Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

Migrants now send home more money than foreign aid, and this is pulling rural families out of poverty, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). A new report, Sending Money Home, released this week, asserts that remittances have become the world’s largest and most resilient source of household finance during overlapping economic, environmental […]

WHO team visits the pediatric oncology ward at the King Hussein Cancer Centre in Amman, Jordan. November 2025. Credit: WHO

By Shreya Komar
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 18 2026 (IPS)

When a child is diagnosed with cancer, their chances of survival should not depend on where they live, yet according to the WHO, more than 80 percent of children with cancer in high-income countries are cured, compared with fewer than 30 percent in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

The key gap lies in access to available medicines. In East Africa, hospitals report frequent stockouts of essential chemotherapy agents, with shortages affecting 32–49 percent of critical medicines such as methotrexate and etoposide. Survival therefore depends less on the discovery of new therapies and more on whether children are able to access and complete uninterrupted treatment.

“No child should be denied a chance of survival because the medicines they need are unavailable, unaffordable, or out of reach,” affirmed Dr Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, Executive Vice President of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

In efforts to combat this issue and in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its collaborators at the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines published a new strategy report with a roadmap to strengthen the global market and improve the circulation of childhood cancer medicines in many LMICs.

Each year, an estimated 400,000 children develop cancer. Unlike many adult cancers, childhood cancer is generally not preventable. As a result, the most effective strategy for improving outcomes is to ensure that children receive a prompt and accurate diagnosis, followed by effective, evidence-based treatment and tailored supportive care.

The report highlighted many key barriers LMICs face when implementing this strategy. First, the supply of essential childhood cancer medicines is unreliable and depends on a small number of manufacturers, especially for medicines that meet international quality standards.

Secondly, LMICs often buy small amounts of cancer medicines, making supply less reliable and prices higher due to perceived low demand. Limited government funding and poor planning can also lead to shortages. Cancer medicines may take years to become available in LMICs because of slow approval processes. There is little investment in medicines designed specifically for children, especially for low-resource settings. This is partly because childhood cancer affects fewer people, making it a smaller market for companies.

“Persistent market challenges continue to affect access for children, and it is critical that we continue to work together to enhance the reliability and affordability of childhood cancer medicines,” said Dr. Kennedy Lishimpi, Permanent Secretary for Technical Services, Ministry of Health, Zambia.

Most types of childhood cancer can be cured with widely available generic medicines and other forms of treatment, including surgery and radiotherapy. Yet children in LMICs often face significant barriers to accessing these lifesaving interventions. Lower survival rates are driven by delays in diagnosis, difficulties obtaining an accurate diagnosis, limited access to appropriate therapy, treatment abandonment, death from treatment-related toxicity, and avoidable relapse.

Improving access to childhood cancer care, including essential medicines and technologies, has the potential to improve survival across all income settings.

The report also mentions how cost of treatment was another big barrier to care. In some cases, More than 70 percent of children being treated for leukaemia stop or do not complete their cancer treatment due to financial reasons.

The Global Platform prioritized a set of ten interventions in the report that will be implemented over 2026-2030. These included working more closely with medicine companies, increasing the number of reliable suppliers, speeding up medicine approval, improving planning and purchasing, and strengthening access to affordable, quality-assured childhood cancer medicines. The interventions also focused on supporting research, improving price information, including these medicines in national health coverage, and encouraging the development of new treatments.

“Rather than focusing only on individual products or prices, market shaping interventions aim to strengthen overall market health by improving the conditions required for sustainable access,” the report states.

In practice, this could look like integrating childhood cancer medications into national health benefit packages. For example, in 2024, Nepal declared free treatment for children with cancer at public health facilities.

“Where the price is more friendly, there are plenty of suppliers; that’s sort of the goal we’re trying to reach,” said Rongrong Liu, program manager from St. Jude’s global operations.

Additionally, the report also mentions that voluntary licensing could play an important role in improving access to new childhood cancer medicines in LMICs by allowing other quality-assured manufacturers to produce medicines that are still protected by patents. This could increase the number of suppliers, improve competition, lower prices, and help medicines reach LMICs sooner, reducing delays caused by high costs or dependence on a single manufacturer. The Global Platform plans to work with companies that own these medicines to negotiate licensing agreements for priority medicines. These agreements would allow selected manufacturers to produce and supply the medicines in LMICs under agreed conditions.

“At the beginning, we have focused only on clinical forecast, but in reality there are a lot of logistical parameters that we need to consider,” said Alessio Mola, pharmacist at WHO, emphasizing the importance of the proposed market strategies.

The newly launched roadmap provides good guidance on strengthening child cancer medicine markets and supply systems and is an essential step toward closing the survival gap and ensuring that where a child is born does not determine whether they survive cancer.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

Without the resources to educate, train and economically include refugees, displacement will continue to drive onward migration

By Linda Latsko Lockhart
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 18 2026 (IPS)

For the young women I met through Global Give Back Circle’s HER Lab in Kenya, displacement was not the end of ambition. It had interrupted school, separated families from stability, and narrowed the choices available to them. But it had not erased their hopes. What they wanted was not pity. They wanted skills, work, confidence and the chance to rebuild their lives with dignity.

Linda Latsko Lockhart

Kevine Muhimpundu, a Technology Skills participant at HER Lab Kajiado, told me how displacement and the cost of education had paused her ambitions. Monica Abul, a Fashion Design participant at HER Lab West Pokot, captured the point powerfully: “I am learning to focus not on what I have lost, but on what I can still build.”

Their stories point to what migration debates often miss: displacement is not only about movement, but also about whether people can rebuild their lives in safety and dignity. If work and opportunity do not exist locally, the question is not only how to manage migration. It is how to create opportunity in their host country.

Kevine and Monica’s experiences reflected a wider reality. UNHCR recorded 117.8 million people forcibly displaced worldwide in 2025. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported 83.4 million people living in internal displacement across 117 countries and territories in 2024.

This is where Africa’s local experience matters, not as a continent people are simply leaving, but as one already hosting many of its own displaced people. African migration remains predominantly regional. The African Union and the International Organisation for Migration reported that 20.8 million people had moved between African countries. They also found that 86% of refugees and asylum seekers from African countries were hosted within Africa, compared with 9.6% in Europe.

This should reset the debate. Most African refugees and displaced people are already hosted within the continent. The challenge is not simply whether Europe or the United States should receive more people, but whether African host countries have the systems, resources and investment to help refugees rebuild locally. When opportunity exists, onward migration becomes less about desperation and more about choice.

This is not an argument against migration or the right to seek asylum. Migration can benefit individuals, communities and economies. But forced movement should not be the only route to dignity. Refugees need recognised skills, training, routes into work and confidence that their futures are not on hold. That means investing in education, accredited training, entrepreneurship, financial inclusion and community acceptance, so refugees can contribute to host economies.

The kind of local capacity needed is not abstract. In Kenya, Global Give Back Circle’s HER Lab, delivered in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, shows what this can look like in practice. Across Kajiado and West Pokot counties, HER Lab supports 32 young refugee women: 19 in Kajiado from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 13 in West Pokot from South Sudan, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are receiving training in fields ranging from coding and electrical installation to fashion, food production, cosmetology and agriculture. The HER Lab model combines market-aligned skills, mentorship, confidence-building, financial inclusion and pathways into employment or enterprise.

HER Lab reflects a broader shift. Through its $300 million partnership with UNHCR, the Mastercard Foundation is supporting half a million young refugees and displaced people across Africa to complete their education and enter dignified work.

In Dadaab, Dadaab Refugee Voices is applying the ILO’s Rural Employment Services model to connect refugees and host communities with job registration, guidance, matching, skills support and digital training. Already, 6,189 jobseekers have registered and received support, showing how local systems can move people towards work and self-reliance.

During and after the 12-month HER Lab programme, young women are building businesses in poultry, beauty, beadwork, retail and regenerative farming, while others are gaining skills in plumbing, agribusiness, digital literacy and electrical work. Through the HER Financial Freedom Programme, hundreds of previously unbanked rural women have gained access to savings and credit in addition to membership in a women-operated tea production cooperative. These are local routes to dignity, income and self-reliance.

That is why local capacity is central to the future of migration policy. Without the resources to educate, train and economically include refugees, displacement will continue to drive onward migration. With support for local initiatives and building inclusive systems, host countries can address some of the pressures that force people to move.

The policy response is clear. Governments, donors, development finance institutions, philanthropies and the private sector should back efforts that are locally rooted, measurable and designed for scale. Western governments, in particular, have a role beyond deterrence or crisis response. Investing in African countries and locally led initiatives can expand education, skills, livelihoods and financial inclusion for refugees and host populations alike. It can also turn migration partnerships into a shared effort to reduce forced movement.

The strongest migration policy is not one that pretends movement can simply be stopped. It is one that gives people real choices before movement becomes unavoidable. Africa is showing what inclusion can look like when opportunity is built locally.

The world should not look away. It should invest in helping that approach scale.

Linda Latsko Lockhart is the Founder and CEO of Global Give Back Circle, a serial social entrepreneur focused on the empowerment of women and girls in Africa and beyond. Named to Forbes “50 Over 50: Impact List”, she brings over 25 years of global leadership designing scalable, gender-based financial independence models. Through her organisation, Lockhart helps marginalised women and girls gain education, financial tools, and lasting economic resilience.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

Without the resources to educate, train and economically include refugees, displacement will continue to drive onward migration

It happened in 1920. At the Grand Trianon Palace at Versailles, the Allies drew a new map of Hungary that sliced away two-thirds of its territory. Such a cartographic mutilation went down in history as the Treaty of Trianon. No country lost more territory after the First World War. Overnight, more than three million Hungarians […]

Closing plenary of the recent Kunming Dialogue. Credit: ENB-IISD/Anastasia Rodopoulou

By Stella Paul
KUNMING, China, Sep 17 2026 (IPS)

The world may have enough money to protect nature. The bigger problem, according to the head of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), is that too much of it is still being spent on activities that destroy it.

With just four years left to meet the world’s 2030 biodiversity goals, Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the CBD, said governments must urgently change where money flows if they are to slow the loss of nature.

Her warning comes just weeks before governments meet in Yerevan, Armenia, for COP17, the UN biodiversity conference scheduled for October 19-30.

Speaking at a press conference organised by the CBD Secretariat on September 11 – after the three-day Kunming Dialogue, Schomaker said governments need to redirect financial flows and reform incentives that encourage activities harmful to nature. Without such changes, she warned, progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) will remain too slow.

What’s Slowing Biodiversity Action?

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in Montreal in 2022, sets 23 targets for protecting and restoring biodiversity by 2030. Since its adoption, governments have been carrying out the first-ever global stocktake of how the framework is being implemented, examining progress across countries and individual targets.

The stocktake began after COP16 and is looking at the full picture of implementation, from the targets countries have set for themselves to the policies, plans, finance and other measures they are putting in place to achieve them. Its findings are being compiled in the forthcoming State of Biodiversity Action report, which will present the final global assessment at COP17.

The three-day Kunming Dialogue, held from Sept. 7 to 9, offered governments, scientists, Indigenous Peoples, youth representatives and civil society organisations an early look at the trends emerging from this stocktake. While more than 70 percent of countries have submitted national reports and over 90 percent have established biodiversity targets aligned with the global framework, the emerging picture is far less encouraging. Progress remains uneven, with implementation lagging behind the scale and pace needed to achieve the 23 targets by 2030. The emerging findings suggest that global efforts are not yet moving fast enough or at the scale needed to achieve the 23 targets by 2030. In other words, while countries have made progress in setting commitments, implementation remains well behind what is required.

