Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Oct 21 2025 (IPS)

When thousands of Georgians filled the streets of Tbilisi in 2023 to protest against their government’s proposed ‘foreign agents’ law, they understood what their leaders were trying to do: this wasn’t about transparency or accountability; it was about silencing dissent. Though the government was forced to withdraw the legislation, it returned with renewed determination in 2024, passing a renamed version despite even bigger protests. The law has effectively frozen Georgia’s hopes of joining the European Union.

Georgia’s repressive law is just one example of a disturbing global trend documented in CIVICUS’s new report, Cutting civil society’s lifeline: the global spread of foreign agents laws. From Central America to Central Asia, from Africa to the Balkans, governments are adopting legislation that brands civil society organisations and independent media as paid agents of foreign interests. Foreign agents laws are proliferating at an alarming rate, posing a growing threat to civil society. Since 2020, El Salvador, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe have all enacted such laws, while many more states have proposed similar measures.

Russia established the blueprint for this architecture of repression in 2012, when Vladimir Putin’s government introduced legislation requiring any civil society organisation that received foreign funding and engaged in broadly defined ‘political activity’ to register as a foreign agent. This offered an impossible choice: accept a stigmatising designation that effectively brands organisations as foreign spies, or cease operations. Russia repeatedly expanded its crackdown, and by 2016, at least 30 groups had chosen to shut down rather than accept the designation. The European Court of Human Rights has unequivocally condemned Russia’s law as violating fundamental civic freedoms, yet this hasn’t prevented other states eagerly adopting the same model.

The pretence that these laws promote transparency is fundamentally disingenuous. Civil society organisations that receive international support are already subject to rigorous accountability requirements imposed by their donors. In contrast, governments often receive substantial foreign funding yet face no equivalent disclosure obligations. This double standard reveals the true purpose of these laws: not transparency, but control. In practice, almost any public interest activity can be deemed political under foreign agents laws, including human rights advocacy, election monitoring and efforts to strengthen democracy. States deliberately leave definitions vague and broad to allow discretionary enforcement and targeting of organisations they don’t like.

The impacts can be devastating. Nicaragua provides a particularly extreme example of the use of foreign agents laws to dismantle civil society. President Daniel Ortega has used such legislation as part of a comprehensive repressive arsenal that has shuttered over 5,600 organisations, roughly 80 per cent of all groups that once operated in the country. State security forces have raided suspended organisations, seized their offices and confiscated their assets, while thousands of academics, activists and journalists have been driven into exile. With only state-controlled organisations remaining operational, Nicaragua has become a full-blown authoritarian regime where independent voices have been eliminated and civic space has slammed shut.

In Kyrgyzstan, a foreign agents law passed in March 2024 has had an immediate chilling effect. Organisations have scaled back their activities, some have re-registered as commercial entities and others have proactively ceased operations to avoid fines for non-compliance. The Open Society Foundations closed its long-established grant-making office in the country. Meanwhile, in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele’s government imposed a punitive 30 per cent tax on all foreign grants alongside stigmatising labels and registration requirements, forcing major civil society organisations to shut down their offices.

Foreign agents laws impose systematic barriers through complex registration processes, demanding reporting requirements and frequent audits that force many smaller organisations to close. The threat of harsh penalties – including heavy fines, licence revocations and imprisonment for non-compliance – creates a climate of fear that frequently leads to self-censorship and organisational dissolution. By restricting foreign funding while offering no measures to expand domestic funding sources, governments make civil society organisations dependent on state approval, curtailing their autonomy. And by forcing them to wear the stigmatising ‘foreign agent’ label, governments ensure they lose public trust, making it harder to mount a defence when further crackdowns follow.

Yet there are grounds for hope. Civil society has shown remarkable resilience in resisting foreign agents laws, and street mobilisation and legal challenges have sometimes stalled or rolled back these measures. Ukraine’s rapid reversal of its 2014 foreign agents law following mass protests showed that immediate pushback can come when the political moment is right. Ethiopia changed its restrictive 2009 law in 2019, while Hungary was forced to drop its 2017 law following a 2020 European Court of Justice ruling. In May 2025, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Constitutional Court suspended a foreign agents law, recognising it violated freedom of association.

International legal pressure has been vital. The European Court of Human Rights’ categorical condemnation of Russia’s legislation established crucial precedents. These decisions provided a foundation for challenging similar laws elsewhere. However, authoritarian governments may adapt their strategies and implement new versions of restrictive legislation, as seen in Hungary’s 2023 introduction of a new ‘sovereignty protection’ law.

The acceleration of this trend since 2020 reflects broader patterns of democratic regression around the world. Authoritarian political leaders are capitalising on legitimate concerns about foreign interference to create legal tools that serve their repressive agendas. The danger extends beyond current adopters. Bulgaria’s parliament has rejected foreign agents bills five times, yet a far-right party keeps reintroducing them. Turkey’s autocratic government shelved its proposed law following public backlash in 2024, only to reintroduce an amended version months later.

Coordinated resistance is essential before foreign agents laws become normalised. There’s an urgent need for international courts to expedite consideration of cases and develop emergency procedures for situations where civil society faces immediate threats. Democratic governments must avoid adopting stigmatising legislation, impose targeted sanctions on foreign officials responsible for enacting foreign agents laws and provide safe haven for activists forced to flee. Funders must establish emergency mechanisms with rapid-disbursement grants, while civil society must strengthen international solidarity networks to share resistance strategies and expose the true intent of these laws.

The alternative to coordinated action is to watch idly as independent voices are systematically silenced. Civil society’s right to exist and operate freely must be defended.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Research and Analysis, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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

 

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Global forests remain in crisis, a new report says. Credit: Dirk Erasmus/Unsplash

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, Oct 21 2025 (IPS)

The Forest Declaration Assessment 2025 warns that global forest loss remains alarmingly high, with little sign of improvement.

The report, released on October 14, by a coalition of international research groups and civil society organizations, states that nearly 8.1 million hectares of forest were destroyed in 2024 alone, leaving the planet 63 percent off track to meet the zero-deforestation goal pledged under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration and other global commitments.

The report describes 2025 as a “dangerous midpoint” in the decade of forest pledges. It says, “Global forests remain in crisis. Despite the indispensable role of forests, the verdict is clear: we are off track on halting and reversing deforestation by 2030.” Forests, the report notes, are “non-negotiable infrastructure for a stable planet,” providing livelihoods to more than a billion people and sheltering 80 percent of terrestrial species.

The report says COP 30 is a “pivotal” opportunity to move to concrete action on forests from the mere commitments.

Under Brazil’s leadership, holding the COP presidency, countries are expected to forge stronger links between climate, forests, and biodiversity by expanding commitments across the land sector,” the report states, adding that this includes scaling innovative finance for standing forests, advancing deforestation- and conversion-free supply chains, supporting resilient food systems, and upholding the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

It calls for forest commitments to be embedded in the next round of NDCs so that the Global Stocktake drives tangible national and international progress.

One of the main report authors, Erin Matson, in an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service, said that the reasons behind the failure to reduce deforestation are many and complex, but they include drastically misaligned finance stemming from an economic system that rewards activities that harm forests over conserving standing forests.

“Both public and private finance are misaligned; for example, USD 409 billion on average per year (2021-2023) is spent globally on environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies versus only USD 1.7 billion spent on payments for ecosystem services by agricultural producers. And in 2024, the 150 financial institutions assessed by Forest 500 had USD 8.9 trillion in active financing to companies most exposed to deforestation risk in their supply chains.”

According to Matson, weak governance is characterized by endemic corruption (which allows well-resourced criminal networks and elites to profit from illegal or illicit forest destruction with impunity), inadequate and mistargeted law enforcement (which often targets small-scale actors who engage in illegal or illicit forest clearing but lets the bigger culprits go free), and insecure land tenure rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities (which severely limits their ability to manage and protect their forest territories).

“Another reason is lack of political will and short-termism. By and large, most leaders in government, business, and finance have, over the last decade, tended to prioritize policies and approaches that deliver short-term wins (like economic growth and increased profits) without tackling the fundamental risks and harms from nature loss that undermine future, medium- and long-term economic and social stability and prosperity,” Matson said.

Rising Losses, Failing Promises

According to the assessment, deforestation rates have barely shifted since 2015, when governments and companies began making strong commitments to forest protection. The 8.1 million hectares lost in 2024 were far above the annual ceiling of 5 million hectares needed to stay on track. Most of this destruction occurred in tropical regions, where 94 percent of all global deforestation took place. The resulting emissions were staggering—4.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, more than the annual emissions of the European Union.

“Every year the curve isn’t bent, we fall further behind. Deforestation continues at the same rate we saw ten years ago. That’s not a slowdown—it’s stagnation,” reads the report.

The hardest hit were primary tropical forests, which store vast amounts of carbon and support irreplaceable biodiversity. About 6.7 million hectares of primary forest were destroyed in 2024, releasing 3.1 billion metric tons of CO₂—nearly 150 percent of the U.S. energy sector’s annual emissions. The report calls this “an ecological and climatic emergency” and warns that much of this loss is irreversible.

“These forests take centuries to form. Once primary forest is gone, no restoration project can bring it back in a generation. The damage is permanent within our lifetime,” claims the report.

The Amazon Basin remains the epicenter of global forest degradation and fire-related emissions. Fires in the Amazon in 2024 released 791 million metric tons of CO₂, exceeding the total emissions of Germany. Bolivia lost 9 percent of its remaining intact tropical moist forests, while Brazil accounted for half of all degradation in the Amazon Basin.

Agriculture Drives Most Forest Loss

The report identifies permanent agriculture as the leading cause of deforestation, responsible for 86 percent of global forest loss over the past decade. Forests are being cleared for crops, pastureland, and plantation commodities like palm oil, soy, and rubber. Mining, infrastructure expansion, and land speculation add further pressure.

Domestic consumption is a major factor. For instance, in Latin America, the region’s consumption of beef and pasture products is the primary cause of deforestation.

In contrast, deforestation in Asia and Africa is tied to a broader range of export commodities. Recent studies cited in the report show that developed nations, especially the United States and several European countries, drive substantial biodiversity loss abroad through imported goods. Between 2000 and 2015, the 24 most industrialized countries caused an estimated 13 percent of global forest biodiversity loss through international trade.

The assessment also notes that “corruption, weak law enforcement, and poor land tenure systems” contribute significantly to deforestation. These governance failures allow illegal land grabs and unregulated clearing, undermining conservation efforts.

According to Matson,  commodity-driven deforestation is complex because it is caused by several factors, including patterns of commodity demand, both for domestic consumption and international trade; trade regulations and tariffs that can shift commodity production areas and flows; domestic land use dynamics like land speculation, where the value of land is considered to increase once forest has been cleared; and weak law enforcement (69-94% of tropical deforestation is estimated to be illegal).

“To change this pattern, we need multiple actions that would complement each other. An investment in just, equitable, and responsive law enforcement to tackle illegal deforestation and make it unprofitable to clear land illegally. Trade regulations that disallow the import of commodities produced on land deforested after a certain date (like 2020), combined with investments in traceability systems and due diligence regulations to ensure that these regulations can be enforced,” she said.

Matson pitched for the adoption and enforcement of due diligence regulations to address deforestation related to domestic consumption of commodities.

“We need efforts and campaigns that aim to shift consumption patterns, where culturally appropriate, for example, reducing meat consumption in high-income, high-consuming countries, shifting to plant-based proteins, and shifting to consumption of certified deforestation-free commodities.”

Fires and Degradation Multiply the Threat

While deforestation removes entire forests, degradation weakens those that remain. In 2024, about 8.8 million hectares of tropical moist forests were degraded, twice the level compatible with halting degradation by 2030. The report calls degradation an “invisible crisis,” often overlooked in policy debates but just as damaging to biodiversity and climate stability.

Fire-induced degradation, particularly in the Amazon, was the primary driver of these losses. Extreme droughts, poor forest management, and deliberate burning for land clearing have made fires more destructive.

As per the report, the Amazon burned on a scale we haven’t seen in decades. These fires are no longer isolated events—they are symptoms of a stressed ecosystem pushed beyond its limits.

The report warns that degraded forests are far more likely to be deforested later, creating a cycle of decline. Data from Latin America, Africa, and Asia shows that once canopy cover falls below 50 percent, the risk of full deforestation rises sharply.

Degradation is a red flag. The report says that when forests start losing structure, deforestation often follows.

Monitoring degradation remains a major challenge due to limited global data. Most national reporting focuses only on tree cover loss, not on forest health or ecosystem function. The report urges governments to integrate degradation indicators into climate and biodiversity frameworks.

“We consider forest degradation a ‘silent crisis’ because forest degradation is extremely widespread and damaging to forest health and resilience, but it often goes unnoticed because it’s harder to detect and track than deforestation. Unlike deforestation, there is no globally agreed definition or standardized monitoring approach for forest degradation. Countries reporting to the FAO’s Forest Resources Assessment can set their own national definitions under the FRA 2025 guidance. This makes it difficult to compare data across regions or to capture the cumulative impacts of logging, fires, and other disturbances on forest quality,” Matson said.

She added that other frameworks have encouraged countries to set forest degradation definitions and monitoring criteria, such as REDD+—so the countries where degradation monitoring is most advanced are the ones that have advanced REDD+ programs.

“Where there are incentives to accurately monitor and report degradation, systems do improve. Forest degradation contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and also impacts biodiversity, so countries should set relevant targets, as a first step, within their NDCs (nationally determined contributions) and in their NBSAPs (national biodiversity strategies and action plans),” Matson said.

