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Negotiators at then UN Climate conference in Bonn, Germany. Credit: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
BONN, Jun 20 2025 (IPS)

In recent years, there has been growing evidence of how climate change is impacting human health in several ways.

The Lancet Countdown has been producing ‘eye-popping’ reports, highlighting  how climate change is breaching health thresholds across multiple indicators—heat, disease vectors, food security, air quality, and socioeconomic stability.

With record-breaking heat threats exposing individuals to dangerous heat compared to pre-industrial expectations; worsening environmental stressors in the form of droughts and flooding, exposing people to heightened risks of waterborne and vector-borne diseases; and the cost of extreme weather events running into billions of dollars globally, the global community is being called upon to act swiftly.

Without urgent, health-centered transformation in energy, finance, health systems, urban planning, and governance, the world is not just delaying action—it’s fueling a global health crisis, the 2024 Lancet Countdown report warns.

Like other sectors, Africa’s health is highly vulnerable to climate impacts and in dire and urgent need of adaptation strategies. A quick perusal of the 2024 State of Africa Climate Report released in May, 2025, by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveals how extreme weather and climate change impacts are hitting Africa the hardest.

The report highlights several health-related impacts of climate change in Africa, ranging from extreme heat events leading to serious heatwaves; flooding and landslides resulting in displacements and loss of lives; food and nutrition insecurity emanating from prolonged droughts; and tropical cyclones leaving a trail of destruction and loss of lives, among others.

These health-related impacts underscore the urgent need for climate adaptation strategies to mitigate risks and protect vulnerable populations across Africa. ​

“The State of the Climate in Africa report reflects the urgent and escalating realities of climate change across the continent,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “It also reveals a stark pattern of extreme weather events, with some countries grappling with exceptional flooding caused by excessive rainfall and others enduring persistent droughts and water scarcity.”

“WMO and its partners are committed to working with Members to build resilience and strengthen adaptation efforts in Africa through initiatives like Early Warnings for All,” she said. “It is my hope that this report will inspire collective action to address increasingly complex challenges and cascading impacts.”

Armed with such devastating information, African climate change negotiators at the UN Climate conference in Bonn, Germany, are calling on parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to take the climate and health nexus seriously and consider mainstreaming it into the main agenda items of climate negotiations, in addition to the health sector target in the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) framework.

“The African Group of Negotiators reaffirms that Africa experiences some of the most severe climate change impacts on human health and health systems, despite contributing minimally to global greenhouse gas emissions. With African countries already having very precarious health systems, climate change impacts exacerbate and overwhelm these systems, putting lives at risk. Urgent help and adaptation support is needed for countries. We call for ambitious and urgent collaboration of parties to address these multifaceted challenges in a holistic manner,” said Dr. Richard Muyungi, Chair of the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN).

The AGN is the mandated negotiating group, which represents all 54 African countries in the UNFCCC processes.

In his opening statement at the Bonn Climate Conference, Muyungi said the group was prepared to work with other parties to spearhead the climate and health agenda and called for the initiation of mandated dialogues on human health and climate change from COP30 and beyond.

Meanwhile, African civil society continues to raise its voice on the importance of climate finance for Africa’s adaptation.

“It is unfortunate that developed parties continue to evade their obligation to provide climate finance as enshrined in Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. This is the hallmark of the climate convention, without which we might as well forget about these negotiations. It is becoming increasingly frustrating that the climate finance agenda item continues to cause serious divisions, including the agenda fight that we have, once again, witnessed here in Bonn. But this should not be the case because both the convention and the Paris Agreement are clear on developed parties’ obligation to provide finance,” said Mithika Mwenda, Executive Director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).

Climate financing and capacity-building support through health systems strengthening have, likewise, dominated recent discussions in the climate and health sub-sector.

At a side event hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and the World Meteorological Organization during the 78th World Health Assembly in Geneva, investments in early warning systems were a key agenda.

Desta Lakew, Group Partnerships and External Affairs Director at Amref Health Africa, highlighted the existing gaps and the need for investments.

“Our early warning systems are not keeping pace. Investments in early warning, data, and information systems lag behind, forcing our governments to continue relying on outdated technologies and equipment that fail to capture and transmit real-time weather information to the public,” said Lakew. “This undermines the public’s preparedness, leading to avoidable losses of both property and lives. We therefore need to strengthen climate-health data systems, surveillance, early warning, and climate risk assessment by enhancing capacity to detect, predict, monitor, and respond to climate-sensitive health risks through improved data integration, early warning systems, and comprehensive vulnerability assessments.”

“At Amref, we believe in community investment; that’s why we are actively working with governments in Africa to build the technical capacity required for health systems adaptation and resilience to climate impacts. We thus advocate for financing that puts community-centered initiatives at the heart of climate adaptation of health systems,” added Lakew.

Local communities’ involvement is touted as the starting point for climate action. And the    Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is leading local communities’ climate adaptation action through the promotion of agroecology.

The Alliance argues for and promotes the practice as a panacea to local farmers’ climate-related production and nutrition security challenges.

“Rooted in traditional knowledge and biodiversity, agroecology promotes healthy soils, thriving ecosystems, and resilient food systems,” says Bridget Mugambe, AFSA Programme Coordinator.

Mugambe argues that agroecology and health are deeply interconnected. “With thriving ecosystems free from chemical inputs, local farmers are guaranteed well-nourished crops, rich in nutrients and devoid of harmful residues, contributing to better human health,” she points out.

“At its core, agroecology respects cultural diversity and traditional food systems, which are central to promoting healthy diets rooted in local, indigenous foods that have nourished African communities for generations.”

As the climate talks continue, what is clear is that health voices calling for total inclusivity are getting louder each passing day, particularly due to the growing list of health-related impacts underscoring the urgent need for climate adaptation strategies to protect vulnerable populations across Africa.

The author is Climate Change Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Police line up at an anti-government outside the parliament building in Tbilisi. Credit: Gvantsa Kalandadze

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jun 20 2025 (IPS)

Having attended hundreds of anti-government protests in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, Gvantsa Kalandadze is no stranger to police intimidation and violence.

Police brutality has become common at the daily protests that have taken place in the city since the end of last year, when the autocratic government of the Georgian Dream party said it was stopping the country’s process of integration into the EU.

Kalandadze has seen others fall victim to police brutality and experienced it on more than one occasion herself—soon after leaving a protest in December last year, she was pushed to the ground and kicked viciously by a group of officers for questioning the arrest of a man in the street, and during another gathering a few weeks later, she was knocked out when officers pushed her and other protestors into a ditch.

But when the protests began, police violence against protesters seemed indiscriminate; research by rights group Amnesty International suggests that women protesters are now being targeted specifically and are facing escalating violence and gender-based reprisals.

Kalandadze says she is not surprised by the news.

“It’s true. The police are aggressive and they harass women both verbally, using demeaning terms such as ‘slut,’ ‘daughter of a whore,’ and others, and threaten us with rape and assault,” she says.

Amnesty’s research details the police’s methods to target women, which involves increasing use of gender-based violence including sexist insults, threats of sexual violence and unlawful and degrading strip searches against women involved in protests.

“We have spoken to people personally about what they experienced at the hands of the police, such as being forced to undergo strip-searches and threats of rape during detention,” Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, told IPS.

The group’s research also highlights individual cases of this abuse, including cases of women being violently restrained by officers, forced to strip naked, denied access to medical treatment, threatened with rape, and subjected to sexual insults.

Amnesty says these abuses not only violate Georgian law, which prohibits full undressing during searches, but also international human rights law and standards aimed at safeguarding human dignity and protecting people from gender-based violence.

“Forcing someone to completely strip naked [in detention] is against both international and Georgian law, yet despite this, the police are forcing protesters to do this. It is clearly a deliberate police policy, despite it being against the law,” said Krivosheev.

While Amnesty says it has spoken to numerous women about such abuse, Krivosheev said, “the number [of women who are victims of this targeting] is far more than we have been able to document simply because many victims are scared to speak out about what happened to them.”

Female protesters who spoke to IPS confirmed that police harassment of women at protests was widespread, but also that it was often used to provoke a specific response, and not always just from women.

“The thing is that women are never violent at protests; they would never attack police, and the police are insulting us—usually with sexual slurs like saying we’re all sluts, bitches, whores, and insults about oral and anal sex—to try and provoke us into doing something that would get us arrested or force the men around us to try and protect us and do something that will get those men arrested,” Vera*, who has attended scores of protests in Tbilisi, told IPS.

“I know multiple women who were physically pushed, dragged, or detained. Some were insulted with misogynistic language. A few were groped during arrests—and that isn’t isolated… many of us know someone personally who’s experienced this abuse,” Tamar*, a civil rights campaigner from Tbilisi who has attended scores of protests, told IPS.

She added that police were even cooperating with, or at least tolerating, criminals abusing women protesters.

“The police have used violence—tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and physical force—but that’s only part of the story. What’s even more disturbing is the presence of organized criminal gangs. These groups operate with impunity, clearly coordinated, yet the police don’t intervene. They specifically target women activists—chasing them, splashing green substances on their faces, shouting threats, and trying to scare them off the streets.

“I was personally hit in the head with a stone by one of these thugs. When I asked a police officer for help, he sarcastically told me to ask my ‘fellow democratic fighters’ who did it, as if it had come from among the people protesting. There’s zero accountability when the violence comes from those orchestrated to look like random citizens. It’s a deliberate tactic to terrorize protesters, especially women, while maintaining official deniability,” she said.

Many female protesters believe the reasons behind the targeting of women are rooted in not just the role women are playing in the current protests but also the “misogynist tendencies” of many officers.

“There is also a culture of toxic masculinity that goes hand in hand with the conservative part of society—the police are angry that women are taking the initiative [in protests]—female participation in the current protests is a lot larger than ever before—and that causes their aggression. The police see (or, at least, saw at the beginning) women at protests as ‘inferior’ compared to men and think they will be easier to break morally and easier to overpower physically.

“Another factor is the sexual deviations of individuals in the police force—when they feel power over the women after detaining them, their perversion takes over,” Vera explained.

Others put it down to how police perceive women as a serious threat to their authority.

“I think that the real reason the police are targeting women is that women are truly fearless in these protests. They are very resilient and persistent and always on the frontlines. They have actually physically saved a lot of men from the hands of violent police. I truly believe that the police feel threatened by them,” Paata Sabelashvili, a rights campaigner in Tbilisi who has taken part in protests, told IPS.

He added, though, that “in light of the misogyny and sexism among police officers, this is, sadly, not unexpected, and I fear it will only get worse in the future.”

While Amnesty has called on Georgian authorities to immediately end all forms of gender-based reprisals and all unlawful use of force by law enforcement, investigate every allegation of abuse during the protests, and ensure accountability at all levels, neither the group itself nor protesters who spoke to IPS, believe that is likely to happen soon.

“There is little hope under the current government for accountability and effective investigation [of police abuse during protests],” said Krivosheev.

Local media have reported that investigations into complaints made by women about the violence and threats they have faced from police at protests have largely gone nowhere, as have investigations by the Special Investigation Service, which is tasked with independently investigating crimes committed by police, despite hundreds of reports of police violence in 2024 alone.

The government has not commented on claims of women protesters being targeted by police, but in the past it has justified police action at protests as being a response to violence from protesters and has claimed, without evidence, that the protests are being funded from abroad.

But while women protesters are suffering from abuse and harassment by police, the tactics appear to be galvanizing female participation in protests.

“These gender-based reprisals may have been aimed at scaring women into giving up, but that has not been the case. Women have continued protesting, and if anything, even more intensively. Many women continue to speak up about how the police are treating them,” said Krivosheev.

Kalandadze says that despite her experiences, she will not stop attending protests.

“The day the government announced it would suspend Georgia’s EU integration, I decided to join the street protests, and the violent suppression began the same night. Since then, I have attended every protest where protesters have been in danger—every gathering where the police special forces were called in. Even today, I take part in every protest where police forces are mobilized,” she says.

Vera pointed out that although the size of street protests in Tbilisi has grown smaller, they continue on a daily basis.

“The fact that there is some kind of protest in the capital every day is discomfiting for the government and also serves to ensure that the regime is not legitimized in the eyes of the country’s former western partners. There are lots of female activists and the leaders of the protest marches are always women. We have shown so much resilience. We believe in each other. This country is ours,” she said.

Tamar was even more defiant.

“When women lead, especially in a patriarchal society, it destabilizes the whole narrative. It’s not just about political dissent; it’s about cultural control. Yes, I fear things may get worse before they get better. But we aren’t taking a step back,” she said.

*Names have been changed for their safety.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jun 20 2025 (IPS)

On a resounding 79.4 per cent turnout, South Korean voters have delivered a clear mandate for change. Lee Jae-myung of the centrist Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) decisively won the 3 June election, becoming the country’s new president after a turbulent time for South Korean democracy.

Just six months before, South Koreans took to the streets to defend their democracy when President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to impose martial law. Their determination to protect democratic institutions paved the way for electoral change, proving once again that South Koreans deeply value hard-won freedoms.