“Progress is being made clearly, but it is uneven, and it is clearly also not at the pace and scale required,” Schomaker told IPS.

Gap Between Global Goals and National Action

One of the biggest problems is that biodiversity commitments have not yet been fully carried into national policies, budgets and economic decisions.

According to Schomaker, some of the largest gaps are in finance, resource mobilisation and efforts to bring biodiversity into the work of government ministries and economic sectors beyond the environment.

Jillian Campbell, Head of Planning, Monitoring and Knowledge at the CBD Secretariat, said the problem is not that countries have failed to set targets. Rather, there is often a gap between what was agreed globally and what countries have committed to doing at home.

“Most parties have set national targets covering almost every global target. However, the national targets often don’t cover the full extent of the global targets,” she told IPS.

As countries turned the global framework into their own national plans, some of its ambition was lost along the way. This is particularly visible in areas where action depends on ministries beyond the environment, including finance, agriculture, infrastructure and development.

That raises a bigger question — and one that is likely to be central at COP17: is the problem really a lack of money for biodiversity, or is it where existing money is going?

For Schomaker, the answer is clear.

“The biggest elephant in the room of all of that is the misalignment of financial systems,” she told IPS. “There is enough money around in the world economy. The question is, where does that money go?”

Money Flowing in the Wrong Direction

Governments, businesses and financial institutions continue to channel large amounts of money into activities that damage ecosystems, even as they commit themselves to protecting nature.

Changing that pattern, Schomaker said, should be one of the central priorities for COP17.

The discussions in Kunming highlighted a growing understanding that biodiversity loss is not caused only by what happens in forests, rivers and oceans. It is also shaped by decisions made in boardrooms, government ministries and financial institutions.

Participants pointed to subsidies, investments and other financial incentives that continue to make activities harmful to nature more attractive or profitable.

Asad Naqvi, Secretary of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation, said the answer to the biodiversity funding problem may therefore lie partly in changing how existing money is used rather than simply searching for new sources of funding.

He noted that governments are still spending large sums on incentives that undermine biodiversity, particularly through harmful subsidies in agriculture and fossil fuels. Redirecting those resources, he suggested, could help close financing gaps while addressing some of the root causes of nature loss.

Biodiversity Beyond Environment Policy

Finance, however, is only part of the challenge.

The Kunming Dialogue also highlighted the need for governments to treat biodiversity as an issue that cuts across the entire economy, rather than something that belongs mainly to environment ministries.

Agriculture, finance, infrastructure and development ministries all make decisions that can either protect or damage ecosystems. Unless biodiversity is considered in those decisions, governments may find themselves trying to repair environmental damage with one hand while creating more of it with the other.

That broader approach is expected to be an important part of the discussions at COP17.

For many observers, the significance of COP17 will depend on how governments respond to the findings of the State of Biodiversity Action report — and whether they can turn commitments into action faster.

The conference is expected to focus on speeding up implementation, closing finance gaps and tackling the targets where progress remains furthest behind.

As delegates prepare to meet in Yerevan, the debate is moving beyond whether governments support the global biodiversity framework.

With only four years left before the 2030 deadline, bringing finance into line with the needs of nature may become one of the defining tests of the global biodiversity agenda.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

Gender discrimination begins early and accumulates over time, leading to a narrowing of job opportunities and loss of belonging as they get older. Credit: Shutterstock

By Kim Samuel and Bridget Sleap
TORONTO / LONDON, Sep 17 2026 (IPS)

Chung Sun-cha started collecting cardboard, plastic, and other recycling materials off the streets of Incheon, South Korea, to sell when she was in her mid-70s. She is now 87. Without an adequate pension, Chung worked six days a week, sometimes seven, in the wind, rain, and snow until she fell and broke her arm while working in 2025. “I couldn’t find any other work because of my age,” she said.

Chung Sun-cha is not alone. In 2024-2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed 41 women ages 28 to 87 in researching working conditions for women in South Korea. They described how their career opportunities narrowed drastically from their 40s onward to a handful of low-paid, precarious jobs that often caused physical and mental harm, and eroded their sense of belonging.

Work by Belonging Forum in the UK indicates that this loss of belonging in older age is not confined to South Korea. Data from the Belonging Forum’s UK-wide 2026 Belonging Barometer reveals that nearly 19 percent of people ages 65 and older reported that they “not really” or “not at all” feel they belong. Furthermore, 16 percent of respondents 65 and older said they felt lonely “often or some of the time.”

October 1 marks the annual International Day of Older Persons. The United Nations theme for 2026 is “Rethinking Longevity.” Longer lives may bring increased opportunities, including in employment, but for many women, gender discrimination begins early and accumulates over time, leading to a narrowing of job opportunities and loss of belonging as they get older.

These entrenched, negative attitudes, known as “gendered ageism,” coupled with discriminatory employment policies and practices, lock women out of the broader workforce as they age, and isolate them in narrow and undervalued roles

Governments have a vital opportunity when they meet in October at the United Nations in Geneva to continue work on a new international treaty on the rights of older people. The proposed treaty should not merely add age-specific language to existing rights; it should fundamentally reimagine how we value older age.

In South Korea, Jung Kyong-sook, 55, worked as a bookkeeper before stopping work in 1994 to raise her three children. When she re-entered the workforce in 2013, the door was largely shut: “Most of us [women] in our 50s go to work in supermarkets as a cashier or cook in schools. We can’t really pursue our career.”

These outcomes stem from systemic gender and age discrimination that restrict women’s economic opportunities and reduce their sense of belonging and value in society. These entrenched, negative attitudes, known as “gendered ageism,” coupled with discriminatory employment policies and practices, lock women out of the broader workforce as they age, and isolate them in narrow and undervalued roles.

Even the government reflects these prejudices. Jobs the Ministry of Employment and Labor promotes for women in their 30s to 50s on Work24, its online hiring platform, revolve predominantly around beauty, caregiving, and education. The platform funnels women ages 50 or over into low-paid care work, cleaning, kitchen assistance, cooking, and social service jobs, reflecting societal expectations.

For many older women, work is necessary for survival, not a matter of choice. In 2025, women in their late 50s in South Korea faced a 50 percent gender pay gap. Women eligible for the National Old Age Pension faced an average gender pension gap of 47 percent. The average monthly pension for women was just KRW367,000 (£200), 18 percent of the national minimum wage.

Yet work offers something beyond economic survival. Work also gives many of the older women we interviewed a sense of purpose, agency, and belonging. This sense of purpose is a key determinant of the internationally protected right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Being systematically segregated into ever-narrowing workplaces simply for being a woman considered “too old” – undermines this sense of belonging.

Research from the Belonging Forum shows that belonging does not happen by accident. It is built or broken by the systems, services, and environments that surround people throughout their lives. It depends on access to economic and social structures that determine whether older people have the time, resources, support, and security to participate in family and community life on an equal footing.

Older people can experience an erosion of dignity when society fails to recognize their equal rights and inherent value, operating under the ageist assumption that older age is a period of inevitable decline rather than continued development. The UK Belonging Barometer found that approximately 51 percent of respondents 65 and older “rarely/never” feel that they are working together with others for mutual benefit – pointing to the risk of social marginalization and exclusion in older age.

By embedding dignity, inclusion, equality, economic security, and belonging in the international treaty, we can ensure that women like Chung Sun-cha and Jung Kyong-sook are no longer treated as invisible low-wage workers, but instead as active and valued rights holders thriving in older age, in line with spirit of the International Day of Older Persons.

 

Kim Samuel is founder and chief architect at the Belonging Forum. Bridget Sleap is senior researcher on the rights of older people at Human Rights Watch.

 

By CIVICUS
Sep 17 2026 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses renewed conflict and a growing crackdown on independent media in Ethiopia with Yonas Kedir, Editor-in-Chief of the independent news outlet Addis Standard, who was recently abducted and detained by government forces.

Yonas Kedir

Fighting has resumed in western Tigray, straining the 2022 peace agreement that ended a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. As the government and armed groups trade blame for the renewed violence, independent journalists trying to report on it are coming under mounting pressure. Reporters covering the conflict and its consequences face abduction, detention, harassment and surveillance, leaving Ethiopians with fewer ways to find out what is happening.

What’s the current situation in Ethiopia?

Ethiopia is facing overlapping humanitarian, political and security crises. Armed conflict continues in Amhara and Oromia states, while Tigray remains scarred by the devastating 2020-2022 war. Displacement continues, territorial disputes remain unresolved and the peace agreement has only been partly implemented.

Armed conflict and insecurity have also spread to Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambela and other parts of Ethiopia. Tensions between the federal government and Tigrayan authorities have intensified. The government alleges that Eritrea is backing the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and other armed groups. Relations with Eritrea are strained, particularly by disputes over Red Sea access and regional security, and Ethiopia is under growing scrutiny over its alleged role in Sudan’s civil war.

The government says Ethiopia faces an anti-federal military movement involving Eritrea, Sudan, the Oromo Liberation Army, Tigray forces and Fano, an Amhara nationalist militia, accusing them of working as an alliance to unseat the federal government. These are highly contested claims, but they shape the government’s framing of the security environment.

Why are journalists being targeted, and why is the pressure escalating?

Journalists are targeted because independent reporting can challenge official narratives and expose abuses, civilian harm and government conduct. When journalists investigate alleged abuses by government forces, authorities present their work as damaging Ethiopia’s national security or serving foreign interests.

There’s a growing tendency to treat independent journalism as a national security threat. Government officials often call on the media to prioritise the national interest and national unity, while treating critical reporting on sensitive issues as inherently harmful to the country.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented a deteriorating environment for independent media, including detention, intimidation, restrictions and the use of broad national security and national interest arguments against critical reporting. In this context, legitimate public-interest reporting can be interpreted by authorities or politicians as taking sides.

The pressure has intensified because several politically sensitive issues are converging at the same time, including the political environment, the security situation, the unresolved consequences of the Tigray war, tensions involving Eritrea and Sudan and debates over Ethiopia’s constitutional and political future.

The most recent election was held in a highly contested political environment, with several major opposition parties boycotting the process. This has raised questions about the inclusiveness and broader political legitimacy of the electoral process, particularly in a context where political space for opposition political figures and independent voices remains constrained.

These issues make independent reporting particularly important, but also make journalism on governance and political issues increasingly sensitive.

Why were you detained, and what happened while you were held?

I don’t know for sure who ordered my detention, and nor can I establish the full motive. But the questions I was asked and the circumstances around them strongly suggest my journalistic work was central to what happened.

On 1 August, security personnel took me, assaulted me, blindfolded me and held me for around 24 hours. They questioned me about my work and about Addis Standard’s reporting. While I was detained, security forces raided Addis Standard’s office and seized cameras and other newsroom equipment. They also searched my home and confiscated company and personal equipment. I was released the next day.

For me, this was bigger than myself. The fact that I was questioned about my work and that newsroom equipment was seized raises concerns about the safety of all journalists and the ability of independent media to operate freely.

What conditions do journalists face in Ethiopia, and what are the consequences of the loss of independent reporting?