Restoration Efforts Show Potential, But Lag Behind

Despite grim trends, the assessment highlights some positive developments. As of September 2025, restoration projects were active across 10.6 million hectares of deforested and degraded land. These efforts include reforestation, agroforestry, and natural regeneration programs, mostly in tropical regions.

However, the figure represents only 0.3 percent of the global forest restoration potential, far below the 30 percent target set under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Monitoring continues to be another area of weakness. Much of the available data comes from fragmented or overlapping sources, such as the Restor database and national observatories. The report warns that without unified global tracking, restoration progress will remain poorly understood.

The assessment calls for broader monitoring under the UN’s Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM), which combines quantitative data with qualitative information on project effectiveness and local participation. Governance and Finance Gaps Persist.

The report stresses that progress depends on systemic shifts, not isolated successes. While countries like Brazil have reduced deforestation through strong enforcement and inclusive land-use planning, others have seen gains erased by political change or weak implementation.

Financing for forest protection and restoration remains grossly inadequate. The report finds that forest-positive finance is still a fraction of the funds supporting activities that harm forests, such as fossil fuel subsidies and industrial agriculture. It calls for reforming financial systems to redirect capital toward sustainable land use.

The assessment also highlights that Indigenous and local communities remain underrepresented in forest decision-making, despite managing some of the world’s most intact ecosystems. Expanding legal recognition of land rights and ensuring community participation are described as “non-negotiable conditions” for progress.

“Like most topics covered in the report, barriers to scaled-up restoration are complex and are mainly financial, governance-related, and structural. Restoration is often underfunded because returns are only realized over the long term, and ecological benefits—like carbon storage, water regulation, or biodiversity—are not fully valued in markets. Public funding for restoration tends to be short-term or project-based, while private finance shies away due to high perceived risks, unclear revenue models, or a simple lack of investable projects or initiatives,” said Matson.

She says that on the policy side, many countries lack clear land tenure, long-term incentives, and enabling frameworks for restoration at scale.

“Integrating restoration into national climate, biodiversity, and rural development plans—and aligning finance, tenure, and monitoring systems accordingly—would incentivize and corral collective action to develop overarching, landscape-scale restoration approaches that move beyond scattered, individual projects,” Matson said.

Deforestation and Market Dynamics

With only five years left before the 2030 deadline, the report states that incremental changes will not be enough. “This crisis cannot fade into the background noise,” it states. “Isolated successes will not save the world’s forests. We need structural reform that makes forest protection the rule, not the exception.”

Experts say that reversing current trends will require coordinated action across agriculture, trade, and finance. Governments must close legal loopholes that allow deforestation-linked products to enter markets. Companies must trace and disclose their supply chains. And international lenders must align funding with environmental goals.

“In the medium to long term, we need to make preserving and sustainably managing forests more attractive and more profitable than even legal deforestation. And that requires shifting the financial incentives—subsidy reform; establishing payments for keeping standing forests standing, like the Tropical Forests Forever Facility; and increasing payments for ecosystem services programs for farmers and foresters,” Matson said. “A lot of deforestation is highly responsive to market dynamics—when the price of gold goes up, we see much more deforestation for gold mining. So, counterbalancing those harmful financial incentives with positive ones must be a part of any permanent solution to the deforestation crisis.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

Closing legal loopholes that allow deforestation-linked products to enter markets and getting international lenders to align funding with environmental goals are key to ending deforestation, says Erin Matson, one of the lead authors of the Forest Declaration Assessment 2025.

Higher income and fintech expansion boosted credit growth, even as monetary policy remained effective. Credit: IMF

By Swarnali A. Hannan, Daniel Leigh, and Rui Xu
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 21 2025 (IPS)

At 15 percent, Brazil’s monetary policy interest rate (called Selic) is one of the highest among major economies. Yet in 2024, bank credit grew by 11.5 percent and corporate bond issuance rose by 30 percent.

This credit expansion—in the face of high policy rates—benefited many individuals, households, and companies. But it also raised questions about the effectiveness of monetary policy itself. In other words, why did the central bank’s efforts to cool down the economy, by making financing more expensive, seem not to be working?

Our analysis, in the context of Brazil’s latest yearly economic review (the Article IV consultation), shows that concerns have been largely unwarranted and that monetary policy transmission in Brazil remains effective. Indeed, recent data indicates that credit growth is starting to slow down.

So, what exactly has been happening?

Even as monetary policy was doing its job as intended, we saw two other factors playing a critical role: strong income growth and the country’s success in expanding financial inclusion. These factors boosted the demand for credit and its supply.

A committed central bank

Brazil’s was the first major central bank to hike rates during the pandemic. After a period of easing, it started a new tightening cycle in September 2024. These decisions have been appropriate and guided by the need to bring inflation and inflation expectations down to its 3 percent target.

The country’s twelve-month inflation rate reached 5.1 percent in August, down slightly from the previous month, but still well above target this year. Inflation expectations are also projected to stay above target over an eighteen-month horizon. This explains the rise in policy rates since the pandemic, in line with standard inflation-targeting principles.

How effective is monetary policy transmission?

To gauge the effectiveness of Brazil’s monetary policy tightening, our report estimates how changes in the central bank’s policy interest rate pass through to bank lending rates paid by households and businesses.

We find that a 1 percentage point increase in the policy rate raises lending rates by around 0.7 percentage point after four months. To raise average lending rates in the economy by one percentage point, the monetary policy rate must increase by about 1.4 percentage points, since roughly 40 percent of total credit is comprised of government-directed loans that are less responsive to policy rate changes.

The analysis also suggests that since 2020, corporate lending rates have become more responsive to changes in the basic rate. This may in part result from the 2018 reform of Brazil’s large development bank, BNDES, which aligned its lending rates with long-term market rates.

Bank-level analysis shows corporate loans adjust faster than consumer loans, likely due to tighter margins and more experienced borrowers. In turn, payroll-backed consumer loans are the least responsive because of rate caps.

What drove credit growth

Although Brazil’s monetary policy is working, credit growth has been strong over the past few years. This was due to both cyclical factors and structural changes. On the cyclical side, Brazil’s economy has grown faster than expected, with low unemployment and rising incomes driving higher credit demand.

Moreover, Brazil has been making significant structural changes that have increased financial inclusion and credit availability.

The rapid expansion of fintech lenders gave more people access to credit. In 2024, digital banks and other fintech lenders accounted for a quarter of the credit card market and over 10 percent of non-payroll personal loans.

Increased competition reduced banking-sector concentration and lowered average lending rates of incumbent banks. In addition, bond-market financing for corporates as a share of GDP tripled in the last decade, driven by tax-exempt debentures. All these factors supported credit growth.

With a 15 percent basic rate, Brazil’s central bank has administered a strong dose of monetary tightening to temper credit growth and return inflation and expectations to target. New loan volumes have been falling since April, further suggesting that the treatment is working.

More broadly, Brazil’s economy is showing signs of moderation amid tight monetary and fiscal policies and elevated global policy uncertainty. Overall, our research shows that concerns about the lack of effectiveness of monetary are proving to be largely unwarranted and that monetary policy transmission in Brazil remains active.

Daniel Leigh is IMF mission chief for Brazil; Swarnali A. Hannan is a deputy division chief in the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department; and Rui Xu is an economist in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Mwavita Rohomoya sits with her four children in front of her drink stall in Minova, Kalehe territory, South Kivu province, DR Congo, on 23 April 2025. Minova is one of the first areas in South Kivu to be affected by the resurgence of violence, one of the immediate consequences was the rise in prices of staple foods and essential goods. UNICEF’s cash transfer programme helped families meet their urgent needs—buying food, finding shelter, and accessing healthcare—while also enabling some, like Mwavita, to invest in small-scale income-generating activities. Credit: UNICEF/Christian Mirindi Johnson

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20 2025 (IPS)

In 2025, unprecedented cuts to foreign aid and humanitarian funding have exacerbated global hunger crises, leaving millions without access to food or basic services. Funding shortfalls have forced aid agencies to scale back or suspend lifesaving programs in some of the world’s most food-insecure regions, particularly across the Global South—exacerbating already dire conditions caused by conflict, displacement, economic instability, and climate shocks.

On October 15, the World Food Programme (WFP) released a report, A Lifeline At Risk: Food Assistance At A Breaking Point, which illustrated the impact of funding shortfalls to their programs in the context of six countries: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan,and Sudan. In these nations, funding cuts have had devastating consequences, with entire communities being pushed to the brink of starvation.

“We see significant reductions in our operations and the operations of our partners,” said Ross Smith, WFP’s Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response. “That goes from cutting people completely off of assistance, reducing rations, and reducing the duration of assistance. Many vulnerable people are completely without a safety net or a landing pad at this point in time.”

The report highlighted that the number of people in urgent need of food and livelihood assistance has surged to a record high of 295 million in 2025—coinciding with major reductions in foreign aid and humanitarian funding from key donors, including the United States. As a result, WFP has been forced to drastically scale back its operations, grappling with an estimated 40 percent cut in funding that has severely limited its ability to deliver lifesaving support to the world’s hungriest populations.

WFP warns that recent funding cuts could “severely undermine global food security”. It is estimated that roughly 13.7 million people who are dependent on food assistance from WFP could be pushed into emergency levels of hunger, with children, women, refugees, and internally displaced people being disproportionately affected.

“These cuts are triggering additional food insecurity that in itself could have impacts at both national and regional levels,” said Jean-Martin Bauer, Director of WFP’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Service.

WFP notes that the full extent of the impact of these funding cuts to food assistance will not be immediate, but will unfold in the coming months. “This is why we call it a ‘slow burn’ in the report,” said Bauer. “Because the cuts haven’t fully fed through the system yet to all countries and communities.”

Bauer warned that escalating hunger amid dwindling aid could have far-reaching implications that could exacerbate existing crises, citing rising rates of child marriage, increased school dropouts, heightened social instability, increased displacement, and growing economic and political turmoil. Furthermore, WFP has recorded increased rates of malnutrition among children in refugee communities, with many of these children experiencing lifelong health challenges as a result.

One of WFP’s most pressing challenges has been the reduction of disaster preparedness programs for some of the world’s most crisis-prone countries, as resources are redirected to sustain emergency food assistance for the most affected populations. In Haiti, WFP has been forced to suspend its hot meals program for displaced families and cut monthly rations in half, as the nation continues to struggle with record levels of hunger.

Bauer noted that Haiti’s contingency stock of humanitarian aid has been fully depleted and, for the first time since Hurricane Matthew in 2016, WFP has been unable to replenish it. The agency continues to closely monitor Haiti’s food security situation.

Similarly, Smith reported that conditions in Afghanistan have worsened considerably over the course of the year, with fewer than 10 percent of the country’s 10 million food-insecure people now receiving humanitarian aid. “We expect pipeline breaks as early as November and can currently only provide (limited) winter assistance,” said Smith, noting that less than 8 percent of those in need of winterization support will receive it.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), WFP has been forced to cut its operations from targeting 2.3 million people to just 600,000 and warns that its resources could be entirely depleted by February of next year without additional funding. In Somalia, WFP’s reach has also been drastically reduced, with the agency now able to assist less than 25 percent of the people it supported last year.

In Sudan, WFP has managed to assist roughly 4 million people in August—half of them in hard-to-reach areas such as Darfur and South Kordofan. “We are shifting away from what used to be a very large program, in the absence of significant government support for many people, to one now that is famine prevention that is moving from hotspot to hotspot,” said Smith. In neighboring South Sudan, WFP has redirected its limited resources to prioritize civilians experiencing the most extreme levels of hunger.

According to the report, WFP has recalibrated its food assistance priorities in the face of dwindling aid budgets and shrinking staff, choosing to focus on famine prevention efforts and distributing food rations that reach fewer people but cover basic needs. Bauer added that it is imperative for humanitarian aid groups to align with local actors and continue to closely monitor levels of hunger. “The data and analytics – they’re the humanitarian community’s GPS,” Bauer said. “We’re taking the risk of losing our way without the data. So the data must flow.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Disasters touch everyone but are not felt equally. Women often take longer to rebuild their livelihoods after a crisis and may face additional barriers in accessing the resources to facilitate a quicker recovery. Credit:: UNDP Nigeria

By Raquel Lagunas and Ronald Jackson
NEW YORK, Oct 20 2025 (IPS)

Climate and environmental challenges are hitting harder and more often, reshaping people’s lives around the world. While disasters touch everyone, their impacts are not felt equally. The most marginalized, especially women and girls, are too often the first to suffer and the last to recover.

Social roles, discrimination and economic inequalities amplify the risks women face in times of crisis and undermine communities’ capacity to rebuild their livelihoods. Placing gender equality at the heart of disaster risk reduction (DDR) isn’t only a matter of fairness, but a key to a more resilient future for all.

UNDP is working with partners to translate this vision into action, by advancing equality and inclusion at every stage of disaster risk reduction, from preparedness to response and recovery. Drawing on our experience we see five powerful ways women’s leadership and meaningful participation can strengthen communities’ ability to withstand and recover from future shocks.

Women’s leadership strengthens resilience 

At UNDP, we actively open doors for women to shape decisions and policies at every level, from local committees to national platforms. We draw on their expertise and perspectives while amplifying the leadership and innovation they already bring to building resilience.

By investing in women’s ideas and supporting their initiatives, we help unlock solutions that ripple across communities, strengthening food security, sustaining livelihoods, and driving progress on every front.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Feminist Coalition for Climate Justice, supported by UNDP, has improved working conditions for over 75,000 women, trained 1,500 women officials in energy and climate management, and opened new opportunities for women-led enterprises.