Failed coup

The road to democratic renewal began with an unprecedented constitutional crisis. Yoon, of the centre-right People Power Party (PPP), had won the presidency in 2022 by the narrowest of margins, benefiting from a backlash against the country’s emerging feminist movement. But his success wasn’t long lived: the PPP suffered a heavy defeat in the 2024 parliamentary election. Hamstrung by a DPK-controlled National Assembly, the besieged Yoon took an unprecedented gamble. On 3 December, he declared martial law.

Yoon claimed his decision was motivated by the need to combat ‘pro-North Korean anti-state forces’, attempting to conflate political opposition with support for the totalitarian menace across the border. Yoon allegedly instructed the military to launch drones into North Korea. He also ordered the army to arrest several political leaders, including Lee and the head of his own party, Han Dong Hoon, and sent troops to try to stop the National Assembly meeting.

Most South Koreans saw this for what it was: an attempt by a failing president to hang onto power through undemocratic means. Their response was immediate and overwhelming. People flooded the streets, massing outside the National Assembly. As the army blocked the gates, politicians climbed fences. Some 190 lawmakers managed to get in, unanimously voting to repeal the martial law declaration.

Yoon made a televised apology but a few days later issued a statement of defiance, insisting his decision had been legitimate and pledging to ‘fight to the end’. The end came quickly. An impeachment vote suspended his presidency. His impeachment trial concluded on 4 April, with the court ordering the end of his presidency and a fresh election. Yoon is now on trial on insurrection charges. His arrest on 15 January followed a dramatic failed attempt on 3 January, when Yoon supporters and his security blocked access to the presidential palace, leading to violent clashes. Protests have continued both for and against Yoon.

Campaign issues

Lee has benefited from the public appetite for change. His campaign tacked rightwards, deemphasising some of the more progressive policies he’d previously championed, such as basic income for young people. This positioning helped win over former PPP supporters appalled by Yoon’s actions and the party’s continuing failure to condemn them.

Lee comfortably beat PPP candidate Kim Moon-soo. But another important factor was a split in the vote on the right: a more conservative party, the Reform Party, had broken off from the PPP and captured 8.3 per cent of the vote. Had these two reunited, they could have prevailed despite Yoon’s dismal record in office.

The martial law crisis dominated the campaign, but it wasn’t the only issue. Economic matters were important for many voters, with South Korea’s once-mighty economy faltering and high living costs and inequality becoming pressing concerns. These worries were exacerbated by the threat of US tariffs: South Korea, the fourth-biggest steel exporter to the USA, faces 50 per cent tariffs.

Political polarisation seems sure to continue following a bruising election campaign that saw the two main candidates accuse each other of planning to destroy democracy. Lee, who survived an assassination attempt in 2024 and faces death threats, campaigned under heavy security. One crucial test of his presidency will be whether he can heal these divides.

Challenges ahead

Lee however enters office carrying his own baggage, in the form of corruption allegations. In 2023, he was indicted on multiple charges over alleged collusion with property developers when he was mayor of Seongnam city. In November 2024, he received a one-year suspended sentence for making false statements about his relationship with the former head of the Seongnam Development Corporation.

A retrial is pending following an appeal, postponed until 18 June to take place after the election; a guilty verdict could have prevented Lee standing. Lee insists the charges against him are politically motivated, but the trial could bring further uncertainty and a potential constitutional crisis.

On the international front, Lee faces the challenge of repairing relations with the USA. The White House made a bizarre comment hinting at Chinese election interference, apparently picking up on far-right disinformation and attempts by the defeated candidates to paint Lee as a China sympathiser.

Relations with North Korea will present perhaps the biggest foreign policy challenge. DPK politicians typically focus on dialogue and bridge-building, and Lee promises to resume the cross-border dialogue that halted under Yoon.

While anything that promotes peace is welcome, civil society that campaigns on North Korea’s dire human rights situation and works with defectors will be on the lookout for potential restrictions. Under the last DPK government from 2017 to 2022, relations with North Korea thawed but civil society groups working on North Korean issues experienced heightened pressure. The government tried to ban the practice of activists using balloons to send humanitarian supplies and propaganda across the border. Civil society will be hoping the new administration doesn’t follow suit.

Time to build bridges

Lee can expect to face little short-term political opposition. Yoon’s actions have left the PPP in disarray and the next parliamentary election isn’t due until 2028. But Lee’s honeymoon isn’t likely to last long. Economic anger could drive more people to embrace regressive politics. In globally tough times, Lee will need to both offer political stability and deliver meaningful economic success.

That’s a difficult task, but there’s a key asset that can help. South Koreans have demonstrated they value democracy. South Korea’s civil society is active and strong. The new administration should commit to working with and nurturing this civic energy.

South Korea’s December resistance proved what people won’t tolerate. Now comes the harder task of building what many will embrace: a more stable, equitable democracy.

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

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

 

Picture alliance | Eibner-Pressefoto/Florian Wiegand
 
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde wants a larger global role for the euro, but Europe’s economic realities may turn privilege into pressure.

By Peter Bofinger
WURZBURG, Germany, Jun 20 2025 (IPS)

In a recent speech, Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), articulated a clear desire for the euro to play a more significant role as an international currency.

This, she argued, could bring substantial benefits to the euro area: ‘It would allow EU governments and businesses to borrow at a lower cost, helping boost our internal demand at a time when external demand is becoming less certain.

It would insulate us from exchange rate fluctuations, as more trade would be denominated in euro, protecting Europe from more volatile capital flows. It would protect Europe from sanctions or other coercive measures.’

Lagarde’s aspiration is that a greater reserve role for the euro would bestow upon Europe some of the so-called ‘exorbitant privilege’ that has, until now, been exclusively enjoyed by the United States.

This ambition stands in stark contrast to the views expressed by the Deutsche Bundesbank (the German Federal Bank) several decades ago, which in 1972, explicitly referred to ‘the Deutsche Mark as a reluctant reserve currency.’

A double-edged sword

The term ‘exorbitant privilege’ was coined in the 1960s by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then the French minister of finance. It describes the unique position of the United States, which allows it to sustain a permanent current account deficit without triggering an exchange rate crisis.

The underlying mechanics are straightforward: when a country imports more than it exports, its liabilities to the rest of the world increase. Exporters abroad accumulate higher deposits denominated in the importing country’s currency.

If these exporters are unwilling to increase their exposure to a deficit country, they typically sell their export receipts on the foreign exchange market, exchanging them for deposits in their own currency.

Consequently, the currency of the deficit country depreciates. If the country fails to address its deficit, the exchange rate will continue to depreciate, risking a currency crisis.

This dynamic changes significantly with the ‘exorbitant privilege’. Foreign investors are willing to increase their holdings of US Treasuries by exchanging US dollar deposits, thereby financing the current account deficit without the dollar depreciating.

Therefore, it is a complete misconception for President Donald Trump to interpret the US current account deficit as exploitation of the United States by the rest of the world. As he once stated, ‘The United States of America is going to take back a lot of what was stolen from it by other countries.’

The opposite is true: The current account deficit has enabled US citizens to enjoy a higher standard of living, financed by the rest of the world through the purchase of US government IOUs. Over the past two decades, the current account deficit and the amount of Treasuries purchased by foreigners have moved in roughly tandem.

If Lagarde is now arguing that Europe could benefit from such a privilege by increasing the reserve role of the euro, one must recognise that Europe and the euro area have, until now, typically been current account surplus countries.

As long as this fundamental situation remains unchanged, Europe does not require the ‘privilege’ of foreigners purchasing euro-denominated government securities.

Given this entirely different current account position, it is unclear whether Europe would genuinely benefit from making euro government bonds more attractive as foreign exchange reserves.

If foreigners were to increase their holdings of euro-area government bonds, they would need to purchase euro deposits on the foreign exchange market against other currencies. This would lead to an increase in the effective exchange rate of the euro, resulting in a deterioration in the price competitiveness of euro-area producers.

It was precisely this fear that prompted the Bundesbank to adopt a cautious approach to an increased reserve currency role for the D-Mark in the 1970s.

Therefore, when discussing the ‘exorbitant privilege’, it is crucial to recognise its dual nature. For a currency area with a structural deficit, it prevents the currency from depreciating. For a currency area with a structural surplus, however, it causes an appreciation of the currency, which can have negative effects on its price competitiveness.

Switzerland provides a compelling example. Traditionally, it has maintained a structural current account surplus. The Swiss franc enjoys a strong reputation as a global reserve currency, leading to permanent capital inflows. To prevent the destabilising appreciation of its currency, the Swiss National Bank has had to purchase massive amounts of foreign currencies.

With reserves exceeding $900 billion, it is now the third-largest holder of foreign exchange reserves in the world, surpassed only by China and Japan. A significant portion of these reserves is invested in government bonds.

It would be ironic if the ECB, by increasing the reserve role of the euro, had to intervene to prevent a depreciation of the dollar and invest these funds in Treasuries.

A fundamental deficiency

However, if the aim is to increase the international role of the euro, it is necessary to determine how to boost this process. Since its introduction in 1999, the euro’s share of global exchange reserves has stabilised at approximately 20 per cent after some fluctuations. The euro has not, however, benefited from the decline in the US dollar’s share, which has fallen from over 70 per cent to under 60 per cent.

Instead, other currencies such as the Swiss franc, the pound sterling and the Japanese yen have been able to increase their position as reserve currencies. Therefore, it is unclear whether the euro would benefit from future shifts in international investors’ portfolios away from the US dollar due to ‘Trumpian policies’.

In her speech, Lagarde described the ‘economic foundation’ of a reserve currency role as a virtuous circle between ‘growth, capital markets and international currency usage’. She explained, ‘The development of US capital markets boosted growth… while simultaneously establishing dollar dominance. The depth and liquidity of the US Treasury market in turn provided an efficient hedge for investors.’

Lagarde believes that ‘Europe has all elements it needs to produce a similar cycle’ and concluded: ‘If we truly want to see the global status of the euro grow, we must first reform our domestic economy.’ The ‘reforms’ she outlined included the usual suspects: completing the Single Market, enabling start-ups, reducing regulation, and building the savings and investment union.

Surprisingly, she did not mention the most obvious obstacle to the euro playing a more prominent international role. While US capital markets offer a total treasury supply of $28.3 billion, the euro area’s government bond market remains a patchwork of larger and smaller national issuers. The largest volume is provided by the French market, totalling €3.3 billion.

It would be naïve to believe that this fundamental deficiency of European capital markets could be overcome by ‘structural reforms’ or by the more homeopathic measures for completing the capital market union.

However, Lagarde also offered a promising step forward: joint financing of European public goods, particularly defence. This would help to increase the supply of truly European safe assets.

In sum, there is no obvious case for increasing the role of the euro as a global reserve currency. If the ECB wants to allow ‘businesses to borrow at a lower cost, helping boost our internal demand’, it must simply reduce its policy rate further.

In addition, the fundamental flaw of a segregated market for European government bonds is very difficult to overcome. Nevertheless, attempts to finance European public goods with jointly issued bonds will undoubtedly lead in the right direction.

This is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS Journal.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Excerpt:

Peter Bofinger is professor of economics at Würzburg University and a former member of the German Council of Economic Experts

Chie Sunada of SGI (left) moderates the first panel discussion, “From Deterrence to Disarmament: The Path Forward”. Credit: SGI

By Katsuhiro Asagiri
SANTA BARBARA/Tokyo (INPSJ) , Jun 19 2025 (IPS)

Marking 80 years since the dawn of the nuclear age, peace advocates, diplomats, educators, and atomic bomb survivors from around the world gathered for the “Choose Hope” symposium on March 12–13, 2025, in Santa Barbara, California. Co-organized by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) and Soka Gakkai International (SGI), the event was held at the Music Academy of the West.

Tomohiko Aishima of SGI opens the symposium with reflections on the dialogue between Daisaku Ikeda and David Krieger, which he witnessed during his time as a reporter at Seikyo Shimbun. Credit: SGI

The symposium was inspired by the 2001 dialogue book Choose Hope co-authored by NAPF founder David Krieger and SGI President Daisaku Ikeda, revisiting the ethical and strategic urgency of nuclear abolition.

“This is not just about legacy,” said Dr. Ivana Nikolić Hughes, president of NAPF. “We are here to continue the journey they started and to build a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons.”

Tomohiko Aishima, Director of Peace Affairs at SGI, recalled witnessing their dialogue firsthand: “What impressed me most was that their dialogue was not merely about ideals—it was a call to action, rooted in practical solutions.”

A Warning Against Nuclear Deterrence

Annie Jacobsen, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Nuclear War: A Scenario delivers the 20th Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future at the start of the symposium. Credit:Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

In the keynote lecture, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author Annie Jacobsen posed the question, “What happens if nuclear deterrence fails?” Drawing from confidential interviews with U.S. government and military insiders, Jacobsen warned: “No matter how it begins, nuclear war will end in total annihilation.” She explained that once a nuclear exchange is triggered, retaliatory strikes could spread globally within just seven minutes, leading to uncontrollable destruction and the collapse of human civilization.

