Africa

Vibrierende Städte, Weinregionen, die ans Mittelmeer erinnern, und unvergessliche Safari-Abenteuer: Südafrika zählt zu den beliebtesten und aufregendsten Destinationen Afrikas. Wir verraten, was man für eine Reise in den Süden Afrikas beachten muss.

Patrick Vieira and Herve Renard are among the high-profile managerial arrivals as the qualification campaign for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations gets under way.

Patrick Vieira and Herve Renard are among the high-profile managerial arrivals as the qualification campaign for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations gets under way.

One of those killed is believed to be a pregnant woman, police said.

The UK is reviewing its deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the defence secretary has said.

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has confirmed the review after Donald Trump told Andy Burnham the deal was "terrible".

Die Forschungsgruppe Gender Economics ging aus dem Forschungsbereich Gender Studies hervor und untersucht Gender Gaps am Arbeitsmarkt sowie die gleichstellungspolitischen Auswirkungen von Steuer-, Sozial- und Familienpolitik. Die Forschung im Bereich Gender Gaps am Arbeitsmarkt konzentriert sich auf die Unterschiede in den Verdiensten von Frauen und Männern sowie auf die geringe Repräsentation von Frauen in Führungspositionen in der Wirtschaft. Zudem forscht die Gruppe in mehreren Projekten zu den Auswirkungen familienpolitischer Maßnahmen wie z.B. Elterngeld, Kita-Ausbau und Ehegattensplitting in Bezug auf die Erwerbsbeteiligung und Lohnentwicklung von Frauen. Die Forschungsgruppe ist Teil der Abteilung Staat.

Zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt suchen wir für Projektarbeiten einen Wissenschaftlerin (w/m/d) (Für den Zeitraum 1. November 2026 bis 31. Januar 2028, Teilzeit mit 75 % der regulären Arbeitszeit).

South Sudan has not held elections since independence in 2011 - polls have twice been postponed.

L'une des victimes serait une femme enceinte, a indiqué la police.

Former Afcon winner Segun Odegbami has slammed those running Nigerian football after the country missed out on the men's and women's World Cups.

Former Afcon winner Segun Odegbami has slammed those running Nigerian football after the country missed out on the men's and women's World Cups.

By CIVICUS
Sep 23 2026 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses public art, gender-based violence and censorship in Iraqi Kurdistan with Tara Abdullah, a multidisciplinary visual artist from Sulaymaniyah who is currently based in Oslo, Norway as part of the Safemuse – Safe Havens for Artists residency.

Tara Abdullah

In Iraqi Kurdistan, where conservative religious and social norms prevent open discussion of gender-based violence, femicide remains a persistent, under-reported crisis. Artists who take these issues into public space, instead of confining them to galleries or private institutions, risk backlash from religious authorities, legal action and the withdrawal of state permits and funding.

How did you become an artivist?

I’m from Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and I’ve been using art to express myself since I was a child. I fought hard to get into art school. After ninth grade, I joined the Institute of Art and studied there for five years, then studied for four more years at the College of Fine Arts at the University of Sulaymaniyah and graduated in 2020. All in all, I spent almost a decade studying art and learning new materials and methods I could bring into my work.

Since I graduated in 2020, I’ve used art in many different forms, and over the past six years I’ve tried to bring art and activism together, mainly around environmental conservation and women’s rights.

Doing art as a woman here isn’t easy. Dogmas around culture, religion and tradition mean most forms of art are considered haram, or forbidden. Even inside the art community, I’ve found a kind of disgust towards certain forms of art, with people saying some things are too provocative or politically wrong. But reading monthly data on femicide and violence against women has pushed me further to try to use elements of the culture and society I grew up in to try to break the red lines set for women.

What was the Feminine Project?

It was a project I started in 2020, in which I collected clothes from women who had faced violence. I went door to door across thousands of homes in the city and surrounding towns to interview the women and collect a piece of clothing along with their story. I stitched the pieces together and hung them along a five-kilometre stretch of the city’s main street, leading from the main court to the public park.

This was my idea of a peaceful protest. Women here can’t speak openly about the violence they face. If they did, they’d face immediate backlash. Their clothes themselves carry shame. When women hang their washing out, they cover their underwear so it isn’t seen by anyone. I wanted to show that not even women’s clothes have the freedom to be touched by the sun, let alone the women themselves.