Meanwhile, in Chad, with support from France through the Global Women, Peace and Security initiative, women’s cooperatives have combined climate-smart agriculture, solar irrigation, and early warning systems to reduce flood risks and support recovery, showing how women-led approaches can strengthen risk reduction measures, preparedness, livelihoods and peacebuilding, even in fragile settings.

Unpaid care responsibilities grow during crises, as disasters disrupt schools, health systems and basic services, placing even greater pressure on women. Credit: UNDP Haiti

Resilience relies on care

Resilience depends on care, and women shoulder more than three-quarters of the world’s unpaid caregiving, supporting children, older adults, people with disabilities and entire communities. These responsibilities grow during crises, as disasters disrupt schools, health systems and basic services, placing even greater pressure on women.

Recognizing and prioritizing care in disaster management, through early warning systems, safe spaces, and continuity of essential services, helps protect lives and speeds up recovery for everyone.

UNDP supports countries to integrate care into disaster and climate strategies. In Honduras, Cuba, Belize and Guatemala, a geo-referenced care mapping tool helps to identify gaps in childcare, eldercare and disability-inclusive services. In Honduras, this analysis helped authorities identify ‘care deserts’ in flood- and landslide-prone areas, prioritize safe-space upgrades, and ensure that care continuity is factored into evacuation and rehabilitation plans.

In Ukraine, the ‘Mommy in the Shelter’ initiative transformed a basement into a child-friendly refuge activated during air raids, linking early warning with ongoing maternal and childcare support, even in acute conflicts.

Gender data means better planning and better response

Good planning starts with good data. Without information that is broken down by sex, age, and disability, disaster risk reduction policies can miss the unique needs and strengths of different parts of the community, especially for marginalized groups. High-quality gender disaggregated data helps ensure that strategies are targeted, effective and inclusive.

Last year, UNDP increased sex-disaggregated data and gender analysis in 20 countries affected by crisis. Cuba, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Samoa and Yemen developed early warning systems that strengthen women’s engagement and leadership.

In Ethiopia, disaster risk reduction measures helped women-headed households recover from landslides, while in Armenia, inclusive risk assessments led by women fed directly into local development and recovery plans.

With strong data, broken down by sex, age and disability, disaster risk reduction policies can address the specific needs of different parts of societies, including marginalized groups. Credit: UNDP Türkiye

Institutions equipped with gender capacities are better equipped for resilience

Resilient communities start with resilient institutions. When organizations, from national authorities managing risks, to local risk committees, embed gender considerations into their policy, planning and programming, good intentions turn to real progress, moving from rhetoric to routine.

Guatemala’s national disaster risk management authority set a new standard by earning UNDP’s Gender Equality Seal for Public Institutions. This means gender mandates, data and participation, including for Indigenous women, are woven into local risk management. Stronger institutions like these are better equipped to meet people’s needs and build lasting resilience.

Breaking down barriers, building resilience

Despite real progress, gaps remain. Gender equality is still too often sidelined across disaster, climate, humanitarian and development efforts. Let’s work together to make women’s leadership, care and inclusion central to every plan and policy.

Together, we can:

• Make women’s leadership non-negotiable in DRR decision making and financing. 
• Direct more capital to women’s resilience, including through risk financing, social protection, and support to women-led enterprises. 
• Centre care in preparedness and continuity plans so alerts translate into protection for caregivers, children, older persons and persons with disabilities.
• Strengthen national and local institutional capacities to apply a gender lens to how risks are managed, from efforts to prevent, prepare, respond to and recover from hazardous events. 
•  When these measures are consistently applied, communities everywhere will be better able to face challenges and confidently bounce back.

Raquel Lagunas is Global Director of Gender Equality, UNDP; Ronald Jackson is Head of the Disaster Risk Reduction, Recovery for Building Resilience, UNDP

Source: UN Development Programme (UNDP)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Tsholofelo Msimango pictured at her home in Brakpan, near Johannesburg. Credit: TB Alliance/Jonathan Torgovnik

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Oct 20 2025 (IPS)

When Tsholofelo Msimango joined a small trial of a new drug regimen for tuberculosis (TB) treatment a decade ago, she had no idea whether the medicines she was about to be given would help her.

But having already spent six months in hospital after developing extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), the most lethal form of the disease, which at the time was barely curable—three-quarters of people with XDR-TB were thought to die before they even received a diagnosis and only a third of those who got treatment survived—Msimango decided she had little to lose.

“I had my doubts, of course, as to whether it would have any success,” she tells IPS.  “But to be honest, at that point all I could think about was that it might make me better, that I might be able to get out of hospital and go home. I was ready to take that chance. I’m glad I did. That trial saved my life—I am sure of it,” she says.

Msimango, who was 21 at the time, from Brakpan in South Africa, was one of 109 participants in the Nix-TB trial of a new drug regimen that ran across three sites in the country between 2015 and 2017.

Until then, typical treatment for the most severe drug-resistant forms of TB would involve patients taking daily doses of a potent cocktail of pills—dozens in some cases—as well as injections for sometimes as long as two years.

The side effects of such regimens can be horrific—deafness, kidney failure and psychosis have been reported—and there are high rates of treatment drop-out, leading not only to a worsening of the patient’s own condition but also to the further spread of the worst strains of the disease among communities.

The Nix-TB trial tested an all-oral six-month drug regimen, which was a combination of the drugs pretomanid, bedaquiline and linezolid (BPaL).

Its results—the regimen had a 90 percent treatment success rate —werehailed as groundbreaking by experts, and the trial proved to be a landmark moment in the fight against the world’s most deadly infectious disease.

Msimango says that until she joined the trial, she had been taking “lots of pills and having injections.” The latter, she says, had stopped working against the disease and was leaving her legs completely numb.

But not long into the trial, she noticed a change. Before the trial she had struggled to keep weight on because of her illness and treatment.

“It was when I started to gain weight that I began to think that the treatment was working. We had check-ups, including for weight, every week and when I saw myself putting on weight, I knew then that I was getting better,” she says.

By the end of the trial, she says she felt like a different person.

Tests showed she was free of TB.

“Of course I was excited about the fact that I could finally stop taking medicines, and because I was then healthy and free of TB and could live a normal life again, but I was also excited about the fact that I was going to be able to finally leave hospital after a year and go home.

“I had already been in hospital for six months before the trial started, and then another six months for the trial, and it was hard being away from home for a year. The hospital was a long way from where I lived so it was very hard for my mother to come and visit me and bring me things,” she says.

Tsholofelo Msimango and her son at her home in Brakpan, near
Johannesburg. Credit: TB Alliance/Jonathan Torgovnik

But while now healthy and free of TB, the disease has continued to play a large role in Msimango’s life.

She decided she wanted to help others affected by TB. Today she is a TB community advocate and educator and helps to recruit people for medical studies.

“I would recommend to anyone that if they get the chance to take part in a study like the one that I got to take part in, that they should go for it,” she says.

Now a mother to a young boy, she says she speaks to him about what she went through and about TB so that he understands about the disease and the risks it poses.

“I talk to my son about what happened to me, why I was in hospital and why I now work in the TB community. I tell my son and his friends about TB and what can be done to stop its spread and how they can help, for instance, by covering their mouths when they cough,” she says.

“Actually, I tell my story a lot because I hope it might help other people,” she adds.

Another participant in the trial, Bongiswa Mdaka, says the same.

“I talk to people all the time about TB and my experience with it—I’m very open about it. If I see someone has been coughing for more than two weeks, I tell them about the disease and about getting tested and treated as early as possible,” she told IPS.

Speaking from her home in Vereeniging, Gauteng, Mdaka, who was 27 when she started the trial, said that, like Msimango, it changed her life.

“The trial was a lifesaver for me. It not only changed my life but saved it. It gave me a second chance. Ten years ago, before the trial, the situation for people with XDR-TB was not good. I was diagnosed with MDR-TB and when my condition continued to get worse, I was hospitalized. I was in the hospital for three days and they told me that no, I don’t have MDR-TB; I have ZDR-TB, the worst I could have. It was like hearing a death sentence.

Tsholofelo Msimango’s late mother, Zeldah Nkosi. She says her mother was a “pillar of support” during her time when she had TB. Credit: TB Alliance

“So when the people doing the trial came to me, it seemed like a godsend. I had no major expectations—I just hoped that I would get better. Today I am healthy and free of TB. I’m strong. I have a family and a normal life. Life is good,” she said.

Speaking to experts who were involved in the trial, it becomes clear that going into it, no one knew how important it would eventually prove to be in the future of TB treatment.

Dr. Pauline Howell managed the patients during the Nix-TB trial at the Sizwe Tropical Diseases Hospital in Johannesburg, where Msimango was a patient.

“Prior to the Nix trial we knew that treatment was too long, too toxic, worked in less than half of people afflicted with TB, and in those diagnosed with XDR TB (per the pre-2021 definition), only 20 percent were still alive after 5 years. I was still junior in clinical trials in 2015, but it was clear to everyone that knew anything about XDR-TB that replacing the extended treatment, which included at least 6 months of injectables, and all the other drugs (the kitchen sink approach) with just three drugs made us more than a little anxious,” she told IPS.

But like many of the trial’s participants, she saw relatively quickly how well the treatment was working.

“When trial participants started telling newly admitted patients about this trial and brought them to the research site before we had had a chance to speak with them, that was speaking loudly. When certain patients, who had been admitted for over two years, were suddenly starting to respond to TB treatment and culture convert, it was wonderful to celebrate with them, Howell, who is now Clinical Research Site Leader at Sizwe Tropical Disease Hospital, said. “When patients were relocating from the Eastern Cape to Gauteng just to get access to the trial, we knew this was the treatment we’d also want for ourselves and our loved ones.”

“There are definitely a few [trial participants] who may not have survived without this treatment, but for the majority, they were able to get back to their lives faster, potentially cause fewer onward infections and suffer less loneliness and other repercussions of having drug-resistant TB,” she added.

However, while the trial had an immediate effect on its participants, its results, which suggested the enormous potential of the regimen, paved the way for BPaL to revolutionize TB treatment.

“I had no idea that this trial would be the first step towards changing the treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis worldwide,” Howell said.

“It’s good to remember that although TB is deadly, it is curable, and the side effects of the BPaL/M regimen are common but predictable and manageable. A decade ago, patients put an end to rental agreements for their homes, quit their jobs, told their partners to move on and their families took out funeral policies. These days, patients sit in front of me and say, ‘I have been here for two weeks already! I need to get home and back to my life’. It makes my head spin how much has changed, partially due to the Nix trial,” she added.

In 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed BPaL with or without another drug, moxifloxacin (M), and BPaL(M) is today the preferred treatment option for drug-resistant TB.

According to data from the TB Alliance, the nonprofit group that developed pretomanid, BPaL and BPaL-based regimens, they treat about 75 percent of the overall number of drug-resistant TB cases treated annually. This number is projected to soon reach 90 percent.

Meanwhile, the group says, the regimens have already saved more than 11,000 lives and USD 100 million for health systems globally and by 2034 are expected to save an additional 192,000 lives and health systems almost USD 1.3 billion.

In some countries classed as having high-burden TB epidemics, they have already altered the TB landscape significantly.

“In South Africa, which adopted the BPaL/M guidelines in Sep 2023, we are seeing a single-digit percentage lost to follow-up for the first time in the history of our TB programme,” she says.

But the regimen’s potential may be in danger of not being fully fulfilled as richer nations cut foreign aid budgets, impacting funding that has traditionally helped support disease and other healthcare programmes in poor countries.

“The eternal challenge with TB is how closely it is tied to lack of access, poverty, substance use, being undomiciled and general lack of funding to overcome these challenges… Unfortunately, as long as there is poverty and lack of access, political will and funding, TB will continue to live side by side with us,” said Howell.

“Some people now can’t get their medications because of these cuts,” said Msimango. “They’re costing people’s lives.”

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

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Excerpt:

Before the successful Nix-TB trial, which took place in South Africa from 2015 to 2017, patients with extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) had to follow a complicated treatment plan for the deadliest form of the disease.

By Orlando Milesi
SAN ANTONIO, Chile, Oct 17 2025 (IPS)

Maritime transport is key for Chile, which has 34 free trade agreements with countries and blocs of nations, one of the broadest trade networks in the world with access to over 86% of the global gross domestic product (GDP).

In 2024, this South American country surpassed US$100 billion in exports for the first time, mostly of copper, forest products, fresh fruits, fish, and organic foods. In turn, it imported US$78.025 billion, mostly diesel oil, clothing, accessories, and footwear.

Faced with growing trade, experts predict enormous port demand by 2036 in this long and narrow South American country squeezed between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean.



To avoid a collapse in 10 years, the San Antonio Outer Port project will triple the capacity of Chile’s main route for the exit and entry of products.

San Antonio currently handles 29% of the tonnage of maritime foreign trade, 34% of exports, and 71% of Chile’s imports by value.

The high agricultural and mining production from Chile’s central area, which contributes 59% of the country’s GDP and is home to 63% of its 19.7 million inhabitants, passes through this port.

The outer port will allow for the movement of six million containers thanks to two new port terminals, 1,730 meters long and 450 meters wide, with eight new berthing fronts for state-of-the-art container ships.

The total estimated investment for the project is US$4.45 billion, which will be financed by the government and by international companies applying for concessions.

The first months of 2026 will be key for awarding the dredging works, the construction of the breakwater, the protective infrastructure for the new port, and for learning the authorities’ decision on the environmental impact of the San Antonio Outer Port works.

