to women from nearby villages.

In January, he travelled to Kabul with four female surgeons, where they set up a fistula repair camp and provided refresher training to Afghan female surgeons.

“In five days, the women surgeons repaired 20 fistulas,” said Syed. “There is a great need there, but with relations between the two countries at their lowest, it is difficult for us.”

Before the Taliban takeover, 30 to 35 women from remote provinces of Afghanistan would travel to Pakistan each year for treatment. That has now ended.

Today, there are 11 fistula repair centers across Pakistan equipped with 88 trained surgeons, and in the last decade, these centers have treated over 7,800 women for fistula.

Globally, about 50,000–100,000 new cases of vesicovaginal fistula occur each year, with 80% in developing countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, according to UNFPA. “In Pakistan, we estimate that up to 5,000 cases of fistula occur annually; iatrogenic fistula is one type,” explained Ahmed.

Back in 2007, when UNFPA began addressing obstetric fistula caused by obstructed labor in Pakistan through the Pakistan National Forum on Women’s Health, it believed that improved reproductive healthcare and more facility-based births would help reduce the incidence of this devastating condition.

Some Progress, But Not Enough

“To some extent, there have been significant improvements in maternal mortality and morbidity since then,” said Ahmed.

The progress is reflected in World Health Organization figures: Pakistan’s maternal mortality ratio fell from 276 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2006 to 155 in 2024. Neonatal mortality declined from 52 to 37.6 deaths per 1,000 live births over the same period, while the stillbirth rate fell from 39.8 per 1,000 births in 2000 to 27.5 in 2024.

But Syed remains unimpressed. Despite these gains, the toll is still “not acceptable” to him. Every day, 675 babies die before reaching one month of age, and 27 mothers die from preventable complications, amounting to more than 246,300 newborn and 9,800 maternal deaths a year. Pakistan also records more than 190,000 stillbirths annually, WHO figures show.

All these put Pakistan’s achievement of SDG 3—which deals with sexual and reproductive health—at risk.

And there is another worrying development.

As Pakistan made progress in tackling obstetric fistula, another form was emerging—one caused not by obstructed labor but by medical intervention itself. “We observed women developing fistulas following Caesarean sections or hysterectomies in health facilities—iatrogenic,” said Ahmed.

Syed is particularly concerned about this kind. “In most childbirth cases, I find surgical intervention unnecessary. Too often, the decision to intervene is a ‘personal’ one, driven by greed and ‘ease’ rather than ethics.”

“We have irrefutable proof that most of the injuries happen due to surgical error during C-sections, hysterectomies, or repair of ruptured uterus and bladder,” says Siddiqui.

UNFPA has found that a staggering 70% of fistula cases in Pakistan result from surgical injuries. “We tried to plug one hole two decades back, through improved facility-based births, and realized there was a bigger one at hand that happened in facilities that needed to be plugged now,” said Ahmed.

Dr. Pushpa Srichand, 75, has spent more than five decades as a gynaecologist and has treated some 2,200 fistula patients in hospitals, along with countless more at free surgical camps. “It is a disease of the poor; I promised myself I would never charge these women,” she said. Even after retiring from government service and joining Isra University, she made free fistula treatment a condition of her appointment.

A recent seven-year prospective study by Isra University found a 56% rise in iatrogenic fistula among gynaecological patients between 2017 and 2024. Of the 2,190 women treated for obstetric and other gynaecological complications, some 1,358 had iatrogenic fistula.

“This is a huge and extremely concerning number,” said Srichand, sharing her findings at a UNFPA national consultation that brought together regulators, medical bodies, and provincial health officials to discuss the rise in iatrogenic fistula and ways to prevent it.

Earlier research points to a similar pattern. A two-year study at Lady Willingdon Hospital, Lahore, from January 2007 to December 2008, found that 54% (33 of 61) of referred fistula cases were iatrogenic. A 2004 report from the same hospital, by contrast, found that 79% of fistulas were obstetric. The 2008 study concluded that “gynaecological surgery is being performed by untrained hands in the periphery.”

Another study at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Islamabad, covering almost 12 years to June 2018, also found a rising trend in iatrogenic urogenital fistula. It concluded that the trend underscored the need for better safety standards in both obstetric and gynecological surgery.

The same was concluded at the UNFPA consultation, where doctors largely blamed inexperienced and unskilled practitioners.

“They make wrong diagnoses, perform faulty surgeries, and leave patients with lifelong complications,” Syed told IPS on the sidelines of the event.