Annie Jacobsen, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Nuclear War: A Scenario delivers the 20th Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future at the start of the symposium. Credit:Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

In a following panel, moderated by Dr. Hughes, Princeton University’s Professor Emeritus Richard Falk, Dr. Jimmy Hara of Physicians for Social Responsibility–Los Angeles (PSR-LA), Professor Peter Kuznick of American University, and ICAN Executive Director Melissa Parke addressed policy transformations urgently needed to prevent such a catastrophe.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, signed 20 September 2017 by 50 United Nations member states. Credit: UN Photo / Paulo Filgueiras

On the second day, SGI’s Director for Disarmament and Human Rights, Chie Sunada, moderated the session titled “From Deterrence to Disarmament: The Path Forward.” She warned against the increasing role of nuclear weapons in national security doctrines and reported: “At the Third Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW, it was reaffirmed that nuclear deterrence itself is a threat to human survival.”

Ambassador Elayne Whyte, who presided over the 2017 UN negotiations that adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), emphasized the need for sincere dialogue, even with those who hold opposing views.

Listening to Testimony

Atomic bomb survivor Masako Wada from Nagasaki (representing Nihon Hidankyo) addressed the symposium via video message, urging participants to “continue telling the truth about the horrors of the bomb.”

Nagasaki, Japan, before and after the atomic bombing of August 9, 1945./ Public Domain

Mary Dickson, a thyroid cancer survivor and U.S. “downwinder” affected by nuclear testing, declared: “We were deliberately exposed. Justice is needed not only for us, but for victims in the Marshall Islands, Kazakhstan, Polynesia, and everywhere else.”

In the session “Legacy of Nuclear Use and Testing: A Call for Justice,” SGI United Nations Office Disarmament Program Coordinator Anna Ikeda shared testimony on the health effects, stigma, and trauma experienced by victims. “Nuclear justice means establishing the collective understanding that the use, testing, or threat of nuclear weapons can never be justified,” she said.

Dr. Togzhan Kassenova presented findings on the intergenerational health effects stemming from Soviet-era nuclear tests in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. Christian Ciobanu, representing Kiribati and Youth for TPNW, proposed establishing an international fund for victim assistance and environmental remediation. Veronique Christory of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stressed the importance of humanitarian principles in disarmament efforts.

Anna Ikeda of SGI (center) speaks as a panelist on the second panel discussion, “Legacy of Nuclear Use and Testing: A Call for Justice”　Credit: SGI

The Intersection with Climate Justice

The final panel, “The Intersection of Climate and Nuclear Justice: Empowering Youth for Change,” was moderated by SGI Disarmament Program Coordinator Miyuki Horiguchi.

Anduin Devos of NuclearBan.US reflected on how concern over the climate crisis led her to become involved in the anti-nuclear movement. “Resources spent on nuclear weapons should be redirected to address climate solutions,” she said.

Young activists Kevin Chiu and Viktoria Lokh spoke on the importance of integrating youth voices into nuclear policy discussions. Horiguchi cited a Native American proverb—“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”—and a quote from Choose Hope: “Hope is another name for youth,” emphasizing the unique power of young people to open new eras.

Miyuki Horiguchi of SGI (left) moderates the final panel discussion, “The Intersection of Climate and Nuclear Justice: Empowering Youth for Change” Credit: SGI

Art as a Catalyst for Change

Film director Andrew Davis and artist Stella Rose discussed the role of art in inspiring awareness and action. “Art doesn’t just reflect truth—it makes us feel it, and move us to act,” said Davis.

The symposium’s final declaration also underscored the role of culture and creativity in promoting peace and deepening empathy.

The Final Declaration: Choosing Hope

The symposium concluded with the adoption of the Choose Hope Declaration. With the Doomsday Clock set at “89 seconds to midnight,” the declaration warned that a nuclear-free world is possible only through intentional and collective choices. “We choose hope over despair,” it stated.

This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International, in consultative status with the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

IPS UN Bureau

 

The removal of tens of thousands of Maasai from Ngorongoro to Msomera is part of a disturbing global trend known as "fortress conservation," where Indigenous people are cast as threats to biodiversity rather than its protectors.

Opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye and co-accused Obeid Lutale before a civilian court in Kampala. They have been in jail since they were abducted from Kenya by Uganda's security forces. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Jun 19 2025 (IPS)

In East Africa’s Tanzania and Uganda, political tensions are rising as they prepare for the next elections. Tanzania goes to the polls in October 2025, while Uganda’s presidential and general elections will take place early in 2026.

In both countries, the leading political leaders, Tundu Lissu of the Chadema party in Tanzania and Dr. Kizza Besigye, a former leader of the once largest opposition party, are under detention facing treason charges.

Political and civil actors in the two countries and their neighbor Kenya say a wave of repression is sweeping across the region and that democracy and civil liberties are dying across East Africa.

Civil actors have reported numerous cases of torture, abductions, and general human rights abuses that have shrunk civic spaces.

On 10 April 2025, Lissu was charged with treason, along with three offenses of publication of false information under cybercrime laws. The charges are connected to his nationwide campaign pushing for electoral reform under the slogan “No Reforms, No Election.” He appeared in court this week (June 16) and was granted permission to represent himself because, he argued, he was denied access to private consultations with his lawyers.

Shortly after Lissu’s arrest, Chadema was disqualified from the October 2025 presidential and parliamentary elections, based on the party’s refusal to sign an electoral code of conduct.

Lissu narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 2017 and was forced into exile, only to face renewed persecution upon his return to Tanzania.

In the run-up to the November 2024 local elections, Tanzania’s government has impeded opposition meetings, arbitrarily arrested hundreds of opposition supporters, imposed restrictions on social media access and banned independent media.

Four government critics were forcibly disappeared and one Chadema official was abducted and brutally killed.

Forced Deportations, Allegations of Torture

On May 19, when Lissu was returning to the court, authorities in Tanzania ordered the deportation of Kenya’s former Justice Minister, Martha Karua, and Dr. Willy Mutunga, the former Chief Justice of Kenya, together with a couple of journalists from Kenya.

They had traveled to Tanzania under the invitation of the East Africa Law Society. Further, a Kenyan human rights activist, Boniface Mwangi, and a Ugandan activist, Agather Atuhaire, were arrested and held incommunicado for five days despite protests. The two activists said they were badly tortured by Tanzanian police and security operatives.

Atuhaire told IPS that she was blindfolded and sexually molested by her captors, who had driven her and Mwangi out of the Central Police Station in Tanzania.

“They took off all my clothes and threw me down and handcuffed my feet and hands and turned my feet upside down. They put a board between my feet and hands. One was hitting my feet and the other was attacking my private parts,” said Athuaire, a mother of two.

Atuhaire, awardee of the US State Department’s International Women of Courage Awards (IWOC) and winner of the 2023 EU Human Rights Defenders’ Award in Uganda said she has seen impunity in Uganda but what she went through and experienced in Tanzania was at a higher level.

“I faced a policeman who seemed very angry. He threatened us. I think with Boniface, he said they will circumcise him the second time. With me, he said they will teach me, so I have a good story for Uganda when I come back,” Atuhaire recounted.

“He also asked me if I had a child. And I said, ‘What do my children have to do with this?’ I told him that I have two children. Then you will get a third one. When we got out, I told Boniface that I think that is a rape threat,” she said.

Mwangi was found on the border with Tanzania near the coast following widespread condemnation by Kenyans. He was carried to the car because he could hardly walk following the torture.

“My body is broken in so many ways that you will never know but my spirit is very strong. They did very horrible things to us. And those things were recorded. And they told us that if we get back home and share what happened, they will share the videos with everyone,” said Mwangi.

“The situation in Tanzania is very bad. I think what happened to us is what happens to all Tanzanian activists,” he said.

He wondered why a country that belongs to the East African Community could torture citizens from the other member states the way it did to them.

“I had just gone there to attend a court case. I didn’t have any ulterior motive. I was treated worse than a criminal and yet I had not committed any offense,” he said.

Foreign Activists Warned

Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu, in a televised address, warned foreign activists to stay away from her country.

“Let’s not give them space. They already ruined their own countries. They have already caused chaos. The only country that has not been ruined, where people have security, peace, and stability, is ours. There have been attempts and I strongly urge our security and defense forces, as well as you who manage our foreign policy, not to allow undisciplined individuals from other countries here,” said Suluhu.

Tigere Chagutah, Regional Director, Amnesty International, East and Southern Africa, condemned the torture and inhumane treatment of the two activists.

“For four days, these two human rights defenders were subjected to unimaginable cruelty. Their ordeal highlights the dangers faced by human rights defenders in Tanzania and there must be accountability and justice,” he noted.

Chagutah raised concern about Suluh’s call for a crackdown on human rights defenders, labeling them “foreign agents.”

“Such statements provide state authorities with an unlawful and spurious pretext to impose restrictions flouting international human rights obligations. Trial observation is central to the transparency of court processes and guarantees of fair trials and is not a threat to security,” said Tigere Chagutah.

Social Justice Campaigner, Khalid Hussein in response to Samia Suluhu, said, “You cannot hold foreign nationals, torture them, and then pretend they are meddling and so they deserve what they got.”

Before the arrest of the two activists, Tanzania had deported Kenya’s former Justice Minister, Martha Karua, and Willy Mutunga, the former Chief Justice of Kenya. The two were in Tanzania for a trial observation too.

Karua denied that she was in Tanzania to meddle in its internal affairs, as alleged by Suluhu.

“I was in Tanzania to watch a political trial. In Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, criminal trials are public. One is entitled to a trial before an impartial court, a trial that is public,” said Karua.

Karua suspected that the authorities in Tanzania were disturbed by her addressing a press conference in April on the need to observe the rule of law, when Tundu Lissu was due to appear in court.

“So as a citizen of the Jumuhiya (East African Community), I went to observe a trial. Nothing wrong with that. We feel as citizens of East Africa we have a duty to stand in solidarity with one another to ensure that we push back on autocratic tendencies and the violation of rights,” said Karua.

Professor Peter Kagwanja, a Kenyan intellectual, advisor, and policy strategist, told IPS that what is happening in Tanzania and its neighbors is regrettable.

“If they are chasing Martha Karua and Dr. Willy Mutunga like that. Can you begin to imagine what is happening to the Tanzanians themselves? Who are Dr. Kabudi and others who want to defend Tundu Lisu?” asked Kagwanja, the President and Chief Executive at the Africa Policy Institute (API).

Lack of Tolerance for Opposition

Kagwanja said what is happening in Tanzania is a sheer lack of tolerance for the opposition, yet the countries claim to be operating under a multiparty democracy.

“And that attitude is what we are seeing in Zimbabwe. It is the same attitude you find in Botswana. That you can push the leader of the opposition to exile. You want to constrain the opposition and their leadership. Rather than talk to them and defeat them politically, you want to defeat them at a battle of violence,” he explained.

“It appears that in Uganda and Tanzania, your ambition to be President is not legitimate. You will either be shot at or languish in jail. And no people from outside should help you out,” Kagwanja added.

While in Uganda for Besigye’s trial, Karua told IPS that it appears like the leaders in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania are collaborating in oppressing citizens.

“We feel as citizens of East Africa that we have a duty to stand in solidarity to ensure that we push back against autocratic tendencies and the violation of rights,” said Karua.

Besigye was abducted in Nairobi on 16 November 2024. He was arraigned in a military court in Uganda. He was charged with offenses relating to security and unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition.

While the Kenyan government has denied involvement, it has been accused by human rights activists of supporting and facilitating an extraordinary rendition.

In August 2024, 36 leaders of Uganda’s FDC were abducted from Kisumu city in Kenya. They were charged with terrorism in Ugandan courts and remanded.

Uganda’s Attorney General, Kiryowa Kiwanuka, refuted claims of kidnap, saying that the suspects were lawfully arrested.

“Even the manner in which people are collected, if at all, from a neighboring country or another country is prescribed by law and we are saying that these people were charged,” he said

Karua and Besigye’s lawyers insist that the abduction was the result of collusion between Kenyan and Ugandan authorities.

“I’m stressing rendition because Kenya has an extradition Act which demands that anybody being removed from Kenya to another country for trial must be due process. Due process was not followed. Nor were they documented at the border when being transported into Uganda,” Karua told IPS.

Besigye and the co-accused, Obeid Lutale, were arraigned before the military court.  The Supreme Court in Uganda at the end of January ruled that civilians should not be tried in a military court. After the ruling of the Supreme Court, Besigye was taken to the civilian court with a new charge of treason. The charge before the military court was treachery.

The Ugandan Parliament hastily debated and passed the Uganda People’s Defence Forces Amendment Bill 2025 on 20 May. President Yoweri  has assented to the law, which, among others, broadens the jurisdiction of military courts, authorizing them to try a wide range of offenses against civilians.

Trying Civilians in Military Courts Contravene Human Rights Obligations

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk in May 2025 expressed concern at the passing in Uganda’s Parliament of proposed legislation to allow for civilians to be tried in military courts.