Journalists in Ethiopia operate in an environment of fear and uncertainty, facing administrative restrictions, arrest, detention, harassment, online intimidation, physical attacks and surveillance. This is particularly true for those in conflict areas, where access can be restricted, sources are often afraid to speak and journalists face pressure from multiple sides, not only federal authorities but also armed and political groups.

This encourages self-censorship. Journalists avoid particular subjects, soften their language or decide not to publish information that could put themselves, colleagues or sources in danger. This leaves people with very limited access to reliable information about decisions that affect their lives.

Independent journalism provides a mechanism for documenting alleged abuses, civilian casualties, displacement and humanitarian needs. A healthy information environment is essential for meaningful public participation, national dialogue and peacebuilding. When independent reporting is weakened, victims and communities lose a public platform to raise concerns. It also becomes harder for people to distinguish verified information from disinformation, propaganda and politically motivated narratives.

What support do Ethiopian journalists and civil society need?

The international community should help build stronger protection and rapid-response mechanisms for when journalists are attacked, detained and threatened, and should press for meaningful accountability for abuses against journalists and media organisations.

International partners should provide legal and institutional support to help media organisations challenge arbitrary licence revocations, unlawful restrictions and other forms of administrative pressure. They should support efforts to strengthen the independence of Ethiopia’s judiciary, so it can protect fundamental rights and provide meaningful remedies when state institutions act unlawfully.

International partners should also give very serious attention to protecting people’s right to organise around their aspirations, grievances and interests, which is essential to peaceful political participation. Expanding civic space can strengthen peace processes and peacebuilding, while suppressing these rights can contribute to the expansion of conflict.

Finally, international partners should continue to monitor Ethiopia’s civic space, engage authorities and support independent investigations. Reporting on abuses shouldn’t be treated as a threat to national interest. It’s part of the public’s right to know. International engagement should also look beyond whether constitutional initiatives, elections and national dialogue processes take place on paper, and assess whether these processes are genuinely inclusive, participatory and protective of fundamental rights.

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

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By Mohammad Zaman
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Sep 17 2026 (IPS)

Bangladesh is rightly praised for saving lives during cyclones and floods. Early warning systems, cyclone shelters and community mobilisation have turned once-catastrophic disasters into emergencies in which evacuation is often possible. But behind that success lies a quieter national failure: millions of people are being uprooted inside the country, often more than once, without a clear path back to secure homes, land or livelihoods.

Dr Mohammad Zaman

An internally displaced person, or IDP, is someone forced to leave home by conflict, violence, rights abuses or disasters, but who remains within their own country. That distinction is crucial. Refugees cross an international border and seek protection elsewhere. IDPs stay inside their state, where the national government remains primarily responsible for their protection and assistance.

In Bangladesh, this distinction is not academic. A Rohingya family that fled Myanmar into Cox’s Bazar is rightly understood as part of a refugee crisis. A Bangladeshi family forced from a riverbank in Kazipur-Sirajganj, a cyclone-hit village in Barguna or Patuakhali, or a landslide-prone hillside in Chattogram is internally displaced. The first case draws international refugee law and a global humanitarian apparatus. The second is too often dismissed as local misfortune, seasonal migration or urban poverty—even when the displacement is forced, repeated and long-term.

The drivers are unmistakable. Monsoon floods, cyclones, storm surges and landslides trigger large annual movements. Slower disasters—riverbank erosion, salinity intrusion and coastal land loss—make return impossible for many families. Conflict and violence produce smaller annual movements, but protracted displacement in the Chittagong Hill Tracts remains unresolved. Development projects, urban evictions and infrastructure expansion can also uproot communities when resettlement and compensation fall short.

The numbers show why Bangladesh can no longer treat internal displacement as a temporary humanitarian footnote. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported about 2.4 million disaster-related displacements in Bangladesh in 2024, up from about 1.8 million in 2023. Monsoon floods alone triggered around 1.3 million movements, including an estimated 723,000 in Sylhet division in June. Cyclone Remal added roughly 1.1 million displacements, many of them pre-emptive evacuations that saved lives but still disrupted homes, schools, work and local economies. Conflict and violence accounted for about 2,800 displacements.

New national evidence makes the picture starker. The International Organization for Migration’s Displacement Tracking Matrix estimated 5 million disaster-induced IDPs in Bangladesh in its 2025 nationwide assessment. Nearly two-thirds had been displaced before April 2020, meaning many have lived with displacement for years, not weeks. One quarter were concentrated in just four districts—Chattogram, Sirajganj, Bhola and Noakhali—while Chattogram and Dhaka divisions together hosted about 40 per cent of the estimated displaced population.

These figures expose an unequal geography of risk. Coastal households face cyclones, storm surges, saline water and embankment failures. Riverine communities in the north and centre lose land to erosion. City slums absorb families who arrive after disasters, only to place them in flood-prone, insecure and poorly serviced neighbourhoods. Women, children, older people and persons with disabilities face particular barriers in evacuation, shelter access, documentation, employment and safe housing. Displacement is not simply movement from one place to another; it can strip people of assets, identity, social networks, education and political voice.

Bangladesh’s IDP crisis is best understood as a development crisis with humanitarian symptoms. The country is comparatively strong at emergency response: it can warn people, open shelters and move communities away from immediate danger. The harder work begins after the water recedes—restoring land, rebuilding homes, returning children to school, replacing fishing gear or livestock, securing tenure in safer locations, and preventing displaced families from being pushed into exploitative labour or unsafe housing. Without durable solutions—safe return, local integration or planned relocation—each disaster deepens the last.

Bangladesh has a policy foundation, including its National Strategy on Internal Displacement Management. What it lacks is implementation at the scale demanded by climate reality. Internal displacement must be built into land-use planning, social protection, climate adaptation, urban housing, education, health care and local government finance. Data systems should distinguish short-term evacuations from protracted displacement. Relief, relocation and resettlement must be transparent, participatory and centred on livelihoods—not merely a transfer from one unsafe place to another.

Ashrayan, Bangladesh’s flagship housing program for landless and homeless families, offers both a useful model and a warning. Since 1997, it has given many poor households a legal roof, a small plot and access to basic services. For families living for years on embankments, khas land, riverbanks or in insecure urban settlements, secure shelter can be life-changing. But Ashrayan also shows why housing cannot be mistaken for rehabilitation. A house in the wrong place—without work nearby, transport, drainage, schools, health care or local accountability—can become another form of confinement. The real test is not how many units are handed over, but whether families can rebuild livelihoods and belong to the communities that receive them.

The recurring failures are practical and political. Too many Ashrayan-style resettlement sites are chosen because public or khas land is available, not because the location offers a realistic route out of poverty. Weak construction, poor drainage, inadequate sanitation, limited maintenance and exposure to floods or erosion can undermine relocation itself. Governance failures—unclear beneficiary selection, local influence, informal payments, land disputes and weak grievance systems—can be just as damaging. When these problems occur, families may gain a roof while losing the social networks, markets and informal economies that kept them afloat. Some commute long distances; some rent out or abandon the unit; some move again. That is not a failure of the displaced. It is a warning about policy design.

The future will be harsher if policy remains reactive. Climate change will intensify the hazards that already uproot families—heavier rainfall, stronger storm surges, sea-level rise, salinity and river erosion—while urbanisation will keep pulling displaced people into already strained cities such as Dhaka, Chattogram and secondary urban centres. Bangladesh has proved through cyclone preparedness that public policy can save lives. Its next test is whether those who survive disaster can also recover dignity, income and security afterward.

That begins with treating IDPs as rights-holders, not as casualties of bad weather. Bangladesh must move beyond emergency shelter toward secure housing, restored livelihoods and accountable national systems backed by climate finance. Resettlement must be written into land policy, local budgets, urban planning, social protection and climate adaptation before the next flood or cyclone arrives. The choice is stark: displacement can remain a conveyor belt into poverty, or it can become a national commitment to safety, citizenship and a future people can rebuild.

Dr. Mohammad Zaman is an internationally recognized scholar and practitioner in resettlement and development projects across Asia and Africa. His work brings together academic scholarship, field-based practice, social safeguards, and policy engagement, with a particular focus on how affected communities experience, negotiate, and reshape development interventions. Dr. Zaman’s most recent book is Anatomy of Resettlement: Ethnographic Accounts and Stories in Retrospect (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025).

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Agriculture remains underfunded in Africa as governments struggle to deliver on decades-old promises to dedicate 10% of national income to agriculture. But for many farmers, mobilising finance is only half the battle. Reaching smallholder farmers in the last mile with the little available finance remains a challenge. Some of the funding is heavily politicised, less […]

Indigenous Kakataibo patrol in the Yamino community forest. A new report titled Collective Power documents the deaths of people who stood against environmental destruction, land grabs, illegal logging, mining projects and other threats to their communities. Credit: Global Witness

By Umar Manzoor Shah
LONDON & SRINAGAR, India, Sep 16 2026 (IPS)

At least 124 land and environmental defenders were killed around the world in 2025 while protecting forests, rivers, farmland and Indigenous territories, according to a new report by Global Witness that warns violence against activists remains widespread even as recorded killings have declined from previous years.

The report, titled Collective Power, documents the deaths of people who stood against environmental destruction, land grabs, illegal logging, mining projects and other threats to their communities. It says the 124 killings recorded in 2025 bring the total number of land and environmental defenders killed or disappeared since Global Witness began tracking such cases in 2012 to 2,375.

While the number of killings fell from 142 deaths and four disappearances documented in 2024, Global Witness cautioned that the decline should not be viewed as evidence that defenders are becoming safer, and onimously, the killing and intimidation have serious consequences for the environment.

“Defenders are the world’s eyes and ears on the ground. It’s thanks to them that we know when ecosystems are being destroyed, where forests are being cleared or rivers polluted,” Toby Hill, land and environmental defenders investigator and lead author, said. “The violence that defenders face, including killings in the most extreme cases, reflects a much broader struggle over the world’s land and resources. But beyond these tragic stories, we can’t forget the thousands of defenders around the world who are working every day to protect their territories and cultures under increasing pressure.”

The report said, “Every one of these deaths represents an attempt, in the most brutal fashion, to impose a chilling effect on movements that resist environmental and human rights abuses. We remember the families, friends and communities who have been left devastated by each attack.”

Researchers argue that the real number of killings is likely much higher because many attacks occur in remote areas, conflict zones and countries where civil society groups face intimidation for reporting abuses. According to the report, difficulties in documenting cases are particularly severe in parts of Africa and Asia, as well as increasingly in Latin America.

The findings reveal a global struggle over land, natural resources and environmental protection, with Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers bearing the heaviest burden.

Indigenous women walk along a river in the Amazon rainforest. According to Global Witness, Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers accounted for nearly three-quarters of the land, and environmental defenders killed globally in 2025. The report highlights the growing risks faced by communities defending their lands, livelihoods and ecosystems from environmental destruction and resource exploitation. Credit: Global Witness

Nearly three-quarters of those killed in 2025 were Indigenous people or small-scale farmers defending their land rights and livelihoods. The report found that 47 victims were small-scale farmers and 44 were Indigenous people. Three victims were Afro-descendant defenders.

Among the dead were seven members of Indigenous guard systems, community-based groups that patrol and protect ancestral territories from illegal activities and outside encroachment. In five of those cases, researchers identified links to organised crime, highlighting what the report describes as a growing overlap between environmental conflicts and criminal networks.

Despite this, Indigenous people continue to defend their environments.