“A C-section, for instance, is a relatively straightforward procedure,” he pointed out, but in incompetent hands, even this can go terribly wrong. “It requires a very special kind of negligent expertise to get this wrong,” he said sarcastically. He also blamed the superiors for the errors of their juniors. “They never taught their juniors properly, and many C-sections and even normal births are carried out by those without adequate training, resulting in these grave mistakes that women suffer lifelong. The worst part is there is no accountability.”

For women like Shehnaz, such medical errors are not simply complications—they can reshape an entire life.

For years, she saw her suffering as punishment for some inexplicable sin. The treatment, she says, is “Allah telling me that I have finally atoned for it.”

“When I go home, the first thing I will do is cook a large pot of biryani and distribute it among the poor, in gratitude to Allah for giving me a second life,” says Shehnaz, her face beaming after her first successful operation.

Dr. Sana Ashfaque, who carried out an “extremely complicated, four-hour-long surgery” to repair Shehnaz’s holes, is hopeful she has plugged the leak for good. “But we will keep her for another two weeks just to be sure everything is in place; she’s come from far and it may not have been easy for her to come back to us.”

After 16 years of waiting, four hours was a small price to pay for a second life.

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

IPS UN Bureau Report

 
CIVICUS discusses life as a refugee with an exiled Sudanese civil society activist who has asked to remain anonymous for security reasons.

Over three years into Sudan’s war, millions of people have been displaced, both within the country and beyond its borders, and the numbers keep rising. Fighting continues to force civilians from their homes, while those who reach neighbouring countries struggle to find safety and stability. Civil society warns that, despite the scale of the suffering, Sudan’s crisis isn’t receiving the international attention it deserves. Exiles document violations and advocate for democracy and peace.

What drew you to human rights activism, and how has exile changed it?

The gender-based injustice women face in our societies drew me to human rights work. From childhood, I objected to the unequal treatment of girls and boys and the stereotypes that painted women as less capable. I rebelled against this system, seeking out books, stories and real-life experiences that showed women’s capabilities and potential.

Activism in exile, particularly during wartime, brings unending and unexpected risks and challenges. At times, it feels like you are fighting to survive. You carry the trauma of war and the guilt of being safe while your family and community remain in danger. Many human rights defenders lack the basic resources to survive.

In exile, I have moved from a radical stance to one focused on reform, having learned that dogmatism, hostility and refusal to listen can lead to violence and grave human rights violations. I have become more deliberate in my judgements, with a stronger desire to understand the other side.

How has Sudanese civil society adapted since the war began?

Sudanese civil society has shown remarkable resilience. People mobilised to confront the war and the collapse of state institutions. Within hours, young people and volunteers were helping the wounded, homes became field clinics and communities shared their resources.

As the war continued, many civil society organisations relocated abroad. One of the most remarkable aspects of the Sudanese experience has been the emergence of numerous additional human rights, humanitarian, women’s and youth organisations in host countries. They have maintained links with activists inside Sudan, monitored human rights and documented violations, provided humanitarian assistance, advocated for peace, promoted dialogue and countered hate speech.

Civil society’s work, inside Sudan and abroad, is one of the few sources of hope for peace in the country.

What barriers do Sudanese civil society activists and organisations face in exile?

Refugees face insecurity and a rising wave of xenophobia in host countries, and many feel unwelcome, or even blamed for seeking safety in a country where they are made to feel they don’t belong. Many also face movement restrictions, difficulties renewing residency documents and the constant risk of deportation.

On top of this, activists carry the added burden of propaganda that portrays them as fugitives or foreign agents. We must confront the abuses we document while also countering division, hatred, intolerance and racism.

Civil society organisations abroad also face economic, legal and security restrictions. Many struggle to register legally, open bank accounts, access funding or obtain permits.

Compounding all this are the limited international support and the sense that global decision-makers, and even international human rights organisations, don’t prioritise our concerns. This can leave you feeling that you simply don’t matter.

What needs to change to stop displacement silencing activists and refugees in general?

The global system often seems designed to protect the strong while weakening the vulnerable. In Africa and across the global south, we seek to change this, yet we remain constrained by the structures and assumptions of the system. We need to see difference as a source of diversity rather than division, share responsibility for resources and security, and protect everyone’s rights to life, development, dignity and freedom.

As a Sudanese refugee and human rights defender, I strongly support the Borderless Africa campaign, led by the pan-African civil society movement Africans Rising, which calls for visa-free travel and a single continental passport across Africa. It reflects the need to move beyond borders and put humanity and fundamental rights first.