“I am concerned that rather than encouraging efforts to implement the Supreme Court’s crystal-clear decision of January this year, Uganda’s legislators have voted to reinstate and broaden military courts’ jurisdiction to try civilians, which would contravene international human rights law obligations,” said Türk.

As Uganda heads to the polls, diplomats from the European Union have raised concern over the torture of the opposition leaders and their supporters. The diplomats particularly expressed concern about the conduct of the Chief of Defence Forces, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, President Yoweri Museveni’s son.

Early May, Uganda’s Chief of Defence Forces Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is Museveni’s eldest child, said he had detained Eddie Mutwe, the chief bodyguard for opposition leader Bobi Wine.

He wrote on X that he had captured Mutwe “like a grasshopper” and was “using him as a punching bag.” The tortured Mutwe was presented in court and slapped with robbery charges.

Uganda’s Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister, Norbert Mao, said, “Bringing illegally detained, brutalized, and tortured suspects before the courts of law is an abuse of judicial processes.”

Meanwhile, Kainerugaba has promised a showdown on Presidential aspirant, Wine and his supporters.

“I want to remind you to advise your children to stay away from NUP gangs. Intelligence reports indicate that NUP is not merely a political party but is also involved in activities that raise concerns related to terrorism. The leaders of NUP are recruiting young people for activities that could be harmful to our beautiful country,” he warned.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Parents and caregivers line up with their children at an immunization centre in Janakpur, southern Nepal. Meanwhile recent funding cuts have caused “severe disruptions” to health services in almost three-quarters of all countries, according to the head of the UN World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. April 2025. Credit: UNICEF

By Hatice Beton, Roberto Durán-Fernández, Dennis Ostwald and Rifat Atun
LONDON, Jun 19 2025 (IPS)

As G7 leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations wrapped up their summit in Kananaskis June 16, a critical issue was absent from the agenda: the future of global health financing.

Amid escalating geopolitical tensions, trade conflicts and cuts to development aid, health has been sidelined – less than five years since COVID-19 devastated lives, health systems and economies.

With the fiscal space for health shrinking in over 69 countries, it’s time to recognise that health financing is no longer solely a public sector concern; it is a fundamental pillar of economic productivity, stability, and resilience.

A glimmer of hope has emerged from South Africa, the current G20 Presidency host, and from the World Health Organization (WHO). A landmark health financing resolution, adopted at last month’s World Health Assembly calls on countries to take ownership of their health funding and increase domestic investment.

While this is a promising step, the prevailing discourse continues to rely on outdated solutions which are often slow to implement and fall short of what is needed.

Invest Smarter, Not Just More, in Health

Recent trends among G20 countries show that annual healthcare expenditure is actually declining across member states. In 2022, health expenditure dropped in 18 out of 20 G20 nations, leading to increased out-of-pocket expenses for citizens.

While countries like Japan, Australia, and Canada demonstrate a direct correlation between higher per capita health expenditure and increased life expectancy, others, such as Russia, India, and South Africa, show the opposite.

This disparity underscores a crucial point: the quality and efficiency of investment matters more than quantity. Smart investment encompasses efficient resource allocation, equitable access to affordable care, effective disease prevention and management, and broader determinants of health like lifestyle, education, and environmental factors.

Achieving positive outcomes hinges on balancing health funding – the operational costs – with sustainable health financing – the capital costs.

Private capital is already moving into health, what’s missing is coordination and strategic alignment

Despite the surge in healthcare private equity reaching USD 480 billion between 2020 and 2024, many in the sector remain unaware of this significant shift. Recent G20 efforts have focused on innovative financing tools, but what’s truly needed are systemic reforms that reframe health as a core pillar of financial stability, economic resilience, and geopolitical security, not just a public service.

This year’s annual Health20 Summit at the WHO, supporting the G20 Health and Finance Ministers Meetings, addresses this need by launching a new compass for health financing: a groundbreaking report on the “Health Taxonomy – A Common Investment Toolkit to Scale Up Future Investments in Health.”

Why do we need an investment map for health?

The answer is simple: since the first ever G20 global health discussions under Germany’s G20 Presidency in 2017, there has been no consistent effort to rethink or coordinate investments. G20 countries still lack a strategic dialogue between governments, health and finance ministries, investors and the private sector.

Market-Driven, Government-Incentivised: The Path Forward

Building on the European Union’s Green Taxonomy, the health taxonomy aims to foster a shared understanding and common language among governments, companies, and investors to drive sustainable health financing. Investors, Asset Managers, Venture Capitalists, G20 Ministries of Health and Finance, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), and International Organisations broadly agree that a market-driven taxonomy is both credible and practical.

Governments can have greater confidence knowing it has been tested with investors and is grounded in market realities.

The Health Taxonomy report identifies a key barrier to progress: the fundamental confusion between health funding and health financing: Health financing refers to the system that manages health investments, such as raising revenue, pooling resources and purchasing services. In contrast, health funding refers to the actual sources of money.

Increasing health funding alone will not improve health outcomes if the financing system is poorly designed. Conversely, a well-developed health financing framework won’t succeed without sufficient funding. Both are essential and must work together.

The health taxonomy has the potential to serve as a vital tool for policy planning sessions, strategic boardroom discussions and investment committees, thereby enabling health to be readily integrated into existing portfolios and strategies. It could also support more systematic assessments of health-related risks and economic impacts, including through existing processes like the IMF’s Article IV consultations and other macroeconomic surveillance frameworks.

The report urges leading G20 health and finance ministers to rethink and align on joint principles for health funding and financing.

The next pandemic could be more severe, more persistent, and more costly. Failure to invest adequately in health before the next crisis is a systemic risk our leaders can no longer afford to ignore.

Hatice Beton is Co-Founder, H20Summit; Roberto Durán-Fernández; PhD, is Tec de Monterrey School of Government, Former Member of the WHO’s Economic Council; Dennis Ostwald is Founder & CEO, WifOR Institute (Germany); Rifat Atun is Professor of Global Health Systems, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

IPS UN Bureau

 

Credit: UN Photo/John Isaac

By Stephanie Hodge
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 19 2025 (IPS)

Ten years ago, I lost more than a job.

When my post was abolished, there was no warning, no closure, no golden parachute—just a quiet erasure. Overnight, I went from a UN professional with decades of service to an invisible statistic in a system that eats its own.

I wasn’t just de-linked from my role—I was cut off from my health insurance, my professional identity, my community, and the safety net I thought I’d built after a lifetime of service.

What’s the real cost of that? Let me try to count it.

The Financial Toll

Over ten years, I’ve conservatively lost between $1.7 and $2.4 million USD—not in stock options or startup fantasies, but in the very basic elements of working life:

• Salary: Gone. A UN professional with my experience (at the P5/D1 level) typically earns around $120,000–$150,000 a year. That’s over $1.2 million in wages lost—and that’s before accounting for inflation.
• Pension: For every year you’re out of the UN system, your pension erodes. I’ve lost another $300,000+ in employer and personal contributions to retirement.
• Health Insurance: When you lose your job, you lose your healthcare. For ten years, I’ve covered out-of-pocket care for my dependent—including during health emergencies. I’ve spent $50,000–$200,000 USD just trying to keep her well and safe.
• Missed Opportunities: I should have been leading evaluations, directing global programs, mentoring the next generation. Instead, I was just trying to survive. Lost networks, lost credibility, lost consulting income. Easily another $200,000–$400,000 in forgone earnings.

The Emotional Toll

The numbers don’t tell the whole story. They don’t reflect what it’s like to wake up every morning wondering if your work ever mattered. They don’t show the moments I had to choose between groceries and another round of lab tests for my mother. They don’t capture the professional shame, the panic, the quiet disbelief that no one came looking.

It’s not just a system failure. It’s a human one.

Why Reform Can’t Wait

You can’t claim to be a values-based organization while discarding your own people in silence. And yet that is what too many international agencies do—cutting technical posts under the guise of restructuring, while retaining bloated management layers and generalist positions with no clear public value.

We need a reset. Here’s where to start:

1. Guarantee Transitional Support for Abolished Posts

Abolition should never mean abandonment. Staff whose posts are cut must be offered:

• Transitional pay and benefits (healthcare continuation, pension bridging)
• Career re-entry guarantees within a defined period
• Support for relocation, re-skilling, and reference protections

2. Protect Technical Expertise

Organizations must stop privileging coordination over content. The future depends on knowledge—gender, climate, health, evaluation, biodiversity, education. We need fewer PowerPoint czars and more people who’ve actually done the work.

Create:

• Technical career tracks with promotion potential
• Fixed-term roles with mobility protections for those in niche or field-based posts
• Internal pools for technical surge deployment

3. Build Accountability into Human Resource Systems

Too often, posts are abolished due to politics, personal vendettas, or vague restructurings. There must be:

• Transparent criteria for abolishment
• Independent review panels for contested decisions
• Data tracking on who is let go and why—disaggregated by gender, nationality, race, and contract type

4. Rebalance Power and Purpose

The system is top-heavy and risk-averse. It’s time to rebalance:

• Elevate field voices, not just headquarters control
• Fund delivery and results—not endless strategy papers
• Measure success by impact, not institutional expansion

Rebuilding, Not Returning

I’ve spent the last decade slowly rebuilding. Consulting, evaluating, speaking truth to power. I’ve advised governments, walked the garbage-strewn backstreets of Jakarta, listened to stories from herders in Mali and coral farmers in Seychelles. My skills didn’t vanish. My value didn’t die.

But I’ve had to fight for every contract. Every inch of ground.

And I’ve come to understand this: abolition doesn’t end a career—it reveals what the system never saw in the first place.

To Those Who’ve Been Abolished

If you’ve lost your job, your anchor, your sense of place—this is for you. You are not expendable. You are not a line in a budget or a casualty of “restructuring.”

You are the system’s conscience, even if it forgot your name.

We are still here. We are still needed.

And we are not done.

Stephanie Hodge is an international evaluator and former UN advisor who has worked across 140 countries. She writes on governance, multilateral reform, and climate equity.

IPS UN Bureau

 

By CIVICUS
Jun 18 2025 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses the dangers of live facial recognition technology with Madeleine Stone, Senior Advocacy Officer at Big Brother Watch, a civil society organisation that campaigns against mass surveillance and for digital rights in the UK.

Madeleine Stone

The rapid expansion of live facial recognition technology across the UK raises urgent questions about civil liberties and democratic freedoms. The Metropolitan Police have begun permanently installing live facial recognition cameras in South London, while the government has launched a £20 million (approx. US$27 million) tender to expand its deployment nationwide. Civil society warns that this technology presents serious risks, including privacy infringements, misidentification and function creep. As authorities increasingly use these systems at public gatherings and demonstrations, concerns grow about their potential to restrict civic freedoms.

How does facial recognition technology work?

Facial recognition technology analyses an image of a person’s face to create a biometric map by measuring distances between facial features, creating a unique pattern as distinctive as a fingerprint. This biometric data is converted into code for matching against other facial images.

It has two main applications. One-to-one matching compares someone’s face to a single image – like an ID photo – to confirm identity. More concerning is one-to-many matching, where facial data is scanned against larger databases. This form is commonly used by law enforcement, intelligence agencies and private companies for surveillance.

How is it used in the UK?

The technology operates in three distinct ways in the UK. Eight police forces in England and Wales currently deploy it, with many others considering adoption. In retail, shops use it to scan customers against internal watchlists.

The most controversial is live facial recognition – mass surveillance in real time. Police use CCTV cameras with facial recognition software to scan everyone passing by, mapping faces and instantly comparing them to watchlists of wanted people for immediate interception.

Retrospective facial recognition works differently, taking still images from crime scenes or social media and running them against existing police databases. This happens behind closed doors as part of broader investigations.

And there’s a third type: operator-initiated recognition, where officers use a phone app to take a photo of someone they are speaking to on the street, which is checked against a police database of custody images in real time. While it doesn’t involve continuous surveillance like live facial recognition, it’s still taking place in the moment and raises significant concerns about the police’s power to perform biometric identity checks at will.

What makes live facial recognition particularly dangerous?

It fundamentally violates democratic principles, because it conducts mass identity checks on everyone in real time, regardless of suspicion. This is the equivalent to police stopping every passerby to check DNA or fingerprints. It gives police extraordinary power to identify and track people without knowledge or consent.

The principle at the heart of any free society is that suspicion should come before surveillance, but this technology completely reverses this logic. Instead of investigating after reasonable cause, it treats everyone as a potential suspect, undermining privacy and eroding presumed innocence.

The threat to civic freedoms is severe. Anonymity in crowds is central to protest, because it makes you part of a collective rather than an isolated dissenter. Live facial recognition destroys this anonymity and creates a chilling effect: people become less likely to protest knowing they’ll be biometrically identified and tracked.