I put up a public installation rather than a gallery, because I wanted the public exposed to it, not just the small art community that already agrees with these ideas. By the end of the first day, people started tearing the piece down and burning parts of it, and it triggered a huge backlash online and offline.

What project did you work on then?

After the Feminine Project, I had thousands of stories from the women I’d interviewed. So in late 2022 I started my Voice Project. I turned the stories into a two-minute speech carrying the weight of all of it: honour killing, suicide, violence. Women here are expected to keep a low voice and never give their opinion. Decisions are made for them by men. So I created a voice for them.

I played the message through 66 synchronised speakers across four cities and three surrounding towns in Sulaymaniyah province, all at the same time. I used megaphones deliberately. They’re symbolically loaded because they are used in mosques by mullahs for the call to prayer. In most countries, anyone can speak, but here it’s always a man’s voice, whether it’s calling people to prayer or selling groceries. I wanted to show women also had a voice.

This caused an even bigger backlash than the first project. People started shutting down the speakers, and the mullahs pushed to bring me to court, accusing me of an immoral act against our culture, religion and tradition. They accused me of promoting homosexuality, which genuinely surprised me, because the piece was straightforwardly about violence against women. When the judge called me in for a statement, he asked whether I was promoting ‘queer ideology’. I replied that my work promotes individual freedom. The case was eventually dismissed, but I had to get out of the country and stay away for a few weeks until things settled down.

I think the backlash comes from the visibility. The art community is tiny, and art typically stays inside galleries where very few people see it. But when you bring it out into the public space, it exposes feelings the public didn’t know were there.

How do you manage the risks that this work brings?

For the Feminine Project, building trust with the women was very difficult. I had to reassure them I wasn’t taking photos or recording their voices, and let them check this was true. Even then, some rejected the idea outright, saying things like, ‘So what are you going to do, are you superwoman? Things won’t change’, or accusing me of trying to destroy their families.

None of the clothes in the final installation were tied to a name, so the women’s safety was protected. That meant all the pressure landed on me. I come from a very traditional, religious family who never approved of me going into art. When I was preparing the Feminine Project, I told them I was doing charity work. When the truth came out, there was a huge conflict at home, including violence. But this didn’t make me back down. Instead, it made me more determined.

I know that by undertaking these projects I risk being taken to court, being denied permission to work or receiving online smears and threats. But if I don’t do this, who will? I’m proud of what I’ve done and I’ll keep doing it.

What support have you received?

There are always going to be people for and against, but honestly, most public reaction leans against this kind of work. But I’ve also received some encouragement. Following the Feminine and Voice projects, many women contacted me anonymously to tell me how much relief the work gave them, as someone was finally saying what they’d wanted to say themselves.

However, most of the support I receive comes from outside Iraq. After the Voice Project, I was blacklisted and I couldn’t get any funding or permission for public installations, so I started applying for international prizes instead.

In 2023 I was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize in Ukraine, out of 12,000 applications, for an installation building a bridge between Kurdish women’s experience of violence and war and Ukrainian women living through the current conflict, and I won the special prize in 2024. I also received the Alpine Fellowship Visual Art Prize in 2023 and the Prince Claus Seed Award in 2025. Researchers have written papers about my work, and in 2025, I showed a rough-cut documentary about the Voice Project in Warsaw and an indoor installation about Kurdish women’s experience in Kraków, Poland. That international attention keeps me going, and I use the exposure and funding to keep building pressure back home.

How do you collaborate with others?

I work as an individual artist. I bring in craftspeople and freelancers to help make each piece, but most of them ask me not to use their names. They want the money, not the association. I always explain the risk honestly to people, and many back out.

When I can, I bring in local women to do the work and pay them. For the Feminine Project I had dozens of women doing the sewing. For my environmental work, I try to involve as many women and young people as possible. For a water festival in 2025, I made giant puppets out of reed and recycled biodegradable material alongside 20 people, running workshops over 10 days so they could learn to use art to deliver their own messages.