“Defending our territory is important to us as a community and as a people, and we’re proud to support the climate that we all depend on. In our culture, the work of defending our resources and territory is taught from an early age. But for this next generation coming up, the work is more dangerous than ever,” Segundo Ispón, commander of Peru’s Kakataibo Indigenous Guard, said.

Global Witness said the killings represent only the most visible form of repression. Beneath them lies what human rights groups call a “hidden iceberg” of threats that include criminal charges, surveillance, harassment, smear campaigns and online abuse.

“Increasingly, social media is weaponised to discredit and harass defenders, eroding public trust and isolating them from their communities,” the report noted.

The organisation suggested that some governments and powerful interests may be relying more on non-lethal forms of repression, which can silence opposition without attracting the international attention that often follows a murder.

The report also highlights a broader deterioration in civic freedoms. Of the 15 countries where killings were documented, 10 were categorised as “repressed” by the CIVICUS Monitor, a global tracker of civic freedoms. Nicaragua was listed in the most restrictive category, described as “closed”.

Asia emerged as one of the regions where environmental defenders face increasing pressure through legal and political means.

A major section of the report focuses on Indonesia, where Dayak Indigenous communities in West Kalimantan have resisted industrial expansion, land grabs and deforestation. According to Global Witness, community leaders and Indigenous defenders have faced criminalisation while attempting to protect forests and customary lands.

The report argues that such cases reflect a wider regional trend in which defenders are increasingly targeted through courts, police investigations and administrative actions rather than direct violence alone. It cites concerns raised by human rights organisations regarding the criminalisation of environmental activism across parts of Asia.

In the Philippines, environmental defenders Jhed Tamano and Jonila Castro are highlighted as examples of activists who continued their advocacy despite legal and political pressure. Their experiences are presented as part of a larger pattern in which defenders face reputational attacks and criminal allegations linked to their activism.

The report also examines Peru, where members of the Kakataibo Indigenous people have developed Indigenous guard systems to protect their territory from growing threats associated with organised crime and environmental exploitation. The movement is presented as an example of collective protection developed by communities that feel abandoned by state institutions.

Across Latin America, which has historically recorded some of the highest numbers of killings of environmental defenders, the report documents continuing violence, disappearances and intimidation.

It revisits the disappearance of Mexican defenders Ricardo Lagunes and Antonio Díaz, whose case has become emblematic of the dangers faced by people challenging powerful economic interests. Three years after their disappearance, United Nations experts were still calling for truth and justice.

The report also highlights the unresolved disappearance of Chilean Indigenous defender Julia Chuñil. According to Global Witness, her family and legal representatives have faced mounting pressure while continuing to seek answers.

“Despite this pressure, Julia’s family continues to fight for truth and justice,” the report said. “They are still searching for their mother, organising protests, pursuing legal challenges and bringing international attention to the case.”

In Nigeria, defenders protecting the Ekuri Forest in Cross River State continued to face intimidation, arrest and detention after speaking out against illegal logging. The report said community leaders were targeted following complaints linked to logging interests but were later released after intervention from environmental organisations and lawyers.

“The arrests were widely viewed as an attempt to silence efforts to defend tropical forests and community forest rights,” the report stated.

The gender dimension of environmental activism also features prominently in the findings. Of the 124 defenders whose deaths were verified in 2025, 109 were men, 14 were women and one was identified as non-binary. However, researchers stressed that women defenders often experience different forms of violence that are less visible but equally damaging.

The report cites data from the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders showing more than 30,000 non-lethal attacks against women defenders in Mexico and Central America between 2012 and 2023. These included harassment, threats, surveillance, psychological abuse and smear campaigns.

The report also expresses concern about the unprecedented fall in foreign aid seen in 2025 – driven by budget cuts by the governments of the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and other traditional donors – impacting thousands of human rights organisations, drastically reducing the global pool of support to communities acting in the depths of rainforests and other secluded ecosystems.

“The effects of these budget cuts are not abstract. In Colombia, projects working to promote and protect human rights and support defenders have been hit by the sudden drop in foreign aid, particularly from the U.S. When foreign aid retreats, Indigenous Peoples and small-scale farmers can be left with fewer resources and less support as they defend the forests, rivers and other ecosystems that sustain their communities and help keep the global climate stable,” Juliana Vélez Echeverri, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said.

Global Witness says the solution requires more than investigations into individual killings. The organisation is calling for stronger legal protections for Indigenous peoples, recognition of land rights, accountability for corporations and criminal networks, and greater support for community-led protection systems.

The report argues that environmental defenders are not only protecting local communities but also safeguarding forests, biodiversity and ecosystems that are critical in the fight against climate change. Their work, researchers say, often benefits society far beyond the places where they live.

The publication opens with a dedication to those who continue that work despite the risks.

“This report is dedicated to all those individuals, communities and organisations bravely speaking out or taking action to defend their rights to land and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment,” it says. “Last year, 124 people were murdered for doing this work.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

Sidi Haidara leads a community dialogue in Mopti, Mali, where families, young people and local leaders discuss girls' rights and ways to end female genital mutilation. Credit: UN Women/Dieneba Deme

By UNFPA
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 16 2026 (IPS)

In Mali, an estimated nine out of ten women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). And for years, Sidi Haidara, a father and recognized leader in his community, believed the practice was simply part of life.

Like many people in his community in central Mali, he saw it as a tradition passed down through generations – one that should be preserved.

Today, he walks from village to village with a very different message: No tradition should come at the expense of a girl’s health, rights, or future.

His story goes beyond one man’s personal transformation. Across parts of West and Central Africa, FGM remains deeply rooted – with Mali having one of the highest rates in the region and no laws that specifically criminalize the practice. Even recently, some men in Mali have launched an all-male pro-FGM campaign on the grounds of protecting tradition.

In places where social norms are deeply entrenched, change often begins with trusted voices from within the community – voices like Haidara’s.

After spending years defending female genital mutilation, Sidi Haidara now leads community dialogues in Mopti, Mali, encouraging families to protect girls’ rights and abandon the practice. Credit: UN Women/Dieneba Deme

How UN Women and partners are shifting mindsets and empowering new anti-FGM advocates in Mali

“I used to believe that this practice was part of our traditions and needed to be preserved”, says Haidara.

Nothing suggested that he would one day become one of the people advocating for its abandonment.

His perspective began to change after taking part in training sessions, workshops, and community dialogues organized through the Men and Boys as Agents of Change project, implemented by UN Women with financial support from the Government of Germany.

As he listened to different experiences and learned about the consequences of FGM, he began questioning his beliefs – beliefs he had never challenged before. He also came to understand that lasting change cannot simply be imposed – it grows through dialogue, trust, and community ownership.

 

“UN Women’s trainings – with the support of Germany – transformed my understanding of female genital mutilation. I learned about the physical, psychological, and social consequences that this practice imposes on girls.”

 

How to end FGM in Mali: Begin with listening, questioning, and conversing

“Today, I regularly organize awareness-raising sessions with families, religious leaders, young people, and women”, he explains.

Rather than telling people what to think, he encourages conversations about what it means to protect girls and challenges long-held beliefs through dialogue.

Little by little, those conversations are making a difference. “I can see change: more parents are asking questions, several families are abandoning female genital mutilation, and discussions about protecting girls have become more open.”

 

“I am convinced that protecting girls today means investing in the future of our entire community.”

 

People can change – and so can social norms

Haidara’s journey is part of a broader movement taking place across the regions of Mopti and Gao in Mali.

With support from the Government of Germany, UN Women works alongside religious and traditional leaders, women, young people, and men like Haidara who are committed to community-driven initiatives that prevent violence against women and girls and challenge harmful social norms.

To date, 50 community initiatives have been implemented across the two regions, while eight community-dialogue platforms provide spaces for people to discuss girls’ rights, their protection, and ways to prevent gender-based violence.

For Haidara, abandoning a harmful practice is about more than leaving a tradition behind. It is about giving girls the opportunity to grow up safely, stay in school, and shape their own futures.

His journey shows that some of the most meaningful changes happen when those who once upheld harmful social norms become the people helping to transform them.

Haidara knows traditions do not change overnight. But every conversation creates an opportunity for reflection. Every family that chooses to protect its daughters helps write a different future from the one that generations before them inherited.

In Mopti and Gao, these conversations are showing that lasting change does not necessarily begin with a new law or policy. More often, it begins when communities themselves decide to imagine a different future for their girls.

Source: UNFPA

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

After years of defending FGM as a cultural practice, Sidi Haidara came to a realization: No tradition should come at the expense of a girl’s health, rights, or future.

Khaled Khiari, Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations, briefs the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East (Yemen). Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

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

In recent days, the humanitarian situation in Yemen has deteriorated sharply following a new escalation of hostilities between the Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC). This follows four years of relative stability, marking the most severe resurgence of violence since the collapse of the United Nations (UN)-mediated ceasefire in October 2022.

Described by the UN as a “new, more dangerous phase of the war,” new hostilities have resulted in persistent disruptions to telecommunications and restrictions on movement, which have left humanitarian aid operations increasingly strained. Although insecurity has largely been concentrated in Yemen’s southwest, civilians across the country face rampant insecurity and increasingly limited access to essential services such as shelter, food, clean water, healthcare, and protection.

On September 3, Houthi forces launched a major offensive in the Taiz governorate, aiming to sever critical connecting roads to the strategic port city, Mokha–a key trade hub in the region. This prompted counter-offensives and cross-border missile exchanges from Saudi-backed forces. By September 10, the Houthis had expanded their operations along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, capturing Mokha as well as key surrounding areas along the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

As of September 14, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has verified at least 40 civilian casualties recorded since September 3, including 8 deaths and 32 injuries. Women and children account for half of those killed and more than half of those injured. Due to rampant access constraints and ongoing insecurity, these initial figures are expected to rise as response efforts continue.

The same day, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) announced that over 100,000 civilians, or at least 18,000 households, have been newly displaced due to renewed violence. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) noted that the Taiz governorate was the hardest-hit by new displacement, with nearly 56,000 displaced from this region alone. An additional 19,000 civilians were displaced from Lahj, more than 8,000 from Al Hodeidah, and over 2,500 in Aden.

“Families are arriving with nothing: no shelter, no food, no way to know if it’s safe to go back,” said Abdusattor Esoev, IOM Yemen’s Chief of Mission. “Many of these are people who have already been displaced once, twice, even four times before. Every time fighting flares up, they lose whatever little they had managed to rebuild. We are particularly concerned by reports that some families may be unable to leave frontline areas safely because of continuing hostilities and insecurity along access routes.”

Additionally, IOM notes that entire villages have been emptied across three districts in Taiz– Maqbanah, Jabal Habashi, and Al Ma’afer–with recorded upward trends in Aden, Al Hodeidah, and Abyan. The agency stated that the recorded number of displaced families increases “by the hour,” noting that basic services across Yemen’s overcrowded displacement shelters have grown increasingly strained.

Renewed violence has also driven massive levels of cross-border movements, with UNHCR recording over 2,400 people crossing from Yemen to Djibouti by sea, with the vast majority arriving through Obock, Khor Angar, Moulhoule, and Godoria. These voyages are extremely dangerous, with overcrowded vessels, fuel shortages, and rough waters leading to frequent fatalities and missing passengers. More than 60 percent of these migrants are women, children, and elderly persons.

