Africa

L'administration Trump a exercé une pression économique énorme sur le gouvernement communiste de l'île.

The headquarters of the United Nations with Trump World Tower looming in the foreground, in Manhattan, NY, on April 28, 2026. (SEBASTIAN CHRISTOPH GOLLNOW/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES) Source: Wahington Reports

By Ian Williams
NEW YORK, May 25 2026 (IPS)

AS THE WORLD HURTLES TO HELL (albeit in a SpaceX rather than a hand basket), it might seem of only academic interest which cipher vegetates on the 38th floor of the U.N. Headquarters. However, the choice is due by the end of the year, unless, as has happened in the past, the Security Council is veto-bound and asks António Guterres to stay on as interim Secretary General.

Guterres certainly has experience for a seat-warming position, since he has performed like an interim Secretary General ever since he was first appointed. At times when his voice could and should have made a difference, he has followed the guidance of the three wise monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil). The Secretary General’s ability to put items on the council agenda and raise them publicly are his few effective powers in the face of the permanent members’ traditional lackadaisical stance.

His studied withdrawal from influence has infected other levels of the Secretariat and allowed the Security Council to reach new lows of subservience to power. So, if and when the council picks his successor, it’s unlikely that crowds will gather on U.N. Plaza to watch the white smoke rising to announce the anointment.

That is not only because Trump World Tower looms over the plaza like an escaped prop from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but also because its eponymous owner has done so much to devalue the U.N. One could almost suspect that it is only allowed to hang on in New York because property values would plummet in the neighborhood if all the insouciant and complaisant diplomats who work in the U.N. complex had to leave.

The U.N.’s geopolitical absence certainly diminishes potential public interest in the race and is compounded by the increasing ineffectuality of the Security Council in the face of the erasure of the U.N. Charter. The guiding principle of the Secretariat often seems to be plucked from Arthur Hugh Clough’s old poem, “Thou shalt not kill/ But needs’t not strive, officiously to keep alive.”

However, the general membership is almost as complicit. Faced with the latest U.S. demand to reshape the organization before Washington even considers paying a part of its legally obligated payments, their response is to dicker about the depth of evisceration, not to challenge the assumptions. Of course, the U.N. needs reform—but not necessarily in the way the U.S. has been demanding for half a century.

Western signatories of the Rome Convention for the International Criminal Court have left their nationals, like Francesca Albanese and Karim Khan, to swing in the wind in the face of an entirely illegal U.S.–Israeli war on International Criminal Court staff. Even their home states’ declaration that they will provide government backed credit to the victims of U.S. sanctions would send a signal and some succor to the judges. A robust denunciation by the outgoing Secretary General (a lame duck and hence beyond significant U.S. payback) would have helped, but it was not forthcoming.

As the only figure who could coordinate (and heaven help us, lead) the defense, the forlorn position of the Secretary General is still essential despite the lackluster field. So, the choice is important—as well as boring.

So far, there is a growing consensus that the next leader needs to be a woman, which China has been very firm on, and should be from the Latin American and Caribbean region. So far, it’s a very uninspiring and, dare one say, “mature” field. Maybe there should be as much pressure for “youth’s” turn as there is for a woman, not least since both declared female candidates are of a certain age. The “most difficult job in the world” is not one for the elderly.

The April candidate forums at the U.N. featured four announced aspirants, but as the Book of Proverbs says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” None of the candidates offered a vision: their presentations were more like an AI-generated resume for corporate human resources.

Even the candidates who showed some signs of integrity, like the “keeping the law” bit, seem to be missing the vision thing and, frankly, professed over-adherence to the law is a stretch for candidates who want to avoid a veto from the P5. Which is, of course, why there was conspicuous silence on the hustings about Israel and Iran. It also so far guaranteed candidates who will not rock the boat for Washington.

So in a field of lame horses, the three-legged one might limp home, and that could be former President of Senegal Macky Sall, who is not a woman, not Latin American and does not have the support of his own country or the African Union. His best qualification is the traditional U.N. promotion criterion: not being remembered for anything in particular. He could fall in the East River and not cause a ripple. But he is unlikely to be willing to undergo the gender transition necessary. China says it wants a woman and has historically been prepared to stand its ground with repeated vetoes.

Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has the required diplomatic and political credentials, and she has clearly been playing the long game. As U.N. Human Rights Commissioner she sat upon a report about the People’s Republic of China’s abuse of the Uighurs, which might fend off a Chinese veto but raises questions about her integrity and independence.

It does suggest that she had acute political antennae since at that time pandering to China could have cost her support with the U.S. and Europeans—but now, perhaps not so much. Under the MAGA Trump Republicans, human rights are a now and then thing. More important perhaps to Washington, Chile’s new right-wing government pulled its endorsement of her which could burnish her credentials with what’s left of the progressive world. And her gender and Latin American origins tick other boxes.

In contrast, right-wing Argentinian President Javier Milei backs Rafael Grossi’s candidacy, which detracts from Grossi’s globalist credentials to head the U.N. However, as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), his equivocation about Iranian nuclear activities might well be negotiable into active U.S. support. He has been a deft tightrope walker, trying not to give Iran a clean bill of health, but avoiding complicity in an over-explicit casus belli to Washington, which would upset Moscow and Beijing (and may yet). But he has defied best practice for candidates by staying active in his U.N. role, which suggests he knows his IAEA position gives him cards to play.

Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan is an uninspiring apparatchik who has presided over the effectual dismantlement of U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, the development agency that had been in the sights of Washington for decades. While one cannot hold family connections against her, many countries might also worry about the optics of a secretary general whose sister is an Israeli settler in the West Bank. However, she is backed by her government, unlike some other candidates, and is a Latina, so ticks two of the boxes, and is likely to get support from the U.S. (and Israel, which does not have a direct seat on the Security Council, but nevertheless is reputedly a presence).

Looking at the heavily handicapped slate so far, it’s good that there are nominations waiting in the wings. Barbadian PM Mia Amor Mottley would be an ideal candidate, ticking both the vision and law boxes. A woman from the Latin American and Caribbean region whose otherwise disqualifying integrity might pass the Trump test by speaking English and being previously accoladed by no less than the American Enterprise Institute! However, she has just won re-election in Barbados and would probably prefer to stay where she is now.

Another person who announced her candidacy is Ecuador’s María Fernanda Espinosa, former General Assembly President, who is also missing support from her own government, but she has shown both vision and integrity and has other backers. And she is not of pensionable age.

In the end, sadly, the odds are against anyone who meets the needs of the world and organization. Their very qualifications would be unlikely to survive the whims and prejudices of this U.S. administration, let alone survive scrutiny by Moscow or Beijing. Even if Russia and China pay lip service to the international order and sacrifice their immediate prejudices for the greater good, Washington is unlikely to be so forbearing.

Overall, the question is whether the U.N. is redeemable while some countries have veto power. At one time the U.S. realized the advantages of maintaining the U.N. as a thin blue fig leaf for its actual hegemony, but it no longer sees the need to cover its rampant MAGA-hood.

U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is president of the Foreign Press Association of the U.S. He is the author of U.N.told: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).

Source: Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs
https://www.wrmea.org/north-america/the-search-is-on-for-the-next-u.n.-secretary-general-in-a-turbulent-world.html

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

  

 

Budget shortfalls could force the organization to move closer to the communities that it's meant to serve.

By JB Bae
FORT COLLINS, Colorado USA, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The $1.2 billion renovation of the Palais des Nations was intended to reaffirm Geneva’s centrality to the multilateral system. Instead, the city’s international quarter is emptying.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has cut hundreds of positions. The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is relocating core administrative roles to Rome and Budapest. Other agencies are scaling back or relocating operations. The United States, which funds roughly a quarter of the U.N.’s regular budget, now owes approximately $2.2 billion, about 95% of all unpaid contributions to the organization.

Many will read this as a harbinger of the decline, or perhaps even the demise, of the U.N. system. Yet the crisis in Geneva may be creating the conditions for a more resilient multilateralism.

Critics claim that American taxpayers subsidized a U.N. bureaucracy hostile to their interests, one lacking accountability and captured by priorities divorced from its founding purposes. There is some truth to this. However, these arguments have marginalized those who wish to refound the U.N. system, rather than dismantling multilateralism wholesale.

The erosion of U.S. funding may be doing what decades of reform efforts could not: forcing a realignment of the U.N.’s structure with its mission. Numerous proposals, secretary-general initiatives, and expert panels have failed to produce meaningful change.