Collaboration carries risk. When I ran a seminar on art and peace, security forces raided it on the second day and took me in for questioning. But my message to anyone facing suppression or violence is not to be afraid. Talk about it; bring it out into the open. You don’t have to be accepted by a corrupted environment around you to accept yourself.

For me, art is a whole universe you can fit everything into: your ideas, your beautiful things and the problems around you. You can use art to try to fix things. It’s the only weapon that doesn’t hurt or kill.

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

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SEE ALSO
Iraq: ‘The proposed amendments to the Personal Status Law are an attack on women’s rights’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Mohammed Juma 07.Dec.2024
Iraq: ‘Tolerance for abuses against LGBTQI+ people has now been made explicit through legislation’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Sarah Sanbar 26.Jun.2024
Iraq: ‘We’ve submitted many bills, but parliament refuses to adopt a law against GBV’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Alyaa Al Ansari 07.Mar.2022

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

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Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples protest exclusion and lack of recognition at the UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Credit: Lucas Wasson for Rights and Resources Initiative

By Bayarsaikhan Namsrai, Gregoria Jimenez Amaya, Isabel Davila Pereira and Stephen Basele
ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia, Sep 23 2026 (IPS)

Rightsholders came to Ulaanbaatar from across the world, carrying declarations, demands and years of experience defending the lands on which their communities depend. Indigenous Peoples, local communities, Afro-descendant Peoples, women and youth were equally clear about what they needed from COP17. But being in the room is not the same as having power in the room.

In a year when the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists and the three Rio Conventions were supposed to create momentum for rights, recognition and implementation, the negotiations showed how quickly those gains can be diluted when the people concerned are not able to shape the language that governs their lands.

What happened in Ulaanbaatar should concern anyone advancing land restoration, climate resilience and biodiversity conservation. These cannot succeed while the rights of the people who govern these landscapes remain negotiable.

Ahead of COP17, the demands were clear: 2026 could not be a symbolic year. It had to be a year when secure and customary tenure for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, pastoralists, Afro-descendant Peoples, women and youth was translated into real protections and implementation across the Rio Conventions.

Pastoralists, Mobile Peoples, Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples and local communities are proven leaders in land stewardship, biodiversity conservation and climate resilience. Achieving global restoration goals requires recognizing their rights, knowledge and leadership.

Secure and flexible tenure and mobility rights were an urgent ask in the context of the IYRP. RRI’s legal analysis of seven countries found that only Nepal and Niger recognize pastoralists as distinct rightsholders and only Niger considers mobility as a fundamental right. Even where rights exist on paper, they routinely fail against agricultural encroachment, mining, conservation expansion and green energy projects. Tenure should not be secondary to these initiatives, but a pre-condition before any projects are attempted in community lands.

Communities requested land and customary governance rights as a formal and permanent agenda item following past land tenure decisions, with customary institutions recognized as implementing bodies rather than consulted stakeholders and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) as a precondition for any Land Degradation Neutrality action.

Finance is not a technical question. It is a question of power. At a COP supposedly focused on implementation, it should have been a central matter that communities cannot implement priorities they did not define, using resources they do not control. Yet too much climate, biodiversity and land finance still travels through institutions far removed from the communities whose territories generate environmental benefits.

For communities, direct and flexible finance is about more than getting money to the last mile. It is about trusting organizations and customary institutions to decide what resilience, restoration and development mean in their own territories.

Rightsholders were ready to advance their distinct rights during COP17. The presence of pastoralists at COP17 was significant, but presence alone does not translate into influence. Pastoralists arrived organized, with a global declaration and clear demands, yet the experience of the negotiations showed that meaningful participation requires more than being present in the conference halls. It requires the knowledge, resources, relationships and sustained capacity to follow negotiating texts, understand procedures, build alliances and influence language as decisions are being shaped.

On Land and People Day, the Indigenous Peoples Caucus delivered the Sacred Lands Declaration directly to the UNCCD Executive Secretary, demanding recognition grounded in self-determination, a permanent seat on the Committee on Science and Technology, and a dedicated fund for Indigenous-led restoration.

The local communities caucus asked for institutional status equal to the Indigenous Peoples’, Gender and Youth Caucuses rather than as a facilitative mechanism sidelined when convenient, plus a self-determined representation model and sustained funding for its operation.