It’s shocking to be forced into silence about crimes you have witnessed simply because you are a refugee. Governments, civil society and activists must dismantle the legal and logistical barriers that leave refugees unable to access basic rights.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

SEE ALSO
Sudan: ‘Crossing a border doesn’t automatically mean you’re safe’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Rawia Saad 09.Sep.2026
Sudan: blood on the hands of foreign powers CIVICUS Lens 04.Sep.2026
Sudan in crisis: mass killings continue while the world looks away CIVICUS Lens 23.Dec.2025

Mariam Daher preparing for her Tawjihi examinations in the temporary learning spaces in Gaza. Credit: Education Above All Foundation

By Hani Shehada
DOHA, Qatar, Oct 2 2026 (IPS)

In the 21st century, getting a pencil into Gaza became international news. In January, after more than two years of restrictions, UNICEF finally brought in learning kits with pencils and exercise books. Textbooks stayed out. By then, the UN had recorded damage to 97.5 per cent of Gaza’s schools.

If a pencil makes headlines, consider what a national examination demands: question papers printed for thousands of students, answer sheets scanned, halls furnished and staffed. In Gaza, education officials started by pulling damaged photocopiers from beneath the rubble, stripping their usable parts and rebuilding enough machines to keep the exam alive. It worked. More than 95,000 students have sat the Tawjihi, the national secondary school examination that decides who can compete for a university place.

This week, world leaders gathered at the UN General Assembly under the banner of “a United Nations that delivers for all“. The effort behind Gaza’s examination poses an uncomfortable question to that promise: when does celebrating a solution make it easier to tolerate the problem? Scholars writing from Gaza have warned that praising Palestinian resilience reassures outside observers and releases them from the duty to act.

At a school damaged by the war near Mashrou’ Amer in southwestern Gaza City, Education Above All Foundation and UNDP have established 10 temporary learning spaces. Credit: Education Above All Foundation

Israel classifies thousands of items as “dual-use“, spare parts among them, and bars or limits their entry. Technicians harvested parts from other machines. Repairing the printers and scanners took more than 90 days. The printers ran on old ink stocks, because new ink faced restrictions too. Until recently, paper itself could not enter Gaza.” and drop the fallback plan after it.

Exam halls also needed seats and desks. Little wood reaches Gaza. Carpenters build tables from scrap and shipping pallets, and families burn whatever they find to cook and keep warm. Staff repaired chairs and desks with timber from the pallets that carry aid. Every liter of fuel for an examination center required coordination. All of it happened under strikes that never fully stopped, which have killed more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect.

An examination also needs people. Every center needed invigilators while many education staff receive only a fraction of their salary. Before assigning anyone, the ministry first had to establish who was still alive. The war has killed more than 21,000 students and educational staff since October 2023.

A school teacher leads a lesson inside one of Gaza’s temporary learning spaces established by Education Above All Foundation and UNDP.
Credit: Education Above All Foundation

This year, Gaza’s candidates took the Tawjihi online, many on phones in tents and cafés, while the ministry worked to bring the exam back into halls. With support from the State of Qatar, Education Above All Foundation, UNDP and the ministry have set up 110 learning spaces, partly for that purpose. Planners intended these spaces, a mix of prefabricated units and tents, as a transition. Gaza’s students are using them for years, while sun, heat, humidity and cold wear them down.

Gaza’s people now crowd into less than 40 per cent of the Strip. Crews must clear rubble and check for unexploded ordnance before they can build. When they clear land for a learning space, displaced families can move onto it and stay. Others shelter in partly destroyed buildings. A school site now competes with the most basic need of all: somewhere to live.

Picture one of those 95,000 candidates. She has studied for this exam for years, first at a desk at home, then by phone light in a tent. The war has taken her father, perhaps her mother too, and most of the family who would have waited for her results. She may walk on crutches where a leg used to be. Strikes still fall at night, and she revises anyway. All she wants is the chance to sit the exam. Behind that chance stand a salvaged photocopier, a rebuilt desk and a negotiated liter of fuel, each one liable to fail. The UN reports that shortages once managed through reuse have become unmanageable, and critical systems are failing. Judged against a cancelled examination, against a school able to order a replacement part, it reveals an avoidable burden.

