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.”

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nurunnahar, 45, is always afraid of the tide. Early warning of the tide helps her prepare. Photographed at Jhapali village in Shyamnagar upazila (sub-district) of Satkhira district, Bangladesh. Credit: Rafiqul Islam Montu/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam Montu
SHYAMNAGAR (Satkhira), Bangladesh, Oct 1 2026 (IPS)

Villagers rush to the vulnerable spot of the embankment—early warning of the rising tide has alerted them. Together, they save the village from tidal flooding by repairing the vulnerable embankment, which is at risk from the impact of low pressure in July this year. The message is clear: early warnings of the rising tide save lives and property.

This wasn’t always the case. Cyclone Amphan in 2020 and Cyclone Yaas in 2021 destroyed the embankment in question, which is located in Datinakhali village, Burigoalini Union, Shyamnagar sub-district, Satkhira district, southwestern Bangladesh. But there was no early warning of the rising tide at that time, and the cyclone caused extensive damage.

Every year during the monsoon, the pressure of tidal water in various parts of the Bangladeshi coast breaks or overflows the embankment. This causes extensive damage to homes, resources, and crops. Many displaced families have been forced to move elsewhere after facing severe losses.

“Real-time area-based tidal surge warnings are helping us in disaster preparedness, saving resources and lives. We can take necessary measures to protect ourselves before the tidal surge. But we have faced losses again and again because we did not have this opportunity before,” explained Meherun Nesa, 45, a resident of Kalbari village in the Shyamnagar sub-district of Satkhira district. Rokeya Begum, 40, Sakina Begum, 39, and many others shared the same opinion.

The United Nations has set the goal of Early Warning for All by 2027 to save people from disasters. On the other hand, a new UN report published on August 31, 2026, says that more than 14 million people in the South Asian delta region are at risk of losing their shelter due to rising sea levels.

Their homes will be permanently submerged. Bangladesh is one of the countries at risk. It is crucial that updated disaster warnings reach people like Meherun Nesha, who live in disaster-prone areas of the country.

This house in Anuliya village in Asashuni upazila (sub-district) of the Satkhira district, Bangladesh, was swept away by tidal water pressure in April 2025, before there was a cyclone warning system. Credit: Rafiqul Islam Montu/IPS

Early Warnings Protect Against Tides

Early warnings were given in 25 places during low sea levels in July, August, and September this year about the risk of breaking embankments or overflowing embankments. After receiving the warnings, villagers repaired the embankments in the two most vulnerable places.

In other places, villagers have also carried out additional preparatory work. Now, people living on the coast can know in advance whether the tide will rise or whether the embankments will collapse under the pressure of the tide. By getting warnings, they are able to prepare themselves and save resources.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based scientific early warnings are also protecting the coastal people of Bangladesh from major disasters like tidal waves and embankment collapses. This technology is capable of providing accurate forecasts three days in advance of the cyclone.

The technology provides advance information about the location of potential tidal waves, water height, flooded areas, and vulnerable embankments. Through these capabilities, meteorologists and disaster management professionals can make quick decisions. Disaster management professionals hope that the technology will further enhance Bangladesh’s capacity to deal with disasters and will play an effective role in reducing losses.

The country currently provides cyclone forecasts, but being port-based or large area-based, these forecasts do not cover specific areas. These forecasts can’t accurately identify the specific location of tidal waves, potential water height, or flooded areas. To overcome this limitation, a scientific model has been developed with international cooperation, which is known as ‘Surf IT.’

The international organization Action Against Hunger and North South University are working jointly under the leadership of Bangladeshi non-governmental organization Uttaran to combat the disaster. Technical assistance is provided by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), Flood Forecasting and Warning Center (FFWC), Water Development Board (BWDB), and Department of Disaster Management (DDM). The International Development Research Center (IDRC) provides financial support for the project.

How Does ‘Surf IT’ Work?

The model works by combining tides, temperature, and wind speed. It is combined with local knowledge. It involves marginalized communities in the project area. The model has been developed following the experience of weather forecasting systems in the European Union and the United States.

It not only measures the height of the tidal wave but also analyzes the condition of coastal embankments, their load-bearing capacity, and where the embankments are at risk of failure, and creates a map of flooded areas. Water sensors are constantly monitoring the river system and quickly detect any changes in water levels. Dams have been mapped to identify vulnerable areas and potential breach sites.

A digital dashboard has been created to convert complex data into simple and effective warnings. These help in providing forecasts. The information is sent to marginalized communities in local languages. It is sometimes sent via voice calls and sometimes via text messages. It is sent in such a simple language that anybody can access the message from any mobile phone.

According to the researchers, the latest test has shown that the model’s predictions are about 98 percent accurate. Work is underway to make it 100 percent accurate. Therefore, the model was tested at the field level in June, July, August, and September this year.

The project plans to transfer the technology to the government for use in the national disaster forecasting system. Currently, the project covers about 500,000 people in 20 unions across 3 sub-districts in 2 districts in southwest Bangladesh. The sub-districts are Shyamnagar, Asashuni in Satkhira district, and Koyra in Khulna district.

Will Reduce Loss and Damage

Md Jakariya, head of the ‘Surf IT’ technical team and professor in the Department of Environmental Science & Management at North South University, said, “One of the goals of the project is to reduce damage not only from major cyclones but also from regular very high tides and small tidal waves. Usually, even in the absence of major government assistance, people in coastal villages suffer a lot. The project has been initiated to reduce that damage.”

Discussions with the government are ongoing.

“This modern model is now final. Regular policy-making meetings are being held with high-level government officials to increase its effectiveness. The model is capable of predicting disasters three days in advance,” Zahid Amin Shaswat, Head of Program at the NGO Uttaran, which implements ‘Surf IT,’ said.

The advantage of this technology is that it goes beyond forecasting.

“Cyclone forecasting alone is not enough in coastal risk management; accurate information about the location, height, and potential flood areas is the most important thing in protecting human lives and property. Therefore, if such a technology based on scientific information can be effectively implemented, early evacuation of people to safe places, dam protection, and decision-making by local administration will be more realistic,” Environmentalist Sharif Jamil said.

Bangladesh in the Face of Disasters

Disasters like cyclones, floods, and heat waves are increasing in Bangladesh. Recently, coastal marginalized communities are facing loss and damage due to the impact of high tides.

In the latest long-term Global Climate Risk Index (CRI) published by Germanwatch, Bangladesh ranks 13th among the most vulnerable countries in the world. The World Bank has expressed concern that 216 million people will be internally displaced in six regions of the world by 2050 if necessary measures are not taken to prevent climate change. Of these, 40 million people will be displaced in South Asia. In South Asia alone, 19.9 million people are expected to be displaced in Bangladesh.

A recent joint study by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) says that more than 21 million people were displaced due to cyclones, floods, and tidal waves in Bangladesh between 2008 and 2025.

Meanwhile, in July this year, Disaster Management and Relief Minister Asadul Habib Dulu informed the National Parliament that floods and cyclones have caused Tk 41,200 crore (about US$ 3.3 million) in damage in the country over the five years from 2021 to 2025.

“In addition to major disasters, disasters like sudden high tides cause extensive damage to rural villages. Here, technology is being combined with the long-standing experience and folk knowledge of local people. Through this approach, it is possible to predict more accurately which dams are weak, where the risk of collapse is high, and where water can overflow,” added Md Jakariya.

Experts involved in the project hope that accurate early warning will ensure the safety of coastal people and reduce the risk of cyclones and tidal waves due to climate change. At the same time, the project will further strengthen Bangladesh’s capacity in disaster management.

On the ground people from marginalized communities, like Meherun Nesa, find hope in this message from experts.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Seaweed farmers tend their crop off Zanzibar, where rising sea temperatures are putting pressure on a vital coastal livelihood, according to the new Copernicus ocean report. Credit: Zuberi Mussa/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

Fatuma Makame learned to farm seaweed in the shallow water where her parents worked. These days, she grows it farther from shore.

In the shallows, warmer water has left the crop more vulnerable to poor growth and disease. Conditions can be better farther out, but working there requires a boat, equipment, and the skills to handle deeper water. Makame joined Mwani Zanzibar Mamas—a cooperative union that obtained a boat and farming gear. She has since reported larger, more reliable harvests.

The decision she faced is becoming familiar to seaweed farmers along Zanzibar’s coast: move the crop, if they can afford to, or keep planting where it has become harder to grow.

A new assessment of the world’s oceans gives that local difficulty a wider context. The 10th Copernicus Ocean State Report, released today (September 30), describes an ocean absorbing more heat, rising along coastlines and becoming more acidic. It was produced by Mercator Ocean International through the European Union’s Copernicus Marine Service.

“The ocean is transforming before our eyes: warming, rising seas and ecosystem degradation are interconnected signs of significant and long-term change. It is our responsibility to build the permanent capacity to anticipate this transformation,” said Pierre Bahurel, director-general of Mercator Ocean International.

According to the report, the global ocean absorbed an additional 23 zettajoules of heat in 2025 — roughly 40 times the energy the world consumed that year. Global mean sea level rose by an average of 3.8 millimetres a year between 1999 and 2025; the rate was 4.2 millimetres a year from 2012 to 2025. The report also says the ocean became approximately 17 percent more acidic between 1985 and 2025.

Those are global measurements. They do not describe the water at Makame’s farm or explain the result of any one planting season. But Zanzibar’s seaweed farmers have had to contend with warmer water for years.

Across Unguja and Pemba, seaweed provides income for thousands of households, many of them headed or supported by women. Farmers tie seedlings to lines, tend them in the water, then harvest and dry the crop for sale. A poor harvest can leave less money for food, school fees and the next planting.

The Food and Agriculture Organization has documented how warmer water can inhibit seaweed growth and make it more susceptible to disease. Moving farms into deeper, cooler water presents other difficulties: stronger currents can damage the crop, and many farmers cannot swim or lack the equipment to work there safely. Low prices further limit what they can spend on changing their methods.

Tanzanian marine scientist Narriman Jiddawi has documented related problems farther south, on Songo Songo Island. In one study commissioned by the Institute of Marine Sciences, she recorded unusually warm water and signs of disease at shallow farming sites that had been abandoned.

“Farming is failing in many cultivation sites in shallow intertidal areas where it used to grow well,” she said. Their measurements were taken at Songo Songo, not at Makame’s farm in Zanzibar.

The Copernicus report also examines the ocean territories of small island developing states. It finds that all their exclusive economic zones have experienced ocean warming since 1960. About 65% of their combined ocean area has been exposed to accelerating sea-level rise since 1999. Among the Indian Ocean members of that group, the figure is 33%

Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, rather than a separate small island developing state, so those percentages are not figures for the archipelago. The findings nevertheless speak to risks faced by island communities whose incomes and homes depend on the sea.

“Small Island Developing States are experiencing multiple dimensions of ocean change at once. Nearly two-thirds of their ocean territories are exposed to accelerating sea-level rise, while warming seas are increasing pressure on coral reefs, fisheries and coastal communities,” said Karina von Schuckmann, director of the Copernicus Ocean State Report.

“For island states, ocean change is not a distant environmental issue; it is an immediate economic, development and security challenge – and a warning of what many other coastlines will face in the future.”

For fishing families, the condition of coral reefs is one concern. Reefs provide habitat for fish and help reduce the force of waves reaching shore. Severe heat can cause corals to bleach, and repeated episodes can hinder their recovery.

The report finds that about a quarter of threatened coral reefs within the ocean territories of small island developing states experienced accumulated, mortality-level heat stress for at least one month between 1982 and 2025. That is a finding for those states collectively, not an assessment of Zanzibar’s reefs.

There is local evidence of damage. Researchers from the State University of Zanzibar examined reef observations spanning 1992 to 2016. They found severe declines in hard coral cover following the El Niño events of 1998 and 2016, though the extent of change differed substantially between reefs.

Heat is only one of the pressures on them. Pollution and damaging fishing practices can make recovery harder. Reducing those local pressures will not cool the Indian Ocean, but it may improve the prospects for reefs that survive a period of extreme heat.

Rising seas pose a separate challenge to coastal settlements. A World Bank assessment identifies Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania’s coast as vulnerable to erosion, flooding and damage to infrastructure and marine habitats.

For authorities deciding where to protect homes or restrict construction, measurements of tides, storms, reefs and mangroves need to be considered alongside what residents know about places where water already reaches houses and roads.

Through the Agriculture and Fisheries Development Programme, seaweed farmers in Unguja and Pemba have received training in planting, handling and processing. Improved drying racks and solar dryers help keep harvested seaweed away from sand and rain, reducing losses after it comes ashore.

Other farmers are exploring additional sources of income. FAO has trained seaweed farmers on Zanzibar’s east coast in sea cucumber cultivation. That work requires suitable sites, equipment and buyers and will not suit every household.

Financial protection is being explored as well. The United Nations Development Programme, Zanzibar’s disaster management authorities and the Ministry of Blue Economy and Fisheries are developing a climate-risk insurance proposal for seaweed farmers in Unguja and Pemba. It remains a proposal. Its usefulness will depend on which losses it covers, what farmers must pay, and how quickly they can settle a claim.

For Makame, the cooperative’s boat and gear made it possible to try farming farther offshore. Other farmers still work the shallows. Whether they can follow her depends on access to equipment, training and a way to bear the risk if a new method fails.

The Copernicus report tracks changes across decades. On Zanzibar’s coast, a farmer must decide where to put her next lines of seaweed.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Excerpt:

Rob Jetten, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, addresses the High-level Meeting on Climate Action and the Just Transition on September 23. Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 29 2026 (IPS)

The United Nations 2026 Climate Summit addressed critical strategies to mitigate the compounding impacts of the climate crisis and accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The summit brought together civil society actors, climate scientists, major energy producers and consumers, development experts, and world leaders on September 23 as part of the High-Level Week of the 81st session of the General Assembly (UNGA 81).

“The world is crying out for climate justice in mitigation, adaptation, and finance. We must answer that call with action, and we don’t have a moment to lose,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his opening remarks. “But emissions are still rising when they must plummet, and fossil fuel expansion continues, defying science, economics, and common sense.”

“We have seen our fossil fuel dependence wreak havoc, driving up costs, draining budgets, squeezing households, and leaving countries at the mercy of conflicts and decisions far beyond their borders. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies are banking windfall profits while everyday people foot the bill. Doubling down on oil and gas will only lock in vulnerability for decades,” Guterres added.

Nearly a decade after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the summit comes as climate experts warn of a dangerous new phase in the global climate crisis. New findings project it is virtually “inevitable” that global temperatures will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels within the next ten years.

This overshoot presents widespread, multifaceted risks—from extreme weather patterns to escalating public health emergencies. Intensifying heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, storms, and floods continue to cause millions of deaths annually, drive mass displacement, and destroy critical infrastructure, particularly in low-lying coastal regions.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman of Bangladesh—one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions—warned the General Assembly that up to 18 percent of the country’s coastal land could be entirely submerged by rising seas, endangering the security and livelihoods of tens of millions. President Naiqama Lalabalavu of Fiji also emphasized that over half of his country’s population lives within a kilometer of the shore, leaving communities at a significant risk of being exposed to natural disasters. He further noted that the stock of fish available to each Fijian is estimated to decline by nearly 25 percent by 2050, threatening widespread food insecurity across the region.

The compounding impact of these disasters is also linked to depressed crop yields—which significantly impact food insecurity, accelerate biodiversity loss, and cause widespread disease outbreaks. Higher temperatures directly drive the spread of vector-borne illnesses, while rising sea levels and flooding exacerbate waterborne diseases. As a result, countries worldwide continue to sustain massive economic and human costs while aid organizations and health sectors struggle to keep up with the influx of needs.

Tarique Rahman, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, addresses the High-level Meeting on Climate Action and the Just Transition. Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

“We just lived through the hottest July and August on record. Global sea surface temperatures are at a record high, and the worst is yet to come,” said Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). “We enter a dangerous terrain where we’re likely to cross a number of tipping point systems that not only regulate the stability of the climate system, but also fundamentally determine life support for human development.”

Numerous speakers also underscored the severity of an immensely powerful “Super El Niño” rapidly forming in the Pacific Ocean, which WMO has described as potentially the strongest in at least a millennium. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center indicate a 90 percent chance that this El Niño will mark one of the most extreme weather events of the 2026-2027 winter.

Saulo warned that the global impacts of the impending El Niño will be massive and long-lasting and will cause 2026 to become the hottest year on record. Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, told the General Assembly that damages in Africa alone could exceed USD 20 billion, with comparable losses projected across other highly climate-vulnerable regions.

The summit sets new goals for the international community: to return global temperatures to below 1.5°C as quickly as possible, limit the severity and duration of ongoing impacts from the overshoot, and facilitate the global transition to renewable energy. Guterres warned that the current generation sits at a critical turning point—it is the first to possess the tools to end the climate crisis and the last with the opportunity to avert a “climate catastrophe.”

The main pathways for climate action highlighted during the summit included increased intergovernmental cooperation, sustained investment in climate adaptation and resilience monitoring systems, and wider-scale deployment of renewable energy. In recent years, renewables have become significantly cheaper than traditional fossil fuels—such as coal, oil, and natural gas—while generating far lower emissions, facilitating sustainable development, and potentially averting hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-related losses worldwide.

While countries representing roughly 90 percent of all global emissions have submitted updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—signaling widespread political commitment to the Paris Agreement in the midst of heightened geopolitical tensions—current NDCs are projected to continue to fall short of the emission reductions required to prevent an overshoot of the 1.5°C target.

Michael R. Bloomberg, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions and also founder of Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies, told the General Assembly that current financial contributions from the international community are insufficient, warning that these gaps in funding “can mean the difference between life and death.”

“More countries recognize that clean energy is essential to their security and economic stability. At the same time, while there’s still not enough climate funding going to developing countries, the amount has more than doubled since the Paris Agreement took effect,” said Bloomberg. “Now, we all know that’s not enough. Every day brings new evidence of the worsening harms of climate change.”

“No place on Earth is safe from climate change. Countries need more investment in resilient measures that protect people and in modern connected grids that will support the waves of clean energy installation. Both will require more of the kind of collaboration that has enabled progress over the past decade across government and business, philanthropy, nonprofits, and community leaders.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Sarada Murlidharan, Photo: Supplied

By Kumkum Chadha
NEW DEHLI, Sep 28 2026 (IPS)

As a young girl, Sarada Murlidharan cringed at the thought of going to school. It was not the studies but the taunts of ‘being black’ or having dark skin, where fair skin was considered preferential, that made her unhappy.

It was not a one-off: it was there as a constant, often unsaid but equally piercing. She was not one of them but one apart, and that too in the negative sense.

Back home in the silence of the night, she would often cry, something she refused to admit in her adult years: “I don’t remember if I actually cried, but yes, I used to be anxious; in fact, torn apart … my insides eaten away … Yes, I went through all that,” Murlidharan told IPS in an exclusive interview.

Those were the days, and in later years of life too, Murlidharan often questioned her destiny and the curse of her darkness; she often wished she could go back to her mother’s womb and come out “all fair and pretty.” To this day, she shudders at the painful memory of having actually asked her aunts and cousins about the soap they used “to look fair and lovely.”

Etched deep in memory are also her teenage years when her father served as a warden in an engineering college down south. A disciplinarian, he took a strong stand against a group of senior students ragging freshers.

In the Indian context, ragging is a serious issue in higher educational institutions. Even with laws in place, colleges still see numerous cases of “violent fun.” When a first-year university student was brought home in a body bag in a city in eastern India, his parents were initially unaware that a 120-minute ragging session had ended his life.

But back to Murlidharan and her father, who had rusticated students on charges of ragging. Sarada recalls how every time that she and her sister stepped out, there were catcalls referring to her dark skin: “We heard it every single day. Words like ‘irrutu murali’ and ‘kurutte budhi’ … continue to haunt me.”

In Malayalam, which is spoken in the southern part of India, ‘irrutu’ means ‘pitch dark’. Roughly translated, ‘irrutu murali’ and ‘kurutte budhi’ mean someone who is pitch dark and has a devious mind.

Memories run deep: the bitter ones are often buried not to surface again. But this memory did surface, thanks to a social media post that created havoc in India. It brought alive an issue that was kind of buried within deep recesses.

The stigma of being dark stung yet again. It also brought an issue out in the open: one that had until now been private to those battling the curse of being dark-skinned.

When Muraleedharan woke up that morning when she was still serving in the state government in a senior position, it was like any other day, unaware that a storm awaited.

A Facebook post had allegedly commented on her skin colour. Worse still, it was a peg to compare her work with that of her husband, Venu Vasudevan.

“Heard an interesting comment yesterday on my stewardship as Chief Secretary — that (someone wrote that she) is as ‘black’ as my husband’s was ‘white’,” she wrote. “I need to own my blackness … I was hurt, yes … it was about being labelled ‘black’, as if it was something to be ashamed of … I need to own my ‘blackness’.”

Both Murlidharan and her husband were senior administrative officers. Like her husband, Sarada served as administrative head of the state of Kerala in South India: a coveted post.

Murlidharan also made history, given that she succeeded her husband. It was the first time that a husband-wife duo had held the top bureaucratic post in the state in succession.

But back to being dark-skinned and to Murlidharan’s story.

“Incidentally, my husband is fair-skinned,” she said, adding that she was calling out those who harboured a colour bias. “I felt it was time to own my blackness … to understand that there is beauty, except it is of a different kind, and it is not always that being fair means being beautiful. Even we who are dark can be beautiful.”

Ostensibly, Murlidharan may have worked around all these issues, but within, she was torn apart.

“The realisation of not being good enough; not being the right colour and the constant feeling that there was something wrong in the way I was born and that ‘black’ is not a good colour to be. I wanted to change it all,” she said.

It is a battle that she has fought all by herself, confronting “our demons”, as she calls her internal strife, her private hell.

“Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose,” she said.

Murlidharan is not alone. There are others who have faced and continue to face colour bias, but unlike Murlidharan, they did not fight it out.

“Better to keep it hidden than call it out,” said Pratibha, a second-year university student in southern India.

The sentiment, rather than rejection, resonates with what Murlidharan’s husband, Vasudevan, has said.

“My sister is not ‘fair’, and she has had to endure snide remarks from the family.”

Whether or not he stood up for his sister, Vasudevan has clearly supported his wife, Murlidharan.

Defending her outburst, he said, “It was a pensive reflection of a personal experience on a matter she felt deeply about and had endured for many years. The obsession with fair complexion is deep-rooted, fed by the general discourse in a society that worships it. There is only one word for this: ridiculous.”

Ridiculous it surely is, yet this reality is deep-rooted, unspoken, and abhorred.

Colourism, now popularly known as colour discrimination, is gender-specific. The intersection of colour and gender is a double whammy. It hits women hard and is tougher on them than it is on men.

“I cannot not be a woman, and I cannot not be dark. The problems that I have had for having to prove myself for being both woman and dark do not go” Murlidharan said, underlining that men being dark is acceptable, but when it comes to women, it is frowned upon, particularly in India, where there is widespread discrimination in terms of caste, gender and, of course, colour.

Even as women are coming into their own professionally and personally, men still get the better of them on the issue of colour.

Weekends are particularly dreadful given that large matrimonial advertisements stare one in the face. The catchline: Wanted a fair-skinned bride…

Occasionally they may say ‘caste no bar’, but they never say ‘colour no bar’. The prerequisite, decidedly, is fair skin, which in India is synonymous with being pretty.

However, this statement suggests that awareness has indeed dawned upon working women. They have not only opposed the fair skin demand, which until some years ago was kind of non-negotiable, but have also protested and, in many cases, changed the status quo.

In this context, what stands out is the campaign by well-known Indian film star and producer Nandita Das, who says she is “tired of being called dark and dusky.”

UNESCO handpicked her and launched a campaign called “India’s Got Colour.”

The campaign was a take-off from an initiative launched some years ago by the founder of Women and Worth, popular as WOW in India, Kavitha Emmanuel, titled Dark is Beautiful. The India’s Got Colour campaign was a significant advance in the fight against colourism.

Once Das got actively involved, other film personalities also got involved, including Bhumi Pednekar, another well-known name in the Indian film industry. To make this clear, Pednekar had intentionally appeared in a trailer of one of her films with make-up that showed her up as darker than she actually is.

For her part, Das has faced several situations during her film career when her skin tone has been lightened simply because she is playing the role of an educated upper-class woman, quite the opposite of when she is playing the role of a slum dweller.

Das has also faced situations when her makeup man reportedly told her, “Don’t worry. I am an expert in making people look fair.” She could then have torn her hair apart.

In addition to individuals, some top brands in the corporate sector were also facing backlash on this issue.

A well-known brand, Hindustan UniLever, had to rework its campaign after a furore over its Fair and Lovely ad. And advertisements wooing women to use fairness cream were nothing new. It had been in the market for over two decades until reality struck. And once it did, there was a backlash against the company for promoting colourism and racism.

The advertisement in question relied on a narrative that portrayed dark skin as ugly and fair skin as acceptable. Over the years several complaints were filed and penalties imposed. The government too stepped in and proposed a ban on such products till companies like Hindustan Unilever rebranded and dropped Fair from its brand name. Amid clamour for the cream’s withdrawal from the market, the company renamed it Glow and Lovely.

But is that enough? Does the rebranding and name change end the bias? Or does it also apply to colourism as well? Do pro-dark-skinned campaigns make life easier for dark-skinned women in India? Or is it mere eyewash, clearly just to grab eyeballs?

Sadly, little has changed in practice. Murlidharan may have taken up cudgels against the bias, and film stars may have backed the Black is Beautiful campaigns, but the truth is that when it comes to Indian society judging women, dark-skinned is considered unattractive, and light-skinned continue to rule.

IPS UN Bureau Report

A man carries his family’s food ration from a WFP distribution point to his shelter in Camp 11, Balukhali, Bangladesh, on September 24, 2026. Credit: Mohammed Zonaid/IPS

By Mohammed Zonaid
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Sep 28 2026 (IPS)

For Mohammed Dullah, recent cuts in UN food rations for Rohingya and other refugees in Bangladesh are not just spreading hunger but also forcing them to save on basic needs such as schooling and healthcare for his children.

“I was able to manage with my children somehow when I used to get $12 by going to work sometimes,” said Dullah, 59. “But since the reduction to seven dollars [per family member] a month, I can’t afford lots of basics anymore, like clothes, tuition fees, meat, or fish one or two times a month.”

As a result, his 15-year-old son has had to give up school to work in a market where he can earn about 6,000 taka ($49) a month to help sustain their family of nine.

Since April, food assistance has been allocated under a revised Targeting and Prioritisation Exercise (TPE) introduced by the World Food Programme (WFP). Households among the nearly 1.2 million refugees in Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char receive different levels of monthly food rations based on categories of assessed vulnerability.

WFP says the new system sets food aid at $12, $10 or $7 per person per month, depending on the household’s level of food insecurity. With money provided through UNHCR registration cards, families buy food from designated WFP e-voucher outlets.

Refugees limit what they eat and trade any surplus food for money to spend on healthcare, education, transport outside the camps and other necessities. For families with no access to formal employment, which is prohibited in the camps, even a relatively small reduction can result in making difficult choices.

Humanitarian agencies are warning that global funding cuts are driving up hunger levels. Children make up more than half of the refugee population in Cox’s Bazar.

“Conditions in the world’s largest refugee settlement are worsening at an alarming rate after nine years, with 35% of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh expected to face ‘crisis’ or ‘emergency’ hunger levels this year, putting more children at risk of malnutrition,” Save the Children stated on August 25.

“Global humanitarian funding cuts, compounded by the resulting reductions in food rations over the past year, have exacerbated existing challenges which include overcrowded living conditions and limited access to clean water, nutritious food and livelihoods.”

A System Under Pressure

The Rohingya have been displaced from Myanmar over decades, with major waves of refugees arriving in Bangladesh in 1991–92 and again after the military-led violence of 2017. More recently, people have fled renewed violence in Rakhine State between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic armed organisation.

Nearly a decade after the 2017 mass exodus, many Rohingya families remain fully dependent on humanitarian assistance. Bangladesh restricts refugees’ access to formal employment, while humanitarian organisations provide food, basic informal education, basic healthcare, water, sanitation and other essential services.

International funding has come under increasing pressure. The UN and its partners have appealed for $710.5 million under the updated 2026 Joint Response Plan (JRP) to support Rohingya refugees and host communities, its lowest level in a decade. So far this year it is 50 percent funded.

WFP’s new assessment found that all Rohingya refugees were food insecure, but that severity differed between households. Households are newly classified into three categories: extremely food-insecure households receive US$12 per person per month, highly food-insecure households receive $10, and food-insecure households, which make up almost 70% of the total, receive $7.

The system is intended to allocate assistance according to need rather than simply impose a blanket reduction because of funding shortages.

WFP says that even the lowest level of assistance is sufficient to meet minimum food needs. But families and INGOs in interviews with this reporter describe a more complicated reality.

Dullah says he is unable to work because of a long-term illness, but his household was categorised at the $7-per-person level. According to Dullah, the family receives basic food items, including rice and cooking oil, but they have little left over to obtain other foods or meet other expenses.

As with other Rohingya refugees, Dullah has no legal access to paid employment, but the levels of food they receive force them to work.

“You cannot expect people to become self-reliant while preventing them from earning a living. If WFP and other agencies want us to rely more on ourselves, they also need to support legal opportunities for Rohingya refugees to work and earn an income,” he said.

“Even before, we struggled with not having enough food when we got $12,” said Dullah, who worries about his children’s growth development. His 18-month-old granddaughter needs infant formula because her mother, lacking in food, struggled to meet the child’s needs by natural feeding.

WFP essentially categorised households according to their composition.

For example, the Extremely Food Insecure bracket includes those headed by a child or by a person with disabilities, female-headed households without an able-bodied adult man aged 18–59, elderly-headed households without an able-bodied adult man, households with two or more persons with disabilities, and one-member households.

The main category of food insecurity covers male-headed households with able-bodied men and no members with disabilities, female-headed households with an able-bodied man and no members with disabilities, and households without females aged 18 to 49 or without members with disabilities.

Selling Food to Pay for Other Needs

Sawyedul Amin, 34, receives assistance valued at $10 per person for his household living in Lambashia Camp in Kutupalong. They fled Myanmar in 2017, losing their father on a mountain along the way.

He has two young children, a sick mother and a wife who has undergone two operations, one related to childbirth and another for a tumour.

“If we want to eat fish or meat, we cannot afford it,” he said. “We also have small children, which means we have additional expenses for them. I also have an ill mother, which makes our medical expenses even greater.”

Sawyedul said he sometimes sells part of his family’s food allocation to obtain cash for those expenses.

Selling or trading food for medicines or services is nothing new in the camps, and the impact has been well documented in earlier cuts.

In 2023 funding shortages forced WFP to reduce monthly food rations from $12 to $10 and then further to $8 in June that year. Monitoring found deteriorating food consumption and worsening nutrition indicators.

Sawyedul said other organisations previously sometimes provided his family with additional assistance, but some of that support has declined. “We now have only the WFP to look to for assistance,” he said.

Flaws in the Rationing System

Radia Bala, a 60-year-old widow among a refugee community of about 1,000 Hindus, had to survive with no assistance at all for five months this year. Her family, along with many others, eventually started to receive aid in July.

Radia, from Nakpura village in Myanmar, arrived in Bangladesh with her family in 2024 after fighting between AA insurgents and the Myanmar military spread through her area.

She recalls ground and air attacks, homes burnt down, and relatives and neighbours killed around her. The insurgents also targeted them for forced recruitment. Their escape involved a three-day journey, partly through mountains.

After reaching Bangladesh, Radia says her family received a smart card and initially received food assistance, cooking gas and soap. But then it stopped in December 2025. “I wasn’t given an exact reason by the authorities why it was stopped,” she said.

Radia now rents space in the house of a local Bangladeshi family from the Barua ethnic group. She is among nearly 150,000 newly arrived refugees who have not been provided with shelter, having crossed from Myanmar’s Rakhine State between December 2024 and March 2026.

Radia and her daughter, who has a six-month-old baby, work as cleaners to survive. “During those months [with no food aid], we ate only rice with leafy vegetables,” she said. When assistance was available, she said, the family could sometimes eat chicken, eggs and bananas.

Her experience highlights serious flaws in the system of allocating food rations, namely that access depends on registration and connection to the mechanisms through which it is delivered.

Radia says that when people from her community arrived in 2024, they were told that food assistance would be available if they stayed inside the camps. But she says the family found it difficult to remain there because of shortages of shelters, water, toilets and washrooms.

“We stayed in the camp for about a month in a relative’s shelter, but life there was very difficult,” she said.

Her family subsequently moved between relatives’ homes and other temporary locations. “We have been living from place to place, staying on the streets and in other people’s homes.”

After raising complaints and following media coverage of their plight, she started receiving $12 per person. But Radia says she needs to sell half of that to pay for room rent.

Her request is simple. “Our first need is food assistance, and our second need is shelter,” she said.

WFP says it provides monthly food assistance to all the refugee population, including people who arrived after 2024, according to their assessed need.

Risks for Children are Worsening

Golam Mostofa, head of Save the Children’s Cox’s Bazar Area Office, said children are increasingly exposed to risks as families struggle with limited resources and opportunities.

“The situation is getting worse day by day,” he said.

Child protection monitoring had raised increasing concerns over child labour and child marriage, as well as other risks facing children and adolescents, he added.

However, Mostofa cautioned against assuming that every reported case of child labour, child marriage, malnutrition or dropping out of NGO learning centres was caused by the latest food-assistance changes.

However, Save the Children’s current assessment warns that worsening access to nutritious food, healthcare and other essentials is increasing pressure on children.

The NGO predicts that by the end of this year, some 10 percent of refugees in camps in Cox’s Bazar will fall into Phase 4 of the international classification of “humanitarian emergency”, which is defined as leading to frequent deaths and increasingly high rates of malnutrition. This is defined as one step before famine and humanitarian catastrophe.

Mostofa appealed to donors to continue supporting food, education, healthcare, water and sanitation while also expanding opportunities for skills development and safe livelihoods.

The WFP Bangladesh communication team did not respond to requests for comment.

Refugees Face Dangerous Choices

While Save the Children has been working in Cox’s Bazar since 2012 with programmes for education, healthcare, water and sanitation and child protection, a whole generation of Rohingya children has grown up in camps which began as emergency settlements but have turned into long-term places of residence.

For families with limited access to formal employment, humanitarian assistance remains central to daily life. Continued civil war in Myanmar, driven by an entrenched military regime backed by China, provides little prospect of a durable solution that would allow the mostly stateless Rohingya to return to their homes.

Committing their lives to human traffickers and fleeing Bangladesh by sea in search of a better life is extremely perilous. An estimated 5,000 refugees are believed to have perished over the past decade while attempting to reach other countries in Southeast Asia.

Dullah still talks about returning to Myanmar, remembering the land he farmed and the cows and buffaloes he owned before his family were forced to flee in 2017. “I want to be able to return and rebuild my life,” he said.

As world leaders met in New York for the UN General Assembly, Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman called for a clear roadmap for the safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable return of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, alongside continued humanitarian support, protection of civilians and international accountability.

Until that becomes possible, refugee families like Dullah’s remain dependent on an aid system based on calculations of dollars per person, while the choices they face are measured in meals, medicines, school days and the future of their children.

Note: This story was produced with support from Moving Minds Alliance (MMA) through the Reporters for Early Childhood in Humanitarian Crisis (REACH Network) Advocacy Stories Fund

IPS UN Bureau Report

By Oritro Karim
KATHMANDU, Nepal / NEW YORK, United States , Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

On August 26, 2026, deadly flash floods and landslides ripped through Himalayan towns and villages along Nepal and Tibet’s border, devastating communities. The United Nations estimates that in Nepal’s worst-affected districts of Rasuwa and Nuwakot, 157,050 women and girls are directly or indirectly impacted.

Ranjeeta Silwal

Climate change, melting glaciers and Nepal’s catastrophic floods

Shortly after 8:30 am, a catastrophic avalanche of glacial ice and bedrock roughly two square kilometres in size plunged thousands of metres into the river below, triggering a lethal flood of water, ice, rock and sediment. Travelling over 200 kilometres from Tibet into Nepal, the raging torrent swept away people, animals, homes, schools, roads, bridges and other key infrastructure.

World Weather Attribution explains that human-caused climate change is thawing permafrost in the Himalayan mountains and causing glaciers to melt, likely destabilising the slopes that triggered this humanitarian and environmental disaster.

At the time of writing, over 1,450 people are confirmed dead and more than 8,000 remain missing, with only a fraction of bodies identified and returned to their families. Nepal’s National Child Rights Council and Save the Children have reported that over 1,000 children are in temporary shelters without any parents, many of whom are dead or missing.

Ranjeeta Silwal explains how Nepal’s floods have put women and girls at greater risk

“While temporary shelters can be life-saving, if they aren’t designed with gender protection considerations from the outset, they can create new risks associated with overcrowding, lack of privacy, separation from family and community support networks, and limited access to confidential mechanisms for reporting violence. Without safe, accessible toilets, adequate lighting, privacy and safe pathways, women and girls may face risks simply when using the toilet or bathing, particularly at night.

“Systems that would normally prevent and respond to violations, like health and social services, police, courts and local communities, may be damaged or inaccessible. When authorities are focused elsewhere or are themselves absent because of disaster, the risk of violence, exploitation and other abuse increases exponentially.

“Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, women in poverty or from rural communities, those with disabilities, widowed and single women, and women-headed households may face additional barriers in accessing services, facilities and information following natural disasters. Adolescent girls can be especially affected because they have less mobility, less access to information and limited decision-making power.

“We need to ask: who can move safely, who has privacy, who can access food and water, who has information and safety networks? These are not additional considerations; these are basic requirements of a rights-based humanitarian response.

“The emergency doesn’t end when flood water recedes, as the secondary impacts can continue for months, even years. When families lose their house, their income and support networks, women and girls become more exposed and vulnerable to sexual violence, intimate partner violence, sexual exploitation, trafficking and child marriage. We need to understand that protection from gender-based violence must be part of the emergency response; it is not something that can wait until reconstruction begins.”

How does the climate crisis increase the risk of child marriage?

“Nepal has made important legal and policy commitments by raising the legal age of marriage to 20 for both women and men and pledging to end child marriage by 2030. Despite this, child marriage remains an ongoing problem. An Equality Now report on child marriage in South Asia explains how poverty, insecurity and lack of access to education are key factors, and the flood in Nepal has amplified all of these, especially for families who’ve lost their homes, agricultural land, livestock and incomes.

“Climate resilience and ending child marriage cannot be treated as separate agendas. As climate-driven disasters become more frequent and severe, the economic pressures on families can intensify, changing how they view a girl’s future.

“When a family is displaced, or a school is destroyed, returning to education can be extremely difficult. Families who’ve lost everything may be unable to afford transport, uniforms or supplies, and girls may be expected to take on additional domestic and care responsibilities. Parents can see marriage as a way to reduce household costs or provide daughters with perceived economic and physical security.

“Once a girl leaves school, the risk of child marriage, early pregnancy, exploitation, child labour and economic dependence increases. So schooling must be part of emergency responses, with displaced children given access to education as soon as possible. Families need social protection, livelihoods, education, food, housing and other essential support so they don’t turn to child marriage as a coping mechanism.”

What should recovery and reconstruction after the floods look like in Nepal?

“Across South Asia, many women depend on agriculture and natural resources while having less control over land, assets and finance. When natural disasters destroy agricultural land, inequalities deepen. A woman who has lost her livelihood and independent income may become more economically dependent on a partner or other household members, making it far harder to leave an abusive situation or challenge exploitation.

“Recovery should mean more than simply rebuilding what existed before. The first step should be a gender-responsive needs assessment, and plans to restore livelihoods must consider who controls assets and income, and how recovery can strengthen women’s economic security and autonomy. Crucially, recovery policies must be deliberately designed to reach women directly.

“Support can take many forms, including cash assistance, help to restore land and housing documentation, and direct access to compensation, recovery grants, credit and financial services. It should also include skills development, employment opportunities and investment in climate resilience. Unpaid care work is often overlooked, despite increasing significantly following disasters. Women looking after children, older people and injured family members have less time to rebuild their livelihoods, so recovery efforts must address this burden.

“Women and girls are not just victims of climate change. They are also agents of change, knowledge holders and decision-makers. We must ensure women’s meaningful participation in recovery decisions, and they shouldn’t only be consulted on plans that have already been developed. They need meaningful influence over what is rebuilt, where it is rebuilt, and how resources are allocated in the short and long term.”

About Ranjeeta Silwal, South Asia Regional Representative, Equality Now

Ranjeeta Silwal is a human rights lawyer, advocate and programme leader. She has recently joined international women’s rights organisation Equality Now as their South Asia Regional Representative. Licensed to practise law in Nepal, Ranjeeta has represented survivors before UN human rights mechanisms, contributed to strategic litigation, and led advocacy to reform discriminatory laws and advance accountability. Her work has focused particularly on gender-based violence, discrimination, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and strengthening legal protections and access to justice for all women and girls.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Excerpt:

Participants at the fourth UN High-Level Meeting on the Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health (NCDs), held in September 2025. Credit: UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein

By Shreya Komar
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

On September 21, just prior to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly Debate (UNGA81), the NCD Alliance held its fifth Multi-stakeholder Gathering, “Strategies for a Sustainable NCD and Mental Health Response,” during the UN High-level Week.

“This meeting may be on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, but the issues discussed here are central to the global health agenda,” emphasized Mary-Ann Etiebet, President and CEO of Vital Strategies and moderator of the event. She opened by highlighting the continuing global burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and the gap in funding and resources dedicated to addressing it.

The discussion centered on how countries can sovereignly lead, scale, sustain and strengthen their responses, with a particular emphasis on country ownership and “putting the country in the driver’s seat”.

The gathering focused on how countries can move from policy commitments to implementation and build sustainable responses to NCDs and mental health through governance, financing, and cross-sector partnerships.

Fleming Kondradsen, a panelist and Chief Scientific Officer at Novo Nordisk Foundation, emphasized the importance of supporting more horizontal approaches to health. Rather than creating parallel systems and new structures, he argued for strengthening and integrating NCD prevention and care into existing health systems wherever possible.

For Paula Johns, another panelist from Brazil and Executive Director of ACT Health Promotion Brazil, meaningful participation begins with a fundamental question: How do we include the public in public health? Maintaining strong relationships with communities, she argued, is essential to ensuring that health policies and interventions reflect the realities of the people they are intended to serve.

Johns also raised concerns about the growing pressures affecting young people in Brazil, describing a “mental health global pandemic”. Among the issues she highlighted were social media and sports betting, calling for greater attention and regulation of environments that can affect young people’s health and wellbeing.

The discussion reinforced the importance of looking beyond the health sector itself. Addressing NCDs and mental health requires collaboration across government, civil society, communities and other sectors that shape the environments in which people live.

For Prisca Githuka, founder of the Pink Hearts Cancer Support Foundation from Nairobi, Kenya, one of the most important questions when it comes to addressing NCDs and mental health is meaningfully engaging people with lived experience. Consulting people who have experienced a disease, she said, is only the beginning. Meaningful engagement means involving people with lived experience in co-creating solutions and participating directly in decision-making structures. This distinction, she noted, separates genuine participation from tokenism.

People with lived experience should not simply be invited to share their stories. They should have a meaningful role in shaping decisions that impact their health, and their contributions should be fairly compensated. Githuka also stressed the importance of measuring whether people’s input actually influences outcomes. Engagement should not end when feedback is collected. Instead, stakeholders should ask: What changed as a result of that feedback? And did the final implementation actually benefit the people with lived experience?

Her own advocacy work has included petitions and efforts to secure funding and support for cancer patients, including advocacy around oncology packages and the National Health Insurance Fund.

The emphasis on advocating for lived experience at the forefront of decision-making also highlighted the impact of smaller organizations and community-based groups. For many of these organizations, their most important contribution is their proximity to the communities affected by NCDs and mental health conditions. Their stories can provide insight into gaps that may not be visible in national strategies or global commitments.

For people with lived experience with NCDs and mental health conditions, being in the room is only the first step. The measure of meaningful engagement is whether they have a voice in decisions, whether that voice influences what happens next, and whether the resulting policies and services improve their lives.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Moderator Arif Ullah of Anthropocene Alliance joins LaTricea Adams of Young, Gifted, and Green; Dionne Delli-Gatti of Continuum Strategies; and Dr. Katlyn Turner of CU Boulder Information Science and KTLN Consulting to discuss AI’s environmental justice impacts and how frontline communities can maintain agency as data center development expands. Credit: Pillar Projects / Grayson Wise

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

On September 21, Frontline Resource Institute (FRI) hosted its Climate Justice Hub at Fordham University at Lincoln Center in New York City under the theme “Building a Stronger Climate Coalition.”

As part of Climate Week, and coinciding with the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, the event united advocates, researchers, policymakers, and frontline leaders to address the intensifying threat of climate change to global public health, while highlighting the need for stricter guardrails on artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, particularly in their impacts on frontline communities.

Arif Ullah, Executive Director of Anthropocene Alliance (A2) and a moderator at the event, referenced Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by journalist Karen Hao, noting her warning that AI functions as a “new form of colonialism.” Ullah emphasized that AI’s impacts on frontline communities and their environments is multifaceted and far-reaching, requiring far more robust physical infrastructure to be sustainable.

“In July, nearly 1,400 tech company employees signed an open letter urging the [U.S.] government to regulate AI. Recently, an Anthropic researcher quit his job warning that the people building AI believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” said Ullah. “When you consider the many ways in which [resources are] extracted, it’s hard to disagree. Hyperscale data centers are among the ways it’s most extracted, not to mention destructive. We are seeing them proliferate, unchecked and unregulated across the country.”

Numerous speakers at the event underscored that natural resources are routinely extracted from frontline communities with little regard for public health or the stability of local ecosystems. To meet the rapidly growing demands for continuous power, data centers around the world have increasingly implemented methane gas turbines. These measures have led to a surge in toxic chemical emissions—such as formaldehyde and benzene—driving widespread air and water pollution while consuming vast amounts of water.

Sarah Vogel, Senior Vice President of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and another moderator of the event, warned that extreme weather patterns—including intense heatwaves, prolonged flooding, destructive wildfires, degraded air and water quality, and the spread of infectious diseases—are among the most alarming and common consequences of AI-exacerbated climate change.

She emphasized that these impacts present heightened risks of lung cancer, heart disease, and strokes, particularly for frontline communities. Young people are uniquely vulnerable, as their developing bodies face continuous strain from pollutants without the opportunity to grow up in healthy environments. Those with pre-existing conditions also face a heightened risk of exacerbated health outcomes.

“For communities in this country and around the world who have experienced the legacy and ongoing impacts of environmental injustices, climate change and the related pollution is a threat magnifier,” said Vogel. “We know that when our health is impaired, it’s like a domino effect. Everything is impacted. Our ability to work, our ability to take care of children, the costs associated with it. The ability to just enjoy our lives. That is what we mean when we say that the climate crisis is a health crisis”

It is these frontline communities, oftentimes primarily composed of people of color, that are entrenched in severe environmental degradation and pushed further into poverty while others reap the financial benefits. Bearing the brunt of extreme pollution, these communities often lack the healthcare infrastructure required to withstand such environmental shocks.

LaTricea Adams, Founder, CEO, and President of Young, Gifted, and Green, noted that frontline communities are often left ill-equipped to adapt to AI-driven climate shocks, describing it as a “point of reckoning.” She emphasized that many residents are often unaware that they are on the frontlines of environmental degradation, going a “significant amount of time” without understanding the full extent of how these developments directly impact their lives.

“We as a collective are still not taking public health seriously. That also has an economic implication,” said Adams. “While you may bring in millions of dollars, if people are consistently sick, does that not have an impact on healthcare, which we know is lacking in our country and in our society?”

“What you’re not gonna do is come into our community and give us nothing but pollution while we remain in poverty. But at the same time, we do have to make sure that we protect the people that have been neglected for centuries in disinvestment.”

Several panelists underscored the importance of centering frontline communities in AI reform, with cooperation between governments, community leaders, corporations, and the health sector imperative in preventing harm and establishing sustainable practices that can uplift these communities. Vogel noted that in order to build healthy and resilient communities, approaches in AI regulation must prioritize health and equity to effectively minimize risks.

Panelist Ali Abazeed, Chief Public Health Officer and Director for the city of Detroit warned that the international community must not become “sophisticated witnesses” to preventable harm, noting that progress hinges on empowering communities and providing them with the data that affects their lives.

“Public health doesn’t happen inside an office. Comfort is comfortable. The ivory tower—the research generated there is hugely important but it has to roll out to the communities,” said Abazeed, emphasizing that action is critically important amidst widespread cuts to funding for research and potential hostile takeovers of national institutes for health.

“Speaking as a government official, we need to recognize that the work that we do and the powers that we have can help uplift and elevate communities. The charge is to be outside, to be in the clinic lobby for public health, in the church basement, for us to be meeting the fence-line communities.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 24 2026 (IPS)

The world’s ongoing arms race is threatening to extend beyond planet earth—and spillover into outer space.

The US has deployed weapons in space and will use them to defend American forces, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said last week, according to Cable News Network (CNN). His comments marked the first public acknowledgment of such capabilities, though he offered no details about the weapons or when they were put into orbit.

“Today we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,” Meink told the Air, Space and Cyber Conference, an annual gathering hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association in National Harbor, Maryland.

The disclosure comes as the US faces an advancing space arms race with China and Russia, which are testing sophisticated offensive capabilities.

Specifically, American officials have said they are monitoring China’s development of a nuclear-capable partial-orbit hypersonic missile. US intelligence has also suggested Russia is developing a space-based nuclear weapon that could knock out satellites critical to weather forecasting, navigation, banking, shipping and emergency services — a claim Moscow denies, according to CNN.

The New York Times quoted Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry as saying: ‘We urge the US side to stop expanding its military force and preparing for war in outer space”.

There have also been reports that “Russia could be planning to put a nuclear weapon in space, a threat that could disrupt satellite networks that are vital to everything – from communications to military operations.”

The multiple UN Conferences on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNISPACE), have served as landmark global summits to shape international cooperation and policy for space exploration.

Convened at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna from 14 to 27 August 1968, UNISPACE 1 focused on the practical benefits of space technology and scientific exchange

Tariq Rauf, former Head of Verification and Security Policy, at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Inter Press Service (IPS) , while appreciating the transparency shown by the US, this disclosure is the most consequential open acknowledgement by any spacefaring State of weaponised on-orbit capability since the erosion of the informal post-Cold War taboo on space weapons.

The testing began with the 2007 Chinese ASAT test and the 2008 and 2021 Russian ASAT tests., the 2008 US and 2021 Russian ASAT tests, and India’s 2019 Mission Shakti ASAT test — building on earlier direct-ascent ASAT programs pursued by the United States and the Soviet Union from the 1960s through the 1980s.

The US deployment converts a long-suspected capability gap into a declared fact, and it will be read by other delegations as confirmation that at least one major power has moved decisively from space “control” doctrine to operational deployment, he said.

For the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) and the Ad Hoc Committee of the Conference on Disarmament on Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS), the announcement raises four immediate questions:

(1) whether the deployment is compatible with the existing Outer Space Treaty regime; (2) what it means for the stalled draft Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force against Outer Space Objects (PPWT) and the EU Code of Conduct (EU International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities); (3) how the expert and policy community is interpreting the move; and (4) what practical steps the Committees can recommend to prevent a cascading arms race in space.

Rauf proposed five recommendations:

1. Convene an urgent joint briefing between COPUOS’s Scientific and Technical and Legal Subcommittees and the CD’s PAROS Ad Hoc Committee to develop a shared factual record of the announcement and its technical implications, avoiding duplicated or contradictory assessments across the two bodies.

2. Both PAROS Ad Hoc Committee and COPUOS should issue an urgent call for a moratorium on placing weapons in Space, urge the US to take down space weapons it has deployed and urge all spacefaring States to preserve Space as the common heritage of humankind and weapons-free.

3. Request, through the Conference on Disarmament Secretariat, that all spacefaring States with counterspace capability — not only the United States — provide voluntary technical briefings on the general character (though not classified specifics) of any on-orbit weapons systems, to reduce the information asymmetry currently driving worst-case assumptions.

4. Task the Legal Subcommittee with producing a technical working paper clarifying the scope of Article IV of the Outer Space Treaty as applied to conventional (non-WMD) on-orbit weapons, and the interaction of Articles III and IX with counterspace operations, to give delegations a common legal baseline rather than competing unilateral interpretations.

5. Encourage major space powers to reaffirm, at head-of-delegation level, existing voluntary moratoria on destructive kinetic ASAT testing, and invite additional States to associate themselves with such moratoria pending progress on a binding instrument.”

Jonathan Granoff, President Global Security Institute, told IPS placing offensive weapons in space is a very risky proposition.

The Outer Space Treaty has been instrumental in ensuring numerous benefits of outer space, including satellites and exploration. All major nations are parties including United States, Russia, China, India, Japan, and all member states of the European Space Agency. The Treaty in its first article establishes that space exploration and use shall only be for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind, ensuring free and non-discriminatory access for all states.

The deployment of weapons in space by the United States could easily be interpreted as violating that peaceful uses principle, he pointed out.

“However, there is an argument that putting weapons in space for defensive purposes only helps protect against abuses of the peace which is in the interest of all nations. This is not frivolous. The problem with that argument is that weapons used for defensive purposes can also be used offensively and the deployment of such weapons would indeed violate the the Treaty. Moreover, such a deployment by one nation will surely stimulate an arms race.”

There are several important questions, he said.

Should the entire world trust that the weapons the US places in space would only be used defensively to preserve the peace? If the US places weapons in space would this new interpretation of the Treaty stimulate other nations to do the same? Would it be wise to trust they would only use their weapons defensively?

Recall that President Reagan, addressing such questions, offered to share his Star Wars deployments of space based missile defenses with the Soviet Union. Would it be a good idea for the US to share space weapons technologies with other nations?

“The entire world benefits very much from the current military uses of outer space which allows the observation of the military activities of all nations thus helping stability. Such uses should affirmatively be protected and encouraged. Other uses that will lead to a new arms race should be prohibited. A protocol to the OST to prohibit offensive weapons in space as well as any anti-satellite weapons should be obtained”, declared Granoff..

IPS UN Bureau Report

A street market in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city. Residents are anxious about high inflation and also fear recent floods will drive food prices higher. Credit: Ant/IPS

By Guy Dinmore, and a reporter in Yangon
YANGON, Myanmar, Sep 23 2026 (IPS)

Isolated and at constant war with itself, Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis is deepening as global challenges far exceed the capacity to respond of a military regime increasingly focused on its own survival.

The climate crisis, soaring commodity prices triggered by wars in Europe and the Middle East, plus worldwide cuts in donor aid are all hitting Myanmar hard. The regime’s inability to govern a fragmented and restive country with nearly four million internally displaced people has been exposed to the full since it seized power over five years ago.

Widespread floods caused by heavy monsoon rains since July have affected over 470,000 people, according to an assessment by the World Health Organization. Cases of malaria and dengue have been increasing, as well as outbreaks of cholera.

“Everyone is starving and cut off. Yes, everyone is facing food shortages,” said an activist calling himself Bruce, describing the situation in Shwebo township in the north-central Sagaing region, one of the main conflict zones and rice transshipment centres hit by floods.

Local and international aid organisations struggle to get help through conflict zones where the military is fighting a shifting array of ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and local resistance groups while syphoning off what it can.

“Armed hostilities, movement restrictions and administrative requirements continue to block access, underscoring the need for safe, sustained and unhindered humanitarian reach to vulnerable communities,” the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a July bulletin.

“Myanmar remains one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, with more than 16 million people in need as conflict, displacement, protection risks and access constraints intensify urgent needs nationwide,” OCHA said, noting that by end-March “humanitarian partners” had managed to reach 1.6 million people.

Floods have driven up food prices, already exacerbated by rising costs of fuel and fertilisers caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine and Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz following attacks by the US and Israel.

All sides exact a price in Myanmar, Bruce said, with cargo trucks moving north from the regime-controlled city of Mandalay to Shwebo having to pay fees at multiple military checkpoints and those run by other armed groups. Farmers in neighbouring Shan state growing rice and tomatoes are also facing “devastating losses” and being driven into deep poverty, he said.

Shwebo has experienced power blackouts of up to 20 consecutive days. As darkness falls, residents do not dare venture outside for fear of forced conscription by the regime, especially in rural areas. Households pay levies to avoid conscription, even those with only single women.

Some people are being forced into a second round of conscription as the military struggles to replenish its ranks, stretched across the country. Over 100,000 people have been conscripted, according to some estimates.

At night authorities inspect mobile phones. If they find online games, evidence of Starlink use or unauthorised communication devices then the individuals are immediately taken for military service.

Inflation and extortion reach deep into prisons too, said Bruce, a former political prisoner. Skin diseases like scabies are common, and the cost of a particular drug bought by relatives has soared more than eight times, while even traditional medicines like neem leaves have gone up fivefold.

Prison staff and those manning checkpoints even take their cuts of peanut snacks, driving up prices paid by prisoners.

The numbers displaced by conflict continue to rise. Fighting in the central Magway region in recent months has added over 200,000 more since May, according to some UN estimates. People fleeing conflict are moving to safer areas, but host communities have limited capacity to accommodate them.

U Than is a farmer in the Ayeyarwady delta and was struggling to make ends meet even before recent floods hit the major rice-growing region, destroying crops and jeopardising the next planting season. Fortunately his land has been spared destruction, but everyone is keeping a close eye on nearby levees.

“Farming has become a cycle of borrowing just to survive,” he said, complaining that the cost of fertiliser has risen five-fold and that fuel is increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain.

“We are working harder, borrowing more, and spending more, but the income from our harvest is no longer enough to cover the cost of farming or even our basic living expenses.” Families are forced to cut back their spending on health and education.

Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, feels somewhat insulated from the recent natural disasters and ongoing civil war. But inflation is hitting the pockets of its six million people, including city officials and their families, who squeeze more money from residents on trumped-up charges or bribes to avoid conscription.

“The junta stooges are resorting to all sorts of methods, legal or illegal, to recruit people while at the same time making money in the process,” one long-time resident told IPS.

“Life in Yangon is morphing into a new normal, with people feeling less safe about their lives as crimes are widespread. So many cases of theft and robberies go unreported or under-reported.”

A cholera outbreak in central Yangon in August, the second in two years, was blamed on poor hygiene among street vendors whose cheap food is even more attractive as inflation bites. The regime responded by shutting down their businesses in six city townships. Outbreaks have also been reported in Sittwe, one of the last regime strongholds in Rakhine State, as well as flood-affected areas.

Reports that CCTV artificial intelligence and facial scanning technology were deployed at a checkpoint in Mandalay city have raised fears that the regime is adopting widespread surveillance controls pioneered by China, its closest ally.

Min Aung Hlaing, leader of the 2021 coup, has proved resilient and uncompromising in directing a brutal retaliation against the popular resistance and was confident enough to swap his general’s uniform for a civilian suit as president after tightly orchestrated elections this year.

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, set up by the UN Human Rights Council, stated in its annual report that its findings “show a pattern of deliberate aerial attacks on civilians, arbitrary detentions, torture and sexual violence committed by the Myanmar military.”

The military escalated its aerial attacks and other crimes against civilians in the lead-up to the elections, and these have continued unabated, the IIMM said, listing the targeting of homes, schools, medical facilities, religious buildings and camps for internally displaced persons.

“This underscores the urgent need to hold those responsible to account,” it said. The IIMM is also investigating alleged atrocities involving armed groups opposed to the military.

For the moment, accountability seems a distant prospect, at best.

Since Min Aung Hlaing’s assumption of the presidency in April, the former general has been accepted on official visits to Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, China, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. The Trump administration has not rolled out the red carpet but has eased sanctions against some of the regime elite and is engaging on matters of particular concern to the US, such as scam centres.

The regime’s growing de facto recognition abroad poses a further threat to the struggling efforts to exert its authority in liberated areas by the parallel National Unity Government (NUG). Established by lawmakers ousted in 2021 when Aung San Suu Kyi and other prominent leaders were jailed, the NUG managed to conclude agreements in March with several major ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) in an attempt to forge a unified political and military resistance.

Calling themselves the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF), the alliance has stated its commitment to a negotiated political solution that would end military rule and exclude the generals from politics.

“To get there we’re pursuing all available avenues, including military means,” a senior resistance official told IPS.

However, there is scepticism that Min Aung Hlaing will deal with the new collective entity and will continue to insist on bilateral ceasefire talks with individual EAOs while refusing to recognise the NUG as an interlocutor. Several major armed groups dependant to varying degrees on neighbouring China have also kept the SCEF at arm’s length.

“Substantive negotiations between the Tatmadaw [the Myanmar military] and SCEF members are likely to prove challenging,” Morgan Michaels, a southeast Asia defence expert, wrote in a recent analysis for the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

“Meaningful progress in Myanmar – whether political, economic or humanitarian – would need to start with a broad conflict de-escalation, which at a minimum would require ceasefires between the Tatmadaw and the EAOs. Unfortunately, the path to de-escalation is likely to be long and fraught with dilemmas.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Helen Clarkson, CEO, Climate Group at Climate Week NYC. Credit: Climate Group

By Naureen Hossain
NEW YORK, Sep 22 2026 (IPS)

The Climate Group’s annual conference in New York City has attracted thousands of attendees this year, among them world leaders, corporate heads, philanthropists, and climate advocates. Those leaders present at the opening ceremony of Climate Week have made clear calls to collectively tackle climate issues.

Climate Week NYC’s opening ceremony and conference began on Monday in conjunction with the United Nations General Assembly Debate and High-Level Week (21-29 September). In addition to the main conference, held in the Glass House on 12th Avenue, there are multiple events hosted across New York City—more than 1,500. This is slated to be the biggest Climate Week yet, according to the Climate Group, the organizers of this week-long event.

Each year, Climate Week focuses on the most urgent issues when it comes to tackling climate change, from the transition to renewable energy, corporate and government responsibility, and scaling climate and economic progress.

The consequences of climate change, including extreme weather events, rising temperatures, and sea levels, are being felt worldwide. Global conflicts like the war between Russia and Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East have disrupted the world’s energy supply of oil and gas, which has put developed and developing countries alike in prolonged stress over energy needs.

Australian PM M Anthony Albanese. Credit: Climate Group

It is the latter point that the day’s first speakers urged on, as even in the face of mounting evidence that clean energy is more affordable, countries still rely on fossil fuels. But blaming the situation solely on fossil fuel companies would not be accurate. Helen Clarkson, the founder of Climate Group, pointed out in her opening remarks that incumbents still use and rely on fossil fuels for their energy needs. She also pointed her finger at right-wing pundits in traditional and social media that spread misinformation about renewable energy and politicians who “weaponize people’s fear.” Meanwhile, some leaders and even media outlets choose not to use the word ‘climate’ in relation to these issues in a form of erasure or denial. Silence is a form of inaction, Clarkson noted soberly, and that inaction leads to more climate change.

“It’s time to face the truth, and that’s hard in a world where truth has lost so much of its currency. But the truth is, we’ve been making ourselves smaller and quiet at the exact moment we should be bigger and louder,” said Clarkson.

Climate and nature loss should also be treated as a matter of national security, said Ed Miliband, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Minister. Miliband, who served as the energy secretary under Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer, remarked that climate destruction was once treated as a peripheral matter that was separate from economic growth or energy security. The job growth in the clean energy sector proves their potential for a sustainable transition. The latest conflicts in Ukraine and Iran underline the dependence of countries on fossil fuels while also highlighting the “energy independent imperative” of clean energy.

Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom at Climate Week. Credit: Climate Group

Countries struggle with the overlapping consequences driven by climate change, for they are no longer confined to borders. In 2026 alone, over 150 million hectares burned in the first four months. This year has also confirmed a “super” El Niño that will likely drive global recorded temperatures and extreme weather events to new levels.

“This is why these facts, what is happening in our world, and why climate breakdown, in my view, must be an issue for foreign ministers and prime ministers, as well as energy and climate ministers,” said Miliband.

Miliband recommended governments pool information on climate issues so that it can be used to inform forecasts and early warning systems to “[act] before the crisis hits, rather than picking up the pieces afterwards.”

This sense of collective responsibility between countries was the core of the keynote speech, delivered by Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“The global community cannot afford to be frozen in time while the world falls around us,” said Albanese. “Australia understands the dangers of global warming and the emergency of climate action as well as any nation. We’ve seen it up close from increasingly intense bushfires and floods.”

Albanese also spoke to the specific context of the Pacific region, where states are uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and have been among the most vocal advocates for climate action. He cited Australia’s efforts to fund and support Pacific Island states in their climate resilience plans. There is also the Pacific Resilience Facility, established last year, which he claimed was the first Pacific-led climate financing mechanism.

Adopting climate-friendly and sustainable initiatives is possible and better in the longterm to build necessary resilience. Iceland provides one such example, as a country that holds geothermal reserves but had been running on imported oil until the early 1970s during the oil crisis that disrupted their supplies. Through financing, political will, and cutting-edge technology, Iceland began developing large-scale geothermal heating districts across the country. Today, over 90 percent of households in Iceland are heated by geothermal energy. For Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir, the lesson that countries should take from their example is to invest in climate-friendly infrastructure and initiatives before the next shock.

“The transition each of you is managing—in energy, in supply chains, in infrastructure, in economic competitiveness—won’t be won by the country or the company that reacts fastest to the next disruption. It’ll be won by the one that has already built the capacity to absorb it, years before it arrives. Resilience, in other words, isn’t a response. It’s a foundation you pour long before anyone tells you the storm is coming,” Frostadóttir said.

As Frostadóttir and the other world leaders remarked in their addresses, the solutions to climate change already exist. But it will require an equal measure of financing and political will to push through with the necessary steps. It cannot be a matter of waiting for the next climate or geopolitical shock to adopt those changes.

IPS UN Bureau Report

A public streetside sign advocates against gender-based violence in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Australia, Sep 22 2026 (IPS)

In the remote Highlands region of Papua New Guinea (PNG), humanitarians are life-saving beacons to women and girls facing myriad forms of violence. Despite years of awareness programmes and advocacy, the incidence of domestic and sexual violence is not declining. But Janet Kilea is one survivor who has rejected the fear and stigma of her experience and now dedicates her energy to transforming other women’s lives.

“I feel for other women who are going through the challenges I went through,” Kilea, who works in communities with the international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the mountainous Jiwaka Province, told IPS. “I need to use my experience to advocate for and empower women. Women should come out and not be silent about gender-based violence.”

Globally, about 31.6 percent of women have been subjected to physical or sexual violence, reports the World Health Organization (WHO), compared to an estimated 64 percent, more than double, in PNG, which has a population of about 10 million. Yet abuse of women, whether physical, psychological or economic, is of worldwide concern. It affects women and girls in both developed and developing countries, with the WHO claiming that SDG 5.2, which aims to eliminate it, is severely off-track and will not, on current trends, be achieved by 2030.

MSF’s Community Engagement Supervisor, Janet Kilea (L), with Community Health Worker, Judith (C), and Village Health Volunteer, Cathy (R), in Mondumil Village, Jiwaka Province, PNG. Credit: Sophie McNamara/MSF

And, in the PNG highlands, there are numerous barriers to changing the behaviours that endanger women’s lives and getting medical and support services to those who desperately need them. Most people live in isolated communities scattered across a vast rugged terrain of impenetrable forests, arduous high-altitude areas and deep valleys. Many do not have access to roads, while state services, including law enforcement, rarely reach far beyond major towns.

Across the Pacific, rural women and girls are particularly vulnerable, given they are twice as likely to live in poverty as those in urban centres, reports the UN Women, and face entrenched customary beliefs and practices that reinforce notions of gender inequality. Polygamous marriage, for instance, increases the risk of intimate partner violence by 24 percent, according to the World Bank. In the Pacific, “men still see women and girls as their property and believe that they are entitled to control them. And so far there are no efforts led by men to change the situation,” Colin Tukuitonga, Professor of Public Health at New Zealand’s University of Auckland, told IPS.

“In Jiwaka Province, it is estimated that 60 percent of women and girls are experiencing some form of violence,” Frédérique Butez, co-ordinator of MSF’s project in Jiwaka Province, told IPS. And “right now there is only one operational facility in Minj town, one facility providing family support centre services, which are integrated services within the public health facility with medical consultations and direct first aid and support. And then appropriate referrals to protection or legal services, according to the needs of the survivor,” she elaborated.

The suffering of survivors can be immense. Their ordeals may have involved weapons, such as knives or machetes, and resulted in chronic pain, sexually transmitted diseases, reproductive health issues, severe trauma or depression. The provision of external support services is crucial, too, as women frequently contend with stigma and pressure within families and communities to not report their abuse to authorities.

But that has not diminished Kilea’s resolve to make a difference. Gender-based violence (GBV) “is a very sensitive issue in our culture, which is taboo. So, when we go into the community, we talk with the women about their daily lives. We then talk about the root causes of GBV and start a conversation with the women. We create a space to share experiences,” Kilea explained.

MSF also trains village-health volunteers, critical first responders who are trusted within communities. “They are the heart of the project, because they are the focal point inside each community to give the first crucial aid care. They are the ones giving women access to the support and care that they need,” said Butez.

Jiwaka is a relatively new province established on the PNG mainland in 2012, and the provincial government, which provides for a rural-based population of about 343,987 people, is still developing its service outreach. “In terms of the scale of the needs and services, it is quite huge,” Butez said. But MSF, in partnership with Jiwaka Province, is using its expertise and resources to boost the skills of local healthcare workers and the capacity of medical and psychosocial services and support the government’s policy planning.

The scale of the public health needs is also recognised at the national level. Legislation, including the Criminal Code and 2013 Family Protection Act, outlaw domestic violence and violence against women and children. PNG’s gender-based violence response strategy promotes zero tolerance and outlines objectives, such as the development of effective response and service delivery to those affected and the scaling up of public message programs aimed at prevention.

Some political leaders have also spoken out. In March, Prime Minister James Marape told the PNG parliament that ‘domestic violence is a no amidst us. You cannot chest-beat as a leader if you are abusing your wife at home. Simple. Period,’ he declared, claiming that the country ‘will not progress if the fundamental fabric of our society is weakened.’

Nevertheless, women are still struggling to access timely support, and impunity continues for the vast majority of perpetrators. A progress review by the National Gender-Based Violence Secretariat last year reported a fall in the proportion of respondents witnessing domestic violence in their homes from 70 percent in 2016 to 51 percent in 2025. But, in contrast, it found a 210 percent increase in reported cases of violence against women since 1986 and a major shortfall in objectives being implemented. ‘Governance structures remain fragmented and under-resourced, with only 5 of 22 provinces having functional GBV secretariats and just 12 receiving annual funding,’ claims the report, while ‘the justice system is failing survivors with conviction rates for GBV cases as low as 0.5 percent in some regions.’

“Implementation is a challenge across the [Pacific Islands] region,” Tukuitonga emphasised. One hurdle is that strategic plans often exceed the budgetary capacity of governments, and “the second issue is that there are often not the skills locally to implement the plans effectively.”

Kilea, in coming to the aid of women and girls facing life-threatening situations every day, is part of efforts to address the latter. “I remember a woman I supported, who had three sons and one daughter. Her husband beat her regularly and took the money,’ Kilea recounted. She had no income and wasn’t working. She was also illiterate and uneducated and found it very difficult to know what to do. But Kilea was able to guide her on how to be patient and focus on her children while searching for opportunities to gain financial independence. “Soon she heard about an opportunity to do voluntary work, which has now led to daily paid work,” enabling her to leave the abusive relationship she was in and move to safer accommodation with her children.

Butez is buoyed to see the project leading to successes and being welcomed in the province. “The communities really accept us. And, as an organisation, it is very important that the trust with the communities is there, because without it we couldn’t work,” said Butez. “It is something that we are really proud of.”

The work of humanitarians will be critical now and in the future, to addressing the hardships and suffering that gender-based violence causes, with PNG’s GBV secretariat predicting that it could affect up to 8 million women in the country by 2046.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Julia Braunmiller, Senior Private Sector Development Specialist with the World Bank Group’s Women, Business and the Law, and Antonia Kirkland, Director of Legal Equality and UN Liaison at Equality Now, discuss the importance of family law reform during the UNGA side event, The Gender Equality Dividend: Investing in Women’s Economic Prosperity Through Family Law Reform. Credit: IPS/Oritro Karim

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 2026 (IPS)

On September 16, at the lead-up to the 81st UN General Assembly, Equality in Family Law (GCEFL), Equality Now, TrustLaw, and the World Bank Group convened in New York City for the event titled The Gender Equality Dividend: Investing in Women’s Economic Prosperity Through Family Law Reform. Hosted by APCO, the event introduced new data on barriers to family law reform and highlighted strategies to help the international community maximize women’s economic participation.

Bringing together experts in legal reform and economic development, the event marked the launch of a landmark joint brief by the World Bank Group and Equality Now, titled Unlocking Women’s Economic Rights through Family Law Reform: Lessons from Case Studies across Five Regions. Drawing upon data collected from Chile, Kenya, Malaysia, Morocco, and Nepal, the brief examines the legal, social, and economic barriers that hinder gender equality, economic growth, and sustainable development.

Targeting the reform of 20 discriminatory laws by 2030, the report highlights the persistent and widespread disparities that women around the world continue to face in marriage, divorce, inheritance, and household decision-making. At the event, Antonia Kirkland, Director of Legal Equality and UN Liaison at Equality Now, stressed that no country has achieved full legal equality for women in terms of economic autonomy and social freedoms.

Additional data from the World Bank Group’s Women, Business, and the Law 2026 project reveals that 22 economies still lack laws granting women equal rights to immovable property, while 43 economies continue to deny women equal inheritance rights. Furthermore, women are estimated to be 33 percent less likely than men to participate in the formal labor market.

Over the past 50 years, family law reform has enabled more than 600 million women to access better economic opportunities, while approximately 118 countries have enacted laws that allow women improved access to employment. However, progress has stalled in recent decades, largely because family law reform is rarely treated as an interconnected policy, cultural, and economic issue.

Removing systemic discriminatory barriers against women yields immense social, financial, and developmental benefits. Granting women control over economic and financial resources can significantly strengthen their household bargaining power, foster greater individual autonomy, and considerably expand their access to formal employment.

Julia Braunmiller, Senior Private Sector Development Specialist with Women, Business and the Law, informed reporters at the briefing that if women had equal access to employment, global GDP could increase by up to 20 percent. Figures from UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2026 report show that not a single indicator on the Sustainable Development Goal for gender equality (SDG 5) is on track to be met by 2030.

“Family law is economic policy. It is not something private,” Braunmiller said. “Marriage, divorce, and inheritance; these are the rules that can change who can work, who can own property, who can make financial decisions, who can earn and spend money. When rights are restricted, we are limiting the productive potential of half our societies. Family law is an overlooked driver of growth, productivity, and economic resilience.”

When women have equal access to formal employment, they are able to achieve significantly greater influence in decision-making, household affairs, and the ability to support themselves, separate from their husbands. In Nepal, landmark legal reforms have enabled widows to access marital assets and property, allowing families to stay afloat during periods of economic hardship.

“Many women, particularly in rural areas, who have lost their husbands or are divorced are in financially precarious situations. Obtaining a share of marital property enables them to invest in income-generating opportunities, educate their children, and even obtain further education themselves to better their lives,” said Gyanu BC, a Nepali women’s rights advocate.

Furthermore, improved family laws could significantly accelerate national productivity, strengthen social security systems, and benefit all household members. Control over family resources, such as access to credit, inheritance, and immovable property, is directly linked with household wellbeing.

Amy Hutchinson, Chief Development Officer of Equality Now, noted that working women invest roughly 90 percent of their incomes in their families, which has “profound” impacts on child nutrition, development, and education. National economies could also save significant aid dollars in social services and programs addressing and preventing gender-based violence by investing in family law reform. According to Hutchinson, women who lack access to formal employment are “infinitely” more vulnerable to violence and exploitation.

“This is not charity, this is an investment that is not just in women and girls, but in sustainable development and economic prosperity for all,” said Hutchinson. “It’s an investment in families, communities, and our global economies…this is an opportunity to invest in ground-floor systemic solutions that scale, not just mitigating the symptoms in perpetuity. Unfortunately, gender equality has become very polarizing and political.”

All of the speakers at the event emphasized that continued support from the international community in establishing legal equality is a crucial first step in closing persistent gender gaps, underscoring the global benefits in driving sustainable growth, preventing gender-based violence, and strengthening community resilience to economic shocks. GCEFL, Equality Now, TrustLaw, and the World Bank Group continue to work alongside national governments to close these gaps and secure a safe and equitable future for all.

IPS UN Bureau Report

President Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine. Credit: UN Photo

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 21 2026 (IPS)

When Yasser Arafat was denied a US visa for his second visit to New York to address the United Nations back in 1988, the General Assembly defied the United States by temporarily moving the UN’s highest policymaking body to Geneva—perhaps for the first time in UN history—providing a less hostile political environment and a platform for the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Arafat, who first addressed the UN in 1974, took a swipe at Washington when he prefaced his statement in Geneva by remarking, “It never occurred to me that my second meeting with this honorable Assembly, since 1974, would take place in the hospitable city of Geneva.”

The US last week denied visas to the Palestinian delegation, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, who was due to address the General Assembly on September 24. The delegates were also denied visas last year.

In the official list of speakers released last week, Abbas has been designated “Head of State” (HS) of the “State of Palestine.”

The U.S. State Department criticized Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) for pursuing the “unilateral recognition of a conjectural Palestinian state” through international bodies rather than negotiated bilateral talks.

As a rebuff to the US, the General Assembly voted overwhelmingly last week to allow President Abbas and other high-level Palestinian officials to participate and address the annual gathering of world leaders via video, outsmarting the US—electronically.

The resolution was adopted with a 152-3 vote (with four countries abstaining). This decision directly addresses the decision by the United States to deny entry visas to the high-level Palestinian delegation—including Abbas—marking the second consecutive year the delegation has been barred from attending the UN high-level meeting of world political leaders.

The resolution was opposed only by the United States, Israel, and Paraguay, with Colombia, Honduras, Panama, and Peru abstaining.

So far, the UN expects about 73 Heads of State, 45 Heads of Government, 49 Ministers, 11 Vice-Presidents, and one Crown Prince to address the General Assembly through September 28.

Alongside the mandated meetings, there are about 168 events that are scheduled during the high-level week, and last week, Member States have submitted about 1,000 requests for bilateral meetings amongst themselves.

The bilateral meetings with the Secretary-General are also in the process of being scheduled.

The UN has also issued 1,935 press passes for visiting journalists and an additional 1,290 press passes for official media.

Dr. Stephen Zunes, a professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies, told Inter Press Service (IPS) under the 1947 US-UN Headquarters agreement that the United States is obliged to allow foreign leaders to address the General Assembly.

“That’s why previous administrations allowed even the likes of Muammar Qaddafi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Idi Amin, Suharto, and other nasty characters to visit.”

(According to one definition, “ruthless autocrats” are political leaders who hold absolute power and use severe oppression, violence, and censorship to maintain control. Throughout history, these dictators have suppressed political opposition, eliminated civil liberties, and caused massive human suffering.)

Now, however, the Trump administration is banning representatives of the government of Palestine—a permanent non-member state of the United Nations—from coming to New York despite their recognizing Israel, renouncing terrorism, and calling for peace, said Dr. Zunes.

And there have been no objections, he said, from Democratic leaders in the US Congress. The problem, therefore, is not that the State of Palestine is a brutal dictatorship or violating international legal norms—the United States has no problems with that.

“The problem is that they are Palestinians. This is bigotry, pure and simple,“ he said.

The General Assembly could have relocated to Geneva, as they did in 1988. However, concerns about the costs and the carbon footprint, combined with access to modern communications technologies, have led them to allow the Palestinian leadership to Zoom in, said Dr. Zunes.

While going to Geneva would have been a more powerful statement, the support by such an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations can still be seen as a rebuke of Washington’s continued opposition to Palestine’s right to exist, declared Dr Zunes.

Mouin Rabbani, Managing Editor, Jadaliyya, an independent ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute, told IPS the United States has once again demonstrated itself to be unfit to play the role of host nation of the United Nations. It considers the Host Country Agreement as something to be honored on a voluntary basis rather than a series of binding obligations.

The US government considers it perfectly normal to behave like a gangster state and openly violate its obligations by refusing entry to foreign delegates on the most specious of pretexts, he pointed out.

This is not a matter of the Trump administration. Nearly four decades ago, its predecessor, the Reagan administration, also refused entry to a Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.

What is particularly noteworthy on this occasion, he said, is that the US government is explicitly identifying the Palestinian recourse to the ICJ and ICC as legitimate grounds to refuse the participation of the Palestinian leader in the GA.

“This is the conduct of one gangster state acting on behalf of another (Israel) and demonstrates in the clearest manner possible that the US cannot and should not be entrusted with hosting the UN HQ.”

The Palestinians should of course be demanding that the GA conduct its session outside the US. The problem is that they are led by the exceptionally weak-kneed Mahmoud Abbas, who seems to continue to believe that absorbing these outrageous violations without confronting them forcefully will earn him brownie points with Trump and Netanyahu, which of course they won’t, declared Rabbani.

Meanwhile, responding to questions from journalists, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said last week the Secretary-General deeply regrets the announcement by the United States extending sanctions that would deny visas to members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and officials of the Palestinian Authority to participate in meetings of the United Nations.

“The Secretary-General is concerned about the impact of this decision on the ability of the State of Palestine to participate fully in the work of the United Nations. The full participation of all delegations in the work of the organization is essential to its proper functioning”.

The Secretary-General takes note of the arrangements adopted yesterday by the General Assembly for the participation of the State of Palestine in the eighty-first session.

The Secretary-General urges the host country to ensure that visas are issued to all delegations in accordance with its obligations under the Headquarters Agreement and will continue to engage with the United States authorities to this end.

Meanwhile, key details of the General Assembly decision include the following:

• Scope of Virtual Access:

• The approved measure not only permits President Abbas to deliver his address virtually but also extends video-participation rights to any senior Palestinian officials for any UN meetings or conferences over the next year if they remain blocked from traveling to the U.S.

• The U.S. Stance:

• The Trump administration extended existing visa sanctions, citing security concerns and accusing the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of failing to comply with legal commitments and attempting to “internationalize” the conflict through global tribunals.

• On-the-Ground Representation:

While the high-level traveling delegation was barred, Palestinian diplomats who are already permanently accredited to the UN in New York will continue to represent them.

IPS UN Bureau Report

The link between urbanization and poverty may be determined by how cities are planned and governed, according to UN reports. Credit: Benjamin Shurance/Unsplash

By Shuli Wong
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 18 2026 (IPS)

Urbanization can help concentrate jobs, services, and investments; however, it can also concentrate unaffordable housing, insecure employment, and unequal exposure to contamination and environmental threats. A recent report from the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, argues that the difference is not urbanization itself, but how cities are planned, governed, and financed.

Elena Díaz Galán’s report, Cities and Poverty, issued earlier in July and examines social exclusion and the structural drivers of poverty in cities. In it, Galán looks at how land use, housing infrastructure, public services, and participation can either exacerbate or mitigate poverty.

In an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service, Anacláudia Rossbach, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN-Habitat, highlighted how the report’s findings closely align with UN-Habitat’s priorities, particularly in how “the central challenge lies not in urbanization itself, but in addressing the inequalities, deprivations and climate risks that accompany it, which affect people differently based on factors such as gender, age, or socio-economic status.”

UN-Habitat’s World Cities Report 2026: The Global Housing Crisis – Pathways to Action paints a bleak picture of the global housing crisis. Worldwide, at least 3.4 billion people lack access to adequate housing, with 1.1 billion people living in slums or informal settlements. As informal settlements become home to a significant and growing share of the world’s urban population, Rossbach emphasized how “informal settlements hold significant potential to contribute to more inclusive and sustainable urban development”. Informal settlements are often characterized by inadequate housing, limited access to basic services, infrastructure deficits, and insecure tenure; however, “they provide housing, livelihoods, social networks, and opportunities for millions of urban residents.”

Addressing Galán’s point in her report that urbanization has the power to reduce poverty or deepen inequality, Rossbach shared how UN-Habitat’s Strategic Plan 2026-2029 focuses on housing, land, and basic services as the foundation for sustainable development.

“We work to ensure that urbanization contributes to improving living conditions and increasing access to adequate housing, while preventing the deepening of existing inequalities and vulnerabilities, particularly for women and other groups that face multiple and overlapping forms of exclusion,” said Rossbach.

The Cities and Poverty report illustrated how poverty and inequality appear in spatial patterns. For example, low-income individuals are often pushed into more outlying and environmentally hazardous areas, leaving them vulnerable and lacking access to services, jobs, schools, and healthcare. Examples within the report illustrated how informal settlements in Dandora and Korogocho, located near Nairobi’s main landfill, are exposed to toxic environments, including polluted air and groundwater. Cycles of poverty often reinforce themselves in informal settlements. For example, in the peri-urban areas of Woldia, Ethiopia, due to the lack of formal water, sanitation, and electricity networks, the price of water can be up to 1,645 percent more than the price paid by those with private water pipes. These examples and additional costs illustrate the unequal cost of urban life. Showing how people who have the fewest resources are often times forced to pay more for lower-quality essential goods and services.

Building off of these points, Rossbach told IPS how UN-Habitat considers participatory in-situ upgrading as the most effective approach for improving living conditions in informal settlements. Instead of focusing on the eradication of settlements, policy responses should build on the social, economic, and environmental potential in these settlements and support their progressive improvement.

As informal settlements house a growing share of the world’s urban population, they hold potential for contributing to more inclusive, sustainable urban planning. Credit: Nikko Balanial/Unsplash

Successful interventions engage residents along all phases, from design, implementation, and maintenance, to ensure that local priorities, needs, and context-based solutions are taken into account. Most importantly, successful interventions require coordinated responses to integrate informal settlements into the wider urban fabric.

“When combined with broader housing policies and planning reforms, participatory in-situ upgrading can contribute to more inclusive, sustainable, and equitable urban development outcomes,” Rossbach said.

The Cities and Poverty report discussed urbanization through the lens of the processes that lead to it and the impact on human rights. Two urbanization models were included, the first of which is the “15-minute city”. The 15-minute city is an inclusive vision of urban development which seeks to ensure that all residents have access within a short walk or bicycle ride to essential daily services and opportunities. Examples include Shanghai’s Anshan Xincun 15-minute community life circles, which have shown increased mobility in the aging population, helping to make more equitable and inclusive cities.

However, greater accessibility within these 15-minute cities can also lead to gentrification. “When neighbourhoods become more attractive and better connected, land values and housing costs can rise, potentially displacing existing residents,” said Rossbach. In order to protect existing residents and ensure that these changes do not lead to displacement or exclusion, Rossbach proposed three principles for protection:

1. Proximity-based planning should help reduce spatial inequalities, not reinforce them.
2. Neighborhood improvements need to go hand in hand with measures to protect housing affordability and tenure security.
3. The communities and residents need to be involved at all levels and should have a meaningful role in deciding what is developed and how.

“The success of a 15-minute city should not be measured only by how quickly people can reach services, but by whether existing residents can continue to live in their communities and benefit from the improvements around them,” said Rossbach.

The second urbanization model discussed was ‘smart cities’. Smart cities utilize digital technologies, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence to improve upon the management and delivery of urban services. However, the report also warns that digitization and smart cities can reinforce existing inequalities and create a sense of double vulnerability where material poverty combines with exclusion from devices, connectivity, and digital skills.

Rossbach discussed how UN-Habitat promotes a “people-centered smart cities approach that puts people and their needs, rather than technology, at the center.” In particular, services and digital services need to be designed to address the realities of low-income neighborhoods and informal settlements, many of which lack affordable connectivity, devices, digital skills, and formal addresses. Most importantly, Rossbach said, “digitization should close existing inequalities, not reinforce them.”

UN-Habitat is working to close these existing inequalities through programs such as the United Nations Innovation Technology Accelerator for Cities (UNITAC). It developed the Building and Establishment Automated Mapper (BEAM), which helps cities better understand informal settlements and fast-growing urban areas by rapidly mapping buildings from aerial imagery. BEAM provides municipalities with better information to plan infrastructure, target upgrading programmes, and improve basic services.

Nonetheless, data itself does not ensure or create more equitable cities. The Cities and Poverty report emphasized how developing human rights indicators are essential, and so are inputting monitoring tools to evaluate the efficiency of government policies and action. Rossbach added that “inclusive digital transformation is about making people visible — both in data and in decision-making”.

Rossbach and Galán, through her report, have called for urban planning that puts human rights at the center. This means promoting affordable housing in well-connected areas, secure tenure, universal basic services, and more equitable investments across neighborhoods. Implementation needs to be people-centered and measured by whether existing residents can remain in their communities and share in the benefits.

IPS UN Bureau Report