Afro-descendant Peoples asked for what the other two Rio Conventions have already conceded: to be named. Afro-descendant Peoples across Latin America and the Caribbean steward territories degraded or acutely at risk — drylands, deforested frontiers, dry forests, riverine and coastal lands. They asked the UNCCD to open an Afro-descendant desertification agenda for the first time.

Women’s demands cut across all of this. Parties have built agreed gender language across three COPs. The ask was that it hold and be implemented.

For youth, being called “the future” has become another way of postponing their participation in the present. Young rightsholders are already living the consequences of drought, shrinking mobility, changing economies and pressures on their territories. They are not waiting to inherit these challenges. What they need is more than a voice now, it is representation, resources and authority in the institutions making decisions about their future. Their minimum requests included recognition as drivers of present-day adaptation, a permanent space within UNCCD processes, culturally appropriate education, and direct financing for youth-led organizations.

How the Negotiations Went

Based on prior COP decisions, COP17 should have been the continuation of a road towards implementation. Instead, the days in Ulaanbaatar became much more focused on protecting past progress rather than operationalizing it.

The institutional failures began on day one. At the opening plenary on 17 August, only two State Parties objected to agenda items, yet no vote was held and instead the presidency provisionally adopted the agenda. Future Strategic Framework, synergies with other conventions, gender, and participation of civil society were all deferred pending consultation. The COP closed with no decision at all on civil society participation, the Riyadh mandate to bring the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus and the Local Communities’ Caucus to full Terms of Reference under Decision 5/COP.16 was pushed to COP18, and Rio synergies were removed from all decisions. Gender never reached the negotiation floor; instead, a quiet Gender Caucus convened in Plenary as the agenda block was sustained.

Still, IYRP advocacy proved successful to some extent. Parties agreed to recognize the critical role of pastoralists as stewards of rangeland ecosystems, including the importance of transboundary mobility. However, compromise language was adopted, replacing “traditional knowledge” with “knowledge accumulated by pastoralists” in order to remove wording related to Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

This distinction matters. Pastoralist knowledge is not simply a body of information accumulated over time; it is embedded in living institutions, relationships, territories and systems of customary governance. When knowledge is separated from the peoples and institutions that hold and transmit it, it becomes a technical resource while the rights and authority of its holders remain unrecognized. Draft decisions on land tenure and sand and dust storms also advanced, but only by leaving the naming of rightsholders behind. The lack of language on Indigenous Peoples and local communities was one of the biggest gaps. Many negotiators backed Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights in plenary, but behind closed doors, agreed to language so general it protects no one in particular. Language proposed replacing references to Indigenous Peoples with “common places” or “common people.” In the land tenure text, “affected areas” was pushed toward “common areas,” a phrase with no grounding in any multilateral mechanism and no obligations attached.

This dilution of language is particularly consequential as pressure on rangelands grows from competing global agendas. Rangelands are increasingly being presented as spaces for carbon sequestration, renewable energy, conservation and large-scale restoration, often without adequately recognizing the pastoralists who already govern and steward these landscapes.

And this is where the politics of rangelands becomes unavoidable.

Rangelands are increasingly being seen as spaces for carbon, renewable energy, conservation and large-scale restoration. The danger is that landscapes already governed and stewarded by pastoralists begin to be treated as empty spaces available for solving someone else’s global environmental problem.

A green transition cannot become a new form of land dispossession.

If pastoralists are displaced in the name of renewable energy, excluded in the name of conservation, or turned into carbon credits in the name of climate action, then changing the colour of development does not change its underlying politics.

Climate, biodiversity and land restoration objectives must not be pursued by treating pastoralist territories as empty spaces or global environmental infrastructure while sidelining the people whose livelihoods, cultures and institutions are rooted in them.

The same principle applies to emerging carbon and other environmental markets. Pastoralist rangelands cannot be reduced to carbon sinks whose value is defined externally while the cumulative ecological, economic and cultural value of pastoralism remains invisible. Any financing or market mechanism operating in these territories must begin with secure tenure, meaningful participation, Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), and fair recognition of the rights and contributions of pastoralist communities.

Right through the final day, negotiators discussed whether to reference synergies among the Rio Conventions, and whether to include gender at all. These questions were either resolved by adopting ambiguous and broad language that betrays the protection from past COP decisions or by simply delaying any decisions to COP18.