Despite the United Nations warning against using biometric surveillance at protests, UK police have deployed it at demonstrations against arms fairs, environmental protests at Formula One events and during King Charles’s coronation. Similar tactics are being introduced at Pride events in Hungary and were used to track people attending opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s funeral in Russia. That these authoritarian methods now appear in the UK, supposedly a rights-respecting democracy, is deeply concerning.

What about accuracy and bias?

The technology is fundamentally discriminatory. While algorithm details remain commercially confidential, independent studies show significantly lower accuracy for women and people of colour as algorithms have largely been trained on white male faces. Despite improvements in recent years, the performance of facial recognition algorithms remains worse for women of colour.

This bias compounds existing police discrimination. Independent reports have found that UK policing already exhibits systemic racist, misogynistic and homophobic biases. Black communities face disproportionate criminalisation, and biased technology deepens these inequalities. Live facial recognition technology can lead to discriminatory outcomes even with a hypothetically perfectly accurate algorithm. If police watchlists were to disproportionately feature people of colour, the system would repeatedly flag them, reinforcing over-policing patterns. This feedback loop validates bias through the constant surveillance of the same communities.

Deployment locations reveal targeting patterns. London police use mobile units in poorer areas with higher populations of people of colour. One of the earliest deployments was during Notting Hill Carnival, London’s biggest celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture – a decision that raised serious targeting concerns.

Police claims of improving reliability ignore this systemic context. Without confronting discrimination in policing, facial recognition reinforces the injustices it claims to address.

What legal oversight exists?

None. Without a written constitution, UK policing powers evolved through common law. Police therefore argue that vague common law powers to prevent crime oversee their use of facial recognition, falsely claiming it enhances public safety.

Parliamentary committees have expressed serious concerns about this legal vacuum. Currently, each police force creates its own rules, deciding deployment locations, watchlist criteria and safeguards. They even use different algorithms with varying accuracy and bias levels. For such intrusive technology, this patchwork approach is unacceptable.

A decade after police began trials began in 2015, successive governments have failed to introduce regulation. The new Labour government is considering regulations, but we don’t know whether this means comprehensive legislation or mere codes of practice.

Our position is clear: this technology shouldn’t be used at all. However, if a government believes there is a case for the use of this technology in policing, there must be primary legislation in place that specifies usage parameters, safeguards and accountability mechanisms.

The contrast with Europe is stark. While imperfect, the European Union’s (EU) AI Act introduces strong safeguards on facial recognition and remote biometric identification. The EU is miles ahead of the UK. If the UK is going to legislate, it should take inspiration from the EU’s AI Act and ensure prior judicial authorisation is required for the use of this technology, only those suspected of serious crimes are placed on watchlists and it is never used as evidence in court.

How are you responding?

Our strategy combines parliamentary engagement, public advocacy and legal action.

Politically, we work across party lines. In 2023, we coordinated a cross-party statement signed by 65 members of parliament (MPs) and backed by dozens of human rights groups, calling for a halt due to racial bias, legal gaps and privacy threats.

On the ground, we attend deployments in Cardiff and London to observe usage and offer legal support to wrongly stopped people. Reality differs sharply from police claims. Over half those stopped aren’t wanted for arrest. We’ve documented shocking cases: a pregnant woman pushed against a shopfront and arrested for allegedly missing probation, and a schoolboy misidentified by the system. The most disturbing cases involve young Black people, demonstrating embedded racial bias and the dangers of trusting flawed technology.

We’re also supporting a legal challenge submitted by Shaun Thompson, a volunteer youth worker wrongly flagged by this technology. Police officers surrounded him and, although he explained the mistake, held him for 30 minutes and attempted to take fingerprints when he couldn’t produce ID. Our director filmed the incident and is a co-claimant in a case against the Metropolitan Police, arguing that live facial recognition violates human rights law.

Public support is crucial. You can follow us online, join our supporters’ scheme or donate monthly. UK residents should write to MPs and the Policing Minister. Politicians need to hear all of our voices, not just those of police forces advocating for more surveillance powers.

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SEE ALSO
Facial recognition: the latest weapon against civil society CIVICUS Lens 23.May.2025
Weaponised surveillance: how spyware targets civil society CIVICUS Lens 24.Apr.2025
Human rights take a backseat in AI regulation CIVICUS Lens 16.Jan.2024

 

Great Buddha Dordenma, a gigantic Shakyamuni Buddha statue in the mountains of Bhutan. While the country is lauded as the only carbon-negative country in the world, it’s vulnerable to climate change. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
THIMPU, Bhutan, Jun 18 2025 (IPS)

“I can’t get this anywhere else,” says Tshering Lhamo, a 29-year-old shopkeeper in Thimphu, as she gestures toward the clean Himalayan air outside her thangka shop. She once studied in Kuala Lumpur but came back to Bhutan for the peace—and the purity. Her friend, Kezan Jatsho, who has never left the country, adds, “I cherish the peace here,” even as many of their peers migrate abroad.

But the serenity they speak of is under threat.

Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom of 745,000 people—roughly the size of Switzerland—is lauded as the world’s first and only carbon-negative country. Forests cover over 72 percent of the land, and the constitution mandates that no less than 60 percent remain forested forever. Clean air, abundant water, and natural beauty define life here.

This environmental commitment is not new. Since 1972, Bhutan’s national philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH) has prioritized well-being over GDP, championing sustainability, cultural preservation, and equitable growth.

“Money can’t buy contentment,” says 33-year-old business graduate Kezan Jatsho, who dreams of opening a coffee shop one day. “I just need enough for food and clothes; too much money would be a burden, stealing my peace of mind.”

Yet Bhutan’s climate security is more precarious than it appears. The country’s location in the eastern Himalayas makes it especially vulnerable to the impacts of global warming. Glacial melt is accelerating. Flash floods and landslides have become more frequent. Hydropower infrastructure—one of Bhutan’s economic lifelines—is at risk.

“Bhutan remains disproportionately vulnerable to climate change, through no fault of its own,” says Karma Dupchu, director of the National Center for Hydrology and Meteorology. His agency warns that a temperature rise of up to 2.8°C by 2100 could trigger catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Bhutan has over 560 glacial lakes, and in the past 70 years, 18 GLOF events have already caused loss of life and damage.

The Cost of Preparedness

Preparing for the future requires money Bhutan does not have. “The costs of adaptation and mitigation are extremely high,” says Finance Minister Lyonpo Lekey Dorji. The country’s National Adaptation Plan is projected to cost nearly USD 14 billion.

Despite limited resources, Bhutan is not standing still. Nearly 50,000 trained volunteers—known as desuups, or “Guardians of Peace”—can be mobilized during natural disasters. Even cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister serve as desuups. “They volunteered in Nepal’s 2015 earthquake,” the finance minister notes proudly.

But for long-term resilience, more investment is needed—in early warning systems, in climate-resilient agriculture, and in off-grid energy for the 4,000 rural families still lacking electricity. “The farmers lack the resources and capacity to address the challenges of climate change,” says Dupchu.

Tshering Lhamo, in her shop where she sells handmade paintings. Lhamo values the clean Himalayan air. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

Between Migration and Mindfulness

The climate crisis is only one part of the story. Bhutan is also confronting an “existential” demographic crisis, driven by a wave of outward migration. More than 12,000 people have left for Australia since the COVID-19 pandemic—many of them young, educated, and fluent in English.

“Today, 10 percent of the population has left,” says the finance minister. “Most are from the working-age group. In all, some 30,000 Bhutanese have migrated in the last two decades.”

To counter this brain drain, Bhutan’s Fifth King, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, has unveiled an ambitious solution: the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), a futuristic economic zone grounded in Bhutanese values. “We realize that to achieve and to continue holding on to GNH, economic development is necessary,” acknowledged the finance minister.

“It’s a new Bhutan with different rules from the rest of the country and a new model of robust economic development,” says Rabsel Dorji, head of communications for the project. “It aims to attract and retain the working-age population by offering well-paid jobs, creating a place where development and wealth can co-exist alongside tradition and sacred values.”

The stakes are high. “If GMC succeeds,” Dorji says, “it can show the world that a city can be created without displacing nature or the people who already live there.”

And if it fails? Dorji just smiles: “Nothing the King does ever fails.”

Culture as a Climate Strategy

Even as Bhutan looks to modernize, its culture remains its most powerful form of resilience. In Thimphu, traffic lights have been rejected in favor of hand gestures from white-gloved police officers. Traditional dress—kira for women and gho for men—is not a costume but daily wear. Brightly colored prayer flags ripple in the mountain breeze. Sacred peaks are never climbed. “Nature is not something to be conquered, but something to be respected,” says Kinley Dorji, a journalist and editor of the Druk Journal. “We emphasize the preservation of our culture—architecture and the arts, spiritual values, and dress code—to be different and look different.”

When Bhutan transitioned to democracy in 2008 after a century of monarchy, it was by royal decree, not revolution. The literacy rate now exceeds 90 percent. Healthcare is free. And despite limited military or economic power, Bhutan’s spiritual and ecological identity remains a source of strength.

“In the absence of military might and economic strength… our unique identity is our strength,” says Kinley Dorji. “The average Bhutanese may not be widely traveled, but they know what matters. People were skeptical about democracy, as they thought it would bring corruption and violence.”

Hydropower and Hope

Nature does not only sustain Bhutan; it powers its economy. Hydroelectricity—mostly sold to India—generates 14 percent of GDP and more than a quarter of government revenue. In 2021, Bhutan produced nearly 11,000 GWh of power, exporting over 80 percent of it.

The country plans to harness an additional 20 GW of renewable energy by 2040, including 5 GW from solar. But even that will require external support. “We need huge investments for this to become a reality,” says the finance minister.

To make tourism more sustainable post-COVID, Bhutan reopened its borders with a revised Sustainable Development Fee—$100 per night for foreign tourists and just ₹1,200 (US$14) for Indian nationals.

Still, sacred sites remain off-limits. “The mountains are home of deities,” Kinley Dorji reminds. “They’re not meant to be conquered.”

A Global Story of Local Survival

In Bhutan, climate change is not a future threat—it’s a present reality. But it’s also a moral argument for global responsibility.

Unlike Greta Thunberg’s urgent call to action, Bhutanese youth aren’t protesting in the streets. Their quiet, inherited mindfulness—combined with progressive government policy—has embedded intergenerational climate justice into the national identity.

But without significant international investment, Bhutan’s future remains as fragile as its glacial lakes.

“I am full of desires for things,” says Tshering Lhamo, “but I also know if I go after them, it will destroy me.”

Bhutan stands at a crossroads between survival and sacrifice, tradition and transformation. Its model is not perfect—but it offers the world something rare: a vision of development that does not cost the Earth.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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In New York, participants attend the multi-stakeholders’ hearing for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases and mental health and well-being. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 18 2025 (IPS)

Although access to mental health and psychosocial support services is considered a fundamental human right by the United Nations (UN), hundreds of millions of people experience limited or inadequate access to mental health and psychosocial support services.

On June 6, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) published a joint summary report on the wellbeing and development of children and adolescents around the world. In this report, the two organizations underscored the risks of neglecting the importance of mental health and called for systemic change in access to critical care.

According to UNICEF and WHO, the global government expenditure for mental health services accounts for only 2 percent of the overall global health budget, with only a fraction going toward children and adolescents. This is particularly alarming, as UN-Women estimates that nearly 20 percent of global health emergencies are a result of mental and psychological conditions.

“The right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health will only be realised if investment in mental health is increased and improved. It is important to understand what the current financial situation is across the world, and this report shows that it is not good,” said James Sale, the Director of Policy, Advocacy and Finance at United for Global Mental Health (UnitedGMH). “With the growing interest in improving mental health, now is the time to redouble our efforts in encouraging governments and donors to provide the money that is desperately needed by so many.”

WHO states that in some countries, up to 90 percent of individuals facing severe mental health challenges receive no care at all. Additionally, many mental health systems globally rely on “outdated institutional models”, falling short of modern international human rights standards. Furthermore, UnitedGMH states there is currently a USD 200 billion gap in annual funding for mental health and psychosocial services, with the majority of the world’s nations falling far below modest mental health baselines.

This leaves children across the world vulnerable to suicide, a reduced quality of life, and stunted social and professional development. To ensure that all young people face equal opportunities for success, it is imperative that governments and other relevant stakeholders, including the private sector, work together to increase funding for mental health and psychosocial support services.

“There are two key stages in childhood for reaching one’s full potential: the early years of life and, later, starting around the age of 10. This age represents a second opportunity to stimulate development and build adolescents’ coping mechanisms. It is essential that they are supported in making their own decisions, participating in community life, and not remaining passive,” said Angela Capcelea, Head of the Health Section at UNICEF.

Funding is particularly scarce in lower-income countries, in which it is estimated that there is fewer than one mental healthcare professional for every one million young people. Additionally, the psychosocial needs of young people in developing countries are compounded by higher rates of violence, armed conflict, natural disasters, heightened social stigma, and an overall lack of basic services.

According to figures from UN Women, almost every person that lives through a protracted humanitarian crisis experiences significant levels of psychological distress. One in five of these people are estimated to develop long-term mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.