Measures will be taken to mitigate that impact, including the protection of two wetlands located on port land and support for the work of fishermen in nearby coves. To decarbonize, the port project will also use energy produced from renewable sources.

San Antonio, 110 kilometers west of Santiago and south of the historic port of Valparaiso, which it has surpassed in relevance, is aiming for a revival by promoting the largest port infrastructure project in Chile’s history.

It currently provides 10,200 direct jobs to port workers with an average monthly income of US$1,110.

San Antonio aims to consolidate its ninth place among the largest ports in Latin America and expand its role in the movement of cargo to and from Asia and the Americas.

Its managers also seek to show that infrastructure development can be harmonized with the protection and improvement of environmental conditions through a project that is a model of sustainability.

A female merchant was crossing a bustling street in Hanoi, Vietnam. Despite economic development over five decades, development gaps in Asia and the Pacific remained. Credit: Unsplash/Jeremy Stewardson

By Sudip Ranjan Basu
BANGKOK Thailand, Oct 17 2025 (IPS)

The Asia-Pacific region has long served as a springboard for transforming socio-economic implementation gaps into development opportunities. With the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals fast approaching, policymakers are stepping up efforts to translate policy announcements into tangible impacts.

Looking back since 1970s, the region’s development trajectory has been shaped by a series of crises that triggered transformative policy responses. By engaging strategic partnerships, countries in the region are well-positioned to promote shared prosperity for both people and the planet.

Anchoring crisis-driven policy shifts
In the 1970s, technological advances—particularly in agriculture—ushered in a new era. The introduction of high-yield crop varieties, known as the Green Revolution, boosted food production and rural incomes, laying the foundation for the emergence of a middle class. However, the decade also exposed vulnerabilities, as volatility in global commodity and energy prices exposed the risks of external shocks.

The 1980s brought further challenges. Rising oil prices and global interest rates strained national budgets across developing countries. The cost of servicing external debt crowded out investments in productive sectors, highlighting the risks of over-reliance on foreign aid.

The 1997 Asian financial crisis marked a watershed moment. Currency collapses, triggered capital flight and trade disruptions, leaving deep scars and prompting shifts in political governance and economic policy across the region.

By the early 2000s, optimism returned. Trade and investment surged, regional value chains expanded, and ICT-driven growth integrated economies more deeply into the global economy. Globalization was widely seen as a pathway to long-term prosperity.

Yet the 2008 global financial crisis shattered this euphoria. Inflation soared, investor confidence plummeted, and trade contracted.

Fast forward to the COVID-19 pandemic, which once again exposed lingering vulnerabilities: socio-economic inequality was deepened, jobs prospects dimmed, overdependence on supply chain became more pronounced, technological monopolies were revealed, and environmental fragility was clearly manifested. The pandemic reinforced the urgent need for adaptive policy frameworks.

These crisis episodes underscored the importance of coordinated policy action in an interconnected landscape, reinforcing the lesson that growth without adequate and shared outcomes is unsustainable.

Adjusting to changing socio-economic realities
The development journey has been marked by complexity and diversity. A comparative analysis over recent decades reveals recurring patterns: energy and food price volatility and tightening financial conditions have consistently tested policymakers. Rising interest rates in advanced economies have reignited debt concerns in developing countries, threatening economic stability and undermining progress.

Simultaneously, intensifying geopolitical competition is reshaping trade relationships, investment flows and technology transfers. Policymakers must navigate these shifts while advancing national development priorities and adapting to evolving dynamics.

These pressures have prompted to diversify its sources of economic growth and strategic engagements. Despite impressive achievements in social development, long-term stability and impact-driven outcomes hinge on governments’ ability to manage external shocks, anticipate risks, and promote cross-border economic cooperation and accelerate climate action.

Recent policy shifts signal a move toward structural transformation. Governments are spearheading industrialization, accelerating green energy transitions and pioneering sustainable financing mechanisms. This marks a shift from short-term crisis management to building medium- and long-term socio-economic progress.

The pandemic years further emphasised the need for adaptive policies—ones that can absorb unexpected shocks while maintaining progress toward stability.

Adapting through policy lessons
The development experience, particularly the least developed countries, the landlocked developing countries and small island developing States, offers valuable insights into building institutional capabilities and preventing future crises. Four strategic policy insights emerge:

Price stability matters: Volatile prices have repeatedly undermined development gains. Strategic foresight and balanced economic policy planning are essential to safeguard progress.
Fiscal buoyancy is critical: Excessive external borrowing has triggered past crises.

Creating fiscal space, mobilizing domestic resources, scaling blended finance and implementing coordinated debt management frameworks are vital for development.

Crisis preparedness requires coordination: The 1997 and 2008 crises showed that no country can respond effectively in isolation. Strengthening institutions is crucial for early warning systems, policy dialogue and coordinated action.

Sustainability is key to people-centred development: Climate change, socio-economic disparities and institutional inefficiencies pose long-term risks. Integrating sustainability into strategies and promoting technological transformation are no longer optional; they are imperative.

Turning points
The Asia-Pacific region’s development story is one of transition, and transformation. Connecting these turning points reveals a region that has consistently learned from its challenges and leveraged them to advance policy solutions.

The path ahead is promising, but policies must adapt to address shifting socio-economic dynamics, structural and climate change vulnerabilities, and emerging geopolitical realignments. These efforts must be anchored in regional cooperation, inclusive dialogue, and coordinated action, particularly through platforms such as ESCAP.

While governments play a central role, long-term progress will depend on the collective engagement of the private sector, academia, civil society and regional institutions. With strategic convergence, the Asia-Pacific region is well-positioned to overcome today’s uncertainty and shape a better future for all.

Sudip Ranjan Basu is Secretary of the Commission, ESCAP

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 17 2025 (IPS)

The US hostility towards the UN is threatening to escalate, as a cash-starved world body is struggling for economic survival.

Addressing the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee last week. Ambassador Jeff Bartos, U.S. Representative for U.N. Management and Reform said: “President Trump is absolutely right – the United Nations can be an important institution for solving international challenges, but it has strayed far from its original purpose”.

“Over 80 years, the UN has grown bloated, unfocused, too often ineffective, and sometimes even part of the problem. The UN’s failure to deliver on its core mandates is alarming and undeniable. “

The United States has been, by far, the largest funder of the UN since its founding. Based on the most recent scales of assessment, the United States provides more funding to the UN than 180 other nations combined, he pointed out.

“For the United States, the era of business as usual is over. During the Main Session, we will work with this Committee to achieve deeper cuts to wasteful spending and stronger accountability, with a relentless focus on results”.

The reductions already proposed in special political missions, the closure of unnecessary field offices, and the consolidation of executive offices, are the kind of decisions that must become the rule, not the exception.

Addressing the General Assembly last month, President Trump remarked: “What is the purpose of the United Nations? It’s not even coming close to living up to [its] potential.”

Dismissing the U.N. as an outdated, ineffective organization, he boasted: “I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal.”

But UN’s political ineffectiveness is due primarily to the role played by the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council—the US, UK, France, China and Russia–who are quick to protect their allies accused of human rights violations, war crimes or genocide.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has officially withdrawn or is in the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and has ceased funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Which triggers the question: what’s the fate and economic survival of the UN against an aggressive Trump administration?

Dr Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), told IPS there is no other way to describe how the Trump administration is treating the UN other than self-defeating and detrimental to the US’s national interests, while substantially eroding America’s influence worldwide.

“It is hard to fathom how on earth Trump, who wants to ‘Make America Great Again,’ demonstrates such blatant hostility towards the only global organization in which the United States has, over the years, played such a pivotal and leading role that surpassed any other country since the UN’s creation in 1945.”

The statement by US Ambassador Bartos, he argued, is at best inaccurate and at worst totally wrong. It has never been a secret that the UN is overdue for significant reforms, beginning with the United Nations Security Council and many other UN agencies.

Dismissing the UN’s vital work on many fronts in one brush, however, and cutting humanitarian assistance on which millions in poor countries depend, or withdrawing from vital UN agencies, is unconscionable and highly damaging to the US’ leadership and national interests, he said.

“By what logic does the Trump administration justify its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), whose primary function is coordinating global health responses to crises such as pandemics, and setting international health standards?”

“One would think that the Trump administration would strongly support such an organization that serves US interests from a global health perspective and would only bolster the US influence by playing a significant role in improving its functions”.

How can the Trump administration explain its withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which promotes and protects human rights worldwide through international cooperation?

By withdrawing from this organization, Trump forsakes any role that the US could play in preventing human rights abuses, which leads to fewer global checks on human rights abuses and weaker international standards.

Trump may care less about human rights violations, but how does withdrawing from such an organization serve the US’ overall national and global interests? he asked.

James E. Jennings, PhD, President, Conscience International, told IPS support for the United Nations organization is vital to global health and stability.,

“Those who have worked on the front lines of UN agencies’ responses to wars, natural disasters, and famines throughout the world cannot imagine the degree of inhumanity involved in taking food out of the mouths of babies, refusing to educate children, and letting disease and epidemics rage. This is not politics, it is bullying, and the world should see it for what it is”.

He said there is a pattern in Mr. Trump’s behavior that is easily exposed, Every one of his perceived enemies, as for example in the majority Democratic states of California and Illinois, he describes in the most terrible terms as crime-ridden and out of control.

“Within three days after he sends in ICE storm troopers to places like Washington DC who do nothing except display their muscle, suddenly that city or state is peaceable and under control.“

Trump brags that things are fine now in Portland, Chicago, and other such places, when no real change can be detected except that some normal citizens have been roughed up. Theatrics may win voters but does not in any way solve problems, said Dr Jennings.

The same technique can be observed on the international scene. After deprecating and sidelining UN peacemaking efforts, which go deeply into the issues, he makes phone calls to leaders of countries on the verge of hostilities and claims that he has ended seven wars, which is nonsense.

“By sidelining the UN, he simply wants to dominate it. With the US the biggest donor supporting the organization, there is a fair chance that he can succeed in bending it to his will unless national leaders, US citizens, and people everywhere are resolute in opposing his plans”, declared Dr Jennings.

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By Dr Himanshu Pathak
HYDERABAD, India, Oct 16 2025 (IPS)

When crops fail, people move not by choice, but by necessity. As families are displaced by droughts and failed harvests, the pressures do not always stop at national boundaries. In short, hunger has become one of the most powerful forces shaping our century.

From the Sahel, the vast semi-arid belt stretching across Africa from Senegal to Sudan and the Horn of Africa to South Asia’s dry zones and Southeast Asia’s coastal farmlands, climate shocks are undermining food production and disrupting communities across the Global South.

In the Sahel, prolonged drought and poor harvests, among other factors, are driving migration north through Niger and Mali toward North Africa and, for some, across the Mediterranean.

Across South Asia, recurrent floods and heat stress have displaced millions in India and Bangladesh, while in Southeast Asia, rising seas are forcing coastal farmers and fishers inland.

These pressures are magnified by rapid population growth, especially in the Sahel, where the population is projected to more than double by 2050, placing immense strain on already limited arable land.

The same story is unfolding across the globe. In Central America’s drought-stricken Dry Corridor, years of crop failure are pushing families to leave their farms and migrate north in search of food and safety.

Safeguarding the right of people to remain where their families have lived for generations, now depends on enabling communities to produce more food from every hectare, even as conditions grow harsher.

This World Food Day (October 16), we must view food security not only as a humanitarian concern, but through the prism of peace and stability.

History shows that when people cannot feed their families, societies fracture and conflicts occur. The world’s most strategic investment today is in the hands that grow our food and not in walls or weapons.

By investing in climate resilient crops such as the drought and heat tolerant varieties developed by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and expanding access to scientific innovation and improved seeds, we enable communities to withstand climate shocks, secure their livelihoods, and remain in their traditional lands instead of being forced to migrate by a crisis not of their making.

These positive impacts are already visible, but they must now be scaled up dramatically to match the magnitude of the challenge.

The World Bank estimates that up to 216 million people could be forced to migrate within their own countries by 2050 as climate impacts intensify most of them in Africa and South Asia.
Investing in resilient food systems in the Global South is one of the most effective and humane strategies for ensuring regional and ultimately global stability.

The UNDP estimates that every dollar invested in sustainable agriculture today saves seven to ten dollars in humanitarian aid and migration management later.

At ICRISAT we witness this every day. Across Africa and Asia, we work with governments and communities to turn drylands, some of the harshest farming environments on Earth, into zones of opportunity.

In India’s Bundelkhand region, stretching across southern Uttar Pradesh and northern Madhya Pradesh our science-led watershed interventions have turned what were once parched and deserted wastelands into thriving, water-abundant croplands.

In Niger, climate-resilient seed systems are now transforming uncertainty into productivity. From drought-tolerant sorghum and pearl millet to digital tools that guide farmers on planting and water management, science is helping people stay and thrive where they are.

These few examples show that solutions exist. What is missing is scale and that requires more sustained investment.

Developed nations have both the capacity and the self-interest to act. Supporting food systems in the Global South should also be seen as insurance against instability.

A world where millions are forced to move in search of food and water will be a world without stability anywhere.

FAO’s 2025 World Food Day theme, “Hand in Hand for Better Food and a Better Future”, captures what this moment demands, a deeper investment in science that make a real difference, and genuine partnership.

Across the Global South, collaboration is already strengthening through the ICRISAT Center of Excellence for South-South Cooperation in Agriculture as nations share knowledge, seeds, and strategies to build resilience together.

Yet the North, too, has a vital role to play in recognition that hunger and instability anywhere can threaten prosperity everywhere.