“People are arriving after a difficult sea journey, many exhausted, distressed and carrying what little they could take with them,” said Sandrine Desamours, UNHCR Representative in Djibouti. “The response is already under pressure. We urgently need more support before more families arrive and needs outpace our capacity to assist them. Djiboutian families and the Yemeni refugee community are opening their doors and sharing what little they have, but the humanitarian response, already facing a dire funding crisis, is being stretched fast.”

Hans Grundberg, UN Special Envoy for Yemen, warned the Security Council on September 10 that the new escalation of hostilities could plunge the country into a state of prolonged war that spills far beyond its borders. Grundberg stressed that Yemen risks being dragged into another broader regional conflict with “global repercussions,” raising significant concern across the humanitarian community.

With Houthi rebels maintaining a strong presence along all key routes connecting to the Red Sea coast–one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints–the global energy trade could face severe disruptions, further inflaming regional tensions. As the Houthis exert control over the Bab al-Mandeb Strait while Iran disrupts shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran effectively consolidates massive economic and political leverage over the global energy market.

The UN Security Council held an emergency session on September 15 to address the situation in Yemen. Mauricio Gaona the Permanent Representative of Colombia to the UN, warned that the disruption of the Straits of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb jeopardize roughly one-third of global oil trade.

“We are facing an international, or potentially an international, conflict that will be felt first in the developing world and then in the developed world. We will believe that the effects of not acting are greater than the conflict we do face today,” said Gaona.

Vasily Nebenzya, the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, stressed that destabilization in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait compromises free, safe navigation and sustainable shipping. He noted that this directly threatens humanitarian cargo shipments—which many countries in protracted crises are critically dependent on—raising concerns that conditions could rapidly deteriorate if aid deliveries are cut off.

Khaled Khiari, the UN Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) for Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations, reiterated concerns for the security of the Red Sea and the international maritime corridors. He added that what is needed in this time is “sustained engagement that reduces tensions prevents further escalation and safeguards freedom of navigation”.

“The parties in Yemen should prioritize dialogue and engage constructively with United Nations-led efforts toward a negotiated political solution,” said Khiari.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

When host governments negotiate with investors, they typically suffer from the fact that investors know more about the value of the minerals than governments do. Credit: Shutterstock

By Karl P. Sauvant and Louis T. Wells
Sep 15 2026 (IPS)

“Critical minerals” are critical in the eyes of firms and governments in industrialized countries because they are indispensable for products such as modern automobiles, AI, computers, drones, and many other consumer and defense products.

Mining, and especially processing, of many critical minerals are today concentrated in China; withholding access to them provides China with a powerful bargaining tool when tensions arise with the West. Consequently, governments and firms of industrialized countries are scrambling to develop new mines and processing facilities outside China to secure their supplies.

Many deposits are in developing countries, but most of the countries must turn to foreign firms for the capital and know how needed to extract rare earths and other critical minerals. Exploration and development contracts determine the rights and responsibilities of both investors and host governments for, often, decades. Because most investors are protected by investment treaties, host countries need to get the contracts “right” at the outset.

Technologies are changing rapidly: what is in demand today for, say, batteries, might be different in a few years. Hence, “use-it-or-lose-it” clauses in contracts are essential: if investors fail to develop mines by an agreed date or meet output requirements, contracts must provide that the investors’ rights end so that government are then free to seek other investors

The bargaining power of developing countries is often greater for critical minerals than for other minerals. This is due to the eagerness of private firms from industrialized countries as well as their home governments for access to critical minerals and their desire to keep them out of the hands of competitors.

When investors are eager, host countries can insist on gaining beneficial financial terms (taxes, royalties), avoiding broad stabilization provisions, including programs to develop local suppliers, ensuring proper mine-closure arrangements, etc. Sometimes, host countries can insist on investors processing ores locally.

Another opportunity is the chance to exploit the strong interest of investors’ home governments to ensure that their investors control critical minerals. Host countries can insist that these governments provide benefits such as finance for projects or increased aid for infrastructure projects even beyond those needed for the mine.

Obtaining real benefits from home governments is more likely if host governments have in-depth knowledge about the investors and their home countries’ policies, as well as information about mining agreements concluded elsewhere. Special to critical minerals are multilateral and bilateral arrangements that are being built to develop and stabilize critical mineral supplies. They include FORGE and stockpiling attempts such as Project Vault.

Exploiting these emerging opportunities to obtain benefits from investors’ home governments may require that host governments involve their foreign affairs ministries as well as the usual ministries concerned with mining. This adds to the common problem of coordination within governments.

Host countries also face certain risks. Particularly important is the risk that investors conclude agreements, but never actually invest. Or they stop short of producing expected levels of output. Or companies may sign agreements only to keep deposits out of the hands of other firms or as backup, “just in case.

Also, technologies are changing rapidly: what is in demand today for, say, batteries, might be different in a few years. Hence, “use-it-or-lose-it” clauses in contracts are essential: if investors fail to develop mines by an agreed date or meet output requirements, contracts must provide that the investors’ rights end so that government are then free to seek other investors.

When host governments negotiate with investors, they typically suffer from the fact that investors know more about the value of the minerals than governments do. And governments often lack the legal, financial and technical expertise required to negotiate successfully with well-resourced international investors.

Even when they have negotiated mining contracts in the past, the expertise acquired can be lodged in the heads of officials who have moved on to other positions, in government or in the private sector. The imbalance may be even greater when it comes to the complexities and special opportunities posed for negotiating agreements covering critical minerals.

Thus, exploiting the opportunities developing countries have is not an easy task. Outside expertise can help governments to optimize mining agreements. But the poorest developing countries typically lack the financial resources to hire international expertise such as lawyers, geologists, engineers, financial analysts, market specialists, and environmental experts.

Multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation can help in developing policies and laws for foreign investment and mining, but they drop out when it comes to actual negotiations with individual firms.

However, there are sources of pro bono advisors that provide help in the negotiation stage. The International Senior Lawyers Project and the African Legal Support Facility offer legal support. The CONNEX Support Unit provides not only legal support, but also other expertise required for specific projects.

Governments should consider calling on such external support when they are negotiating contracts for critical minerals. But they should work closely with the providing organization to select advisors who meet their specific needs and with whom they are comfortable.

The chosen advisors should have the necessary technical knowledge, but also the consulting skills that are required to bring together the ministries and agencies that have an interest in proposed mines—often a challenging task. In the end, advisors, or teams of advisors with different skills, can only advise. The governments of countries with minerals make the decisions.

One word of caution, though. Governments need to be careful not to overplay their hand. They need to aim for contracts that reflect, in a balanced manner, the long-term interests of all parties involved. Only then will they stand the test of time.

Karl P. Sauvant is Senior Fellow, CCSI, Columbia University, and former Director of UNCTAD’s Investment Division; Louis Wells is the Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Management, Emeritus, Harvard Business School. The authors are members of the CONNEX Advisory Committee.

Members of the Uyghur delegation pose with the director of their host organisation, CADAL, during their visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, 23 August 2026. The sky flag is strictly banned by the Chinese government under anti-separatism laws. Credit: CADAL.

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 15 2026 (IPS)

On 24 August, I took part in a human rights conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Days before it opened, the city legislature cancelled the intended venue after the Chinese ambassador complained to the Argentine government about the participation of prominent Uyghur human rights defenders, including Dolkun Isa, an activist exiled in Germany. Beijing has waged a campaign of mass detention and forced assimilation against the mostly Muslim Uyghur population for years.

The organisers found another venue at the last minute, and the conference went ahead, but the episode was revealing. This was a small gathering, of no great consequence to anyone beyond those in the room, in a global south city over 19,000 kilometres from Beijing, yet China still went out of its way to stop it. The episode showed how China aims to deny its critics any platform, however modest, anywhere. A phone call to a compliant government is the least of what it does in pursuit of this objective.

China’s global campaign

China is the world’s leading perpetrator of transnational repression, the practice of reaching beyond borders to intimidate, punish and silence critics in exile. Its new ‘Ethnic Unity Law‘, in force since July, lets the government target dissidents abroad when they are deemed to be ‘undermining ethnic unity’ or ‘creating ethnic division’. Freedom House has documented at least 319 instances of China’s physical transnational repression targeting Hong Kong democracy activists, Tibetans and Uyghurs, in addition to Taiwanese civil society and political figures, whom it treats as if they were Chinese nationals.

China’s transnational repression spans the spectrum of severity. At the far end, dissidents disappear. Chinese dissident Yi Haihua reportedly vanished in Dubai in April, having fled China via Hong Kong the previous November. China also uses prosecution and imprisonment to punish dissent abroad. Those targeted include a student who was handed a six-year sentence when he returned to China after participating in a pro-democracy protest in Australia.

Less extreme but far more widespread are surveillance, intimidation and repression by proxy, through which China monitors and threatens dissidents abroad and pressures family members back home. China also applies economic leverage against states, as seen in April when the government of Zambia, a state heavily indebted to China, called off the RightsCon digital rights conference, over the participation of Taiwanese activists, days before it was due to open in Lusaka.

Beyond China

China is not alone. Vietnam and Russia are the second and third worst offenders, and at least 54 states have engaged in transnational repression, with six — Afghanistan, Benin, Georgia, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe — identified as using these tactics for the first time in 2025.

Latin America, once largely spared, is now home to transnational repression. In June 2025, former Nicaraguan army major Roberto Samcam, an outspoken critic of dictator Daniel Ortega, was shot dead at his home near San José, Costa Rica, the third such killing of a Nicaraguan exile there in recent years. Nicaragua has also taken the lead in stripping dissenters of nationality. Since 2023, the government has removed citizenship from over 300 former journalists, opponents and political prisoners and confiscated their assets, leaving them stateless and unprotected.

Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro pursued its opponents with similar determination. In February 2024, men in fake police uniforms abducted exiled former army lieutenant Ronald Ojeda from his apartment in Santiago de Chile. His dismembered body was found buried under concrete nine days later. Chilean prosecutors concluded the killing was ordered by the Venezuelan government and carried out through a Venezuelan gang, part of a growing practice of outsourcing violence that offers plausible deniability. In October 2025, gunmen in Bogotá opened fire on exiled activists Yendri Velásquez and Luis Peche. Fortunately, they survived their multiple gunshot wounds.

Weak response

In March 2025, a New York jury convicted two members of an Eastern European crime ring hired by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard over a 2022 plot to kill exiled journalist Masih Alinejad at her Brooklyn home. This June, a UK court convicted two men of spying on UK-based Hong Kong democracy activists, and in July, it convicted those responsible for a knife attack on exiled Iranian television presenter Pouria Zeraati. The USA has imposed visa bans on Thai officials responsible for forcibly returning Uyghurs to China.

Yet these are exceptions in a pattern of host states quietly enabling the repression they claim to oppose. On top of failing to do enough to prevent transnational repression on their soil, many are facilitating it through their border and immigration systems, with geopolitical calculations and political pressure to curb immigration numbers trumping human rights protections.

In June, Germany deported Tajik opposition activist Asadullo Boboev and his son despite a documented risk of arrest. Tajik authorities detained Boboev on arrival. The USA has repeatedly returned Russians to the authoritarian government they fled, and has let officials from Iran’s consulate into US detention facilities to help process Iranian asylum seekers for deportation, including Christian converts and women’s rights protesters. In 2025, the UK reopened the door to extraditions to Hong Kong, five years after suspending cooperation over the territory’s draconian national security law. The Trump administration’s 2025 dismantling of USAID and freeze on democracy funding have cut off support that once helped threatened activists relocate and rebuild their lives.