UN Women states that due to constant bombardment, displacement, and a lack of basic services in Gaza, the mental health of young women and girls is currently at a “breaking point”. It is estimated that roughly 75 percent of women in Gaza experience depression, 62 percent experience insomnia, and 65 percent experience nightmares and anxiety.

In Afghanistan, roughly 68 percent of women describe their mental health as being “bad” or “very bad”, with eight percent also reporting that they personally know someone who has attempted suicide. Due to the numerous edicts in Afghanistan that restrict women’s autonomy, as well as a strong social stigma around mental health, the majority of women and girls are left with virtually no psychosocial resources.

Additionally, cuts in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have decimated global funding for mental health and psychosocial support programs, with many reporting that they had to cease or scale back operations. According to the Global Mental Health Action Network, there were 131 global programs, including 9,343 staff, that were providing mental health care to vulnerable communities. Roughly 73 percent of these positions were cut.

Furthermore, over 50,000 people across 32 countries that were training to become mental health practitioners lost access to their education. In 2025, approximately 5,908 people will receive training, marking a stark decline from the 55,911 people in 2024. WHO projects that the global number of mental health workers will fall to roughly 10 million by 2030, with low and middle-income countries facing shortages of approximately 1.18 million mental health workers.

“My program works with unaccompanied minors. Due to budget cuts, over 60% of staff have been furloughed and in process of being laid off,” said Lucy Onen Adoch, the Partnerships Program Coordinator for StrongMinds in Uganda, a nonprofit organization that provides mental healthcare support for depression. “The government halted access to funds that directly impact mental health services to unaccompanied minors and their families, as well as access to case management services and connection to community resources such as education and legal services.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

A Security Council meeting on the rapidly escalating crisis in the Middle East. 13 June 2025. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe
 
Rosemary DiCarlo, UN Under-Secretary-General for political affairs told ambassadors that the repercussions of the attacks were already reverberating. “I reaffirm the Secretary-General’s condemnation of any military escalation in the Middle East,” she said, urging both Israel and Iran to exercise maximum restraint and “avoid at all costs a descent into deeper and wider regional conflict”

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Jun 18 2025 (IPS)

Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities may be justified if one takes Netanyahu’s explanation at face value. I doubt, however, if he and Trump have fully considered the ominous regional ramifications of the attack and whether negotiations to limit Iran’s nuclear program would have led to much more positive results.

Netanyahu has finally executed what he has been itching to do for many years—attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and army installations and decapitating many of its military commanders and nuclear scientists.

Even though Trump first appeared to have distanced himself from the Israeli operation, there is simply no doubt that he gave the green light to it, without which Netanyahu would not have dared to make such a move that may well draw the US into the fray and plunge the entire region into a war, potentially with horrific ramifications.

Trump and Netanyahu developed a strategy whereby the United States would deny any involvement in Israel’s decision to attack Iran. They warned Tehran, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated: “We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense.

President Trump and the administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target US interests or personnel.”

On Wednesday, Trump expressed misgivings about reaching a negotiated agreement during the sixth round of negotiations between US and Iranian representatives scheduled for next Sunday in Qatar. By that time, he was already aware of Netanyahu’s pending attack.

Although many high-ranking Democrats and Republicans repudiated Netanyahu for daring to take such an ominous action when another round of talks was set, they appear oblivious to what was agreed upon behind the scenes between Trump and Netanyahu.

Netanyahu would attack, and the US would distance itself to prevent Iran from attacking American military targets in the region, knowing that Iran would want to avoid a direct confrontation with the US. The US, however, would come to Israel’s defense by intercepting incoming ballistic missiles.

Trump’s response to the attack on his Truth Social site says it all, threatening further attacks unless Iran accepts a nuclear deal. In a lengthy post, he stated:

“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to “just do it,” but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated… Certain Iranian hardliner’s [sic] spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse! There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

Furthermore, Trump also described the Israeli attack as “excellent” in an ABC interview and cautioned that “there’s more to come – a lot more,” unless Iran agrees to a deal.

The problem here is that, regardless of how weak Iran is as a result of Israel’s successful campaign to diminish Iran’s axis of resistance, Hezbollah and Hamas, and their shattered air defense systems as a result of Israel’s attack a few months ago, Iran still retains a formidable military power and is not about to surrender. To suggest that the Ayatollah will resume negotiations after being humiliated is foolish.

Iran will not succumb and will retaliate against Israel, and regardless of the extent of damage and destruction it will sustain, Iran will want to preserve their pride, and for that, it will be more than willing to sacrifice a great deal more.

The Iranian people, who largely detest their regime, will now rally behind it as they view the Israeli attack with the support of the US as only humiliating, but it will further worsen the economic condition in the country, from which they have already been suffering.

Another outcome of the Israel-US miscalculation is that the attack has only strengthened the voices of many Iranian hardline officials who oppose negotiations with the US in the first place. They had serious doubts about the US’s real intentions, and now they feel vindicated as it became increasingly clear that Trump has given the blessing to Netanyahu.

Moreover, although the Arab Gulf states may quietly cheer the destruction that Israel inflicted on Iran, they are now in a state not only of apprehension but fear that they may be dragged into a war they do not want.

Any regional war will have major economic ramifications, which set back their economic development, which they prize the most, and especially their concerns over the disruption of their oil exports, which is the beating heart of their economies.

Israel’s attack on Iran with US support will further push Iran into Russia’s and China’s arms. For these two countries, it is a heaven-sent development and they will spare no effort to capitalize on it and squeeze all the geostrategic benefits at the expense of the US in particular.

Finally, even if Israel manages to destroy all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, which is unlikely, it will only be a matter of time for it to rebuild and resume its nuclear program, except this time it will do so even with greater vigor and determination to produce nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, Iran would more than likely withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and open the door to regional nuclear proliferation, which successive US administrations wanted to avoid.

Trump and Netanyahu seem to have forgotten that Iran is a regional powerhouse with a population of 90 million, has enormous natural and human resources, enjoys a crucial geostrategic location, and a rich history that endows it with a unique regional presence. Even after suffering a devastating war, Iran will emerge again as a major power that Trump and Netanyahu must reckon with. Iran is here to stay, and Israel and the US will have to live with it.

Regardless of how the current hostilities end, the long-term solution to Iran’s nuclear program is at the negotiating table. Trump’s desire to reach a quick solution to show some success, especially after having failed to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, might have doomed the negotiations with Iran.

And Netanyahu, who is politically beleaguered at home and has been itching to attack Iran and wants to emerge as a hero, decided to exploit Iran’s weakness without carefully considering that the price that Israel might have to pay later will far outweigh what he might have gained today.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Excerpt:

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

A mother receives a birth certificate for her youngest child in the village of Bindia, East Cameroon. Photo credit: UNICEF/Dejongh

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Jun 17 2025 (IPS)

Registering the birth of a newborn, which is taken for granted in many countries, has profound lifelong repercussions for a child’s health, protection, and well-being. But after initially increasing this century, the global birth registration rate has declined in the past ten years, with some countries in the Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa facing significant challenges. Embracing new registration technologies, increasing political will, and increasing parents’ understanding of its importance are paramount to reversing the trend.

Today about 75 percent of all children aged under 5 years are registered, up from 60 percent in 2000, reports the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

But Bhaskar Mishra, Child Protection Specialist at UNICEF Headquarters in New York, told IPS that a recent slowdown is due to persistent challenges.

“Rapid population growth, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, is outpacing registration systems. Weak infrastructure, limited funding, and low political prioritization have also contributed to the stagnation. Additionally, families often face barriers such as high fees, complex procedures, and limited access,” he said.

Some of these hurdles exist in East Africa, where the birth registration rate is 41 percent and the Pacific Islands where it is 26 percent. At the country level, it varies from 29 percent in Tanzania to 13 percent in Papua New Guinea and 3 percent in Somalia and Ethiopia. Of an estimated 654 million children aged under five years in the world, about 166 million are unregistered and 237 do not have a birth certificate.

In Papua New Guinea, the birth registration rate is being raised with the aid of mobile registration, an important means to reach rural and remote communities and help protect children living in vulnerable circumstances. Mangem IDP Camp, Madang Province, PNG. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

“Systemic and social obstacles, exacerbated by the lingering effects of COVID-19, which reversed gains achieved in previous years, mean that progress must accelerate fivefold to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target of universal birth registration by 2030,” Mishra emphasized.

One country that is striving to meet the challenge is Papua New Guinea (PNG). The most populous Pacific Island nation of about 11 million people comprises far-flung islands and an epic mountain range on the mainland where people’s daily hardships include extreme terrain, lack of roads, and unreliable transportation.

More than 80 percent of people live in rural areas and, in Madang Province, in the northeast of the country, the Country Women’s Association has worked to increase maternal and health awareness among pregnant women.

“Some don’t have access to health facilities as they are in very remote areas and it takes hours to get to a health facility, so all births are done in the village. But health facilities in some communities are rundown, there is no maintenance on the infrastructure and no health workers on the ground, so that is the most challenging,” Tabitha Waka at the association’s Madang Branch told IPS.

For a mother, recording the birth of her baby could entail long journeys in community buses along dirt tracks and unsealed roads to the registration office, along with the cost of the fares.

“Lack of information is another challenge. These rural mothers don’t have this kind of helpful information and they don’t know the importance of birth registration. And, in some communities, due to traditions and customs, they only allow mothers to give birth in the village,” Waka continued. Just over half of all births in PNG take place in a healthcare facility, according to the government.

Births are registered and birth certificates issued to mothers at Nijereng Primary Health Centre, Adamawa State, Nigeria. Photo credit: UNICEF/Esiebo

But the country has made significant strides and, from 2023 to 2024, more than doubled the distribution of birth certificates from 26,000 to 78,000. Last July, 44 handheld mobile registration devices were supplied by UNICEF to the government and field officers have started a massive outreach mission to record births in local communities.

Then in December, the PNG Parliament passed a new bill to develop the national Civil and Identity Registry. “The Pangu-led government is a responsible government with policies based on inclusivity across the country… accurate and reliable identity information on our people is significantly vital for enabling effective service delivery and for their social well-being,” PNG’s Prime Minister, James Marape, told media in November.

There is already tangible progress, but the government’s goal to register up to half a million births every year “will require scaling up technology. The kits need to be deployed nationwide, especially in remote areas, and decentralizing certificate issuance,” Paula Vargas, UNICEF’s Chief of Child Protection in PNG told IPS. “There are bottlenecks in the process. For example, there is just one person in PNG authorized to manually sign birth certificates.”

On the other side of the world, more than half of all unregistered children live in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Ethiopia, among other countries in the region, is grappling with similar issues.

Located on the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is more than twice the size of PNG and has a high birth rate of 32 births per 1,000 people, compared to the global average of 16. Here the majority of Ethiopia’s more than 119 million people also live in vast and remote regions.

But while birth registration is free and the government is training healthcare extension workers in the procedures, the urban-rural divide persists. The burden on rural parents of multiple visits, with long distances and costs, required to complete registration is impeding progress.  The birth registration rate in the rural Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNP) is 3 percent, which is the national average, compared to 24 percent in the capital, Addis Ababa.

Dr. Tariku Nigatu, Assistant Professor of Public Health at Ethiopia’s University of Gondar, told IPS that improvements could be driven by “integrating the registration service with the health system, [increasing] availability of resources to support interventions to boost birth registration and infrastructure for real-time or near real-time reporting of births.”

UNICEF has also assisted Ethiopia in deploying mobile registration kits to healthcare workers in remote communities, including those experiencing instability, “ensuring that children born during emergencies or while displaced are not excluded from legal identity and protection,” Mishra said. Currently a humanitarian crisis and insecurity are affecting people’s lives in the northern Tigray region following a civil war from 2020-2022.

Lack of understanding and misconceptions about birth registration also need to be addressed, Nigatu emphasized.

Birth registration is the first step to reducing the risk of children being exploited, abused, trafficked and coerced into child marriage. A young mother in Mozambique ensures her newborn is protected with a birth certificate and legal identity. Photo credit: UNICEF/Fauvrelle

“There are myths in some communities that counting the newborn as ‘a person’ at an early age could bring bad luck to the newborn. They do not consider the child worthy of counting before people know it even survives the neonatal period,” he said. This is partly due to the country’s high neonatal mortality of 30 in every 1,000 live births, with around half occurring within 24 hours after birth, he explained.

Messaging also needs to reinforce how birth registration is of lifelong importance to a child. There are high risks and human disadvantages for the uncounted millions of children without an official existence. They will have a greater fight to rise out of poverty, to resist sexual exploitation, abuse, child labor, and human trafficking, and to access legal protection, voting rights, even formal employment, and property ownership.

But birth registration is only the first step to their protection and well-being.

“It only works when backed by strong systems and services. This includes linking registration to services such as immunizations, hospital births, and school enrollment,” Mishra said.