The U.N.’s own 2021 Integration Review, drawing on input from over 200 staff members across the organization, found that institutional insulation undermined impact, calling for more decentralized decision-making and reforms responsive to field realities. Member states had pressed for the same for decades.

Meanwhile, Geneva came to embody the distance between those running the institution and the constituencies they were meant to serve. The compensation structure tells part of the story. Bureaucrats enjoyed tax-free salaries, exceptionally generous pension arrangements, housing allowances pegged to one of the world’s most expensive cities, business-class travel, and education grants that cover most of the cost of elite international-school tuition in Geneva, where annual fees often reach $45,000 per child per year.

One study of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) operations found spending of roughly $600 per refugee annually (around $800-850 in today’s dollars). U.N. reimbursements for a single child’s school fees in Geneva, in other words, could support dozens of refugees for a year. These arrangements are not reserved for senior leadership. They define the terms of employment for the typical international civil servant.

These terms apply to a substantial workforce. Switzerland hosts roughly forty international organizations that employ more than 25,000 people, most concentrated in the Lake Geneva region. The World Health Organization, the largest, employs roughly 2,400 people at its Geneva headquarters and operated on a biennial budget of $5.3 billion for 2026-27 before recent cuts. The International Labour Organization (ILO), UNHCR, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and others maintain significant presences in Geneva.

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don’t miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.

When the U.N. Secretary-General’s office issued a memo in April 2025 directing Geneva and New York to identify posts for relocation to lower-cost duty stations, the Geneva staff union’s response was telling: its official statement declared the union “alarmed,” hundreds of staff demonstrated on International Workers’ Day to protect their Geneva postings, and unions defended housing subsidies, education grants, and tax exemptions as essential. These numbers and reactions reflect the insulation of much of Geneva from the realities the institution nominally exists to address.

Yet the crisis is strengthening the position of those within the system who have long called for change. The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF)’s consolidation of regional functions to Bangkok, the expansion of U.N. agency operations in Nairobi, and shifting administrative functions to lower-cost duty stations all reflect a shift toward where the work actually is. Technology and the remote collaboration it enables make justifying the Geneva-centric model even more difficult. What once required flights to Geneva can now happen across multiple continents simultaneously.

Simply relocating institutions to less costly settings, however, risks reproducing Geneva’s pathologies — insulated professional communities, compensation structures detached from local conditions, and organizational cultures oriented more toward one another than toward the populations they serve. More than simply moving offices, structural reform requires confronting how these institutions are staffed, incentivized, and embedded in the political contexts in which they operate.

A more promising direction is aligning institutions with the political support and capacity of host nations. This goes beyond decentralization and proximity to need, toward placing authority where capacity and political will already exist. Former aid recipients that have become donors and regional powers in their own right — Poland, Chile, and South Korea among them — are natural candidates for anchoring this kind of multilateralism. Having navigated conflict, development, refugee flows, and political transition themselves, they bring the political legitimacy and operational credibility that Geneva-centered bureaucracies cannot replicate.

The substance of the changes also matters for the legitimacy of the international order. A multilateral system whose centers of decision-making remain in Geneva, New York, and a handful of donor capitals is vulnerable to the accusation that it represents a historical moment that has long passed. Institutions whose operational weight sits closer to the communities they serve, staffed by professionals embedded in supportive settings, are harder to displace. What survives will be better able to compete for relevance in a more contested world order.

Geneva will survive this crisis as a conference center for highest-stakes diplomacy and backroom dialogues that only physical proximity can enable. But what emerges beyond Geneva, in the field offices of agencies closer to the populations they serve and potentially in the hands of actors with the legitimacy and experience to carry multilateralism forward, may prove closer to what the system was always intended to be.

Many of the structural problems that have long plagued the U.N. will remain. The shifts now under way will not solve them. But they change where influence accumulates, and who shapes the decisions that matter. This new multilateralism may prove more resilient, more legitimate, and harder to hold captive to the politics of any single donor.

JB Bae is an assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University. His research addresses issues in international security and foreign policy, with a focus on East Asia. He received his PhD from UCLA.

The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.

Source: Responsible Statecraft

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

  

 

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Credit: UN Photo/Sourav Sarker

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The United Nations has had a longstanding tradition, described by some as a “privilege”, where most senior staffers are entitled to highly-expensive First Class or Business Class seats on trips worldwide.