The European Parliament, the G7 and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have all formally acknowledged transnational repression as an assault on human rights and state sovereignty, but recognition hasn’t brought stronger responses. Democratic states must resist pressure, impose consequences on foreign officials who order transnational repression and refrain from returning exiles to face danger. Democracies must not prioritise calculations of trade and diplomacy over the protection of the people seeking safety.

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 a Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

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

 

 

 

 

By Roberto Savio
Sep 15 2026 (IPS)

On 11 September 2001 I was in New York, on one of my frequent visits to the United Nations, to which I was tied by a consultancy contract. That morning I woke up late, around eleven, sleeping off the jet lag of the flight from Italy. I was staying at the Hyatt Park, today the Millennium. A hotel a few metres from the Glass Palace, built to serve the world of the United Nations.

Roberto Savio

When I came down to the lobby, I was taken aback by an extreme state of agitation, from the staff to the guests. I tried to speak to a bellboy I knew, but he ran off without answering. So I went to reception, where everyone was on the telephone and no one paid me any attention. Finally, someone I knew told me: “They’ve attacked the Twin Towers!” And then she too rushed away.

At that point, with the professional deformation of the journalist, I went out into the street to take a taxi and get to the scene. But the street was deserted. Not a car in sight, and the few passers-by were running as well, certainly to get home.

So I did the only intelligent thing left to me, which was to watch television. The images were clear and terrible. But the anchors were groping in total darkness, in a bewilderment I had never seen. It was clear that this was an attack and not an accident. But by whom? And why? The CBS presenter was asking: “But who could wish America harm, when we have always helped the whole world?” And the one on NBC: “The Evil Empire is over, it set with the fall of the Berlin Wall two years ago. Where does this hatred come from?”

New York comes to a halt

On the day of the attack, as on the day after, New York ceased to exist. The streets were deserted. Shops, restaurants, supermarkets, closed. There was no public transport. In my hotel, where the staff had not turned up, the managers improvised pathetic sandwiches, which was all that could be offered to the guests to keep them fed. Everyone was at home digesting the shock, avoiding unpredictable dangers, and watching television. Only on the second day, beyond the appalling images of people falling from the sky, of office workers and firemen covered in a mantle of ash, did figures and data begin to appear. And in those days, the American dream vanished.

The American myth and its crisis

The United States had been the clear winner of the Second World War. And from then on, the undisputed leader of the world, opposed only by the Evil Empire, the Soviet Union. But American citizens saw the socialist world as politically absurd and economically backward, a place people were constantly fleeing in order to take refuge in the world of freedom, democracy and prosperity, the United States. It was they who had set in motion the reconstruction of Europe, which, though historically the centre of the West, was by then an arm of American hegemony. And their aid to the development of the Third World had saved millions of people from hunger and famine. In the collective imagination, this took on enormous proportions, which had nothing to do with reality. Shortly before 11 September, the New York Times had published a survey according to which the American “in the street” believed that development aid amounted to anywhere from a minimum of 5 per cent of Gross Product up to 10 per cent. In fact it was 0.10.

The common feeling in those days was disbelief. In the history of the United States, Americans had first read about and then watched wars, massacres and every kind of violence as distant events, even when their own sons were involved, as in the Second World War. But they had never suffered an attack at home. And the fact that this had been possible was the first, subconscious feeling of distrust towards the institutions — which, with other events and with time, would become an important part of today’s political reality. Until then, polls had always recorded a serene confidence in a State that guaranteed security.

From the American dream to Trump and Musk

To make an effective analysis of how the American dream progressively faded would require far more space than we have. But let me try to summarise the threads of the carpet that slowly covered the United States we knew, replacing them with those of Trump and Musk.

First of all, it should be remembered that in the decade of the Eighties a number of things happened that carried great significance not only globally, but with great weight inside the United States.

The first was the Conference of Heads of State in Cancún, in 1981, convened by the United Nations to continue the dialogue for a New World Order based on cooperation and international solidarity, adopted by acclamation by the General Assembly in 1973. I was head of communications for the Summit, and I lived it from the inside. The 25 most representative heads of state of the moment were there, and from Indira Gandhi to Mitterrand, from Nyerere to Trudeau, all spoke of the need to strengthen international cooperation. When Reagan’s turn came, elected shortly before, his speech was categorical, and was later taken up by Thatcher: “American citizens elected me to serve their interests and not those of others. And therefore I do not accept the straitjacket of United Nations resolutions. From now on, America will choose its own road.”

In those same years, at American urging, the international community adopted the Washington Consensus, drawn up by the American Treasury, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank. The consensus broke with the economic doctrines that had prevailed since the end of the war. It eliminated every social component, making the market and its laws of absolute competition the centre of society. The State was to withdraw from its central role and let the market take its place. Expenditure that was not immediately productive, such as health and education, was to be taken over by the private sector. And competition, at every level, from the individual to the global, was to be the yardstick by which success is judged.

The result was that many factories and companies moved to countries with lower labour costs and fewer controls. America lost millions of jobs, of people who until then had been a middle class — white, rural, with a social conscience. But the same happened in the rural world, of white, conservative Americans with little education and an unconscious racism towards workers of colour.

The wars and the financial collapse

Nor should it be forgotten that after the attack on the Twin Towers, the United States began the war in Afghanistan, from which it would withdraw ignominiously twenty years later. And shortly afterwards, in 2003, it began the invasion of Iraq, from which it withdrew in 2011, giving life to the Islamic Caliphate (ISIS), which would become a great element of destabilisation throughout the Middle East. During these years, Americans discover that their country is not invincible. It was supposed to overcome the trauma of Vietnam. Instead, the failure of the most powerful military machine in the world continues. In the end, all that will remain is a tragic balance sheet of ruins and dead, and a total expenditure of around eight trillion dollars. To put it in perspective, the American budget today is thirty trillion dollars.

But in my view, the final blow to the American dream came a few years later, with the collapse of Wall Street, an event which once again found me present while it was happening. Finance without controls had gone so far as to turn the stock exchange into a genuine casino, a place of ever riskier bets. Under Clinton, in 1999, a law was repealed which since 1923 had established a clear separation between deposit banks (those serving citizens and businesses, loans and mortgages) and investment banks, that is, banks of speculation. The capital of the deposit banks, which were not very profitable, flowed into the investment banks. Americans do not say, as we Europeans do, that they “gamble” on the stock exchange, but that they “invest” in it. And a great many citizens do so, as do their pension funds.

In 2008 the speculative bubble bursts, sweeps away Lehman Brothers, an icon of Wall Street, and gives rise to a crisis which obviously affects the whole world. It is calculated that all the countries of the world together had to commit some 20,000 dollars in rescue money for every citizen of the planet in order to avoid a total collapse of finance. In the crisis, millions upon millions of Americans lose their savings. Their pensions too are in danger. Since the decade of the Eighties, the bargaining power of the unions has been in continuous decline. Wages in real, purchasing terms have been steadily falling. Many citizens are struggling with precarious and part-time jobs with which they can barely reach the end of the month. Many have to hold down two jobs in order to survive. The poverty rate rises to 15 per cent, and child poverty to African levels. UNICEF’s figures are dramatic. And so begins the conviction that the elites are the enemies of the people, that politics no longer has anything to do with citizens’ real concerns. Electoral abstention increases. And so the immigrant, the labour force on which America was built, becomes the enemy who takes my job, pollutes my child’s classroom, takes my place in the hospital, and commits crimes and outrages.

Religion, sovereignism and the new right

It is not only politics that digs out this feeling of frustration and anger, which explains Trump’s great success. It is also religion. Fundamentalist evangelicals now number 60 million in the United States, and their message takes up exactly the economic and social vision of the Washington Consensus. We must compete, because God judges us by our success; whoever is poor is poor because he has not fought. They support an Israel that recovers its ancient kingdom of Samaria and Judea (and therefore a vast ethnic cleansing), because they preach that Jesus will make a “second coming”, a return to earth, only when Israel has returned to the time of Jesus. And in this world flourishes the sovereignism of Bannon, who wants to turn the right into a great international (later overshadowed by Musk, who wants an anti-system sovereignism of the far right). Catholic integralism flourishes, embraced by J. Vance, the vice-president placed there by Silicon Valley and a possible next President. The integralism that leads the Secretary of Defense (or rather of War, as he prefers it) to bring religion into the armed forces, to present the war against Iran in terms of religion. And a population in which the level of economic and social distress reaches 20 per cent sees the flourishing of the first trillionaire in history (let us look at a trillion: 1,000,000,000,000), who boasts of paying no taxes, eliminates American development aid, and dismisses tens of thousands of public servants without criterion.

The internet and the end of shared truth

Shortly afterwards comes the development of communications technology. In 2004 Facebook is born, Reddit in 2005, Twitter in 2006. All at once, millions of Americans find themselves connected to one another, bypassing the enormous media system of the United States, which was in any case in few hands. I was one of the great champions of the internet, until (I believe it was Bill Gates) someone launched a slogan: “Now it is not important to know; it is important to know where to look” — which brought me to a state of great concern. If I find, but do not possess, what I have looked for, it will slide off me, like water off a goose’s back.

But the problem is that the internet was not born as a common good, as a service for humanity. It was born as a source of profit, and with the orgy of available information, being consulted became fundamental. Hence the abandonment of any meaningful mechanism of ethical or professional control over the information in circulation. So, in order to keep the connection and not lose the user, priority went to the most sensational, extraordinary, striking information. Before long this would be exploited by creators of false or tendentious news, with a great flowering of conspiracy theories which, for example, see in the President of the Republic and the Pope a network of paedophiles covered by the secret services. I read, again I think in the NYT, that the FBI estimated at 45 million the number of people adhering to these conspiracies, which stripped the institutions of all legitimacy. And so the internet gave them a megaphone, which carried the most incredible ideas from the bar to the whole of society. And above all to the extremists, infinitely more fanatical than ordinary citizens.

Numerous studies and statistics tell us of the impact of the isolation that leads young people, instead of socialising, to shut themselves up in the internet, in a virtual world in which AI becomes the real friend and adviser. This falls upon a society that has always idealised the individual against the social, and where a winning political line sees in the reduction of the State the freedom of citizens, in taxes an unjust expropriation of the fruit of their labour, and in social spending, such as medical care, a clear socialist imprint.

Obviously, a reaction of suffering is under way in the United States. The Mayor of New York, who declares himself a socialist, has been elected, and other openly progressive figures are entering the field. But this is happening with a strong polarisation, with an intolerant and profound confrontation, which offers no glimpse, in the immediate future, of a path towards national consensus, but quite the contrary. Trump calls the Democrats “communists”, and politics has by now become the great instrument of division. The future does not look at all like a return to the America of dreams.

Bin Laden’s legacy and Europe

Bin Laden could never have imagined, in destroying the Twin Towers, that he would set in motion such a mechanism of destruction.

But his legacy is not measured only in treaties. It is measured also in everyday gestures, which we have stopped recognising as such. Today no one is surprised at having to arrive at the airport two hours before departure: shoes and belts in the tray, liquids in hundred-millilitre bottles, queues, scanners, searches. The new generations experience it as a law of nature, because they never knew the before. It was enough to turn up half an hour ahead, check in, and go straight to the gate. No controls. That world disappeared on a September morning, and it has never come back. This is terrorism’s most silent victory: not to have changed our ideas, but our habits, to the point that we no longer remember having had different ones.