In the wider context, having accurate birth and population data is essential for governments to plan public services and national development and equally critical to assessing progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram, in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International, in consultative status with the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

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• FEATURED TRANSLATION – SWAHILI

Fishermen gliding on a canoe off the coast of Dar es Salaam. Photo by Kizito Makoye

By Kizito Makoye
NICE, France, Jun 17 2025 (IPS)

With less than six harvest seasons left to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the urgency to find transformative solutions to end hunger, protect the oceans, and build climate resilience dominated the ninth panel session at the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France.

In a moment emblematic of growing African leadership in ocean sustainability, Tanzania took center stage during the panel titled “Promoting the Role of Sustainable Food from the Ocean for Poverty Eradication and Food Security.” The panel offered not only a scientific and policy-rich exchange of ideas but also a rare glimpse into how countries like Tanzania are positioning aquatic foods as engines of economic recovery, public health, and ecological sustainability.

A Defining Voice From the Swahili Coast

Co-chairing the session, Shaaban Ali Othman, Minister for Blue Economy and Fisheries of Zanzibar, part of the United Republic of Tanzania, laid out his country’s blueprint for harnessing ocean resources without compromising marine ecosystems.

“Our survival is intimately tied to the ocean. It feeds us, it employs our people, and it holds the promise to lift millions out of poverty,” Othman said, advocating for a redefinition of how the world views aquatic food systems. “But this can only happen if we manage them responsibly.”

He emphasized that for Tanzania, the blue economy is not a buzzword—it is a foundational strategy woven into national development planning. As climate change intensifies and traditional farming struggles under erratic rainfall, coastal and inland aquatic foods offer a viable, nutrient-dense alternative for the country’s growing population.

“Communities in Zanzibar and along the Tanzanian coastline have fished for generations, but now we must ensure those practices are not just traditional, but also sustainable and inclusive,” Othman said.

He pointed to Zanzibar’s push to increase seaweed farming, particularly among women, as a double dividend for nutrition and gender equity. He also highlighted new investments in cold storage and fish processing facilities aimed at reducing post-harvest losses—currently among the highest in the region.

The Global Science Backs Tanzania’s Approach

His remarks resonated with the scientific panelists, particularly Jörn Schmidt, Science Director for Sustainable Aquatic Food Systems at WorldFish, who urged countries to bring aquatic foods “from the margins to the mainstream.”

“Aquatic foods are one of the few tools that can simultaneously tackle poverty, hunger, and climate risk,” said Schmidt. “But they are often left off the table—both literally and figuratively.”

Schmidt called for urgent action on three fronts: nutrition, production, and equity. He cited research showing that even modest increases in aquatic food consumption in the first 1,000 days of life could significantly reduce stunting and improve cognitive development. For production, he recommended low-impact, high-return systems such as seaweed and bivalves. On equity, he urged secure tenure for small-scale fishers, gender inclusion, and expanded social protections.

Barange noted that in 2023 alone, global fish production hit 189 million tons, delivering about 21 kilograms of aquatic animal protein per capita. However, an alarming 23.8 million tons—almost 15 percent—was lost or wasted due to poor handling and inefficient distribution systems.

“These losses are not just about food—they are lost nutrition, lost income, and lost opportunity,” said Barange, adding that if properly managed, aquatic foods could be the backbone of a global “blue transformation.”

Tanzania’s Call for Equity and Innovation

Othman used the opportunity to underline that the success of aquatic food systems must also address inequality—particularly the role of women and youth in the sector.

“Across Tanzania, from Kigamboni to Kilwa, women are drying fish, farming seaweed, and selling aquatic produce in markets. But they need access to capital, to better technology, and most importantly, to decision-making spaces,” he said.

To that end, Tanzania has begun piloting aquatic food training centres aimed at equipping youth with climate-smart aquaculture skills, including sustainable pond farming and low-carbon feed techniques.

“This is how we move from potential to prosperity,” Othman said.

A Blueprint for Global Action

The panel also featured a range of high-level contributions aimed at linking aquatic foods to broader development frameworks. Rhea Moss-Christian, Executive Director of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, underscored the economic lifeline that tuna fisheries represent for small island developing states. She emphasized that tuna is not just a food source, but a pillar of public finance, especially in the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.

“Let’s be clear,” she said. “In some Pacific nations, tuna revenue funds schools, hospitals and roads. A healthy tuna fishery is existential.”

Her message echoed Tanzania’s own struggle to balance economic imperatives with conservation, especially in the face of illegal fishing and weak monitoring infrastructure. Minister Othman called for stronger regional cooperation in fighting these threats, including shared surveillance and satellite-based monitoring systems.

CGIAR and the Seaweed Solution

Adding another layer of urgency, Dr. Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted of CGIAR warned that the world is “falling behind on SDG 2 and SDG 14.” She championed seaweed as a sustainable aquatic superfood with enormous potential, particularly for South Asia and Africa.

“Tanzania, with its long coastline and established seaweed culture, is ideally placed to lead in this domain,” she said.

She called for more public and private investment to scale innovations, support local entrepreneurs, and integrate aquatic foods into school feeding and public procurement programmes.

“Let us not miss this opportunity,” she added. “The sea can feed us—if we let it.”

Resilience in the Face of Crisis

Ciyong Zou, Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), highlighted the broader resilience benefits of aquatic food systems. He noted that aquatic foods support over 3 billion people globally, yet post-harvest losses—up to 30 percent in developing countries—undermine their potential.

He offered case studies from Cambodia and Sudan, where targeted investments in processing and training led to higher incomes and improved child nutrition. He announced UNIDO’s voluntary commitment to expand technical support to 10 additional coastal nations by 2030.

“For countries like Tanzania, this could mean new tools, cleaner production methods, and more resilient livelihoods,” Zou said.

Call to Action

As the panel drew to a close, one theme stood out: aquatic food systems are not merely about fish or seaweed—they are about dignity, sovereignty, and survival.

“We need to democratize access to data, empower communities, and ensure that small-scale fishers, especially women, are not left behind,” Othman insisted.

Back in Tanzania, the ripple effects of such commitments are already being felt. In Kisiwa Panza, a small island in Pemba, a women-led seaweed cooperative recently began exporting to Europe, thanks to technical support from local NGOs and government backing. “It’s a new life,” said Asha Mzee, one of the cooperative’s founders. “Before, we fished only what we needed. Now, we grow for the world.”

With nations like Tanzania stepping forward, the ocean—so long exploited—is being reimagined as a source of renewal. But the clock is ticking.

“In 2030, we’ll be asked what we did with these six remaining harvests,” Othman said in his final remarks. “Let’s ensure our answer is-we used them to feed people, protect our planet, and leave no one behind.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: Taryn Schulz / UN News
 
Last week’s UN conference on ocean (June 9-13) was aimed at supporting and taking urgent action to conserve and sustainably use oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. Co-hosted by France and Costa Rica, UNOC3 brought 15,000 participants, including more than 60 Heads of State and Government, to France’s Mediterranean coast, in Nice.

By Iván Duque Márquez
BOGOTA, Colombia, Jun 17 2025 (IPS)

The services the ocean provides are the backbone of our collective health, wealth and food security, yet today just 2.7% of the ocean has been assessed and deemed to be effectively protected. In failing to establish adequate safeguards, not only are we condemning communities and ecosystems across the world to decline and collapse, we are also overlooking a significant economic opportunity.

By investing in protecting just 30% of the ocean globally, we stand to unlock around $85 billion per year in annual returns and avoided costs by 2050. That’s the return from three key benefits alone – preserving natural coastal defences to prevent escalating property damages; avoiding the costs of carbon emissions from seagrass loss; and reducing profit losses from declining, overexploited fisheries. These are conservative estimates – additional benefits from spillover effects on tourism, fishery yields, and job creation could raise returns even further.

Iván Duque Márquez

Currently $15.8 billion is needed annually to meet the global target to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030. Just $1.2 billion currently flows to marine protection annually. That’s a finance gap of $14.6 billion – a miniscule fraction of what the global community funnels into defence spending every year. Why are we repeatedly missing the mark on this critical goal when it represents such an opportunity?

This is a question of global equity and responsibility. Fewer than one-third of coastal countries have established quantified, timebound targets aligned with 30×30. Without stronger leadership from these countries, global efforts risk stalling further.

Wealthy nations can and must deliver on the pledges made in their revised National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and continue to embed targets in national plans, regional action plans, and national biodiversity financing plans. Given the financial returns and ecological imperative, this should be an easy decision.

Luckily, there is no shortage of examples to learn from. There are already nations demonstrating the level of ambition needed to reach the 30×30 target, using innovative policy and finance models to secure the protection of their marine ecosystems – and empower the communities that rely on them.

In my home country of Colombia, a commitment to protect 34% of the country’s ocean areas by 2030 has already been exceeded, with 37.6% of marine areas currently under protection. This achievement reflects a whole-of-government approach, incorporating mechanisms to secure legal land ownership and ensure inclusive decision-making.

Meanwhile our neighbor Ecuador’s debt for nature swaps are generating proceeds for the protection of critically important Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) – including a newly-created trans-national MPA corridor – for a number of years to come.

To succeed in reaching the 30×30 goal, and unlocking the financial returns associated with this milestone, we will need to look beyond national borders and focus attention on the high seas – just 1.5% of which is currently protected.

The impending ratification of the High Seas Treaty – focused on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction – is expected to catalyse action in this area, with countries already developing proposals for the first wave of high seas MPAs. This represents a generational opportunity for cooperation on global commons.

Chile is demonstrating strong leadership in this area, proposing the creation of a high seas MPA covering the international waters portion of the Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges – a 3,000km long biodiversity hotspot and vital migratory corridor for whales, sharks, and turtles.

Chile’s plans connect existing national MPAs with proposed protections in international waters, aiming to create a continuous network of conservation areas to maintain ecological connectivity for migratory species. This is exactly the kind of multilateral coordination we need to scale.

We are at a critical juncture for ocean protection. If we act now, we can deliver long-term health, food security and economic stability for coastal communities across the globe, reaping the associated economic and environmental returns.

As a former head of government, I understand what it means to make difficult budgetary decisions. But it is clear that some investments pay back many times over – for people, for the planet, and for future generations. The time to close the ocean finance gap is now. The question is no longer whether we can afford to protect the ocean – but whether we can afford not to.

Iván Duque Márquez, the youngest elected President in Colombia’s history at the age of 41, is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Transformational Distinguished Fellow at Oxford University, a Distinguished Fellow at WRI, a Leadership Fellow at FIU, a Distinguished Fellow at the Bezos Earth Fund, and a member of the Campaign for Nature Global Steering Committee. He is a global expert in sustainability, conservation, green finance, and energy transition.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Excerpt:

Iván Duque Márquez is a Former President of Colombia (2018-2022)

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Nadia Malyanah Azman
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 17 2025 (IPS)

Wars, economic shocks, planetary heating and aid cuts have worsened food crises in recent years, with almost 300 million people now threatened by starvation.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Why hunger?
World food production has increased almost fourfold since 1960. FAO statistics indicate enough output to feed the world’s eight billion plus another three billion!

Clearly, inadequate food due to population growth cannot explain persistent hunger. Yet, the number of hungry people has been rising for more than a decade. So, why are so many hungry if there is more than enough food for all?

The multi-stakeholder 2025 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) notes 2024 was the sixth consecutive year of high and growing acute food insecurity, with 295.3 million people starving!

In 2023, 733 million people experienced chronic hunger. Over a fifth (22.6%) of the 53 countries/territories assessed in this year’s GRFC were especially vulnerable.

Food output in 2024 continued to rise. In 2022, the world produced 11 billion metric tonnes of food, including 9.6 billion tonnes of cereal crops, such as maize, rice and wheat.

Most hungry people are poor. The poverty line is supposed to reflect the poor’s ability to afford basic needs, mainly food. But the discrepancy between poverty and hunger trends implies inconsistent data and definitions.

Nadia Malyanah Azman

Over 700 million worldwide survive on less than $2.15 daily without enough food. Presumably, the 3.4 billion with less than $5.50 daily can barely afford enough nutrition.

New World Bank data estimates 838 million, 10.5% of the world’s population, were in extreme poverty in 2022, 125 million more than previously estimated. It expects one in ten (9.9%) to be in extreme poverty in 2025, with about 750 million hungry.

The extreme poverty line is now $3/day instead of $2.15/day. The poor comprised almost half (48%) the world’s population in 2022. With bleak medium-term growth prospects and inequality still growing, their prospects look especially dismal.

While dietary or caloric energy is essential for human activity, adequate dietary diversity is crucial for human nutrition. Hence, the poor typically cannot afford to eat enough, let alone healthily.

Women and girls are generally more likely to go hungry than men, with hunger rates in women-headed households usually higher. UN-recognized ‘indigenous peoples’ are under 5% of the world’s population but account for 15% of the extreme poor, suffering more hunger than others.

Why food crises?
The multi-stakeholder 2025 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) notes 2024 was the sixth consecutive year of high and growing acute food insecurity, with 295.3 million people starving!

Worsening conflicts, economic crises, deep funding cuts and less humanitarian assistance all threaten food security. As planetary heating worsens, those experiencing acute food insecurity will likely increase again this year.