But with the world body facing a severe cash crisis –and demands by the Trump administration calling for drastic cost-cutting—another privilege is likely to end up on the chopping block.

https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/senior-management-group

Speaking off-the-record, a former UN official told Inter Press Service: “On the rare occasion I travelled with the UN for work, I was always shocked by the enormous amounts paid for air tickets. I find it interesting to see that it took the UN a deep financial crisis to invite the staff to a ”voluntary” downgrade”

Setting the record straight, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told IPS: “To be clear, a Secretary-General is the only person in the UN cleared for first class travel, and since about the start of the year, this Secretary-General no longer sits in the first class cabin.”

As part of the Organization’s ongoing efforts to reduce travel costs, and in response to the General Assembly’s call to strengthen measures to promote voluntary downgrades from business or first-class travel entitlements, the UN’s Human Resources Services Division (HRSD), in collaboration with the Travel and Transportation Section (TTS), in the Department of Operational Support (DOS), has launched the Voluntary Downgrade Pilot which introduced a set of new incentives to encourage voluntary downgrade for official air travels by United Nations travelers.

“The initiative is designed to encourage United Nations travelers to voluntarily downgrade from business class to premium economy, or equivalent cabins, by offering eligible travelers, a series of additional incentives aimed at maintaining comfort and convenience, while generating cost savings for the Organization,” says a circular released 18 May.

Meanwhile, in the latest figures released in one published report, the UN spent approximately $319 million on staff travel in one recent reporting year, covering roughly 98,000 trips.

Of those trips:

• About 12,000 flights were business class
• Only 51 flights were first class

The report also noted that the Secretary-General has recommended curbing first-class travel for senior officials.

Current UN travel rules state that:

• Most staff up to D-2 level normally travel economy, though some long-haul exceptions permit a higher class.
• Under-Secretaries-General (USGs) and Assistant Secretaries-General (ASGs) are entitled to “the class immediately below first class,” which in practice is generally business class on most airlines.

So, while the UN’s total annual travel spending has been in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars, the portion specifically attributable to senior officials flying business or first class is likely only a fraction of that total — probably in the tens of millions rather than hundreds of millions annually, based on the relatively small number of first-class tickets reported. The UN has steadily tightened rules on premium travel over the years, according to the report.

In addition to the existing entitlements for travelers, such as reimbursement for advance seat selection, in-flight meals and beverages, and one additional checked bag, the new incentives, according to the staff circular include:

Rest Periods (subject to supervisory approval)

• One additional day of rest upon arrival at the duty station, with up to one day of additional Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA), if arriving early.
• The option to remain at the official business location for one extra day prior to return, with DSA, if this reduces overall ticket cost.
• One additional calendar day of rest upon return to duty station (no DSA).

Reimbursement of costs for

• Lounge access at departure and connection points for both outbound and inbound travel (where applicable).
• Purchase of “extra space seating” including “couch style” in economy class, if offered by the airline.

The circular appeals to staffers to consider the above incentives when planning official travel, ”and should you opt for voluntary downgrade, you may select any combination, provided that the total cost is less than the entitled business class fare, keeping in mind, any additional rest periods selected under the pilot will remain subject to the approval of your first reporting officer.”

How to get started

• Explore details on iSeek: New incentives for travelers: Voluntary downgrade pilot launches | iSeek
• Check out how-to guides on how to opt in;
• Contact your local HR, Travel, or Admin Office for further information and support.

“We encourage all staff to take advantage of these options and contribute to more cost-effective travel practices across the Organization”.

HRSD in the Office of Support Operations (OSO) and TTS in the Facilities and Commercial Acitivites Service (FCAS) within the Division of Administration (DOA), are part of the Department of Operationsl Support (DOS).

Read about DOS on iSeek or our website and follow us on LinkedIn and X.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

  

 

The Moroccan government wants more Western holidaymakers to visit the territory it claims to own.

South Africa's Mamelodi Sundowns clinch their second African Champions League title with a 2-1 aggregate win over Moroccan club AS FAR in the final.

Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are major importers of used garments from the West and China.

L'équipe Ask Me Anything de BBC Sport cherche à savoir qui sont les joueurs les plus âgés de l'histoire de la Coupe du monde

L'épidémie, causée par une espèce rare d'Ebola, aurait causé 139 décès à ce jour.