The future of food security, peace, and climate resilience must be built together.
As the climate crisis tightens its hold, the world must choose, act now to strengthen the foundations of food and farming, or face the growing cost of displacement and unrest.

This World Food Day let us remember that peace, like harvests, depends on what we sow today.

Dr Himanshu Pathak Director General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Dr Himanshu Pathak is Director General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)

The community gets together to repair a school in the city of Saraqib, located south of Idlib, that was destroyed by bombing during the Assad regime. Credit: Sonia Al Ali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
IDLIB, Syria, Oct 16 2025 (IPS)

The war has deprived thousands of Syrian children of their right to education, especially displaced children in makeshift camps. Amidst difficult economic conditions and the inability of many families to afford educational costs, the future of these children is under threat.

Adel Al-Abbas, a 13-year-old boy from Aleppo, northern Syria, was forced to quit his education after being displaced from his city and moving to a camp on the Syrian-Turkish border. He says, “I was chasing my dream like any other child, but my family’s poverty and the harsh circumstances stood in my way and destroyed all my dreams.”

Adel had hoped to become an engineer, but he left school and gave up on his goal. He replaced books and pens with work tools to help his impoverished family secure life’s necessities. He adds, “We are living in extremely difficult conditions today; we can’t even afford food. So, I have to find a job to survive and help my family, especially after my father was hit by shrapnel in the head, which caused him a permanent disability.”

Adel’s mother is saddened by her son’s situation, saying to IPS, “We need the income my son brings in after my husband got sick and became unable to provide for our family. In any case, work is better than an education that is now useless after he’s been out of school for so long and has fallen behind his peers.”

Reem Al-Diri, an 11-year-old, left school after her family was displaced from rural Damascus to the city of Idlib in northern Syria. Explaining why, she speaks with a clear sense of regret: “I loved school very much and was one of the top students in my class, but my family decided I had to stop my education to help my mom with the housework.”

The young girl confirms that she watches children on their way to school every morning, and she wishes she could go with them to complete her education and become a teacher in the future.

Reem’s mother, Umayya Al-Khalid, justifies her daughter’s absence from school, saying, “After we moved to a camp on the outskirts of Idlib, the schools became far from where we live. We also suffer from a lack of security and the widespread kidnapping of girls. So, I feared for my daughter and preferred for her to stay at home.”

Causes of school dropout

Akram Al-Hussein, a school principal in Idlib, northern Syria, speaks about the school dropout crisis in the country.

“School dropouts are one of the most serious challenges facing society. The absence of education leads to an unknown future for children and for the entire community.”

Al-Hussein emphasizes that relevant authorities and the international community must exert greater efforts to support education and ensure it does not remain a distant dream for children who face poverty and displacement.

He adds, “The reasons and motivations for children dropping out of school vary, ranging from conditions imposed by war—such as killings, displacement, and forced conscription-to child labor and poverty. Other factors include frequent displacement and the child’s inability to settle in one place during the school year, as well as a general lack of parental interest in education and their ignorance of the risks of depriving a child of schooling.”

In this context, the Syria Response Coordinators team, a specialized statistics group in Syria, noted in a statement that the number of out-of-school children in Syria has reached more than 2.5 million, with northwestern Syria alone accounting for over 318,000 out-of-school children, with more than 78,000 of them living in displacement camps. Of this group, 85 percent are engaged in various occupations, including dangerous ones.

In a report dated June 12, 2024, the team identified the key reasons behind the widening school dropout crisis.

A shortage of schools relative to the population density, a shift towards private education, difficult economic conditions, a lack of local government laws to prevent children from entering the labor market, displacement and forced migration, and a marginalized education sector with insufficient support from both local and international humanitarian organizations are seen as the causes.

The team’s report warned that if this trend continues, it will lead to the emergence of an uneducated, illiterate generation. This generation will be consumers rather than producers, and as a result, these uneducated children will become a burden on society.

Initiatives to Restore Destroyed Schools

The destruction of schools in Syria has significantly contributed to the school dropout crisis. Throughout the years of war, schools were not spared from destruction, looting, and vandalism, leaving millions of children without a place to learn or in buildings unfit for education. However, with the downfall of the Assad regime, several initiatives have been launched to restore these schools. This is seen as an urgent and immediate necessity for building a new Syria.

Samah Al-Dioub, a school principal in the northern Syrian city of Maarat al-Nu’man, says, “Syria’s schools suffered extensive damage from both the earthquake and the bombings. We have collected funds from the city’s residents and are now working on rehabilitating the school, but the need is still immense and the costs are very high, especially with residents returning to the city.” She explained that their current focus is on surveying schools and prioritizing which ones need renovation the most.

Engineer Mohammad Hannoun, director of school buildings at the Syrian Ministry of Education, states that approximately 7,400 schools across Syria were either partially or completely destroyed. They have restored 156 schools so far.

Hannoun adds, “We are working to rehabilitate schools in all Syrian regions, aiming to equip at least one school in every village or city to welcome returning students. The Ministry of Education, along with local and international organizations and civil society, are all contributing to these restoration efforts.”

Hannoun points out that the extensive damage to school buildings harms both teachers and students. It leads to a lack of basic educational resources, puts pressure on the few schools that are still functional, and causes a large number of students to drop out, which ultimately impacts the quality of the educational process.

As part of their contingency plans, Hannoun explains that the ministry, in collaboration with partner organizations, intends to activate schools with the available resources to accommodate children returning from camps and from asylum countries. This effort is particularly focused on affected areas that have experienced massive waves of displacement.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in 2025, 16.7 million people, including 7.5 million children, are in need of humanitarian support in the country, with 2.45 million children out of school, and 2 million children are at risk of malnutrition.

The phenomenon of school dropouts has become a crisis threatening Syria’s children, who have been forced by circumstances to work to earn a living for their families. Instead of being in a classroom to build their futures, children are struggling to survive in an environment left behind by conflict and displacement.

 

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The UN General Assembly endorses New York Declaration on a two-State solution between Israel and Palestine. 12 September 2025. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Oct 16 2025 (IPS)

The ceasefire agreement and the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners are only the first steps on the long and treacherous road that could end the calamitous, decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In my recent article, “A Rare Alignment:The World Stands Ready, Are the Palestinians?”

I tackled what the Palestinians must do to realize their national aspirations. In this article, I address what the Israelis must do not only to end their conflict with the Palestinians, but also to salvage Israel’s moral standing, which lies in ruin in Gaza.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reached a new breaking point, more precipitous now than any time before. Although Israelis have experienced unfathomable trauma as a result of Hamas’ horrific attack, now is the time for all Israelis to carefully examine the circumstances that have brought them to this fateful crossroads.

Decades of violent conflict and the persistent denial of each other’s rights culminated in Hamas’ savagery, followed by the longest and most devastating war, which has reframed the nature of the conflict. It made it clearer than ever before that those who wrote the obituary for a two-state solution must now rewrite their script. As much as co-existence is inescapable, so is the inevitable rise of a Palestinian state.

Choosing the right path would require courage and a new vision. The Israelis must first disabuse themselves of several beliefs embedded in their psyche and push for a just solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, which is central to gradually restoring Israel’s shattered moral standing, which only the Israelis themselves can reclaim.

Existential Threat
The Israelis have been indoctrinated to believe that a Palestinian state would pose an existential threat and must be prevented at all costs, which has been falsely promulgated for decades by egocentric, nationalist and corrupt politicians like Netanyahu. At this juncture, the Israelis need to accept the irrevocable reality of Palestinian existence and take action to mitigate their fear rather than perpetuate enmity.

Israel was created as a sanctuary for any Jew who wishes to live in peace and security. This millennium-old dream however, cannot be realized, as time has shown, as long as the Palestinians are denied a state of their own.

The Israelis need to overcome their anxieties and misguided beliefs by finding meaning and self-affirmation, which does not hinge on denying the Palestinians their own state. They should step away from the deeply rooted, misguided fear that a Palestinian state indeed poses an existential threat, because without it, Israel renders itself permanently insecure, as time has shown.

Hatred Toward the Palestinians
The Israelis’ hatred of the Palestinians is rooted in a century-old conflict, which has only deepened due to the continuing acts of violence and the prevalence of mutually acrimonious narratives. This is further compounded by the Israelis’ belief that the Palestinians refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist. Instead of focusing on practical measures of reconciliation necessitated by the inescapable coexistence, they clung to hatred, which subconsciously justifies their continuing resistance to Palestinian statehood.

A well-known proverb notes that “Hatred is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Indeed, hatred is self-destructive, and letting go of it is essential for peaceful coexistence. The Israelis must live in the present to free themselves from the shackles of past prejudices against the Palestinians and reach out rather than shun them.

Such an approach may surprise many Israelis, who will find that generally the Palestinians are a willing partner eager to engage, albeit only if they believe they stand a good chance of realizing their national aspirations.

Refusing the Reality of Coexistence
The Israelis need to come to terms with the fact that accepting what cannot be changed and embracing it with understanding and even compassion would ultimately serve their own interests. In essence, Israelis must use their collective power to create the conditions that produce mutual political, economic, and security gains, which is the only way to coexist peacefully. Israelis must ask what the alternative to peaceful coexistence is.

Has anyone come up with a viable and mutually acceptable alternative whereby both can live in peace, short of a two-state solution?

The irony is that while Netanyahu spent decades trying to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, his devastating onslaught on the Palestinians has only produced precisely the opposite. It has rallied the international community to support an independent Palestinian state like never before.

Israel can annex all the West Bank and Gaza, assuming that it could live with international isolation, sanctions, expulsion from various international organizations, etc., but where will the Palestinians go?

For how long can seven million Israeli Jews suppress seven million Palestinians living in their midst and around them? How many Palestinians can they kill, displace, or starve to death? What choice would the Palestinians be left with other than armed struggle?

Since coexistence is inescapable, under what kind of an umbrella do the Israelis want to live? Hamas’ savagery and Israel’s devastating retaliation only attest to the consequences of decades-long mutual systematic dehumanization.

Unless the Israelis accept coexistence as an unmitigated reality, they will have to raise generations of warriors trained to kill Palestinians, destroy their properties, and live by the sword for as far as the eye can see.

The Catastrophic Loss of Israel’s Moral Standing
There are no words to describe the lasting damage that the Netanyahu government has inflicted on Israel as a country and the Israeli people. The whole world was astounded to see Jews, of all people, committing crimes against humanity in broad daylight beyond the capacity of any human being with a conscience to grasp.

Yes, the world applies a double standard when it comes to the Jews, and for good reason. The Jews have suffered for millennia from persecution, discrimination, and expulsion, culminating with the Holocaust, and are expected, because of their tragic experience, to uphold the sanctity of life.

And while the Jews have lived by and spread the values of caring, compassion, empathy, and altruism—values that have shielded them throughout their dispersion—the barbaric Netanyahu government has betrayed these tenets of Judaism. It has left Israel, and by tragic extension, Jews round the world, with no moral ground to stand on while precipitating the exponential rise of antisemitism.

It is hard to imagine how any Israeli government would desert these values and perpetrate this inconceivable cruelty and vengeance upon the Palestinians. The killing of tens of thousands of women, children, and the elderly, the bombing of hospitals and schools, and the deliberate starvation of a whole people as a weapon of war, sent shock waves throughout the world, bewildering friends and foes.

The countries that admired Israel for its incredible achievements in all walks of life are now looking at it as a pariah state that has lost its moral compass and its way.

My Plea to the Israelis—Facing a Moral Reckoning
No one can make light of the trauma and the horrendous suffering so many of you have and continue to endure because of Hamas’ butchery and heartless imprisonment of the hostages. But your government’s retaliatory war, which quickly became a war of revenge and retribution that killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians, did not do justice to your sacrifices by committing horrific war crimes in your name.

The war in Gaza and its consequences demand that Israel face a moral reckoning. You need to confront your government’s actions that plundered the depths of human immorality. Your moral obligation is to rise against Netanyahu’s government.

Remember, the Palestinians will recover from the catastrophe they have endured, rebuild their lives, and coalesce around a renewed effort, with the mounting support of the international community, to realize their aspiration for statehood.

Israel, however, has sustained a far greater catastrophe by forsaking Jewish values. It will take a generation (or more) before your country can regain a measure of moral standing, and that is only if it ends the conflict with the Palestinians in a fair and just way based on a two-state solution.

Now it’s time for accountability. Following the release of the hostages, you now need to embark on bringing an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pour into the streets by the hundreds of thousands and demand the immediate resignation of Netanyahu and force him to face a commission of inquiry about his conduct before and after Hamas’ attack.

What you need to pursue now is building on the ceasefire and demanding that a newly-formed government move step-by-step toward implementing the Trump peace plan, which must culminate in establishing a Palestinian state.

This will not be a gift to the Palestinians. Rather, this is what you must do to transform the calamitous war in Gaza and the horrific pain, suffering, and losses you have sustained into a breakthrough on the road toward the long-awaited and desperately needed peaceful Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.

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.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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On 10 October 2025, thousands of Palestinian families moved along the coastal road back to northern Gaza, amid the extreme devastation of infrastructure. Credit: UNICEF/Mohammed Nateel

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 15 2025 (IPS)

After two years of conflict with Israel, Hamas has released the remaining 20 living hostages, while Israel has freed 250 Palestinian prisoners and over 1,700 detainees who have since returned to Gaza. Following a ceasefire agreement which took effect on October 10, Israeli forces are set to withdraw from designated areas within the Gaza Strip as humanitarian organizations mobilize to assist Palestinians in urgent need.