Food insecurity has worsened in 19 countries/territories, mainly due to internal conflicts, as in Myanmar, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Even before the aid cuts, half the countries/territories featured in GRFC 2025 faced food crises. Despite La Niña rains, droughts in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan are expected to worsen.

USAID and other recent aid cuts have defunded food programmes for over 14 million children in Sudan, Yemen and Haiti alone. G7 countries are expected to cut aid by 28% in 2026 from 2024. Meanwhile, the GRFC 2025 reported humanitarian food assistance “declined by 30 percent in 2023, and again in 2024”!

In 2024, 65.9 million in Asia were food insecure, the worst in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Food crises threatened 33.5 million, or 44% of those in the eight MENA territories assessed in GRFC 2025.

Starvation as weapon
The number of starving people more than doubled in 2024! Over 95% of this increase was in the Gaza Strip or Sudan. Wars destroy and disrupt food production and distribution. A famine was declared in Sudan in December 2024, with more than 24 million starving due to the civil war.

Sudan has the largest land area for farming in Africa. Two-thirds of Sudan’s population relies on agriculture, but the ongoing conflict has caused the destruction and abandonment of much farmland and infrastructure.

Despite the Sudanese military’s devastating factional war, the country remains the world’s largest exporter of oily seeds (groundnuts, safflower, sesame, soybean, and sunflower), reflecting its agronomic potential.

Many more are starving in Haiti, Mali, and South Sudan. The UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) deems such starvation, death, destitution and severe acute malnutrition “catastrophic”.

Food deprivation has become the primary Israeli weapon against the people of Gaza. Gaza’s 2.1 million Palestinians have been at “critical risk” of famine due to the Israeli blockade on food and humanitarian aid since October 2023!

Despite official Israeli denial of mass starvation, growing international outrage, including from some of its staunchest allies, has forced the Netanyahu government to gloss over its actions. In May, it set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to “calibrate” calorie rations to continue starvation but not to death.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jun 16 2025 (IPS-Partners)

As we commemorate International Day of the African Child, we honor the courage, resilience and dreams of millions of children and youth across Africa. Their potential is limitless, their right to a quality education is non-negotiable.

There is clear evidence highlighting the value of education in building strong economies and ensuring peace and stability across the continent. Foundational learning has the potential to double the GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050, according to the World Bank. Additional analysis indicates that every US$1 invested in tripling pre-primary education enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa can generate up to US$33 in returns.

With just a small investment in education for all of Africa’s children, we could transform a continent, open vast untapped markets, and deliver on the promises outlined in the Pact for the Future and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Yet, too many children are being left behind. About half of the world’s 234 million crisis-impacted school-aged children reside in sub-Saharan Africa, according to Education Cannot Wait (ECW). Learning poverty is further exacerbating cycles of poverty, displacement and crises. Did you know that four out of five African children cannot read or understand a simple text by age 10?

To address these challenges, we must invest in quality education for the youngest and fastest-growing continent in the world. Across Africa, ECW investments have already reached over 7.4 million girls and boys, with a focus on foundational learning, gender equality, teacher training and psychosocial support – a whole-of-child learning approach.

Today – expanding on the African Union’s ‘Year of Education 2024’ efforts to build resilient education systems for increased access to inclusive, lifelong, quality and relevant learning in Africa – we call on world leaders, donors and the private sector to fund education in emergencies through proven multilateral funds like Education Cannot Wait.

We can and we must keep hope alive for the children of Africa.

 

Excerpt:

International Day of the African Child Statement by ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif

A displaced mother from Khartoum brings her child for treatment at the UNICEF-supported Alkarama clinic in Kassala state. Credit: UNICEF/Ahmed Mohamdeen Elfatih

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 16 2025 (IPS)

Over the course of 2025, the food security situation in Sudan has taken a considerable turn for the worst. Compounded by the Sudanese Civil War, millions of civilians face alarming levels of food insecurity and are at risk of experiencing famine. Humanitarian experts have described the situation in Sudan as being the worst hunger crisis in the world today.

Over two years of warfare has decimated critical infrastructures and countless livelihoods in Sudan, leaving many unable to access basic services. The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that roughly 24.6 million people, or half of the population, is acutely food insecure. Additionally, about 638,000 people are estimated to be facing the most severe levels of hunger, the highest of anywhere in the world.

On June 12, the WFP, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) issued a joint press release detailing the food security situation in the Upper Nile State. With armed conflict intensifying in this area, humanitarian aid deliveries have been hampered and food sources have been decimated. According to the latest findings from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), roughly 11 in 13 people in Upper Nile State counties are now facing emergency levels of hunger.

The two most vulnerable counties in the Upper Nile State are Nasir and Ulang, which have been ravaged by armed clashes and airstrikes since March. Rates of displacement have soared in these areas and experts have projected that famine is imminent. Approximately 32,000 people in these counties are experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger (IPC Phase 5), marking a threefold increase from previous projections.

“Once again, we are seeing the devastating impact conflict has on food security in South Sudan,” said Mary-Ellen McGroarty, Country Director and Representative for WFP in South Sudan. “Conflict doesn’t just destroy homes and livelihoods, it tears communities apart, cuts off access to markets, and sends food prices spiraling upward. Long-term peace is essential, but right now, it is critical that our teams are able to access and safely distribute food to families caught in conflict in Upper Nile, to bring them back from the brink and prevent famine.”

In addition to worsening levels of hunger in Upper Nile counties, the food security situation has deteriorated significantly in the areas surrounding Khartoum State, where the fighting has been concentrated over the course of the war. According to WFP’s Country Director in Sudan, Laurent Bukera, Khartoum and its surrounding areas have experienced “widespread destruction”, with several areas at high risks of famine.

“The needs are immense,” said Bukera. He underscored the prevalence of a particularly virulent outbreak of cholera, as well as a lack of access to water, healthcare, and electricity. Jabal Awliya, which is roughly 25 miles south of Khartoum, has been described by Bukera as having an intense “level(s) of hunger, destitution, and desperation”.

Bukera has also expressed concern over the possibility of displaced civilians returning to highly damaged and dangerous areas such as Khartoum, which would further complicate relief efforts. “We have rapidly scaled up our operation to meet increasing needs,” Mr. Bukera said. “We are aiming to reach seven million people on a monthly basis, prioritizing those facing famine or other areas at extreme risk.”

Shortfalls in funding have greatly exacerbated the food security situation, with lifesaving nutritional supplies being pushed out of reach for millions, including many young children as well as pregnant or nursing women. The number of children in South Sudan facing the risk of acute malnutrition has risen to 2.3 million in the past few months, marking an increase of over 200,000 people.

“The ongoing challenges with access in some of the most affected areas, as well as health and nutrition site closures reduce the chances of early intervention and treatment. In addition, the cholera outbreak has added to an already difficult situation, putting young lives in a precarious fight for survival,” said Noala Skinner, UNICEF’s country representative in South Sudan. “Now more than ever we need continuity and scale-up of services for prevention and treatment of malnutrition,” added McGroarty.

Despite hostilities presenting numerous accessibility challenges throughout Sudan, the United Nations (UN) is currently assisting over 4 million people a month, marking a four-fold increase from the start of 2024. Additionally, previously unreachable areas, such as Khartoum, have experienced an easing of restrictions, facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid. WFP is aiming to reach 7 million people as restrictions continue to loosen.

However, the stability of relief efforts remain fragile. According to Bukera, WFP urgently requires $500 million for “emergency food and cash assistance” for the next six months of operations. Additionally, the upcoming rainy season is projected to stretch resources, with flooding compounding risks of disease transmission and damage to critical infrastructures.

Furthermore, the security situation has become increasingly volatile for aid personnel, which threatens to disrupt humanitarian efforts. “Indiscriminate and unacceptable attacks on humanitarian personnel and operations are escalating – including last week’s strike on a WFP-UNICEF convoy when it was just hours from reaching besieged El Fasher in North Darfur,” said Bukera. “In April, aid workers were killed during a major escalation of fighting in Zamzam camp also near El Fasher.”

For a sustainable end to this crisis, it is imperative that there is a lasting cessation of hostilities. The joint report from WFP, FAO, and UNICEF states that areas that have lower volumes of violence have seen improvements in food security. These areas have been linked to better rates of crop production and smoother humanitarian operations, underscoring the positive outcomes that are possible if peace is established.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Plow moving rubble in Hatay Turkey after earthquake. Credit: Çağlar Oskay, Unsplash

By Maximilian Malawista
NEW YORK, Jun 16 2025 (IPS)

Floods, earthquakes, and droughts are striking the wallets of the world harder than any other time in history. According to the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, the cost of disasters is only growing, with annual expenditures exceeding 2.3$ trillion; accounting for over 2% of global GDP, and if represented as a nation, it would have the seventh largest GDP.

The $2.3 trillion expenditure accounts for indirect and ecosystem impacts. While direct costs are $180 – 200 billion on average annually during 2001 to 2020, which represents a 153% increase from the $70 – 80 billion between 1970 and 2000.

The report mentioned that “a national debt of just $300 billion was enough to trigger the European sovereign debt crisis.” displaying a financial threat on global stability, if left unchecked.

In the report, regions with higher economic stability directly transferred to a nation’s ability to be resilient to disasters, as when North America incurred $69.57 billion in losses during 2023, it only had an impact of .23% on its GDP. On the other hand, Micronesia, a subregion of oceania made up of 2,000 small islands, incurred a loss of $4.3 billion, which represented a 46.1% impact on its nominal $1.43 billion GDP.

Developed nations have the ability to bounce back, but developing nations with less capital have to choose between continuing economic expansion, or rebuilding from the rubble. Now there seems to be a solution.

In Pakistan, floods and storms have posed a continuing threat to the development of further economic growth, among sustainable infrastructure. To smartly invest, Pakistan looked at mangroves, an industry which brings economic stability but also storm protection. This protection ensures safety for their new industries, as the industries surround the mangroves, the mangroves become Pakistan’s insurance against disasters.

According to the IUCN, Pakistan made a “20 fold return”, revealing that mangroves were not only a defence mechanism, but also a foster for large economic returns bringing sustainable development among stability through offering habitats for fish and animals, protecting coasts against storms, and even storing “3 to 4 times more carbon then tropical forests”.

Makkio Yashiro, regional ecosystems coordinator for UNEP, says “Mangroves are an important tool in the fight against climate change. They reduce carbon in the atmosphere and they also make financial sense. Restoring mangroves is five times more cost effective than building ‘grey infrastructure’ such as flood walls, which also don’t help with climate change,”

UNEP also found that “for every dollar invested in mangrove restoration there is a benefit of four dollars” evaluating it as an investment with no cons.

The Three Harmful Cycles

Structural engineers in disaster relief training in earthquake ruins. Credit:This is engineering, Unsplash

Aromar Revi, Director of the Indian Institute for Human settlements (IIHS), identified three spirals commonly associated with the risk of disasters.

First, he said the rise in debt along with falling income. Adding that “Many companies carry hidden disaster risks because they are underinsured,” this underinsurance makes companies “vulnerable to disasters facing not only supply chain disruptions, but also wider financial instability”

Second, according to Theodora Antonakaki, Director of Bank of Greece’s Climate Change and Sustainability Centre (CCSC), is “a decrease in insurability.” adding that “traditional risk transfer methods are failing to keep up.”

For the third cycle, Ronald Jackson, Head of Disaster Risk Reduction, Recovery and Resilience Building Team, UNDP, noted an over reliance on costly humanitarian aid. He argued this reliance “weakens resilience” and underscores the crucial need for “disaster financing strategies,” specifically “budget tracking systems” to address regionally specific risks.

While many countries remain stuck in these harmful cycles, Japan, like Pakistan, has taken steps towards a proactive future through disaster risk reduction (DRR). Through investing in mitigation strategies, identifying key risks, and implementing sustainable devices, they have protected their economies and infrastructure, reducing all three cycles.

Japan, which frequently faces tsunamis and earthquakes, has adapted to disasters by using “seismic safety” measures. One of these technologies has been seismic isolation bearings, which allow buildings to have horizontal movement during earthquakes, minimizing any possible damage. For Tsunamis, Japan has employed seawalls and coastal forests, which either block or displace water, both strategies which have been effective in reducing damage.

The report argues that disasters themselves are not necessarily becoming more frequent or stronger, but rather things are getting more expensive to replace, raising economic tolls. A major reason for this is the lack of safe and resilient housing catered to regional risks. With estimates of “Approximately 1.2 billion people are expected to be living in cities by 2050 compared to 2020.”, urban densities must be built with DRR methods at the forefront of construction. Without such measures, infrastructure investments would risk being entirely lost. Research has consistently displayed that “disaster losses are already considerably larger than mitigation costs,” making preventionary DRR measures not only proactive and wise, but economically necessary.

United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres stated “This report clearly shows that investing in disaster risk reduction saves money, saves lives, and lays the foundation for a safe and prosperous future for us all. I urge all leaders to heed that call.”

IPS UN Bureau Report