Who picks up the tab for AI’s unbridled genius?

For the last few years, Artificial intelligence has been making increasingly intrusive demands for our attention. It burst onto the scene like a child prodigy, enthralling us with feats of brilliance. With consummate ease, it removed drudgery from our tasks and began helping us achieve our personal and workplace objectives.

Rohingya Repatriation: A Roadmap Without a Road

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

East Asia and Pacific Faces a USD 900 Billion Maritime Investment Challenge

East Asia and the Pacific's (EAP) maritime system has powered the region's rise as the world's largest trading and manufacturing center, but the infrastructure supporting that system has become increasingly vulnerable.

ARMENIA: ‘Anti-LGBTQI+ Discourse Is Increasingly Tied to Anti-democratic Narratives’

 
CIVICUS discusses disinformation campaigns targeting the LGBTQI+ community in Armenia with Hripsime Kizogyan, Executive Director of Pink Armenia, a community-based organisation that defends the human rights of LGBTQI+ people and advocates for policy change.

US Casualty Figures Keep Fluctuating in War with Iran

An age-old axiom in Statistics reads : Figures Cannot Lie, But Liars Can Figure. And more so, in military conflicts, including the five-month-old US-Iran war, where casualty figures are difficult to track down because of lack of transparency and false accounting.

Dual Crises in Eastern DRC as Ebola Surges and Hunger Deepens

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is battling the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record, with United Nations officials warning that hunger is actively undermining efforts to contain the spread.

From the Foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, Magnolia Athletics Camp Is Helping Girls Stay in School, Pursue Athletics and Escape the Pressures of Harmful Traditional Practices

Before sunrise each morning, 19-year-old Josephine Sembeyo joins dozens of teenage runners leaving Magnolia Athletics Camp for training beneath the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Financing Africa’s Digital Future: Institutions Push for Smarter, Coordinated Funding

Africa’s digital revolution is gathering pace, but the financing needed to sustain it remains uneven, fragmented, and often out of reach.

A New Wave of “Communist” Hysteria is Threatening to Spread Across US Politics

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

The United Nations in a Time of Opportunity & Uncertainty: a Time to Choose

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

Extreme Heatwave Escalates Urgency of Climate Adaptation in Europe

As Western Europe endured its worst-ever June heatwave in recorded history, the imperative for climate adaptation is now urgent as the continent accelerates beyond others to become the fastest-warming region in the world.

Sudan’s War Economy: Funded by Gum Arabic and Gold

In the three years since the outbreak of the Sudanese Civil War, the humanitarian crisis has deteriorated significantly, with the United Nations underscoring a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law among warring parties. This includes the deliberate targeting of civilians in residential areas, widespread sexual violence, and attacks on critical infrastructure that have hindered aid efforts and pushed communities to the brink of collapse. To manage rising military expenses, the warring parties have increasingly relied on the exploitation of trade routes and territories, prompting humanitarian experts to express concern about a persistent, self-sustaining “war economy.”

Ongoing Need for Humanitarian Assistance in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

On Monday July 20, a team from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) visited two displacement sites in Gaza where they found two family tents decimated by domestic fires. This incident is indicative of the increasing frequency of domestic fires in Gaza.

U.S.-Saudi Nuclear Agreement Opens Door to Civilian Nuclear Cooperation, with One Major Caveat

On Wednesday, July 22, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, and Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy, HRH Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman bin Abdulaziz signed a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, best known as a 123 agreement, as well as an accompanying bilateral safeguards agreement, according to the U.S. Department of Energy and the Saudi Ministry of Energy.

Cockroach Protests: How India’s Youth Movement Led to Minister’s Resignation

On July 25, after 50 days of protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned.

UNHCR: 75 years on, the Refugee Convention Remains a Lifeline for Millions

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

Guatemala: A Narrow Opening in a Captured Justice System

José Rubén Zamora, founder of elPeriódico, Guatemala’s now-defunct leading investigative newspaper, spent 1,295 days in detention before a court granted him house arrest on 12 February. He endured long stretches of solitary confinement in a military jail, held in near-constant darkness and subjected to treatment that six UN experts warned could amount to torture. His offence was simply doing his job. For decades, he exposed the corrupt dealings of Guatemala’s economic and political elites. Prosecutors are still trying to send him back to prison.

From Castel Gandolfo to Campidoglio: Call for Human Dignity to Be at the Heart of the AI Revolution

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

The Houthis Don’t Need to Close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Strangle the Suez Canal

With regional friction between Iran and the Gulf monarchies escalating, Houthi leadership in Yemen has proclaimed a total maritime blockade against all vessels linked to Saudi shipping. While this declaration does not constitute a verified military obstruction of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, it significantly heightens the risk of volatility at the Red Sea’s southern gateway, potentially severing the primary arterial link to the Suez Canal.

What Development Looks like in Myanmar Today

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

Food and Transport Costs through Strait of Hormuz Remain High, Burdening Vulnerable Economies

Prior to the latest round of hostilities between the United States and Iran, freight traffic had been increasing in the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations were underway for a new agreement to fully restore trade through this channel.