For the past two years, Gaza has endured relentless bombardment, while aid deliveries have been largely obstructed throughout the course of the war. Over the past three days, the United Nations (UN) and its partners have been operating on the ground to provide lifesaving assistance to displaced civilians—many of whom are finally returning home and receiving access to basic services for the first time in months.

“After so much horror and suffering there is finally relief at last,” said Olga Cherevko, the Spokesperson in Gaza for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “Since the ceasefire took effect, the UN and our humanitarian partners have moved swiftly to scale up the delivery of humanitarian assistance across Gaza. The bombs have stopped falling and with that silence, came an opportunity and the responsibility to act. The ceasefire has allowed those who are suffering during the two years of war, Palestinian and Israeli families, a breath of fresh air and a light of hope after many dark months.”

On October 13, OCHA confirmed that Israeli authorities had approved the delivery of more than 190,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid—roughly 20,000 tonnes above the previous agreement—including food, medicine, and shelter materials. According to Cherevko, 817 aid trucks have successfully entered Gaza without obstruction, offering a moment of relief for Palestinian families devastated by the conflict.

UNICEF trucks bring life-saving supplies into Gaza for children and their families. Credit: UNICEF/Mohammed Nateel

For the first time since March, cooking gas has been delivered to households in Gaza, while many residents have also gained access to frozen meat, fresh fruits and vegetables, and flour—essentials that had been out of reach for months. “All these items, we’ve been needing for so long,” Cherevko told reporters on Tuesday. “This is going to make a massive difference in people’s lives because we’ve been seeing families and kids collecting garbage to cook with. This will be a huge breakthrough.”

As a result of improved security conditions within the enclave, humanitarian agencies have gained greater mobility, allowing them to reach several previously inaccessible areas—including the north, where access had been most restricted and needs are most severe. OCHA has fully mobilized to deliver aid across all regions of Gaza as part of its 60-day scale-up plan for the ceasefire, which has so far proven effective.

“We’re offloading and collecting critical supplies and reaching areas we haven’t been able to access for months,” said Cherevko. “With the commercial sector reinforcing our response and bilateral assistance alongside us, we’re working to restore access to clean water and ensure people receive bread and hot meals.”

The UN and its partners have been working to resupply hospitals and field clinics that have been left without fuel or medical supplies for months, many of which were left only partially operational during the war. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), within 24 hours of the ceasefire taking effect, an emergency medical team was deployed to Al-Ahli Hospital.

Additionally, eight aid trucks carrying critical medical supplies, including insulin, cancer medicines, incubators, ventilators, patient monitors, and solar panels for desalination units, have reached the European Gaza and Nasser hospitals. Additional deployments are planned for Gaza City as displaced civilians begin returning to their areas of origin.

“Improving access to health facilities and expanding our operational missions are vital first steps toward delivering urgent health assistance to Palestinians throughout Gaza,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO. “Gaza’s health system must be rehabilitated and rebuilt. This crisis gives us the opportunity to rebuild it better: stronger, fairer and centered on people’s needs.”

Rubble and unexploded ordnance pose a significant threat to Palestinians returning home and remain one of OCHA’s top priorities during its sixty-day scale-up plan. Specialized OCHA teams are currently conducting assessments along key roads and crossings, making sure explosive ordnance is clearly marked and that communities know to stay away. The full extent of unexploded ordnance across the enclave has yet to be determined.

Despite marked improvements over the past several days, the scale of needs remains immense and additional funding is urgently required to support lifesaving services and ensure a sustained path for recovery. In addition to unexploded ordnance, displacement, destroyed infrastructure, lawlessness, damaged roads, and the collapse of basic services stand as significant challenges for humanitarian organizations.

“The ceasefire has ended the fighting but it has not ended the crisis,” noted Cherevko. “Scaling up responses is not just about logistics, and more trucks. It is about restoring humanity and dignity to a shattered population. We’re working around the clock with all parties to ensure predictable safe and sustained access.”

On October 14, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced that an estimated USD 20 billion will be required over the next three years to initiate Gaza’s reconstruction efforts—part of a broader recovery plan that could span decades and ultimately cost more than USD 70 billion. UNDP Representative Jaco Cillers told reporters in Geneva that while there are “good indicators” of support from potential donors in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, no commitments have yet been confirmed.

Numerous humanitarian experts have affirmed that lasting peace is the only viable solution to the crisis, warning that conditions in Gaza are extremely fragile and could deteriorate further—especially with the onset of the winter season. “Let me be clear, humanitarian aid alone will not be a substitute for peace,” said Cherevko. “The ceasefire must hold. It must become the basis for broader political efforts that bring the end of cycles of violence and despair.

“The ceasefire has opened the door to a future in which children can go to schools safely, hospitals are places of healing and not suffering, and aid convoys are ultimately replaced by commerce and opportunity.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The forced deportations of immigrants without due process, violent crackdowns against protesters in Los Angeles, ICE raids, and the deployment of military forces in Washington, D.C. are chilling reminders of the authoritarian playbook. For those of us who have lived through repression, these are unmistakable warning signs. Credit: Shutterstock

By Carine Kaneza Nantulya
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 15 2025 (IPS)

I moved to the United States in 2012 with great reluctance. I wasn’t sure why I should uproot myself to a country thousands of miles away from my hometown. The move reminded me of a childhood I hadn’t fully embraced—growing up in faraway countries like Russia and China, making constant adjustments, encountering racism, forging and losing friendships along the way. I had promised myself I would not impose the same cycle on my children.

This is the moment for the continent to claim leadership, to strengthen multilateralism, and to shape a global order rooted not in interventionism, self-centeredness but in Ubuntu -- a vision of shared humanity, community, and interdependence

But the U.S. turned out to be different. It wasn’t China, and it wasn’t Russia. It was, and still is, a mosaic of cultures, languages, and nationalities unlike anywhere else. Most important, it was a country rooted in the fierce belief that people are free to speak, dissent, and live as they choose.

That bedrock principle, however, is eroding. The US is changing in ways eerily reminiscent of my home country, Burundi. In 2015, when President Pierre Nkurunziza defied the constitution to seek a third term, peaceful protesters were met with bullets, political opponents were silenced, and journalists fled. Many of those journalists found refuge in the US—at Voice of America, for instance—only to lose their livelihoods recently when the government shuttered most of VOA’s Africa department.

The dismantling of USAID has left social workers and health experts reeling, their efforts to uplift millions crushed overnight. Yes, the US has long had a complicated role abroad. I grew up hearing about its support for abusive leaders like Mobutu in what was then Zaire and its meddling in countries’ internal affairs in the name of fighting communism.

But those contradictions always existed alongside a powerful counterforce: freedom in journalism and academia, and activism that relentlessly exposed America’s own wrongs. Writers like Alfred McCoy and critics like Noam Chomsky built careers by holding the U.S. government accountable—something unthinkable in today’s Burundi, Moscow or Beijing.

That commitment to truth and liberty was precisely why, when Burundian security forces fired live bullets into protesters, students instinctively ran to the US embassy—not the Russian or Chinese one. For decades, US soft power was rooted in the promise of human rights and democracy.

Carine Kaneza Nantulya, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch

Today, that promise is faltering. The forced deportations of immigrants without due process, violent crackdowns against protesters in Los Angeles, ICE raids, and the deployment of military forces in Washington, D.C. are chilling reminders of the authoritarian playbook.

For those of us who have lived through repression, these are unmistakable warning signs. Dictatorships do not emerge overnight; they take root when fear replaces voice, when courts surrender independence, when social movements fracture. Above all, they thrive on apathy and isolation.

Defending human rights and democratic principles is never easy—as my organization, Human Rights Watch, knows too well. But it is the only way to safeguard the dignity of the vulnerable and the cohesion of our shared humanity. So if Washington retreats from that responsibility, who will step up?

The answer lies, in part, with African governments. This is the moment for the continent to claim leadership, to strengthen multilateralism, and to shape a global order rooted not in interventionism, self-centeredness but in Ubuntu — a vision of shared humanity, community, and interdependence. Many Africans applauded when South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice saying Israel violated the Genocide Convention in Gaza. That same courage is needed in Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Sahel, where civilians face atrocities while the U.S. limits itself to mineral deals or silence.

“African solutions to African problems” cannot remain a slogan. It needs to become a policy agenda with concrete commitments. That means building stronger regional institutions with the authority and resources to act, supporting accountability mechanisms like the African Court and the International Criminal Court, and investing in early warning systems that can prevent crises before they spiral into atrocities.

It means protecting independent media and civil society so that governments are held accountable at home as well as abroad. And it means engaging at the United Nations and other multilateral forums not just as individual states but as coordinated blocks capable of shaping outcomes.

The US retreat is not simply a void; it is a test. If African leaders want to claim greater influence in the global order, they need to demonstrate it through pragmatic policies that protect civilians, strengthen the rule of law, and prioritize human dignity over mineral contracts and short-term business deals. This is less about replacing America and more about safeguarding Africa’s future on its own terms.

Excerpt:

Carine Kaneza Nantulya is deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch

By External Source
Oct 15 2025 (IPS-Partners)

 
Poverty is not just scarcity. It is exclusion, stigma, and invisibility.

Poverty is not a personal failure. It is a systemic failure. A denial of dignity and human rights.

Families in poverty often endure intrusive surveillance, burdensome eligibility checks and systems that judge, not
support.

Single mothers, Indigenous households, marginalized groups face increased scrutiny, suspicion and separation.

Over 690 million people live in extreme poverty.

Nearly half the world lives on less than USD$6.85 per day.

Around 1.1 billion people suffer multidimensional poverty.

Two-thirds of people in extreme poverty are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Progress has slowed and the path to 2030 is fragile.

Social and institutional maltreatment is structural.

It lives in rules, routines and default practices.

When people avoid help because of fear, the system has already failed them.

This year’s “International Day for the Eradication of Poverty” calls for three fundamental shifts:

From control to care:
– Designing systems based on trust, not suspicion.
– Reducing punitive conditions and simplify documentation.

From surveillance to support:
– Prioritizing family-strengthening: income support, childcare, housing, mental health and justice

From top-down to co-created solutions:
– Including families in design, budgeting, delivery and evaluation.

Supporting families strengthens many goals:
– Poverty Reduction
– Health & Wellbeing
– Quality Education
– Gender Equality
– Decent Work and Social Protection
– Reduced Inequalities
– Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

“Too often, people living in poverty are blamed, stigmatized, and pushed into the shadows.” – UN Secretary
General, António Guterres.

2030 is looming. We must act now.

 

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Bapi Mondal and his wife Shanti in Bangalore. Climate change has forced the couple from their traditional livelihoods in the Sundarbans. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

By Diwash Gahatraj
BANGALORE & PAKHIRALAY, India, Oct 15 2025 (IPS)

Bapi Mondal’s morning routine in Bangalore is a world away from his ancestral village, Pakhiralay, in the Sundarbans, West Bengal. He wakes before dawn, navigates heavy traffic, and spends eight long hours molding plastic battery casings. It’s not the life his honey-gathering forefathers knew, but factors like extreme storms, rising seas, and deadly soil salinity forced the 40-year-old to abandon centuries of family tradition and travel miles away to work in a concrete suburban factory.

Bapi still remembers his traditional skills—walking through a mangrove forest to find a tree with a honeycomb, mending boats and fishing nets, and singing and acting in the traditional plays. His 19-year-old son, Subhodeep—working alongside in the factory—has lost the heritage.

Bapi’s home, the Sundarbans—the world’s largest mangrove forest—is on the frontlines of climate change, and local livelihoods are taking the hit. In this watery maze where land and sea meet, villagers who once relied on fishing, honey collection and farming are now grappling with rising tides, saltier water, and more frequent storms. For many, life is becoming a struggle to hold on to centuries-old ways.

Sea levels in the Sundarbans are rising nearly twice the global rate, flooding villages and forcing families out. Saltwater ruins rice fields and ponds, making farming and fishing harder. Mawalis, the honey gatherers, also struggle as climate change disrupts flowering and damages mangroves, reducing wild bee populations.

A fisherman in the Sundarbans. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

The crisis doesn’t end with the water. Salinity, once held at bay by freshwater flows, is climbing year after year, disrupting both fishing and farming. Pollution, ill-managed embankments, and overexploitation of resources add to the challenge. As incomes shrink and lands disappear, thousands leave for nearby cities, hoping for work but often finding only life in urban slums.

City life is unforgiving for migrants like Mondal. He spends eight grueling hours on his feet, molding battery casings six days a week in harsh factory conditions. At the end of each day, he returns to a small one-room apartment. He shares this space with his wife Shanti and son, Subhodeep. The family struggles financially. Bapi earns ₹19,000 per month (about USD 215)—barely enough to get by. Despite the hardships, he says the work is still his choice.

“A hard choice, but a choice,” he explains.

Morning rush is hectic for the Mondal family. He points to the wall clock and asks his wife to pack lunch quickly. “All three of us work in different factories in the area,” Mondal says. “We all have to reach work by 8 am.”

Gopal Mondal and his family in the Sundarbans. Gopal still ventures into the forests to collect wild honey. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

Shanti, Bapi’s wife, spends her days at a garment factory pressing clothes with a hot iron. She works eight-hour shifts with just one weekly break, earning ₹15,000 per month (about USD 169). Their 19-year-old son, Subhodeep, has also joined his father at the plastic factory. All three now work in Bommasandra, Bangalore’s industrial belt, pooling their wages to survive.

The migration has split their family apart.