We should also analyse how this mechanism did not remain in the United States. With different characteristics, and in a different reality, it spread to Europe as well. One need only look at the Maastricht Treaty, on which our European Union is based. Concluded in the Dutch town in 1992, at the height of the intoxication with the extreme capitalism of the Washington Consensus, it provides for obligations and competences in the economic field alone. The social field is part of an added document, which has no binding value. And now, out of 27 member states of the Union, a majority are sovereignist, and therefore opposed to any real power for Brussels. Next year we will have elections in Spain, France, Italy and Poland. Countries of great weight. If sovereignism prevails in these too, Europeans — who look upon Trump as an aberration — will have fulfilled his dream: to destroy the European Union.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti-neoliberal global governance. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Credit: Cia Pak / UN

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 15 2026 (IPS)

As the race for the election of a new Secretary-General (UNSG) gathers momentum, the spotlight is on the 193-member General Assembly, the highest policy making body at the United Nations, which has refused to assert itself and continues to play a subservient role in the elections of UNSGs.

Perhaps this year will be no exception either.

According to Article 97 of the United Nations Charter, the Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council (SC), which puts forward a single recommended candidate.

Traditionally, the General Assembly (GA) has always approved that recommendation, usually by acclamation or a resolution

But the GA has never rejected a SC nominee. Despite a growing demand for a female SG in the 81- year history of the UN, what if the SC nominee this year is a male candidate.?

Isn’t it time for the GA to assert its authority and reject any candidates– male or female—who lacks the right credentials for the post of Chief Administrative Officer of the United Nations? Isn’t it also time for the GA to cease being a mere rubber stamp — approving without questioning the Security Council decision?

Richard Gowan, Director for Global Issues and Institutions and a longtime UN watcher at the Brussels-based Crisis Group, told Inter Press Service (IPS): “I really, really doubt that the General Assembly would reject a candidate approved by the Security Council– unless he or she was a certified axe murderer. And even then, it might be a close call.”

There has been a lot of talk about the General Assembly asserting itself more in the selection process. But member states are also worried that the veto powers in the Council will not be able to agree on anyone at all. There is more and more talk of the Council reaching the end of the year without making a recommendation, he said.

“ I think that there will be a deal in the end, but to be frank if the veto powers do agree on a candidate, a lot of countries will conclude that they have to accept him or her. Even if diplomats in New York think the person on offer is sub-standard, their political bosses in capitals will not want to offend Washington, Beijing and Moscow by challenging the choice”.

* I can imagine a situation in which the veto powers force through a candidate from outside Latin America and the Caribbean, leading the Latin Americans to abstain or vote against them in protest over the breach of the regional rotation principle. Although a lot of members do really want a female Secretary-General, I find it less likely that a lot of states would vote against a man on principle.”

* I think that a lot of diplomats would worry about damaging their relations with the next Secretary-General before they even take office. And in the final analysis, there will be a tendency to say that it is better to give the next UN chief a broad endorsement for the sake of the organization. Turning the next Secretary-General into a lame duck in advance would look bad, declared Gowan.

Jesselina Rana, UN Advisor, CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organisations and activists, told IPS in theory the GA can push back if a woman is not recommended, once voting starts. It only takes a simple majority present and voting to appoint the SG. In practice, it never has happened.

Real pressure has to come earlier. This means the GA asking for multiple candidates before the Security Council makes its recommendation or even holding GA straw polls to gauge preferences., she said.

Dr Palitha Kohona, former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, told IPS to seek clarity from the Charter, which substantially reflects the reality of the world after the Second World War, would not be particularly helpful in the appointment of a new SG.

“We continue to be dominated by that reality which in the view of some commentators, including the present writer, is outdated. Practices have been developed which essentially perpetuate that reality. Whatever the P5 decides is likely to prevail.”

The Charter itself says little on the appointment process of the SG. Article 97 stipulates that the General Assembly will appoint a Secretary-General on the recommendation of the Security Council. Resolutions 11/1 of 1946 and 54/246 of 1997 are important in this regard, said Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

The Security Council (SC) has continued to play the preeminent role in the selection of a candidate for the position of SG. In fact, the role played by the veto wielding Permanent 5 (P5) is critical.

In the first instance, he pointed out, the SC will seek consensus prior to recommending a candidate to the GA, although 9 votes in favour of a candidate in the Council would suffice to progress the matter. If consensus is not feasible, the Council will vote on the candidates available.

The practice of conducting straw polls among the members of the SC has become popular in recent times. To the disconcert of many members of the world body, the recommendation is adopted at a private meeting in accordance with Rule 48 of the Provisional Rules of Procedure. The P5 has fiercely hung on to this privilege.

“It is now almost mandatory for aspirants to the post of SG to undertake visits to the capitals of the P5 to seek their blessings and not say or do anything that would cause them unease”.

In South Asia, people are familiar with the somewhat similar practice of making offerings to deities in order to obtain divine blessings prior to undertaking any important task.

This was not always the case. When, in 1951, Trygve Lie was vetoed by the Soviet Union, as he sought his second term, the US had him appointed through a clear majority of votes in the GA.

Given the difficulties that Trygve Lie faced subsequently, especially in dealing with a hostile Soviet Union, it would be unlikely that such a break from accepted practice would be adopted today. The life of a SG appointed in this manner would simply be too difficult, he argued.

While many would consider that at least now a woman should occupy the position of SG, the present writer subscribes to the view, that the best candidate should be picked to head this supremely important global position, irrespective of gender.

“The ideal candidate should be able to work effectively with the P5, maintain the confidence of the members of the Organization, manage a complex universal bureaucracy and advance the goals and ideals of the Character without fear or favour, declared Dr Kohona.

Meanwhile, in an article published in PassBlue last month, Graca Machel, a co-founder and the Deputy Chair of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders, said historically, the selection of a new secretary-general has been treated as the domain of the UN Security Council, especially its five permanent members, known as “the P5.”

But the wording of the UN Charter is clear that while the Council should recommend a candidate, the appointment is made by the General Assembly. If the P5 propose an unsuitable candidate for reasons of realpolitik, the states of the General Assembly can and should reject them and insist that more suitable individuals be put forward said Machel, the only woman in modern history to have served as First Lady of two countries: South Africa and Mozambique.

“The concentration of such power in the hands of only five member states — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — has never been consistent with the democratic spirit of multilateralism. It is particularly indefensible today, when two permanent members, Russia and the US, have recently breached the Charter through launching unilateral wars of aggression,” she pointed out.

The concentration of such power in the hands of only five member states — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — has never been consistent with the democratic spirit of multilateralism. It is particularly indefensible today, when two permanent members, Russia and the US, have recently breached the Charter through launching unilateral wars of aggression.

“As an African woman who fought in my country’s liberation struggle and has spent decades working for peace, justice and human dignity, I find it profoundly troubling that the UN still reflects, at its uppermost levels of the Security Council, the power hierarchies of 1945 and the colonial era”, she declared.

All 193 members of the General Assembly bear responsibility for ensuring a credible process and must affirm their commitment to multilateralism, universal human rights and the rules-based international order. They have an obligation to ensure that those principles are reflected in the candidate they support.

“If the Security Council presents a candidate who lacks the independence, experience, integrity and broad confidence required for the office, the General Assembly is not bound to rubber-stamp that choice. Member states have the right and responsibility to demand a candidate worthy of the Charter and of the peoples in whose name the UN acts”.

The next secretary-general cannot be merely an administrator of international consensus, especially when consensus itself is often paralyzed. The office requires a leader with moral courage, political judgment and strategic independence — someone to speak truth to power, to work quietly and effectively behind the scenes and to retain the trust of governments without becoming beholden to any of them, declared Machel.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

A report Rebuild Trust: Rigged Economies, Fractured Societies and the Case for Change found that people everywhere believed the system was rigged. Credit: Earth4All

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Sep 14 2026 (IPS)

An international survey released by Earth4All has found a growing crisis of trust in governments, widespread anger over inequality, and strong public support for major economic reforms, suggesting that many people across the world believe current political and economic systems are failing to serve ordinary citizens.

The report, Rebuild Trust: Rigged Economies, Fractured Societies and the Case for Change, surveyed people in 17 countries representing 58 percent of global GDP, 38 percent of the world’s population, and 37 percent of global carbon emissions. Its findings paint a picture of societies that feel increasingly divided, economically insecure, and disconnected from political institutions.

As per the report, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believe their country’s economic system is “rigged” to benefit the rich and powerful. Seven in ten said there is too much economic inequality in their country, while 69 percent called for major changes to economic systems to improve life for most people.

“The survey results show a mismatch between public support for economic change and what mainstream political parties are willing to offer,” the report’s authors, Owen Gaffney and Kate Pickett, write. They argue that the findings reveal an opportunity for governments to build new social contracts based on fairness, economic security, and long-term wellbeing.

The survey comes at a time when many countries are grappling with rising living costs, political polarisation, climate pressures, and growing public frustration with institutions.

One of the report’s most striking conclusions is that many people feel their societies are becoming more fractured.

Across the 17 countries surveyed, 67 percent said their country is more divided today than it was a decade ago. More than seven in ten respondents reported serious tensions between supporters of different political parties. Nearly two-thirds saw conflict between rich and poor, while similar numbers perceived tensions between immigrant and native-born populations.

The authors argue that these divisions are linked not only to economic conditions but also to a broader erosion of trust.

“Societies feel themselves coming apart. There is a trust deficit at the heart of societies,” reads the report.

Only 31 percent of respondents said they trust their governments to make decisions that will benefit the majority of people 20 or 30 years into the future. This was one of the lowest-rated measures in the survey.

The report also highlights a less visible issue. Many people feel they are not treated with respect and dignity.

Across all surveyed countries, only 41 percent agreed that people like them are treated with respect and dignity. The authors note that feelings of disrespect and humiliation can fuel political alienation and social resentment.

“A society in which one in four people feel they do not receive respect contains significant combustible material,” the report states. “Many people feel unseen, believe the system is rigged and do not experience their society as a collective enterprise.”

Asian countries included in the survey showed significant differences in public attitudes.

Indonesia emerged as one of the strongest supporters of economic reform. Nearly three-quarters of Indonesians said there is too much inequality in their country, while 74 percent believed the system benefits the wealthy. A remarkable 78 percent supported major economic changes, the highest level among all countries surveyed.

Indonesians also showed strong backing for climate action. Sixty-eight per cent said governments should take strong action against climate change even if it results in higher prices.

Yet Indonesia appeared less polarised than many Western countries. Only 53 percent believed the country is more divided than it was ten years ago, significantly below the global average.

Japan presented a different picture.

Trust in government was among the lowest recorded in the survey. Only 19 percent of Japanese respondents said they trusted their government to make long-term decisions benefiting the majority of citizens. Just one fifth felt they were treated with respect and dignity.

The findings also revealed unexpectedly strong support for authoritarian leadership in Japan. Nearly half of respondents agreed that the country would be better off with a strong leader unconstrained by parliament and elections. Meanwhile, only half said democracy was the best system of government.

India also featured prominently in the survey. According to comparative data in the report, 66 percent of Indian respondents agreed that there is too much economic inequality in the country, close to the international average. India ranked among countries where a majority still felt they were treated with respect and dignity, recording one of the highest scores in the survey on that measure.

Despite widespread frustration with governments and economic systems, the survey found continued support for democracy.