Across every draft negotiating text currently available, rangelands, drought, sand and dust storms, land tenure, Afro-descendant Peoples do not appear at all. Not contested and diluted; simply absent. On the year of the three Rio Conventions, this demonstrates how UNCCD is lagging. CBD Decision 16/6 made the Convention on Biological Diversity the first Rio Convention to name them explicitly and at UNFCCC COP30 they appeared in core negotiating text. The bridge that could have carried that recognition into the UNCCD was the synergies item blocked on day one. These synergies are urgent to deal with the intersections across climate, land degradation and biodiversity conservation.

When it came to drought, the COP also fell short. Decision ICCD/COP(17)/L.15 runs to four operative paragraphs: continue discussions at COP18 with a view to adopting a decision on proactive drought management; make drought a stand-alone agenda item; ask the secretariat and Global Mechanism to keep supporting Parties; and report back. After deferring at COP16 and again here, the working group toward a binding instrument did not materialize; the next window is 2028. In the current text, Indigenous Peoples and local communities appear as people affected by drought and consulted, rather than as rightsholders.

COP17 presented an unprecedented situation in which a small number of Parties blocked key issues from meaningful consideration. There is no Land Degradation Neutrality without human rights, no resilience without gender equality, no sustainable land governance without Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples and local communities.

COP17 also taught us something uncomfortable about participation. It is possible to be visible everywhere at a COP and still have very little influence over what finally enters the negotiating text.

Influence requires preparation. It requires people who understand the Convention, know the procedures, follow the text, build relationships with negotiators, organize across constituencies and remain engaged long after the cameras leave. Pastoralist movements have strong knowledge of their lands and livelihoods. What they need now is equal investment in the political and technical capacity required to defend that knowledge and those rights in global decision-making spaces.

If pastoralists want to shape the next COP, they cannot only prepare declarations. They must prepare negotiators.

What Happens Next

The answer cannot be another declaration.

The remaining COPs of 2026 must turn recognition into implementation. That means three things: name the peoples whose rights are at stake; put resources directly into the hands of their organizations and institutions; and give them meaningful authority over the decisions affecting their territories.

At CBD COP17 and UNFCCC COP31, Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples and local communities must be recognized as rights-holders and implementing partners, not folded into generic “vulnerable groups” language. At UNCCD COP18, the gains made on pastoralists, tenure and customary governance must not be allowed to disappear into vague language.

But the responsibility does not rest with the conventions alone. Pastoralist movements must also build the capacity to influence these processes. The period between COPs must be used to coordinate positions, prepare negotiators, track decisions and negotiating texts, build alliances across the Rio Conventions and engage governments between sessions. Pastoralist organizations need investment not only to attend COPs, but to understand and shape what happens inside them.

COP18 must deliver the adoption of Terms of Reference for the Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ Caucuses, restore gender and synergies to the agenda, open an Afro-descendant desertification agenda, advance a drought decision with the communities who live its consequences first, and restore the full recognition of traditional knowledge.

Vague language does not merely fail to establish obligations. It blurs the content of rights and leaves earned recognition in a regression limbo.

Naming peoples is the beginning of recognition, not the end of it. Recognition must lead to rights, rights must be backed by institutions and finance, and those institutions must have the authority to shape the decisions that affect their territories.

The peoples who shepherd the vast majority of the world’s lands do not need another symbolic year. They need their names written into the decisions, and their voices, institutions and authority protected long after the COP is over.

Bayarsaikhan Namsrai (Steps Without Borders), Gregoria Jimenez Amaya (CITAFRO/ODECO), Isabel Davila Pereira (Rights and Resources Initiative), Stephen Basele (Pastoralist Goals Foundation)

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Young voters are being courted with football slogans, promises of jobs and anti-Israel rallying calls.

Young voters are being courted with football slogans, promises of jobs and anti-Israel rallying calls.

Shadrack Sibiya, who has made no comment, is alleged to have groomed a 16-year-old and raped an 18-year-old.

The BBC goes inside the prison where prisoners were trapped in stifling, cramped conditions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Australian PM M Anthony Albanese. Credit: Climate Group

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IPS UN Bureau Report