“We have an 11-year-old daughter who lives with my in-laws in the Sundarbans,” Shanti explains. The cost of city life forced them to leave their youngest child behind. “It breaks my heart to be apart from my daughter, but we want her to have a good education and life—that’s why we sacrifice,” says Shanti. Her daughter attends school back in the village.

Her job gave her economic independence and a voice in family decisions, like building their new house. Bapi’s family, rooted in the village for centuries, were Mawalis, honey gatherers who knew the forest through knowledge passed down generations.

Still Rooted

Bapi’s father, Gopal Mondal, still ventures into the dangerous forests of Sunderbans. He risks tiger attacks and deadly cyclones to collect wild honey. But the forest that once fed families is now failing them.

Climate change has disrupted everything. Cyclones strike more often and with greater force. The natural flowering cycle has gone haywire. Fish populations in the waters have crashed.

“The honey harvest keeps shrinking and prices keep falling,” Gopal explains.

As Gopal tried to hold on to tradition, his son Bapi could no longer see a future in the same waters and forests.

“The forest no longer provides enough honey or fish,” Bapi shares. The rhythms his ancestors lived by for centuries suddenly made no sense. Faced with shrinking opportunities, Bapi tried other work back home. Besides going to the jungle for honey with his father during the season (April-May), he operated a van gaari—a battery-powered three-wheeler with a wooden platform for passengers. But even that barely paid enough to survive. “There was a time when I struggled to buy a saree for my wife,” he recalls. Migration was the only choice left.

A boat ferries passengers in Sundarbans. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

From Forests to Factories

Apart from forced migration, climate change erodes memory, identity, and ancestral knowledge. Leaving the Sundarbans has cost the family more than a homeland.

Bapi still carries traditional skills—navigating treacherous waters by boat and collecting honey deep in the forest.

“I know how to catch shrimp and crabs from the river and sea,” he says. “My father and uncles taught me these skills when I was young.”

His wife, Shanti, nods, adding that she was an expert crab and shrimp collector back in the Sundarbans. “I think I still have it in me,” she says with quiet pride.

But the chain of knowledge is breaking. “I could not pass on that wisdom to my son,” Bapi admits with regret.

Subhodeep represents this lost generation. He finished tenth grade and left his village to join his parents in Bangalore. He has not learned the skills that defined his family for generations. “I have never entered the forest to collect honey or fish back in the village,” Subhodeep explains. “My parents were against it.”

Bon bibi temple in Pakhiralay village. Along with losing traditional livelihoods, religion and cultural life are also in jeopardy. Credit: Diwash Gahatraj/IPS

The irony is stark. Bapi’s parents encouraged him to learn these ancestral skills. But when environmental collapse made these traditions dangerous and unprofitable, Bapi chose to shield his son from them.

For the Mondals, the forest has become too dangerous and unreliable.

“Going to collect honey or catch fish is very unpredictable now,” Bapi explains. Catch volumes have fallen, and tiger attacks have grown. Bapi’s family knows the risk; his grandfather was killed while gathering honey in the forest.

Years earlier, a tiger also attacked Gopal Mondal. He was luckier—he escaped alive but still carries scars on his hand.

These brutal realities shaped Bapi’s decision about his son’s future. “I don’t want my next generation to have such a risky occupation,” he says. The choice is clear. Families can either cling to dangerous traditions that no longer pay enough to survive or abandon their ancestral practices for safer work in distant cities.

Are there other reasons behind the changes in the Sundarbans?

“We can’t just blame climate change and ignore human activities making things worse,” says Professor Tuhin Ghosh of Jadavpur University’s School of Oceanographic Studies. Human activity and climate change create a deadly combination.

People cleared mangroves for farms and fish ponds and built embankments that blocked tidal flows. The result is salt contamination, poisoned soil and water, vanishing species, and a broken landscape.

Uninhabitable Home

About 4.5 million people live across the Sundarbans region in Bangladesh and India. A recent survey reveals the massive scale of climate migration: nearly 59% of households have at least one family member who has moved away for work.

Some studies report 60,000 people migrated from parts of the Sundarbans by 2018. But household surveys show much higher rates because they measure affected families, not just individuals.

These local figures reflect a much bigger crisis. Across Bangladesh, weather-related disasters displaced 7.1 million people in 2022 alone, showing how climate change drives mass movement.

On the Indian side in West Bengal, researchers document large seasonal and permanent migration flows to cities and other states. Families routinely send members to work elsewhere, though official counts are scarce.

Loss Beyond Dollars

Over the past two decades, the Sundarbans has been hit by cyclones made stronger by climate change. They uprooted thousands and caused millions in losses. But beyond disaster relief and migration, a quieter crisis unfolds: the erosion of centuries-old ecological wisdom, culture, and tradition.

Gopal Mondal, in his early sixties, sits outside his modest home in Pakhiralay. When asked about protective equipment for his dangerous work collecting honey in the Sundarbans forest, he holds up a small amulet—a tabeej.

“This and my prayers to Bon Bibi are my protection,” says Mondal, who leads a team of honey collectors into the mangrove forests. “They shield us from storms and babu (tigers).”

The elderly collector recites mantras passed down through generations—teachings from his father or cousins, though he cannot recall exactly who taught him.

“The whole community worships Bon Bibi,” he explains simply

For Sundarbans communities like Mondal’s, Bon Bibi—the “Lady of the Forest”—is a guardian of the mangroves. For centuries, fishermen, honey collectors, and wood gatherers have sought her protection in tiger territory and cyclone-prone waters. Her worship is more than faith; it reflects the people’s bond with a dangerous yet life-sustaining environment, offering both comfort and identity where safety tools are scarce.

When asked about traditional knowledge slipping away from his family, Mondal’s weathered face shows a faint smile.

“Earlier, every fisherman’s family had someone —a son or grandson—who knew how to repair torn nets or mend boats,” he explains. “But in my family, things are slowly changing. My grandsons and sons live too far away, and their visits home are too short to learn these skills.”

The honey collector pauses, watching the distant mangroves. “The younger generation shows very little interest in our profession,” he adds quietly.

Climate migration expert M. Zakir Hossain Khan of Change Initiative, a Bangladesh-based think tank focused on solving critical global challenges, warns that climate-driven displacement from the Sundarbans is destroying centuries-old ways of life that depend entirely on deep knowledge of the forest and rivers.

Fishermen carry rare knowledge of tides, breeding cycles, and mangrove routes, passed down through years of practice. With youth leaving for city jobs, few inherit it. Honey gatherers know how to find hives, protect bees, and survive in tiger territory. As young people turn away, honey collection is fading from the Sundarbans.

A Vanishing Heritage

This generational shift reflects a broader transformation across the Sundarbans. Traditional skills that once defined coastal communities—net weaving, boat building, reading weather patterns, and forest navigation—are disappearing as young people migrate to cities primarily  for employment and a few for education.

“Similarly, mangrove-based handicrafts and boat-making using leaves, bamboo, and mangrove wood to make mats, roofing materials, and small boats demand both ecological understanding and artisanal skill, which are now rarely passed down,” comments Khan from Change Initiative.

He adds that herbal medicine and spiritual rituals practiced by local healers using plants like sundari bark and hental are also at risk, as migration and urbanization erode the cultural setting that sustains them.

Culture at Crossroads

Ghosh, who has spent over 30 years working in the Sundarbans, points to a troubling pattern.

“Migration is killing our folk arts,” he says. “Bonbibi stories, jatra pala theater, fishermen’s songs—they’re all disappearing. The people who used to perform during festivals are getting old. And there’s no one to replace them.”

The Sundarbans face a cultural crisis. Traditional performances that once brought villages together during religious festivals now struggle to find performers. Young people who might have learned these arts from their elders are instead leaving for cities for a better life

Once central to life in the Sundarbans, folk traditions like Jatra Pala, Bonbibi tales, and fishermen’s songs now fade with their aging performers. With few young apprentices, a rich cultural heritage risks disappearing—leaving behind a region not just economically changed, but culturally empty.

Note: This story was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network

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The World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings for 2025 are taking place in Washington, D.C., October 13–18, at the World Bank Group and IMF headquarters. The meetings bring together the international community to discuss global economic challenges and opportunities, with a focus on creating jobs and driving sustainable growth, according to the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and World Bank.
 
Meanwhile, with prices at record highs, the IMF should use its gold reserves to fund much-needed support for developing countries.

By Michael Galant and Ivana Vasic-Lalovic
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 15 2025 (IPS)

Countries across the Global South face an accelerating climate crisis, tepid growth, and unsustainable levels of debt. Yet hopes of finding support at the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Annual Meetings in Washington are dim. The IMF is tightening its purse strings — even as it leaves untouched a vast treasure of more than 3,000 tons of gold that offers a prime opportunity to stabilize the global economy.

While IMF lending yielded record income in FY2024, fears that Trump will cut off funding — combined with the organization’s exposure on an ill-advised,
US-directed mega-loan to Argentina — have prompted the Fund to reassess its assistance to those most in need.

At last year’s meetings, the IMF implemented a system of tiered interest rates on loans made through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) — a formerly interest-free lending facility for low-income countries.

The Fund also elected to maintain (if slightly modify) its controversial “surcharge” policy, which generates revenue for the IMF by charging onerous fees to highly indebted middle-income countries. Income from surcharges is now effectively being used to fund the PRGT, forcing these distressed countries to
subsidize the Fund’s concessional lending.

Yet while the IMF squeezes financing from the very countries it is meant to support, it is, in fact, sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of idle firepower.

When the Fund was founded in 1944, members were required to pay at least a quarter of their initial contribution in gold, which at the time was the foundation of the global monetary order. The gold standard is long gone, but the IMF still holds 90.5 million ounces — or over 3,000 tons — of the precious metal, historically held at the central banks of major shareholders.

Critically, this gold is still on the IMF’s books at a price determined in 1944: roughly $48 per ounce. This year, amid geopolitical uncertainty and increased demand from central banks, prices soared to all-time highs; for the first time ever, gold prices now exceed $4,000 per ounce.

In other words, the IMF’s gold reserves are worth over 85 times more than its accounting would suggest.

Selling just 1.5 percent of these holdings would cover the income generated from all surcharge payments through 2030. Selling 10 percent would cover the PRGT’s entire current lending envelope for a decade.

There’s precedent for such a move. In 1999, when gold was $282 per ounce, the IMF sold about 444 tons of gold directly to IMF members, who immediately returned it at the same price in fulfillment of outstanding debts.

The IMF was thus left with the same quantity of gold holdings, but with about $3 billion in profit to provide debt relief for low-income countries as a part of the celebrated Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative.

In 2009, with gold prices still less than a third of today’s, the IMF board agreed to sell an eighth of its holdings outright, generating $15 billion in proceeds, a portion of which was transferred to the PRGT.

So, what’s stopping the IMF from doing the same today?

An agreement to sell gold reserves requires an 85 percent vote of the IMF board. As the proceeds from gold sales are, by default, distributed to IMF members in proportion to their quotas, a sale to bolster IMF lending power would require prior commitment from members to return their share of the windfall. But these political hurdles have been cleared before, in both 1999 and 2009.

While the US, which alone holds an effective veto over major IMF decisions, would have to agree to any arrangement, it’s difficult to see a cause for objection. Strengthening global economic stability — and therefore demand for US exports — at no new cost to the United States should hardly run afoul of an “America First” agenda.

Moreover, common concerns about the impacts of a sale on the gold market mean little in today’s context. With prices at record highs, the market can easily weather any price drops from an IMF sell-off, which can in any case be mitigated through the use of phased sales and off-market transactions.

And while some have historically fretted over the prudence of selling off a portion of the institution’s “rainy day” fund, selling while prices are sky-high makes good financial sense, and would easily leave plenty for future need.

Even if the political challenges to a gold sale prove insurmountable, there may still be a way to unlock its benefits; the IMF can simply revalue its gold holdings to match the market price, thus increasing the assets on its books without conducting even a single transaction.

Germany, Italy, and South Africa have all recently taken similar actions with their national gold holdings, and there is some speculation that the United States might follow suit. In fact, the IMF’s own accounting guidelines recommend countries value gold holdings at the market rate.

Awareness of the need to tap the IMF’s undervalued gold reserves is growing. In the past year, leading experts, top officials from Brazil and South Africa, and the G-24, which represents developing country interests at the Fund, all called on the organization to consider a gold sale.

Seeing that call through would take additional political will. But if the alternative is letting developing countries founder in the current crisis — or worse, bleeding them dry in order to protect the IMF’s balance sheets — then the choice couldn’t be clearer.

Michael Galant is a Senior Research and Outreach Associate, and Ivana Vasic-Lalovic is a Senior Research Associate, at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (cepr.net) in Washington, DC

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Though access is back, throttling and platform blocks persist, reflecting tightened internet restrictions nationwide. Credit: Learning Together.

By External Source
KABUL, Oct 14 2025 (IPS)

At the end of September, the Taliban abruptly severed Wi-Fi and fiber-optic internet in Afghanistan for 48 hours without any explanation. The disruption caused consternation and suffering among millions of Afghans, especially those who depend on the internet for education and online commerce.

Closing girls’ schools had not entirely stopped students from pursing education, as many found workarounds through online classes. They therefore, targeted Wi-Fi and fiber-optic internet to close off all those possibilities

Even though the internet blockage has been lifted, its speed is significantly lower than normal, and certain social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook appear to be intentionally restricted, according to foreign journalists reporting from the country.

Nilam, 23, recalls, how her online English language lesson was suddenly disconnected, leaving her desperate. “At that moment, my world went dark. I felt like I had lost everything and all my dreams were destroyed right in front of me”. She recounts the previous decrees issued by the Taliban that closed down schools and universities, “and how many times I was forced to stay home”.