I am from Gaza, and I work for one of the foundations that funds this response. That makes the question personal: have we become so used to celebrating what Palestinians can salvage that we no longer ask why they must salvage it? An examination held amid continuing strikes is an achievement. It is also evidence of a world that has allowed the conditions for education to be dismantled.

As the speeches in New York wind down, leaders can measure their words against practical tests. Let paper, printer parts, school furniture and textbooks into Gaza without months of negotiation. Fund classrooms built to last years, not seasons. Pay the teachers who keep the system running. Gaza’s educators have shown what they will do to keep education alive. The question before the world is what it would take for Gaza’s schools to stop needing miracles.

Hani Shehada, Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, and is Regional Manager at Education Above All Foundation’s Al Fakhoora programme.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

Members of Smallholder Farmer Alliance in Haiti with first harvest of regenerative cotton. Credit: Thomas Norielle/SFA

By Hugh Locke
NEW YORK, Oct 2 2026 (IPS)

In November 1952, the United States detonated the world’s first thermonuclear device at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The test, code-named Ivy Mike, erased the island of Elugelab and scattered a signature of plutonium across the planet that remains in lake beds, ice sheets and ocean sediments today.

This month, scientists writing in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment proposed this moment as the start of the Anthropocene, a geological epoch shaped by human activity. Co-author Victor Galaz of the Stockholm Resilience Centre called the date “a tragic reminder of the highly unjust impacts of planetary change.”

I take that proposal seriously, because it carries hope as well as warning, and it connects to the argument of my new book, Whole Earth Farming.

Hugh Locke

The idea of the Anthropocene was popularized in 2000 by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen. In 2020, a paper in Nature found that human-made materials now outweigh all living things on Earth. Yet in 2024, the International Union of Geological Sciences declined to formally recognize the Anthropocene. Officially, we are still in the Holocene.

The new paper, led by Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin Waters and Martin J. Head, draws on 12 stratigraphic records worldwide and identifies the 1952 rise in plutonium as the clearest marker of the new epoch. Whatever the geologists decide, the substance stands: human beings have become a force of planetary consequence.

Nobody set out to launch a new geological epoch. The Anthropocene is the unintended result of billions of decisions about energy, industry, consumption and land use. That is sobering. It is also, strangely, encouraging.

If humanity can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere without meaning to, then we are clearly capable of transformation at planetary scale. The only question is whether we can do it on purpose, in a direction that heals rather than harms.

Galaz’s point about injustice matters too. The Marshall Islanders had no say in what happened at Enewetak, yet bore its consequences. Those who contributed least to planetary change are often hit hardest, among them the world’s smallholder farmers. Any real transformation must put them at the center.

There are some 475 million smallholder farming families in the world, roughly one quarter of humanity, and yet they are largely absent from conversations about the future of food and climate.

Whole Earth Farming argues that these families could lead an agricultural revolution. It draws on 21 farmer stories from 18 countries and on decades of work, including in Haiti, where I co-founded the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. Its central argument is that if half the world’s smallholders adopted regenerative practices, they could produce all the additional food needed by 2050 while reducing agriculture’s net climate impact.

There is a fitting symmetry here. The Holocene began with a climate stable enough for humans to start farming. The Anthropocene could likewise coincide with a new global agricultural movement, one that restores the land rather than depleting it.

The changes of the 1950s spread without any global plan, as new tools and habits moved from place to place until they gathered their own momentum. A regenerative transformation can spread the same way: through practices that work, farmers who see them working on a neighbor’s land, and the support to adopt them.

The farmers in the book are already rebuilding soil, planting trees alongside crops and restoring water cycles. What they lack is not ingenuity but recognition, investment and connection to one another.

I once suggested that the historical epoch now taking shape will one day be named for the moment we began to reorganize ourselves around the principle of oneness. I still believe that.

The Anthropocene is, in one sense, the geological record of our failure to see ourselves as one people sharing one planet. A regenerative transformation led by smallholders would be the opposite: a practical expression of oneness, rooted in the recognition that the health of the land, the wellbeing of the farmer and the future of humanity are inseparable.

If a single morning in 1952 can mark a new chapter in the Earth’s geological history, then surely the choices of hundreds of millions of farming families can mark a new chapter in human history. We have already proven that we can change the planet. Now it is time to prove that we can do so with intention, with justice, and with the whole Earth in mind.

Hugh Locke is president and co-founder of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, president of the Impact Farming Foundation and author of Whole Earth Farming: Smallholders and the Great Regenerative Transformation (George Ronald Publisher, 2026).

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt: