Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By James Alix Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Oct 1 2026 (IPS)

From a distance, an island nation can appear to possess everything: pristine waters, a thriving tourism industry and a strong cultural identity. Its income figures may suggest prosperity.

James Alix Michel

Yet those figures can conceal the permanent costs of remoteness, dependence on imported food and fuel, expensive transport and infrastructure, and an economy exposed to forces far beyond its shores. A pandemic, a cyclone or a sudden interruption in tourism can undo years of progress with frightening speed.

This is the paradox confronting small island states. We are judged by what we earn on paper, while our future is shaped by what we must endure in reality. President Dr Patrick Herminie of Seychelles brought this question to the United Nations this month, urging international finance to “measure reality correctly”. He called for affordable, accessible, long-term finance, meaningful debt relief and effective implementation of the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI).

His appeal continues a case Seychelles has made for many years.

In 2009, Seychelles warned at the United Nations that small economies were especially exposed to global economic instability and the impacts of climate change. In 2013, it called for financing mechanisms and concessional conditions tailored to small island developing states. In 2015, it argued that attaining a higher-income classification should not automatically exclude an island nation from concessional support. The message has remained consistent: development gains do not erase structural vulnerability.

For too long, eligibility for grants and affordable loans has depended heavily on GDP or gross national income per capita. Income matters, but it cannot tell the whole story. It reveals little about a country’s exposure to shocks or its capacity to recover. A small state must maintain ports, airports, hospitals, schools, power systems, water supplies and coastal defences with a limited population and tax base. It may depend on one or two sectors, such as tourism or fisheries. When global prices rise or supply chains fail, the consequences can be felt across the entire nation at once.

This is not an argument against sound national management. It is an argument for recognising realities that good management alone cannot remove. Countries may graduate from an income category; they do not graduate from geography, climate exposure or limited economic scale.

Nor is this a Seychelles concern alone. From the Caribbean to the Pacific and across the Indian Ocean, island countries have long pressed for international finance to reflect vulnerability rather than income alone. Barbados has advocated measures that better capture vulnerability and resilience, while the Alliance of Small Island States has argued that the financial system must recognise the distinctive circumstances of its members. There is a shared understanding here: a prosperous-looking average can hide a profoundly fragile foundation.

The MVI offers a way to make that foundation visible. It is intended to complement, not replace, income measures by assessing structural vulnerability and resilience across economic, environmental and social dimensions. It asks decision-makers to look beyond a single number towards the pressures an island country faces: remoteness, economic concentration, disaster risk, climate exposure and the limited room to absorb shocks.

In August 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 78/322 on the MVI, an important recognition that national income alone is an inadequate guide. But adoption is only the beginning. An index will not protect a coastline, keep a hospital open or help a family recover after a storm unless it changes financing decisions. Will lenders and development partners use it to widen access to concessional finance? Will it help countries obtain adaptation funds before disaster strikes? Will it inform debt arrangements that leave governments room to protect essential services after a crisis?

That is the true test of the international community’s commitment. A fairer system would provide more grants and affordable long-term finance for resilience. It would include clauses that pause debt repayments after major disasters. It would treat coastal protection, water security, renewable energy and the restoration of reefs and mangroves as essential investments, not discretionary extras to be considered only when funds remain.
We know the price of waiting. When a storm destroys infrastructure, a country may have to borrow to rebuild what it could not afford to protect. Debt then limits future investment, leaving it more exposed to the next shock. Financing resilience in advance can break that cycle. It protects lives, public finances and development gains. This is not charity; it is sound economics.

The question also reaches beyond island states. Across the developing world, countries facing climate shocks, volatile markets and heavy debt are too often assessed through indicators that overlook their lived circumstances. When scarce public money goes towards expensive borrowing instead of health, education or adaptation, the poorest communities bear the greatest cost. A financial system that responds only after calamity is neither efficient nor just.

Seychelles has voiced this concern since 2009, and President Herminie’s appeal shows why it remains urgent. The MVI gives the world an opportunity to turn recognition into action. Those who govern international lending must now decide whether vulnerability will matter when resources are allocated, not merely when speeches are delivered.

An island is more than an income figure. It is a society, a culture, an ecosystem and a future, living close to risks often created far beyond its shores. To measure that reality correctly is the beginning of fairness. To finance it fairly must follow.

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

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

A stronger future for coffee starts by strengthening the places and communities where that journey begins. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Boubaker Ben Belhassen
ROME, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

Imagine your morning coffee. You smell the aroma as steam rises from the cup. It wisps and swirls, thins, then disappears. You lift the cup to your mouth. The first pure joy of the day.

That coffee may have begun beneath shade trees in Ethiopia, on a Colombian hillside, in Viet Nam’s highlands or among the coffee farms of Brazil. Long before it reached your cup, someone planted and tended the trees from which it came. Then came the harvest. Ripe cherries were picked with care, and the coffee began a journey that would carry it far from the place where it was grown.

Building a stronger future for coffee therefore begins where coffee itself begins: with productive and resilient farms, open and transparent markets, and greater economic opportunity in producing countries

Few agricultural products connect people across such long distances. Coffee is among the world’s most widely traded commodities. Coffee supports the livelihoods of up to 25 million farmers worldwide, while millions more people participate in the economic activity created along the coffee value chain.

Coffee’s extraordinary global reach has created livelihoods and economic opportunities across continents. It has also connected millions of small producers to a market in which shocks can propagate quickly. Building a stronger future for coffee therefore begins where coffee itself begins: with productive and resilient farms, open and transparent markets, and greater economic opportunity in producing countries.

International Coffee Day is a moment to celebrate what coffee has made possible. It is also a moment to ask what its future will require.

Recent years have shown why. International coffee prices have experienced large fluctuations as weather has affected production in major producing countries and supplies have tightened. Droughts, frosts and excessive rainfall can disrupt harvests, while pests, diseases, rising costs, geopolitical tensions and shipping delays can add further pressure.

That exposure is amplified by the concentration of production in relatively few places. Brazil and Viet Nam together account for nearly half of global coffee production, while five countries supply around 70 percent of global coffee bean exports. With such concentration, a shock in one major producing region can quickly reverberate far beyond it.

Those shocks are transmitted unevenly through coffee value chains, with producers generally more directly exposed to fluctuations in international prices. The answer is not to prevent prices from moving. Markets respond to changes in supply and demand, and prices will inevitably rise and fall. Greater resilience therefore depends on strengthening the capacity of producers and producing countries to adapt and respond when conditions change.

The first priority is production itself. Coffee farming must remain productive and competitive while adapting to changing conditions. More resilient farming systems, innovation and technology, effective management of pests and diseases, and better tools for managing risk can help stabilize production and incomes and boost investment in the future of the crop.

Transparent markets and timely information are essential. Better and timely information on crop conditions, stocks, trade flows and prices reduce uncertainty and help producers, governments and businesses understand changing market conditions and adjust sooner. At a time when disruption in one major producing region can affect markets around the world, international cooperation and greater transparency become even more important.

Stronger production and better markets provide the foundation. But there is also an opportunity to create more economic value from the coffee that producing countries already grow.

The bean’s economic journey is far from finished when it is harvested. Coffee is processed and transported, then may be roasted, packaged, branded, distributed and eventually sold to consumers. Each stage requires investment, expertise and enterprise, while creating opportunities to generate additional economic value.

Much of the coffee produced in low- and middle-income countries is exported in raw form as green beans for processing and distribution elsewhere. Coffee therefore often enters international trade relatively early in its economic journey, leaving opportunities for producing countries to develop more economic activity around the later stages of the value chain.

Where commercially viable, improvements in quality can help producers reach different and potentially higher-value markets. Processing can create additional economic activity, while certification and branding can provide further scope for upgrading within coffee value chains. The opportunities will vary across countries, and investments should focus on areas in which producers and businesses can compete successfully.

Greater resilience in coffee production and greater economic opportunity around what happens after it is produced are complementary ambitions. Productivity, innovation and risk management can strengthen the productive foundation of the sector. Transparent markets can help participants respond to changing conditions. And commercially viable upgrading can broaden the economic opportunities created around the crop.

Realising these opportunities requires cooperation across the coffee value chain. Producers, traders, processors, roasters, retailers and governments perform different roles in moving coffee from the tree to the consumer. International cooperation, market transparency, innovation and investment can strengthen those connections and support a coffee sector that is more productive, competitive, resilient and sustainable.

Coffee already demonstrates what international trade can achieve. A crop grown by millions of farmers, predominantly in low- and middle-income countries, reaches consumers across the world and sustains economic activity throughout its journey. The next opportunity not to miss is to strengthen this connection while creating more economic possibilities in the places where coffee is grown.

Tomorrow morning, the journey begins again. Steam will rise from your cup. Somewhere far away, coffee trees will be tended and another harvest prepared.

The journey from crop to cup already connects millions of people around the globe. A stronger future for coffee starts by strengthening the places and communities where that journey begins.

Boubaker Ben-Belhassen is Director of the Markets and Trade Division at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Excerpt:

Stronger farms and better markets can build a more resilient coffee economy

Khalilur Rahman (second from right), President of the eighty-first session of the United Nations General Assembly, chairs the High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Shreya Komar
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

The United Nations High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (PPPR) on September 25 called for faster and more sustained investment in pandemic preparedness. Speakers emphasized that future outbreaks will require coordinated action across governments, health systems, and communities.

The meeting, held three years after the General Assembly’s first high-level meeting on pandemic preparedness, focused on lessons from COVID-19 and persistent gaps in global health security.

“No country can protect itself alone,” UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said, underscoring the need to turn the lessons of COVID-19 into long-term preparedness.

Opening the meeting, Dr. Khalilur Rahman, President of the General Assembly, highlighted three priorities: closing financing gaps, adopting a stronger “One Health” approach, and ensuring equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other essential medical tools.

“All countries need and deserve well-funded community-based systems for detection, surveillance, communication and containment,” Rahman said, calling for predictable and sustainable financing. He also stressed that pandemic preparedness must address the links between human, animal and environmental health, arguing that stronger understanding of these interactions could help prevent outbreaks from reaching human populations. Equitable access to life-saving tools, he said, is both a matter of justice and a critical component of containing outbreaks.

In a press briefing held on the same day, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that global investment in health security has declined since the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, reviving what he described as a cycle of “panic and neglect.”

Although countries and international institutions have established new mechanisms for pandemic preparedness, Tedros said the scale and speed of investment remain insufficient.

The WHO has launched and supported a range of initiatives since the pandemic, including the Pandemic Fund, strengthened pandemic and epidemic intelligence, vaccine and medical countermeasure initiatives, the mRNA Technology Transfer Programme, the WHO BioHub System and the Global Health Emergency Corps.

Countries have also strengthened the international framework governing pandemic response. In 2024, WHO member states adopted amendments to the International Health Regulations, while the WHO Pandemic Agreement was adopted the following year.

However, recent outbreaks, including Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have underscored the continuing risk of infectious diseases crossing borders and becoming international threats. Tedros said the possibility of a future respiratory pandemic remains particularly concerning because of the potential scale of its impact.

A key issue still under negotiation is the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) system, which is intended to establish arrangements for sharing pathogen materials and information while ensuring that countries providing those resources benefit from vaccines, diagnostics and other products developed from them.

Tedros urged countries to conclude the negotiations. “So today, I leave you with just one request: get PABS done as soon as possible. Please conclude the negotiations as soon as possible,” he said. “We are as strong as our weakest link.”

He also emphasized the importance of investing in countries more vulnerable to pandemics, not as an act of charity, but rather as collective action against the common goal of pandemic prevention. Sustained financing and stronger international cooperation will be central to preventing future outbreaks from becoming global emergencies.

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

 

 

 

 

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Excerpt:

While the 10th Copernicus Ocean State Report documents the ocean's transformation with increased heat, rising sea levels and its acidity – Zanibar's seaweed farmers feel its impact with every crop.

Media personnel watch a digital screen showing leaders of member states gather for a family photograph during the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 13 September 2026. Credit: Arun Sankar/AFP

By Samuel King and Inés M. Pousadela
BRUSSELS, Belgium / MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

At the 18th BRICS Summit, held on 12 and 13 September in New Delhi, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought together presidents Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, along with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed, representing the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Around the table sat longstanding rivals such as India and China and, in the case of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, states on opposite sides of an ongoing war. That the summit produced a joint declaration every member could sign was a modest multilateralist success.

The summit took place against a fast-changing backdrop. With the USA under Donald Trump an unreliable partner and often a hostile power bent on bullying others into submission, numerous states are seeking new alliances as a counterweight. BRICS, whose 11 members account for 49 per cent of the world’s population and 28 per cent of the global economy, could become a more significant forum as a result. But what is on offer is a profoundly old-fashioned, state-centric form of multilateralism, in which the people in whose name states claim to act have little say.

A hollow declaration

At the summit, Xi called for international rules to be ‘written by all countries’, even though he leads a one-party state where increasingly only he writes the rules. Putin urges greater representation for Africa, Asia and Latin America at the UN Security Council, while routinely wielding his veto to stop the council acting on his war in Ukraine.

The New Delhi Declaration’s silences speak loudest. It is explicit on Palestine, calling on Israel to end its war on Gaza and backing a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. But on the war in Iran, it only urges ‘maximum restraint’ without naming the warring parties, reflecting the fact that Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE sat around the same table. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not mentioned at all, a regression from past declarations and a troubling sign that Putin has no interest in ending the fighting. The text condemns ‘indiscriminate rising tariffs’ and ‘unilateral sanctions’ without naming the USA, sparing the blushes of members such as India, which is reportedly finalising a trade deal with Washington. The declaration preserves consensus at the expense of resolve.

Closed civic space, open defiance

Most BRICS governments have no fear of being held domestically accountable for the compromises they have made. Civic space is closed in seven of BRICS’ 11 states and obstructed or repressed in the rest. Russia jails and exiles opposition voices and has made protest almost impossible. China subjects its people to mass surveillance and crushes any expression that departs from ruling-party lines. Iran violently suppresses protest movements, including through the death penalty. Saudi Arabia and the UAE recognise no legitimate role for independent civil society. Host and self-styled mediator India has seen Modi’s government erode press freedom, restrict civil society funding and stoke hostility towards religious minorities.

Domestic repression translates directly into a closed international forum. After 18 summits, BRICS still has no treaty, no published membership criteria, no permanent secretariat, no budget and no mechanism for civil society to hold its members to account. This is no accident. It leaves powerful leaders free to pursue their interests, and it means civil society has less influence in BRICS than in comparable blocs such as the G20, and much less than in UN processes.

Civil society mobilised regardless. Three weeks before the summit, over 200 delegates from farmers’ organisations, people’s movements, trade unions, women’s organisations and other civil society groups gathered in New Delhi for the People’s BRICS Summit. Its resolution denounced BRICS states for reproducing extractivist, inequitable development models, and insisted that cooperation between global south states be judged by the dignity and rights it delivers to people and communities, not by the freedom it grants states and capital. It called for debt restructuring, a publicly accountable energy transition, food sovereignty, universal social security, women’s political representation and an end to the persecution of civil society activists, and for BRICS to take a clear stand against military intervention, occupation and genocide. BRICS governments chose not to listen.

Ambition without accountability

BRICS’ biggest ambition, on display in the New Delhi Declaration, is to reshape international finance. Development of payment systems independent of the US dollar would chip away at the USA’s unique ability to sustain its power by printing more dollars, despite mountainous debt, to meet unceasing demand. But it would also let repressive states such as Iran and Russia sell oil and gas more easily, funding their repression while blunting international sanctions.

This ambition comes with no commitment to accountability. The bloc has no channel through which the people most affected by its decisions can make their voices heard, and no human rights conditions are attached to its initiatives.

None of the emerging responses to the rapidly changing international order promises to be more democratic than the current system. So far, neither BRICS nor any of the other alternatives now taking shape has matched its growing ambition with greater accountability.

Samuel King is a researcher at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, working on ENSURED: Shaping Cooperation for a World in Transition, a Horizon Europe-funded project. Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Research and Analysis, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report. She is also Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

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

 

 

 

 

Member of Smallholder Farmer Alliance in Haiti with tree she is about to plant. Credit: A.F. Cortes/SFA

By Hugh Locke
NEW YORK, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

Years ago, standing in a small farmer’s field in Haiti, I began to suspect that we had agriculture backward. The development world saw a man in need of rescue. I saw a farmer who might help rescue the rest of us.

That distinction matters. Over the next 25 years, humanity will need to grow much more food on a planet with degraded soils, shrinking biodiversity and a destabilizing climate. The usual instinct is to seek a technical fix. I want to suggest another source of help: a moral idea rooted in religion.

I am not a theologian. I am a development worker. In 2010, Haitian agronomist Timote Georges and I co-founded the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. We now work with about 10,000 farmers throughout Haiti who grow more food while rebuilding degraded land. Our “tree currency” rewards them for planting and caring for trees with credits they can exchange for seeds, tools and training.

Hugh Locke

Development programs often define smallholder farmers by what they lack: financing, equipment, training and market access. Yet the farmer in that Haitian field had land, labor, family, community and intimate knowledge of one patch of earth. The Baha’i Faith offers a useful principle: people should be regarded as protagonists in their own development, not merely recipients of assistance.

Roughly 475 million smallholder farms, each under five acres, already produce about 30% of the world’s food despite limited access to finance, markets or technical support. In my new book, Whole Earth Farming, I argue that if even half of these families received support to adopt regenerative methods, they could produce the additional food humanity will need through 2050 on 12% of the world’s arable land, with a climate benefit comparable to offsetting the aviation industry’s annual emissions.

The Green Revolution averted famine, but its gains often came with degraded soils, diminished biodiversity and polluted water. Regenerative farming aims not merely to limit damage but to restore soil, rebuild biodiversity, improve farmers’ wellbeing and deliver a net climate benefit.

That is the language investors expect. Yet a case study more than a century old anticipated this approach, and its foundation was not market logic but morality.

From 1901 to 1921, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, one of the central figures of the Baha’i Faith, directed a farming settlement called ‘Adasiyyih in the Jordan Valley. Long before the term “regenerative agriculture” existed, the community used crop rotation, agroforestry, water conservation and integrated livestock management to make the land productive without exhausting it. Just as important was the framework behind those techniques: the belief that the earth is one country and humanity one interdependent family, expressed through consultation, equality and a rejection of extraction for its own sake. Farming at ‘Adasiyyih was not simply commodity production. It was a way to build community.

Regenerative agriculture does not require religious belief. Many successful regenerative farmers are secular, and the science stands on its own. But ‘Adasiyyih addressed, on a limited scale, a coordination problem that still hinders the movement: how can independent farmers, financiers, governments and companies be persuaded to treat soil health, water and biodiversity as a shared obligation?

‘Adasiyyih began with a moral premise rather than a technical formula. That premise is worth borrowing, whether one calls it stewardship or enlightened self-interest. Farmers, buyers and governments must act as though what happens to one plot of land is everyone’s concern, because increasingly it is. For generations we have asked how much the earth can give us. We should also ask what we owe in return.

Regenerative agriculture is at a fragile moment. By my estimate, some 15 million farms and ranches worldwide now use regenerative practices, and some 25 million acres, mostly in the United States, are certified under third-party standards, though almost none of that land is farmed by smallholders. The movement is growing faster than the systems meant to support it. Farmers can face lower yields and higher costs during the transition, there is no consensus on how to measure results, and financing, training and market rewards lag well behind farmers’ interest. A shared obligation is what can turn these isolated successes into lasting change.

This is not a case for religious agricultural policy, which would be unworkable in a pluralistic world. Smallholders are not waiting for a new theology. They need capital, training and markets. But the case for providing that support may rest more persuasively on the old idea of shared stewardship than on another spreadsheet of carbon calculations.

The next great agricultural transformation may begin not on the world’s largest farms but on hundreds of millions of its smallest. Given the means, smallholders may help determine whether the next 25 years of food production heal the planet or finish degrading it.

Hugh Locke is president of the Impact Farming Foundation and author of Whole Earth Farming: Smallholders and the Great Regenerative Transformation (George Ronald Publisher, 2026).

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Credit: United Nations

By Shihana Mohamed
NEW YORK, Sep 29 2026 (IPS)

“Artificial intelligence (AI) must be shaped by humanity, with humanity, and for all humanity… Life-and-death decisions must never be surrendered to machines. Killer robots must have no place in our future.”

With those words, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres opened the high-level debate of the 81st session of the General Assembly (UNGA 81). He also warned: “Women and girls continue to face discrimination, violence, exclusion and abuse… Their rights are being rolled back. Their voices silenced. Their bodies turned into battlegrounds.”

Both technological transformation and the erosion of women’s rights were placed before the world, yet the political response to each was markedly different.

Opening speeches focused heavily on technology. French President Emmanuel Macron warned that a few powers could decide the planet’s future through AI and urged states to build independent, open-source models; UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham called for global cooperation on transparency and ethics; China’s Vice President Han Zheng stressed a people-centered approach to narrowing the digital divide; and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for the UN to lead AI rule-setting through equal participation.

U.S. President Donald Trump focused on U.S. technological leadership. He declared that the United States was outcompeting the world and called for a change in terminology: “From this point forward, all U.S. documents—and hopefully the world—will use the more accurate term super rather than artificial. So, it’s super intelligence.”

Shihana Mohamed

Disparity is also reflected in the numbers. By Saturday, September 26, 2026, 86 of the 174 speakers had raised technology and AI, compared with 46 who raised human rights and gender.

The question is unavoidable: why has the international system shown such urgency in governing emerging technologies while allowing the erosion of women’s rights to remain a secondary concern?

Twin Transformations
The 81st session convened under the theme, “Restoring trust, managing transformation: a United Nations that delivers for all.” That theme highlights two defining transformations: the rapid expansion of generative AI and the growing political backlash against the rights of women and girls.

The United Nations treats both as critical to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, yet world leaders are not giving them equal political weight. AI is being elevated as an urgent global governance challenge, while gender equality is increasingly treated as a goal that can wait.

That is a dangerous disconnect.

AI is already reshaping economies, labour markets and public life. It will influence who gets opportunities, whose work is automated, and whose voices are represented in the systems that increasingly influence daily life.

Declining Gender Momentum
AI has ascended to the top tier of global political concerns. Leaders are focused on governance, innovation, digital sovereignty, security, and technological competition.

Meanwhile, the momentum on gender equality is moving in the opposite direction. UN Women and UN DESA report that one in three institutional mechanisms for gender equality has lost institutional power over the past two years. Around one in four have seen their operating budgets cut, while nearly one in ten have lost control of their budgets altogether.

Globally, progress on women’s political and executive participation is reversing. At the current rate of progress, the report projects that global gender equality could be achieved only by 2197, far beyond the UN’s 2030 target.

There is a basic leadership question that Member States have yet to answer: Why has no woman ever been selected as Secretary-General of the United Nations?

The problem is not a shortage of promises but the widening gap between rhetoric and political action.

The Funding Disparity
The resource gap makes that contrast tangible.

Global venture-capital investment in AI firms reached $258.7 billion in 2025, accounting for 61% of total global VC investment, according to the OECD. Philanthropic investment is also growing, including the Gates Foundation’s September 2026 commitment to spend at least $1 billion over two years on equitable access to AI and AI-enabled solutions.

Funding for women’s rights is contracting.

Funding for gender equality fell 13% between 2023 and 2024, while funding for women’s rights organizations declined by 28% over the same period.

This is not merely a funding problem; it reflects what the international community considers urgent.

The world is mobilizing enormous capital to build the technologies that will define the future while reducing resources for the organizations working to ensure that women have an equal place in it.

Women Left Behind in the AI Economy
The gender gap is already visible inside the AI economy.

UN Women’s 2026 Gender Snapshot reports that women account for around 22% of AI professionals globally and fewer than 14% of senior leadership positions, based on an analysis of nearly 1.6 million AI professionals.

Women are around 20% less likely than men to use generative AI tools. The result is a persistent gap in both the development and adoption of AI—and a fundamental question about whose perspectives are shaping the future of work.

The International Labour Organization finds that female-dominated occupations are almost twice as likely to be exposed to generative AI as male-dominated occupations—29% compared with 16%. Women’s concentration in clerical, administrative, and business-support roles, where many tasks are routine and codifiable, contributes significantly to this disparity.

AI is intensifying digital violence against women in public life. UN Women reports increasing use of AI-generated deepfakes, manipulated images and coordinated online harassment against women in public-facing roles. Such abuse can intimidate women and undermine their participation in public life.

UN Women estimates that 90–95% of online deepfakes are non-consensual pornographic images, with around 90% depicting women.

This is where the two crises converge. The same technology being celebrated as transformative is also being used to threaten women’s economic security, public participation, and personal safety.

Immediate Mandates for AI and Gender Equality
More than three decades after the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action set a global framework for gender equality, the world remains far from its commitments.

The General Assembly must move beyond another cycle of declarations and voluntary targets and act where technology, funding and gender rights now intersect.

• Enforce Financial Reciprocity via a Global Tech Solidarity Fund: The General Assembly should establish a mechanism requiring a fixed share of global digital-transformation investment to support grassroots women’s organizations, and strengthen their technical capacity, infrastructure and advocacy.

• Establish an International Enforcement Mechanism with the Urgency Applied to AI: The UN should address the erosion of women’s rights with the same urgency applied to emerging technological threats. The General Assembly should establish a global monitoring mechanism empowered to impose diplomatic and financial consequences on states that roll back women’s legal protections.

• Criminalize Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Mandate Safety-by-Design: The General Assembly should advance a binding international treaty classifying AI-generated deepfakes weaponized against women in public life as violations of international human rights law. Technology companies should be required to address algorithmic bias and security failures that endanger women’s participation in public life.

If world leaders truly intend to “manage transformation” and “restore trust,” they cannot continue treating women’s empowerment as a secondary issue.

The willingness to govern the digital frontier must extend to protecting the women who live and work within it.

Otherwise, the “super intelligence” that leaders celebrate will not simply become an engine of economic growth. It could also become a powerful tool for reinforcing the structural exclusion of half the human race.

Shihana Mohamed is the President of Asia Global Forum (www.AsiaGlobalForum.org) and a US Public Voices Fellow on advancing the rights of women and girls. She is the founder of the UN Asia Network for Diversity & Inclusion (www.UN-ANDI.org) and a dedicated human rights activist and a strong advocate for gender equality and the advancement of women.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Mohamed Abakar, Head of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition at the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) during the convening in Yaounde. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
YAOUNDE, Cameroon, Sep 29 2026 (IPS)

Agricultural, land, forestry, environmental and trade policies in the Congo Basin remain compartmentalised at country levels, leaving proven agroecological models trapped at pilot stages due to a lack of advisory services, organic inputs, market outlets and sustainable financing.

In a declaration made following the Second Congo Basin Convening on Agroecology held in Yaounde, Cameroon, in August 2026, experts and activists, as well as government representatives, observed that the Congo Basin does not end at the borders of its six countries.

“The trade corridors, timber and charcoal markets, mining, energy and infrastructure investment, transhumance and pastoral movement, displacement and refugee flows, and shared river systems mean that the decisions of neighbouring states and regional bodies can protect the basin or degrade it, and that coherence between them is a condition of success,” reads part of the Yaounde Declaration 2026.

“In several countries as well, agricultural, land, trade, environmental, and fiscal policies are not sufficiently aligned,” noted Mohamed Abakar, Head of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition at the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS).

“Some policies for example, continue to favour use and sometimes offer subsidies on conventional inputs without offering comparable support for bio-fertilisers, bio-pesticides, indigenous seeds, or ecosystem services,” he observed.

He called on countries within the basin to adopt a regional framework for agroecology and organic farming and integrate it into the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Regional Agricultural Investment Plan (RAIP).

“Our ambition is not merely to change the way we produce; it is to build sustainable agrifood systems in the Central Africa region, capable of sustainably feeding populations, boosting rural incomes, creating decent jobs, and preserving the Congo Basin,” said Abakar.

The region, in particular the Congo Basin, hosts the largest continuous tract of forest in Africa that regulates the global climate. But according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), industrial agriculture in different states has been cited as one of major threats to these forests, apart from extractive industries and infrastructure development.

According to the recent World Bank report titled the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem Accounts report and Policy Recommendations, forests in the region store over 90.9 billion tonnes of carbon, ten times the annual global carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector, making the basin one of the planet’s most critical natural carbon sinks.

Yet, the entire ecosystem is under direct threat. Forest loss nearly doubled between 2010 and 2020 compared to the previous decade, driven by shifting agriculture, infrastructure, and mounting land pressures.

During the convening in Yaounde, the delegates affirmed that adopting ecological farming models can sustain farmer incomes, protect biodiversity, and lead to food sovereignty while conserving the forests and the entire ecosystem.

Through the Yaounde Declaration, the delegates called upon Member States and the African Union Commission to write ‘agroecology’ by name in the domestication of CAADP so that National and Regional Agriculture and Food Systems Investment Plans carry explicit agroecology objectives, indicators and budget lines, with at least 30 per cent of allocations across the sectors that shape food systems dedicated to agroecology.

The Kampala Declaration of the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) speaks to achieving sustainable agrifood systems transformation but fails to explicitly recognise agroecology.

“We urge technical and funding partners, including the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, Central African Forest Initiative, the Blue Fund for the Congo Basin and the African Development Bank, to open simplified direct-access windows so that at least 20 per cent of climate, biodiversity and conservation finance flowing into the basin reaches farmer organisations, women, youth, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and to fund multi-year core support rather than short projects,” said Dr Million Belay, General Coordinator at the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).

“We are also asking Regional Economic Communities to adopt a regional agroecology framework within the Common Agricultural Policy of Central Africa and the COMIFAC Convergence Plan, and to establish a standing channel with the EAC, SADC and COMESA on the trans-boundary drivers of deforestation, including timber and charcoal trade, mining and infrastructure corridors, transhumance and displacement,” he said.

Abakar told IPS that ECCAS is progressively integrating agroecology into a broader vision for the sustainable, resilient, and competitive transformation of agrifood systems, both across Central Africa in general and within the Congo Basin in particular.

“This approach is grounded, first and foremost, in the revised ECCAS Treaty,” he said. “Article 63 of the revised Treaty commits member states to harmonising their agricultural policies, improving food production in terms of both quantity and quality, sharing research findings, developing joint training programs, and enhancing the ability of rural populations to master the technical and economic environment.”

At country levels, Ghada Kames Kill, a a Member of Parliament from South Sudan, told IPS that the country is in the process of enacting a law that will safeguard indigenous seeds, among other agroecological practices.

“Most of the seeds grown in South Sudan are imported, and in many times the quality is compromised.

With the right policies, our communities should be able to produce their own seeds that are adopted to their environment,” she said. In Cameroon, Law No. 2025/013, promulgated by President Paul Biya on December 17, 2025, establishes a national legal framework to regulate, promote, and develop sustainable agriculture that respects the environment, human health, and biodiversity.

The Central African Republic has developed the National Multi-Stakeholder Food Systems Platform that promotes local production of biofertilisers and soil restoration models, while the Democratic Republic of Congo has a dedicated agroecology service and national strategy.

For the Congo Basin, the solution lies in harmonised regional policies rather than in isolated, short-lived national projects.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

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)

On September 23, the United Nations held its 2026 Climate Summit as part of the High-Level Week of the 81st session of the General Assembly (UNGA 81). Convening civil society actors, climate scientists, major energy producers and consumers, development experts, and world leaders, the summit addressed critical strategies to mitigate the compounding impacts of the climate crisis and accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“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 season.

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

 

 

 

 

Smaller generations are entering the workforce as larger generations retire and begin receiving pension benefits. Credit: Shutterstock

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Sep 28 2026 (IPS)

Dozens of government-funded pension programs providing benefits to hundreds of millions of men and women face growing fiscal strain and long-term sustainability challenges. These pressures are largely driven by rapid demographic transitions, including ageing populations, declining fertility, rising life expectancy, and shrinking workforces.

Many state pension systems rely on current workers to finance benefits for current retirees. In countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United States, these systems face increasing financial pressure as the number of workers supporting each retiree declines, while retirees live longer and collect benefits for more years.

Smaller generations are entering the workforce as larger generations retire and begin receiving pension benefits. This demographic shift is placing growing pressure on pension systems and raising concerns about their ability to meet future obligations.

As a result of these significant demographic changes, relatively fewer workers are paying into pension systems to support growing numbers of retirees who are living longer and collecting benefits for more years.

At the same time, extended families, local communities, and other traditional forms of support for retirees are weakening. Moreover, formal pension systems, including government-backed programs, have proven to be difficult to reform and, in some cases, financially unsustainable. In a growing number of countries, government pension programs are also facing insolvency.

Global life expectancy at age 65, for example, has reached 18 years, a 50% increase from 12 years in 1960. At the same time, the share of the world’s population aged 65 and older has more than doubled, from 5% in 1960 to 11% today. Global fertility has also fallen sharply, from 4.7 births per woman in 1960 to 2.2 today. Moreover, these demographic trends are expected to continue well into the 21st century (Table 1).

Source: United Nations.

Population ageing is particularly evident in some more developed countries. For example, a quarter or more of the populations of Germany, Italy, and Japan are aged 65 and older.

Moreover, the proportion of older persons is expected to increase significantly in many countries in the coming decades. By mid-century, for example, about a third or more of the populations of China, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Spain are projected to be aged 65 and older (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations.

As a result of significant demographic changes in age structure, longevity, fertility, and the workforce, the number of pension beneficiaries is growing relative to the number of workers whose payroll taxes often finance these programs.

By 2050, the ratios of workers to retirees are expected to decline significantly in many of the world’s largest economies. In 2020, these ratios ranged from about 2 workers per retiree in Japan to about 5 in China. By 2050, the ratios are projected to fall to between 1 to 2 workers per retiree in these countries.

Furthermore, despite population ageing, increased longevity among older persons, and fewer workers per retiree, official retirement ages for receiving government pension benefits have remained largely unchanged.

Countries are moving closer to the point when their pension programs may be unable to pay full scheduled benefits. Unless governments take action, pension revenues will become insufficient in many countries to cover scheduled benefits, with financial shortfalls expected to grow substantially over the coming years

Consequently, pension costs are projected to rise as more workers reach retirement age, while slower population and economic growth constrain the tax bases that support many of the pension programs.

As the ratio of workers to retirees worsens, government officials face difficult choices about raising retirement ages, adjusting benefits, and increasing taxes.

Countries are moving closer to the point when their pension programs may be unable to pay full scheduled benefits. Unless governments take action, pension revenues will become insufficient in many countries to cover scheduled benefits, with financial shortfalls expected to grow substantially over the coming years.

The longer governments delay necessary reforms, the larger the adjustments are likely to be to close these financing gaps. Such adjustments could involve changes to revenue, benefits, retirement ages, or other program provisions.

Despite repeated warnings from pension officials and approaching financial shortfalls, pension reform has received relatively little government attention. Policymakers have generally avoided proposing comprehensive legislation to ensure the long-term financial solvency of their pension programs.

The growing pension peril underscores the urgency of addressing these financial challenges well before programs reach their projected insolvency dates. Acting sooner would give policymakers more time to make gradual changes and restore long-term financial balance.

As some countries have done in the past, governments could establish national commissions to examine the long-term finances of their pension programs. These commissions could develop recommendations and present them to government officials well before projected insolvency dates, giving policymakers adequate time to consider and implement reforms.

Governments have several options for addressing expected pension shortfalls. Policymakers could eliminate or raise the ceiling on earnings subject to payroll taxes, increase payroll tax rates paid by employers and employees, reduce cost-of-living adjustments for high-income beneficiaries, and gradually raise the retirement age as life expectancy increases.

Many of these measures, however, are politically difficult and unpopular with much of the public. Some countries, for example, are considering raising their official retirement ages, but such proposals are opposed by large proportions of the public.

Opinion surveys also indicate a preference for lower retirement ages. For example, respondents in 18 mostly middle-income countries say, on average, that the best age to retire is around 58 (Figure 2).

Source: Pew Research Center.

In sum, many national pension systems are in peril. Significant demographic changes – especially population ageing, increased longevity, declining fertility, and shrinking workforces – are placing growing financial pressure on many government pension programs and threatening their long-term sustainability.

Despite these well-known challenges and the prospect of growing financial shortfalls, government leaders have shown limited willingness to make the difficult policy choices needed to address them. Unless policymakers act, many national pension programs could face serious funding gaps, potentially leading to significant reductions in scheduled benefits for retirees and other beneficiaries.

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

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

 

 

 

 

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Helen Clark, Chair of the Board of Partners for the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), moderates the event "Financing for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health in a Time of Austerity", hosted by the Global Leaders Network. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Shuli Wong
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2026 (IPS)

In the wake of the largest decline in global health financing on record, the Global Leaders Network (GLN) for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescent Health convened a high-level meeting on September 22 to sustain political momentum for women and children’s health financing. The event, Financing for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescent’s Health in a Time of Austerity, was co-hosted by the Governments of South Africa, Spain, and Tanzania, in addition to the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (PMMCH).

Throughout the meeting, GLN members repeatedly called for a financing reset for women’s, children’s, and adolescent health (WCAH), warning that reduced global assistance and rising debt could reverse decades of progress. In 2025, official development assistance (ODA) fell to USD 174.3 billion, a 23.1 percent drop from 2024 and the largest annual decline on record. Simultaneously, the external debt in low- and middle-income countries reached a record USD 8.9 trillion, with debt-servicing costs remaining at a historic high. The reduction in assistance, with the increase in debt, has limited governments’ abilities to invest in essential services, leading to consequences for WCAH.

In low- and middle-income countries, an estimated 260,000 women died in 2023 from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. In 2024, an estimated 4.9 million children died before their 5th birthday from deaths that are preventable with low-cost interventions and access to quality health care. Members of the GLN framed this challenge less as finding replacement funds for the declining aid, but instead, governments need to ensure that existing resources are allocated, protected, and used effectively to deliver improvements in WCAH.

“We know that issues of women, children, adolescent health and well-being can’t be solved by ministers of health alone. They need head of state support, they need minister of finance support, and there are always political choices to be made about what we protect when the resources are scarce,” said Helen Clark, chair of the board of the PMNCH and moderator of the meeting.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Chebreyesus, WHO Director-General, also called for the protection of health budget lines for WCAH, in particular the protection of sexual and reproductive health in humanitarian settings, and stronger accountability and reporting of results. “A policy without a budget is a press release. A commitment without financing is a promise already broken,” he said.

During Tuesday’s meeting, representatives continued to stress the point of investing in primary health care. In particular, the importance of midwives, community health workers, vaccines, medications, nutrition services, clinics, and referral systems that women, children, and adolescents depend upon. Helga Fogstad, Director of the UNICEF Health Programme, urged governments to protect these foundations when preparing the 2027 budgets. Fogstad urged the prioritization of “domestic resources for what has the greatest impact, ensuring essential medicines, vaccines, and nutrition supplies are available where they are needed and investing in enough trained, equipped, and paid healthcare workers to reach every community”.

Diene Keita, Executive Director of UNFPA, stressed the importance of investing in maternal care and family planning: “World leaders and financial experts agree, investing in women and girls delivers unbeatable returns.”

An audience member at the event “Financing for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health in a Time of Austerity”, hosted by the Global Leaders Network. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

Country examples presented during the session illustrated how investing in WCAH has been translated into policy. For example, under Nigeria’s Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative, Nigeria has moved away from fragmented donor-led programs towards greater country ownership, stronger alignment of resources and accountability for results. Nigeria has already committed nearly $3 billion in domestic health financing over five years in addition to USD 2 billion of US support. The result of this has been revitalizing more than 4,000 primary health centers, retraining 80,000 frontline health workers, a 34 percent increase in deliveries by skilled birth attendants, and a 22 percent reduction in maternal mortality among women delivered in the facilities.

A tension emerged during the session between greater national ownership for countries and the continuing need for international solidarity. Speakers across the board discussed the need for blended finance, pooled funding, and debt-for-health swaps, while institutions like the World Bank and Islamic Development Bank advocated for moving isolated projects into integrated national systems. Issa Faye, Director General for Global Practices and Partnerships at the Islamic Development Bank, stressed how the “challenge now is to help the countries move beyond the short-term responses”.

“We should go away from project by project to really act in a more massive way through the system. We need to talk about the system, not the project,” said Faye.

In closing, the GLN committed to stronger country-led financing, domestic resource mobilization, and appropriately designed financing mechanisms. In addition, donors were called upon to align assistance with countries’ national plans. The focus was that austerity cannot become health austerity; instead, political declarations and financing plans must protect frontline services and lead to a measurable reduction in preventable deaths.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

By CIVICUS
Sep 28 2026 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses the role of art in climate and rights struggles in the Brazilian Amazon with Tom Wheeler, executive director and co-founder of Treesistance. Treesistance is a platform operated by the Netherlands-based Sinchi Foundation that partners with Indigenous communities across four Brazilian states on cultural preservation and forest protection.

Tom Wheeler

Indigenous peoples steward a large share of the world’s forest biodiversity but receive only a small fraction of global conservation funding and are often excluded from climate and environmental decision-making spaces. Their traditions, oral histories and visual cultures are under pressure, including from land loss and the slow erosion of intergenerational knowledge.

How did art become the centre of a forest protection initiative?

Sinchi, the foundation behind Treesistance, was set up in 2016 as a cultural organisation. I believed we needed a societal or spiritual shift, so in our first years we ran festivals, film screenings, galleries, music events and debates, and built art and documentary projects with Indigenous communities across six continents.

At some point I went through a bit of a crisis, questioning what real impact this work was having. Then I met Vandria Borari, a brilliant Indigenous lawyer and celebrated ceramic artist from western Pará, a state in the Brazilian Amazon. She introduced me to the Tapajós and Arapiuns Indigenous Council, an association that represents 14 Indigenous groups in the Lower Tapajós region. In 2021, our focus shifted to the Amazon, and in 2023, together with our Indigenous partners, we co-created Treesistance as a platform built around four pillars: access to justice, communications, renewable energy and sustainable economic development.

The access to justice work is what we’re best known for. We support Forest Guardians, community-led groups that patrol and defend Indigenous territories against illegal logging and other threats, and we help build strong relationships between the territories and Brazil’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, which has a constitutional mandate to defend Indigenous rights.

That shift toward tangible, on-the-ground impact didn’t push art aside. If anything, it made clear how essential it was. Art isn’t a side product or a tool for us. It’s central to the community aspect of this work, to participation and authenticity, and to what the wider decolonial tradition is trying to achieve, of giving voice to communities and centring them in their own stories. Everything we do is co-created, but it’s led by our Indigenous partners. This carries multiple meanings for them, not least the pride of building something of their own from the ground up.

What’s the Tales of Resistance project?

Tales of Resistance is led on the ground by Vivi Borari, a talented young Indigenous woman. The idea was to build an archive, first and foremost for Indigenous communities’ use and records, telling the stories of the Majés and Pajés – plant healers, shamans and spiritual guides within these territories – from the inside out.

The project is about telling their origin stories, how they work within the community, what their roles and responsibilities are and the messages they carry from the spirits to the world. Once those stories exist on the communities’ terms, and with their consent, they can also travel further, which is why we’re now developing them into an exhibition. That kind of storytelling matters because one of the biggest challenges impact organisations face is talking only to people who already agree with them and failing to reach beyond that circle. Art and storytelling are how you break through.

We also took a deliberately different approach to how these stories are gathered. Turning up with a camera and asking people to explain their culture on the spot is a very western way of working. Just imagine how strange it would feel if someone did that to you. So we don’t do that. For us, everything starts as an audio recording while we are sitting together, having tea, walking in the forest, just talking about people’s experiences. Many of these stories would simply never be told in front of a camera. Only afterwards do we do a photo shoot, and that’s when we layer the audio and images together.

What films have you made, and what impact have they had?

Two years ago, we made a short film, Curupira, sharing the story of one of the forest’s spirits as told by one of the communities we work with. It was nominated for awards at film festivals around the world. It’s a tangible example of what storytelling can do for us. It brought in new interest, funders, partners and collaborators, people who wouldn’t otherwise have found their way to this work.

In 2026, we released another short film, Surara – Spirit of Resistance, directed by Lea Hejn, which won the Guardians in Action category at the Santiago Wild Film Festival in Chile. It includes footage from patrols led by Chief Dadá Borari, head of our Forest Guardian programme.

What changes when communities see themselves represented, and why do you call this resistance rather than activism?

The cultural scene, in the global south as much as the global north, is still working through questions of representation, making sure people see the diversity of their context reflected on screen. As Vivi has said, our biggest impact comes when Indigenous people see themselves and their reality reflected. This changes their self-perception. They no longer see themselves as victims but as people with agency, as fighters. That’s a qualitative impact that’s genuinely hard to put into a single sentence or measure in the way we measure hectares protected. But it’s real, and it’s the storytelling and narration that make it happen.

That’s also why we don’t use the word ‘activism’ much. It’s a strange word, a badge of honour to some people, something to avoid for others, and I think it’s fundamentally a western construct. There shouldn’t be anything activist about wanting to protect the health of the planet or stand up for human rights. That should be a key component of being a good person.

For our Indigenous partners, the stakes are different, though. For them, this work is intrinsic to survival, both literally, given the violence they face from illegal and aggressive forces, and culturally, in the sense of keeping traditions such as their graphic art and oral storytelling alive.

‘Resistência’ is the word I hear most often within Indigenous communities, whether people are talking about protecting their culture or land. It’s not a one-off response to a single government or form of exploitation, but something long-term and intergenerational, and like any form of resistance, the energy behind it runs low if it isn’t renewed. Art is one of the ways that energy gets renewed, generation after generation. That’s why we called the storytelling project Tales of Resistance and the wider platform Treesistance.

What other art initiatives do you run?

Storytelling extends into our product collaborations with local Indigenous artists, who create things such as clothing and notebooks. One example is Guardian of Nature, a T-shirt based on the Guardians’ uniform design. Buying one pays for a uniform for a Forest Guardian on the ground.

We’ve also launched a drink called Purpose, now going into restaurants in the Netherlands. A portion of the proceeds from every bottle sold supports our Forest Guardian projects. The brand itself is built around storytelling. It’s about people identifying their own sense of purpose in the world. So it’s art, but commercially driven, aimed at creating impact on the ground.

We held an open art and design competition for Indigenous artists from the 14 ethnic groups or nations of the Tapajós, focused on expressing their culture and relationship with nature. It brought the artists local and regional recognition through an event where the Indigenous Council, artists and other partners came together to celebrate the work.

How do you avoid the exploitative imagery typical of development fundraising?

Traditional development fundraising tends to rely on a particular kind of emotional imagery – a poor person, a hungry child, an old man in need – because that’s what drives donations from the kind of donor it targets. We deliberately avoid that.

There’s a well-known quote, often attributed to the Aboriginal Australian academic Lilla Watson, although she credits it to a collective of Aboriginal activists, that says, ‘If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together’.

None of the communities we work with are looking for charity. The role they play in protecting the Earth and their culture has real value in itself and, in my opinion, we need their wisdom more than they need us. We never describe ourselves as the communities’ funder. We’re a partner. When we help raise money, we’re clear that it was never ours to begin with. If it comes with requirements attached, the conversation is always about how we meet them together rather than about us imposing them. That’s the same principle whether we’re talking about a grant, a story or art. It has to build something the community owns, not something we extract.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 28 2026 (IPS)

The 1944 Bretton Woods (BW) conference accepted the US demand to use the dollar to settle international financial transactions. This arrangement would require a US balance-of-payments deficit to issue enough dollars.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

But every dollar abroad was, in principle, a claim on US monetary gold. With dollar liabilities exceeding US gold reserves by the 1960s, the arrangement became more vulnerable.

Bretton Woods
At BW in July 1944, 44 allied nations met to design the post-war world monetary system. John Maynard Keynes represented the UK, no longer financially dominant due to its heavy public debt fighting two world wars.

Harry Dexter White represented the US, which then held two-thirds of the world’s monetary gold, while other countries needed dollar loans for trade and reconstruction. The US promised foreign governments and central banks to convert dollars to gold.

With the US BW promise to redeem an ounce of gold for $35, the dollar became the world’s reserve asset. Every other currency’s exchange rate was fixed against the dollar, in principle, adjustable with IMF approval.

Instead, Keynes proposed a reserve currency, Bancor, managed by an international clearing union to avoid any national currency becoming dominant; a payments system using a national currency could eventually force others to accept its national policies and priorities.

Unsustainable by design
The BW agreement also created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Each member nation was assigned a quota, partly paid in gold and its own currency.

A member nation’s quota determined both its voting weight and how much it could borrow if it needed to borrow when its own currency came under pressure.

The dollar-gold peg was vulnerable by design. For the arrangement to function, the world needed a growing supply of dollars for reserves and international transactions.

In principle, the US had to have enough gold to honour all claims against it. This requirement was met in 1944, when its gold reserves were vast, while other economies were ruined. However, these conditions were not met for long.

As currency devaluations were stigmatised, currency pegs were rarely adjusted. Governments defended unrealistic exchange rates, unjustified by their reserves.

Instead of adjusting gradually, fixed exchange rates would adjust abruptly, typically after crises, as with sterling in 1967 and the dollar in 1971.

Keynes had insisted on allowing governments to manage cross-border capital movements, expecting free-flowing speculative capital to undermine fixed exchange rates.

For a decade and a half, most European governments used the IMF’s sixth Article of Agreement to restrict how freely money could leave their countries and thus defend their currency pegs.

As strong post-war recoveries turned Europe’s dollar shortages into surpluses, capital controls were gradually loosened from the 1960s.

London Gold Pool
The US Congress ignored Triffin’s warning. Instead, in late 1961, the US organised seven European central banks into the London Gold Pool, coordinated by the Bank of England rather than by treaty.

It worked for a while. Whenever private demand pushed the gold price over $35/ounce, participating banks sold their bullion to bring the price down, to buy gold!

From 1962, currency swap lines involving the same central banks withdrew dollars from circulation abroad to reduce demand for gold. Both efforts used a formula based on each country’s original contributions.

Rising US government spending made things worse. The Johnson administration financed both the Vietnam War and Great Society programmes without raising taxes. More dollars flowed out of the US, expanding the supply of Eurodollars.

In March 1967, without any parliamentary mandate or transparent treaty, West Germany’s Bundesbank President privately promised the Fed it would not convert its large dollar reserves from its fast-growing trade surplus into gold.

But France’s president had never accepted Washington’s abuse of the post-war arrangement. In February 1965, De Gaulle complained of the dollar’s exorbitant privilege.

This referred to the US ability to settle its liabilities abroad by issuing more dollars, instead of earning foreign exchange like others. In June 1967, France refused to continue subsidising the dollar peg by withdrawing from the Gold Pool.

Britain devalued the pound in November 1967. As speculative pressure on gold rose, other Pool central banks had to sell even more gold until they gave up on 17 March.

Two tiers
In the subsequent two-tier system, the $35 gold price was only used for transactions between central banks and governments. Another floating free-market price traded well above it.

US gold reserves, almost $20 billion shortly after WW2, were halved by 1971 as foreign governments’ and central banks’ dollar claims rose over $50 billion!

When member governments safely created official liquidity by introducing a new reserve asset, the Special Drawing Right (SDR), in 1969, the problem was highlighted again.

SDRs were allocated directly to member countries rather than tied to either gold or the US trade or current account deficit. The SDR was supposed to supplement, not replace, gold and the dollar as reserve assets.

By mid-1971, when President Nixon unilaterally ended the dollar’s gold convertibility obligation, the debate was no longer about whether the gold window could hold, but over how to close it without triggering a currency-market panic after years of speculation.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

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Oritro Karim, IPS UN Bureau Correspondent, speaks to Ranjeeta Silwal of Equality Now.

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

As Nepal moves from emergency response to recovery and reconstruction, Ranjeeta Silwal, Equality Now’s South Asia Regional Representative, who lives in Kathmandu, explains in an interview how decisions about shelter, healthcare, education, livelihoods and social protection must prioritise the specific needs of women and girls. She also calls for women and girls to have a central role in shaping recovery and climate adaptation, so rebuilding strengthens their rights and resilience rather than reinforcing existing gender inequalities.

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:

Oritro Karim, IPS UN Bureau Correspondent, speaks to Ranjeeta Silwal of Equality Now.

A Rohingya refugee carries Myanmar's national flag during a Genocide Remembrance Day rally marking the anniversary of their mass exodus at a refugee camp in Bangladesh on 25 August 2026. Credit: Abdul Goni/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

On 15 September, Norwegian police and security services raided the headquarters of Telenor in Oslo. Authorities accuse the multinational telecoms company, majority owned by the Norwegian state, of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in Myanmar and breaching sanctions.

Telenor sold its Myanmar subsidiary in March 2022, in the wake of the military coup that ousted the country’s democratically elected government in February 2021. An August 2025 Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation investigation reported that ahead of its exit, Telenor had complied with military requests to hand over customer data. It’s alleged that call log and location data may have helped the military track, capture and kill democracy activists, including campaigner Ko Jimmy, executed in July 2022.

Civil society warned of the dangers when Telenor prepared to sell its subsidiary to a joint venture between a Lebanese group and Thein Win Zaw, a Burmese entrepreneur accused of having close military ties. It has kept up the struggle for accountability. Justice for Myanmar, a covert activist group, worked with the International Commission of Jurists to collect documentary evidence on Telenor’s role and filed police complaints in December 2024 and October 2025.

Telenor is also subject to a lawsuit brought by a group of civil society organisations last October, alleging the company passed on data of over 1,200 people. In addition, the company has been found in breach of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct.

International complicity

The Telenor case focuses attention on the wider networks of companies and states that are propping up the regime and keeping Myanmar’s civil war going.

Following the coup, almost all states refused to recognise Myanmar’s military rulers and continued to regard the exiled National Unity Government as the country’s legitimate representative. But several authoritarian states have since swung behind the junta. Russia leads the pack, with Vladimir Putin hosting junta leader Min Aung Hlaing for repeat visits in Moscow. China, India, Singapore and Thailand have joined Russia in supplying weapons.

Many Chinese companies collaborate with the regime, among them Geedge Networks, a tech company with close links to the Chinese state that specialises in online surveillance. The company is helping the military install a version of China’s ‘great firewall’ so it can systematically restrict internet use, access users’ data and identify and track down dissenters.

The junta made a concerted effort to gain international legitimacy with a sham election in December 2025 and January 2026. It extensively prepared the ground by replacing the civilian electoral commission with a military-controlled body, banning pro-democracy parties and prohibiting political rallies, ensuring a military puppet party faced only token opposition. A new election law enabled it to criminalise over 300 people for criticising the election. Authorities jailed some merely for liking social media posts and handed 37-year sentences to eight activists for taking part in a protest calling for a boycott. There were also reports of threats to withhold aid from displacement camps unless people voted.

After the military’s party duly won, Min Aung Hlaing transitioned from general to civilian and became president in April. That same month, a group of civil society organisations filed a complaint against him in Indonesia over his role in the 2017 genocide of Rohingya people. Despite this legal action and the election’s evident lack of credibility, an array of non-democratic states including Belarus, China and Russia were happy to endorse the result.