Online English courses, she said, was the only available channel left to her to learn a language and find a job, or study abroad. And when it appeared that it was also blocked she was lost and in total despair.

As she colourfully puts it, “It was as if I were living in the century of carrier pigeons; the Taliban have cut us off from the flow of global progress”, she said.

The Taliban’s stated reason for yanking Afghans off the internet was to curb “immorality,” arguing that widespread access among young people to the internet, and the use of smartphones generate moral corruption.

However, media experts reject that explanation as a cover for the Taliban’s main objective, which is to deny girls’ access to education, the flagship policy of the Islamist group since it returned to power four years ago.

Many women in Afghanistan relied on online study; tightening internet restrictions now make it far more difficult. Credit: Learning Together.

They first began by shutting off wireless internet in the provinces of Balkh, Baghlan, Kandahar, and Paktia. This was extended to fifteen other provinces the next day, denying access to internet to millions of Afghans. Closing girls’ schools had not entirely stopped students from pursing education, as many found workarounds through online classes. They therefore, targeted Wi-Fi and fiber-optic internet to close off all those possibilities.

For many low-income households, Wi-Fi was the most affordable option because several family members could simultaneously use a single connection for study and work at a relatively cheaper cost compared to mobile data.

Nooria, in Mazar-i-Sharif, like many women who had lost jobs due to Taliban edicts, turned to online commerce to support her family.

“After the fall of the republic, I turned to online selling to cover living expenses. Through this work, I could meet my own needs and help support part of my family’s expenses. But now, with wireless internet cut off, continuing this work has become nearly impossible for me”, she complained bitterly.

As she explains, mobile data internet is prohibitively expensive. “By paying 2,000 Afghanis (about 26 Euros), our entire family could use wireless internet” she says. “My little sister would study, my brothers would work on their lessons, and I could continue my online work. But now, if we want to buy mobile data, we would have to pay separately for each person, a cost we simply cannot afford.”

Announcement posted at an internet provider notifying customers of an internet ban under new internet restrictions. Credit: Learning Together.

Ahmad, an internet service provider in Herat, emphasizes that limited access provides hardly meaningful internet use.

“Apart from simple messaging on WhatsApp, nothing else will be allowed. That means no education, no online work, no research, and no free connection with the outside world”, says Ahmad.

Last month’s outage was widely described by local users and providers as the most sweeping multi-province shutdown since the fall of the Afghan Republic on August 15, 2021.

At the beginning of 2025, 13.2 million – around 30.5 percent of the population – had access to the internet in Afghanistan, according to the specialist website DataReportal. Around 4.05 million people were using social media.

Experts believe the Taliban are attempting to completely isolate Afghan society from global communication, allowing only a small group of people connected to business or government to access the internet.

They warn that, if implemented, such restrictions would severely cripple the social, educational, and economic life of ordinary citizens. Analysts warn that this move will deal a severe blow to the education of Afghan women and girls, pushing society further into isolation.

Excerpt:

The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons

Multilateral development banks are caught in a tricky dynamic: responding to pressures from key shareholders — notably the U.S. — to loosen restrictions on financing for fossil fuels while working to limit greenhouse gas emissions that negatively affect development. Credit: IPS

By Philippe Benoit
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 14 2025 (IPS)

The World Bank and other multilateral development banks recently have begun reconsidering their self-imposed restrictions on financing fossil fuel projects. This change is being prompted in part by the new U.S. administration and is also supported by developing country experts. Yet, the reality remains that greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from fossil fuels, and specifically the climate change they induce, can severely undermine multilateral development bank projects and overall developing country growth prospects.

Most of these emissions, however, come from richer big economies, not poorer developing ones. Given the negative effects of these emissions, multilateral development banks need to push richer economies away from fossil fuel-produced GHG emissions, even as they consider softening restrictions on lending for fossil fuel projects in poorer countries.

Last decade, multilateral development banks began restricting funding for fossil fuel projects due to concerns about the negative impact of emissions-induced climate change on development, but also under pressure from the U.S., European and other key stakeholders.

The emissions reduction needed to avoid dangerous levels of climate change must come, unsurprisingly, from the world’s biggest economies. This includes China, with 33 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in 2022, followed by the U.S. with 13 percent, the European Union taken as a block, Russia and then Japan. Together, these countries generate 60 percent of the global total

For example, the World Bank announced in 2017 it would largely stop funding gas drilling and extracting projects. Other multilateral development banks followed suit.

Many have noted the economic benefits being denied to poor countries by these restrictions, such as export revenues and power plants fueled by domestic gas reserves. In contrast, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America have contributed little to historical global emissions — 2 percent and 3 percent, respectively, a trend projected to continue.

As the International Energy Agency consistently highlights in its climate scenarios, the emissions reduction needed to avoid dangerous levels of climate change must come, unsurprisingly, from the world’s biggest economies. This includes China, with 33 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in 2022, followed by the U.S. with 13 percent, the European Union taken as a block, Russia and then Japan. Together, these countries generate 60 percent of the global total. India is also a large emitter, but its level is driven more by a massive population than wealth.

These emissions, and specifically the climate change they drive, present two significant risks for multilateral development banks. First, they undermine the development benefits sought by multilateral development bank projects. Second, they create financial risks for these banks by potentially weakening the capacity of developing country borrowers to repay their loans.

The massive 2022 flooding in Pakistan illustrates the potentially devastating economic impact of climate change, as the country suffered over $30 billion in losses — nearly 10 percent of its GDP. This degree of devastation is not feasible to plan for or adapt to. It needs to be avoided.

Unfortunately, various factors stunt a proper appreciation of climate change’s potential destructive impact. First, there is the ‘past is not prologue’ phenomenon, namely the inevitable uncertainties regarding the future. Looking back or even to the present does not provide a full sense of the future potential destructive impact of climate change.

Second, climate change’s impact grows over time, producing more destruction in a more distant future. Its small impact on today’s stock market where short-term horizons drive valuation contrasts significantly with its potentially large-scale economic damage 15 to 20 years from now as climate change predictably worsens over time. That longer period is particularly relevant to multilateral development banks, whose projects often take years to mature, and whose corresponding loans extend beyond 15 years.

Third, the uncertainty inherent in predicting the future is being exploited by climate minimizers to play down the long-term perils of emissions relative to the shorter-term benefits of fossil fuel projects.

As a result, multilateral development banks are caught in a tricky dynamic: responding to pressures from key shareholders — notably the U.S. — to loosen restrictions on financing for fossil fuels while working to limit greenhouse gas emissions that negatively affect development.

Earlier this year, the World Bank’s president proposed an “all of the above” shift in approach, with more natural gas development projects, as well as nuclear power and other alternatives. Although this proposal was welcomed by some, the World Bank’s board in June deferred a decision on natural gas, even as it approved nuclear power.

This debate will continue, including at the World Bank Annual Meetings this October. But the writing is on the wall as the U.S. pushes multilateral development banks to fund more fossil fuel projects.

This discussion, however, hides a thornier and more important development issue: the pressing and inescapable need in supporting the long-term development of poorer countries to address the fossil fuel emissions of the world’s biggest and richest emitting countries. The prospective destructive impact of climate change on the economies of developing countries is too large to ignore.

In order to reduce this risk to multilateral development banks and their poorer developing country borrowers, these banks should launch an initiative to encourage the largest greenhouse gas emitting countries to reduce their emissions [the “Undertaking to Reduce Global Emissions to support Development” (URGED)].

Although these richer countries aren’t susceptible to being influenced through multilateral development bank lending policies (China’s loan levels have dropped significantly, while the US, most EU countries and Japan aren’t even borrowers), they are all leading shareholders of these banks, active on the executive boards and at shareholder meetings and other convenings. This involvement provides an avenue for multilateral development banks to engage with these countries on this emissions topic that affects development.

For example, the “URGED” initiative — built around analytic work, convenings and outreach regarding the negative development impact of wealthy country emissions — could even be launched at the World Bank’s October annual meetings.

Is that likely in today’s political environment? No, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense.


Philippe Benoit is managing director at Global Infrastructure Advisory Services 2050. He previously worked as division chief at the World Bank and the International Energy Agency, as a director at SG Investment Bank and as senior adjunct research scholar at Columbia University-SIPA’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

[Previously published in The Hill]

Climate change is a significant contributor to water insecurity in Africa. Water stress and hazards, like withering droughts, are hitting African communities, economies, and ecosystems hard. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Oct 14 2025 (IPS)

The Gambia’s lead negotiator on mitigation believes that COP30 presents a unique opportunity to rebalance global climate leadership.

“This COP cannot be shrouded in vagueness. Too much is now at stake,” Malang Sambou Manneh says in an interview with IPS ahead of the climate negotiations. He identified a wide range of issues that are expected to define COP30 climate talks.

The global community will shortly descend on the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest intact forest, home to more than 24 million people in Brazil alone, including hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Peoples. Here, delegates will come face-to-face with the realities of climate change and see what is at stake.

Malang Sambou Manneh.

COP30, the UN’s annual climate conference, or the Conference of Parties, will take place from November 10-21, 2025 in the Amazonian city of Belém, Brazil and promises to be people-centered and inclusive. But with fragmented and fragile geopolitics, negotiations for the best climate deal will not be easy.

Sambou, a lead climate negotiator who has attended all COPs, says a unified global South is up to the task.

He particularly stressed the need for an unwavering “focus on mitigation or actions to reduce or prevent greenhouse gas emissions.” Stating that the Mitigation Work Programme is critical, as it is a process established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at COP26 to urgently scale up the ambition and implementation of efforts to mitigate climate change globally.

Sambou spoke about how COP30 differs from previous conferences, expectations from the global South, fossils fuels and climate financing, stressing that “as it was in Azerbaijan for COP29, Belem will be a ‘finance COP’ because climate financing is still the major hurdle. Negotiations will be tough, but I foresee a better outcome this time round.”

The Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T is expected to be released soon, outlining a framework by the COP 29 and COP 30 Presidencies for scaling climate finance for developing countries to at least USD 1.3 trillion annually by 2035.

Unlike previous conferences, COP30 focuses on closing the ambition gap identified by the Global Stocktake, a periodic review that enables countries and other stakeholders, such as the private sector, to take inventory to assess the world’s collective progress in meeting its climate goals.

The first stocktake was completed at COP28 in 2023, revealing that current efforts are insufficient and the world is not on track to meet the Paris Agreement. But while the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, set off on a high singular note when it entered into force in November 2016, that unity is today far from guaranteed.

Malang Sambou Manneh with She-Climate Fellows. Credit: Clean Earth Gambia/Facebook

Unlocking high-impact and sustainable climate action opportunities amidst geopolitical turbulence was always going to be difficult. Not only did President Donald Trump pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, but he is now reenergized against climate programs and robustly in support of fossil fuels—and there are those who are listening to his message.

Sambou says while this stance “could impact the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, many more countries are in favor of renewable energy than against.”

“But energy issues are complex because fossil fuels have been a way of life for centuries, and developed countries leveraged fossil fuels to accelerate development. And then, developing countries also started discovering their oil and gas, but they are not to touch it to accelerate their own development and must instead shift to renewables. It is a complex situation.”

Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, famously described oil as a “gift from God” at COP29 to defend his country’s reliance on fossil fuels despite climate change concerns. This statement highlights the complexity of the situation, especially since it came only a year after the landmark COP28 hard-won UAE Consensus included the first explicit reference to “transitioning away from all fossil fuels in energy systems” in a COP agreement.

As a negotiator, Sambou says he is very much alive to these dynamics but advises that the global community “will not successfully counter fossil fuels by saying they are bad and harmful; we should do so through technology. By showcasing alternatives that work. This is an opportunity for the global South to take the lead and present best practices in renewables.”

And it seems there is evidence for his optimism. A recent report shows the uptake of renewables overtaking coal generation for the first time on record in the first half of 2025 and solar and wind outpacing the growth in demand.

This time around, the global south has its work cut out, as it will be expected to step up and provide much-needed leadership as Western leaders retreat to address pressing problems at home, defined by escalating economic crises, immigration issues, conflict, and social unrest.

It is in the developing world’s leadership that Sambou sees the opportunities—especially as scientific evidence mounts on the impacts of the climate crisis.

The World Meteorological Organization projects a continuation of record-high global temperatures, increasing climate risks and potentially marking the first five-year period, 2025-2029.

Sambou says all is not lost in light of the new and ambitious national climate action plans or the Nationally Determined Contributions.

This past September marked the deadline for a new set of these contributions, which will guide the COP30 talks. Every five years, the signatory governments to the Paris Agreement are requested to submit new national climate plans detailing more ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction and adaptation goals.

“Ambition has never been a problem; it is the lack of implementation that remains a most pressing issue. Action plans cannot be implemented without financing. This is why the ongoing political fragmentation is concerning, for if there was ever a time to stand unified, it is now. The survival of humanity depends on it,” he emphasizes.

“Rather than just setting new goals in Belém, this time around, we are better off pushing for a few scalable solutions, commitments that we can firmly hold ourselves accountable to, than 200 pages of outcomes that will never properly translate into climate action.”

Despite many competing challenges and a step forward, two steps backwards here and there, from the heart of the Amazon rainforest, COP30’s emphasis on the critical role of tropical forests and nature-based solutions is expected to significantly drive action for environmental and economic growth.

Note: This interview is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

COP30 negotiator Malang Sambou Manneh believes the method of countering growth in fossil fuel development lies in technology. Showcasing alternatives that work provides the opportunity for the global South to take the lead and present best practices in renewables.