Overall, 68 percent of respondents said democracy remains the best way to govern their country. However, support was not universal. Forty percent also agreed that their country would be better off with a strong leader who does not have to worry about parliament or elections.

The authors describe this as a warning sign rather than a rejection of democracy itself.

In countries such as Brazil and Japan, support for strong leaders reached especially high levels. In Brazil, 51 percent backed the idea of a leader unconstrained by elections, while 63 percent still supported democracy. In Japan, support for strong leadership stood at 46 percent.

The United States presented a contrasting picture. Only 26 percent favoured a strong leader outside democratic constraints, while 68 percent supported democracy as the preferred form of government.

The report warns that declining trust in institutions can create openings for anti-democratic movements if governments fail to address public concerns about fairness and economic opportunity.

Climate Action Retains Public Backing

Despite growing economic anxieties, the survey found continued support for climate action.

More than half of respondents said governments should take strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even if it leads to higher prices. Support was strongest in middle-income countries and weaker among lower-income households and politically conservative respondents.

The authors argue that climate policies are more likely to succeed when paired with measures that address economic inequality and social insecurity.

Public resistance to climate action often grows when people believe they are being asked to bear unfair costs while wealthier groups benefit from the existing system, the report suggests.

Kate Pickett, one of the report’s authors and a well-known researcher on inequality and social wellbeing, has long argued that unequal societies tend to experience weaker social cohesion and lower levels of trust. The findings of the new survey appear to reinforce that argument.

Economic Anxiety Remains Widespread

Beyond questions of trust and politics, the survey highlights persistent worries about basic economic security.

Across the countries surveyed, 41 percent of respondents said they were concerned about having enough money to cover their basic needs during the coming year. Economic anxiety was particularly high in countries facing inflation and financial instability.

Argentina recorded the highest levels of economic insecurity. More than two-thirds of respondents worried about covering basic needs, and 78 percent supported major economic reforms.

Even in wealthier countries, concerns about inequality remained widespread.

In the United States, 62 percent said there was too much inequality. In Sweden, often regarded as one of the world’s more equal societies, 71 percent shared the same view. Australia recorded 64 percent.

The authors argue that economic growth alone is no longer enough to reassure citizens.

Instead, people increasingly judge systems based on fairness, opportunity, and whether prosperity is shared.

The Earth4All initiative was launched by organisations including the Club of Rome, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the Norwegian Business School. It seeks to identify pathways toward sustainable prosperity and social wellbeing.

The report’s authors say the findings should serve as a wake-up call for political leaders.

Rather than viewing public frustration as a temporary reaction to economic shocks, they argue that governments should recognize it as evidence of deeper structural problems.

The survey reveals what the authors call a “near-universal diagnosis”. Across different political systems, cultures, and income levels, large majorities share the belief that current economic arrangements favour elites while leaving ordinary citizens behind.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

A delegate walking past a billboard at the Africa Food Systems Forum at Kigali Convention Centre in Rwanda's capital. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
KIGALI, Sep 14 2026 (IPS)

When the African continent experiences erratic rains, crops fail, leaving millions of people facing hunger.

Approximately 95% of Africa’s arable land depends heavily on rainfall, which is vulnerable to climate shocks such as drought.

El Niño-induced drought expected to hit some parts of Africa, particularly southern Africa, is going to worsen the situation.

At the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, governments and development partners are calling for more investment in irrigation systems to reduce dependence on rain-fed agriculture by farmers, including small holders who make up 80% of all farmers in sub-saharan Africa.

Building More Irrigation Systems

Only 5% of Africa’s arable land is under irrigation. Asia irrigates about 7 times more than Africa, as it holds about three-quarters of the entire world’s irrigated land.

“Some irrigation systems have been developed. The task now is to take it to scale,” said Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, Senator Abubakar Kyari, at a side event organised by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). “The technology is there and the workforce is there. What we need is collective action.”

IWMI is a global research organisation addressing water challenges in developing countries, working with governments, civil society, and businesses.

When El Niño hit the southern Africa region in the 2023/2024 agriculture season, it triggered one of the driest mid-seasons in over 40 years. It devastated rain-fed maize production, leaving over 26 million people facing hunger in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia and Zambia.

These countries declared national drought disasters to mobilise resources from the public purse, private sector and humanitarian agencies.

In preparing for the next El Nino, Abubakar said agriculture cannot remain at the mercy of the seasons. He said Africa should sustainably manage and deploy its vast water schemes. “This is not a continent of scarcity but of strategic abundance,” he said. “Our task now is not to apportion blame but to break that cycle.”

Africa holds about 9% of the world’s renewable freshwater systems.

Abubakar proposed the adoption and operationalisation of the African Union Framework on Irrigation Development and Agricultural Water Management to enhance water control and increase farmer-led irrigation. This framework is a continental blueprint published in 2020 to boost food security, adapt to climate change, and modernise agriculture across member states.

Abubakar said there is a need to innovate financing to close the investment gap and to strengthen transboundary water appropriation. “We must move from sharing drops to sharing benefits. Establishment of enforceable cooperative frameworks. To scale up climate-smart irrigation and put farmers at the centre of irrigation development. Also to open opportunities for young people in irrigated value chains,” he said

“We must turn continental commitments into actionable delivery. We have articulated the future we want. We must translate that.”

Policy is key to enabling a working, favourable environment for increasing investment in the agriculture sector.

Speaking at the same event, Vincent Kabuti, Irrigation Secretary in the Ministry of Water, said governments should be able to put in place mechanisms for farmers to hold the government accountable.

He said large commercial irrigation systems are essential in complementing farmer-led irrigation systems.

“We have a lot of water, but it is the investment that we do not have,”

Preparing for the next El Niño

Southern Africa expects the next El Niño in the 2026/2027 agricultural season, according to scientists.

The weather phenomenon was officially declared on 11 June by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA confirmed that ocean temperatures in equatorial areas of the Pacific Ocean had remained more than 0.5 °C above average for several months.

El Niño occurs when trade winds in the Pacific reverse direction, causing warmer water to flow into central and eastern areas of the world’s largest ocean.

In Africa, it normally brings El contrasting weather extremes, causing severe droughts in southern Africa and heavy, flood-triggering rains across East Africa.

Drier conditions, which scientists are anticipating, are expected to threaten staple crop yields like maize in southern Africa. Reduced food security risks compounding pressure on food price inflation and acute malnutrition among children.

Abubakar said irrigation systems cushion farmers from droughts and boost food security, create jobs and boost the livelihoods of approximately 439 million Africans living in extreme poverty.

Tilahun Amede, a director of Climate Sustainable Productivity and Resilience at Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an institution focused on scaling agricultural innovations that help smallholder farmers towards increased incomes, better livelihoods, and improved food security, said countries must integrate water in every aspect of agriculture. “African governments must invest in water and irrigation systems,” he said.

“We also need to create a market for farmers to increase their incomes so that they can adopt irrigation systems.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 14 2026 (IPS)

Most free trade advocates falsely claim that comparative advantage ensures developmental gains from trade liberalisation. Mainstream trade theory does not promise that partial trade liberalisation guarantees optimal international specialisation.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Specialisation?
Developing countries are supposedly better off after specialising in relatively simple activities contributing to global supply chains, such as primary commodity production and low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing.

Why should developing countries specialise in producing and exporting mineral or agricultural primary commodities? After all, most economists recognise the greater gains in growth, employment, and income from dynamic modern activities, especially manufacturing.

Comparative advantage supposedly gained by trade liberalisation supposedly ensures gains from international specialisation. However, tropical agriculture has instead experienced falling relative prices rather than higher-value-added secondary and tertiary activities in the North.

As Hans Singer and Raul Prebisch showed in 1950, export prices for primary commodities have fallen much more over the long term relative to the prices of manufactures. Bilge Erten has shown these trends continuing into the early 21st century.

Evidence since the late 20th century suggests that the prices of manufactured goods produced by developing countries have fallen relative to those of more sophisticated, high-tech goods from more developed economies.

Intellectual property rents
Due to intense competition among developing countries producing ‘generic’ manufactures, developed-country firms secure higher rents from intellectual property rights (IPRs) – namely, ‘surplus’ from monopoly power so conferred – on their manufactured exports.

The latter are priced higher due to the ‘exclusive’ monopoly power protected by IPRs and ‘branding’ strengthened by transnational law with the establishment of the multilateral World Trade Organization and related law on trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS).

In fact, the prices of generic primary commodities and ‘unbranded’ manufactures have fallen due to more intense competition. In contrast, the prices of ‘exclusive’ products, due to monopoly IPRs and transnational corporate branding, remain higher.

However, such rents do not accrue to mass-produced generic products, whether primary commodities or manufactures made with easily accessible materials and production techniques, subject to intense market competition.

The last decade-long commodity ‘super-cycle’ price boom, which ended around 2004, generated windfall earnings and investible capital. While it undoubtedly lifted many boats for growth, if not development, it did not contradict longer-term trends.

Biased theory
The economic literature on development, trade, and monopolistic competition recognises the possibility of increasing – not just diminishing – returns to scale in manufacturing, enabling average costs to fall.

Such gains from trade are not from one-time ‘static’ improvements in resource allocation. Instead, these benefits stem from dynamic changes driven by production expansion, specialisation, and differentiation for larger markets.

Potential gains from greater external market access can be significant, but only if building on an existing industrial base, capacity and capabilities. Proactive support through appropriate industrial, investment, and technology policies can be crucial.

This pragmatic developmental approach to trade policy contradicts the neoclassical Heckscher-Ohlin ‘pure’ trade theory, the received conventional wisdom invoked by contemporary advocates of trade liberalisation.

Some Keynesian economists promoted balance-of-payments-constrained growth. Cross-border flows of goods and services are determined by the level and growth rate of economic activity, with the exchange rate determining relative prices.

This approach, implying fewer gains from trade, is rejected by trade liberalisation advocates. Developing countries’ gains from specialisation are reduced by falling relative prices, with consumers benefiting from productivity gains at the expense of producers.

If developing-country firms do not manufacture products at productivity levels comparable to those in developed countries, claims of trade gains from consumers’ ‘love of variety’ become quite irrelevant.

Agricultural trade liberalisation
The Western push for agricultural trade liberalisation sought to eliminate tariffs to ensure food security while ignoring subsidies that developed countries could afford.

Although agricultural export subsidies have been largely eliminated, OECD food producers continue to benefit from production subsidies, thereby enabling productivity and trade gains.

As many developing countries became net importers of subsidised agribusiness exports from OECD exporters, price increases due to subsidy withdrawal hurt consumers, especially in developing countries.

Comparable gains in developing-country agriculture have often been modest due to the decline in infrastructure and support services, especially after the imposition of the ‘neoliberal’ Washington Consensus by the West in the 1980s.

The increasing private foreign corporate domination of agricultural research, development, and extension has also significantly reduced net gains to developing-country smallholder farmers.

Neoliberal reforms, including structural adjustment programmes, have reduced, contracted out or privatised government and public-sector alternatives. This raised the costs of credit, marketing, and inputs, including seeds, fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, machinery and fuel.

While trade liberalisation of manufactured imports eroded the policy space needed for investment and technology policies for development, agricultural trade liberalisation has undermined ‘food security’ in most developing countries.

Thus, many African net food-exporting nations became net food importers in the 1980s, following the neoliberal reforms imposed by structural adjustment programmes on indebted nations.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

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