While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) didn’t recognise the election, its most authoritarian members, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, backed it anyway, and the bloc has consistently stuck with its failed Five Point Consensus, a plan agreed with the junta in April 2021 that the military has never respected.

The US government has also shifted its position. In 2025, the Trump administration cut funding to independent Burmese media, lifted sanctions against junta-controlled businesses and arms dealers supplying the regime and removed protections from Burmese refugees living in the USA, citing governance improvements. It treated the junta as a legitimate counterpart by sending it a letter about tariffs. In May, it was revealed the junta gives Roger Stone, a long-time Donald Trump ally, US$50,000 a month to rebuild relations with the USA. Mineral deposits are likely in the Trump administration’s sights.

Civil war continues

The Telenor raid has momentarily brought Myanmar back into the headlines. Its civil war has otherwise gone on for almost five and a half years with little global attention. Sparked by the army’s violent suppression of democracy protests, it pits the military against armed pro-democracy forces, both backed by a variety of ethnic militia. The army controls the main population centres and has recently regained some territory, but there’s no end in sight.

The army has committed numerous crimes against humanity and war crimes. A September 2025 UN report painted a harrowing picture of airstrikes on schools and the destruction of villages. This year, the conflict has escalated across the Magway Region, with the army and associated militia mounting armed assaults on villages, burning homes and using drones to kill civilians, including children.

Recent escalations of conflict have driven further displacement. At the same time, monsoon rains across several regions in July and August caused floods that left villages isolated and increased disease risks. As needs have grown, the healthcare system is collapsing due to military attacks on facilities and workers, while humanitarian aid and vital health supplies are further constrained by military checkpoints, road closures and movement restrictions.

The Telenor case has the potential to challenge impunity. It should refocus the minds of democratic states and companies headquartered in them, offering a warning that they can be exposed for complicity in the junta’s atrocities. It should give fresh impetus to civil society’s efforts to hold states and companies to account. By standing with civil society, in Myanmar and around the world, democratic states can put themselves on the side of human rights and justice.

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

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

 

 

 

 

Secretary-General António Guterres (second from left) addressing the high-level segment of the General Assembly to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development. Also visible (from left to right) are Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; Khalilur Rahman, President of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly; and Chee Yoke Ling, Executive Director of the Third World Network (TWN). Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

By Busani Bafana
UNITED NATIONS & BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

World leaders have warned that the most vulnerable people have been left behind as the right to development has promised more than it has delivered, with development seemingly the preserve of the superrich and powerful.

Addressing a session on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly in New York to commemorate the occasion, global leaders marked the 40th anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development with a call to do more to eliminate deep inequality resulting from uneven development in the world.

The Declaration, adopted by the General Assembly in December 1986, proclaims that “the right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised.” But the Declaration, espoused as a fundamental shift in humanity’s progress, has not delivered on its promise.

“For millions around the world, promises made in the declaration remain unfulfilled, yet we know how to make it real,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders, noting that the declaration’s anniversary is a call to action and pointing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the blueprint to leave no one behind.

“Development, human rights and peace are not separate ambitions. They advance together. In today’s divided world, this vision can still unite us, and the Sustainable Development Goals are the roadmap to get us there.”

Under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the 17 SDGs contain goals and targets that are lifting people out of poverty and protecting their rights. However, 36% of 139 SDG targets are on track or have made moderate progress.

Guterres said the promise of development faces new tests today, from widening inequalities and persistent food insecurity to rising debt, conflicts and economic instability that are impeding development and economic growth.

“The climate crisis is reaching devastating new levels each year, reminding the world that there can be no development on a degraded and unhealthy planet,” said Guterres, warning that while the digital revolution and artificial intelligence hold enormous potential to improve lives, they can also be drivers of exclusion and division.

“The declaration unequivocally establishes development as a right and puts people at the centre of the development process,” he said.

Ensuring food security forms part of the right to development, according to the United Nations. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Some Progress, but More Needs to Be Done

Development is not about economic growth but about the constant improvement of human well-being through their active, free and meaningful participation in development, said Khalilur Rahman, President of the 81st UN General Assembly.

“We measure progress not only by aggregate growth but by whether people can live in dignity, exercise their rights and shape their own futures,” he said, emphasising that the Declaration should be honoured through action and by protecting the “hard-won gains of the past four decades” and addressing the inequalities and structural barriers that persist.

“Let us make multilateralism more representative, more responsive and more capable of delivering for all,” he emphasised.

Citing that global life expectancy has increased, along with access to education and health for many, Rahman said 1.5 billion people have escaped poverty in the past four decades. However, he bemoaned that many countries suffer from unsustainable debt burdens and unequal participation in global decisions, which have provided lessons over the last 40 years: development is inclusive and cannot be separated from human rights, environmental concerns, peace and security.

The cost of debt is $1.4 trillion in developing countries, and 3.4 billion people are currently living in countries that spend more on debt interest than on education or health.

Noting that the goal of development was broader and calling for the elimination of several barriers to development, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the current financial system was grotesquely out of balance and squeezed human rights out of budgets. Budget cuts, he said, affected the poorest more, calling for the elimination of human misery alongside insatiable military and economic power.

Türk said 2025 marked the 11th consecutive year in which military spending hit $2.8 trillion, which is eight times more than the cost of ending poverty globally.

“Development must be equitable and environmentally sustainable,” he said. “Sustainability cannot be equated to economic growth achieved at any cost to people and the planet. We need a strong shift to greater equality, participation, dignity, freedom and mutual respect, and we need to recommit to the principle of international cooperation, which is at the core of the right to development.”

Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar. Credit, Oxfam International

The Rich Growing Richer and the Poor, Poorer

According to Oxfam’s 2026 report, Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power, the unprecedented rise of the ultra-wealthy has deepened the global divide. Billionaire wealth surged by $2.5 trillion last year—an amount roughly equal to the total assets held by the bottom 4.1 billion people combined.

Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International, said the right to development remains in principle, despite progress made in the 1990s and 2000s, but there has been some regression in the last few years. The right to development was being questioned because, for instance, the right to education and health were being converted into commodities and privatised.

Behar said rights arising from agreements at international platforms should be translated at the national level to ensure people understand their rights and that there is a movement towards their realisation.

“For any right to become a real right, it’s really important that we build it from the bottom up. If we do not invest time, energy and resources in building from the bottom up, the realisation of these rights will remain inadequate,” Behar said.

Behar noted that the right to development speaks to the indivisibility of human rights and that governments have demonstrated the political will to start delivering on these rights, but this progress can only be realised when people start demanding their rights.

“We are seeing an economic system where the money is going upward and getting concentrated in the hands of the few super-rich billionaires, so the government must tax them and get revenues for the people and ensure that they are investing in making sure the right to development is a reality for everyone,” Behar said.

Harjeet Singh, global convenor of the Fill the Fund campaign, warned that “we must confront an uncomfortable truth: the dominant global economic model has spent four decades betraying the core of that declaration.”

Singh, who is also the founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation and engagement director at the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, warned that “we must confront an uncomfortable truth: the dominant global economic model has spent four decades betraying the core of that declaration.”

“Development was meant to be an emancipatory project centred on the human person, affirming everyone’s right to active, free and meaningful participation and an equitable share in economic and social progress,” Singh told IPS. “Today, however, global finance capital has hijacked it, serving multinational corporations and private bondholders rather than smallholder farmers, indigenous peoples, or urban workers.”

Singh highlighted that developing countries that contributed least to climate change are forced to divert significant portions of their budgets to disaster recovery, driving them deeper into debt. “On this 40th anniversary, governments in the Global South and their allies should demand a Binding Fossil Fuel Treaty and create an explicit international framework to equitably phase out fossil fuels, end expansion, and fund a global just transition.”

“The 1986 Declaration was designed as a charter for liberation and justice. Unless the UN General Assembly anchors development in human rights, climate reparations, a fossil fuel phaseout, and systemic economic reform, this milestone will mark four decades of unfulfilled promises.”

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

 

 

 

 

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