La relation perdure malgré un déséquilibre des pouvoirs. Depuis 2012, Poutine et Xi se sont rencontrés près d’une soixantaine de fois.Le partenariat sino-russe repose surtout sur le pragmatisme : Moscou a besoin du soutien économique et diplomatique chinois, tandis que Pékin voit en la Russie un allié essentiel pour limiter l’influence américaine.

The Democratic Republic of Congo's World Cup squad must isolate for 21 days before they can enter the US because of the Ebola outbreak.

Those caught up in West Africa's Ebola outbreak a decade ago on how best to tackle the current epidemic.

Those caught up in West Africa's Ebola outbreak a decade ago on how best to tackle the current epidemic.

L'Institut culturel bulgare à le plaisir d'accueillir pour la première fois l'exposition personnelle de l'artiste contemporain Rossen Markovski, intitulée Le Récit des Poissons, du 26 mars au 22 mai 2026.
L'exposition réunit 25 toiles ainsi que quelques sculptures — « empreintes de rencontres et d'amour » et inspirées par sa vie « à la lisière de la mer », selon les mots de l'artiste. Celui-ci peint de manière spontanée et expressive ; ses tableaux sont à la fois puissants et délicats, (…)

- Agenda / Bulgarie, Région parisienne

Credit: Rizwan Tabassum/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, May 22 2026 (IPS)

Narges Mohammadi, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights activism in Iran, has been allowed to go home. After guards found her unconscious in her cell, the apparent victim of a heart attack, she was granted temporary release from prison and transferred to a hospital. However, she still faces the threat of being taken back to jail once her condition has improved.

Mohammadi has been repeatedly imprisoned for criticising the theocratic regime, demanding women’s rights, advocating for prison reform and campaigning against the death penalty. Over her lifetime she’s been sentenced to a total of 44 years. She’s already spent more than a decade behind bars, including 161 days in solitary confinement, and has also been sentenced to 154 lashes. In February she was handed a further seven-and-a-half-year sentence. From prison – where she experienced cardiac and blood pressure problems and severe weight loss – she has documented systematic rights violations against political prisoners, including sexual and physical abuse of women detainees, torture and extensive use of solitary confinement.

Mohammadi’s case is one among many. While her ordeal has rightly drawn international attention, others more distant from the spotlight are in danger. Three more women human rights activists – Pakhshan Azizi, Sharifeh Mohammadi and Varisheh Moradi – are on death row at imminent risk of execution. The dangers they and countless others face have grown sharply since the current war began.

Repression tightens

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he wants regime change in Iran. On 1 March, an Israeli strike killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But if the intention was to topple the regime, it didn’t happen. Iran’s ruling theocratic structures run deep, with multiple layers of planned succession. Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei, injured in the same attack, was quickly named his replacement, despite Iran’s official ideology formally rejecting hereditary succession.

While clerical leaders have been killed, Iran’s coercive apparatus has gained in its day-to-day power, hardening the theocracy into something closer to a military dictatorship, with the Basij, the paramilitary volunteer force long deployed to crush public dissent, now front and centre.

Israeli and US hopes that Iranians would rise up against the regime have been disappointed. Iran has seen successive mass protest waves, each crushed with large-scale lethal violence. They include the Green Movement that demanded democracy in 2009 and 2010 and the Woman, Life, Freedom protests that demanded women’s rights in 2022 and 2023. The latest uprising came in December 2025 and January 2026, triggered by economic collapse, forging a movement that united broad sections of society to demand an end to the theocratic regime. The state suppressed it with shocking brutality, killing thousands and detaining tens of thousands.

By February, the uprising had been crushed. The Israeli-US intervention was unlikely to reignite a meaningful mass protest movement. If anything, for some Iranians the war has stoked patriotism and more intense enmity towards Israel and the USA. The anticipated revolt simply hasn’t happened.

Much of Iran’s vast diaspora has rallied in support of the war as a means of toppling the regime. But while the diaspora is united in demanding change, its array of ethnic minority organisations, Islamist factions, leftists, monarchists and republicans is bitterly divided over what should come next. Reza Pahlavi, son of the last shah, enjoys some support but others are wary about monarchical nostalgia and his close ties to Israel and the USA. The most credible potential unifying figures inside Iran are imprisoned or otherwise silenced.

Instead of losing control, the regime has tightened its repression. Even as Iran’s leaders wage a social media propaganda war abroad, at home they’ve imposed a near-total internet shutdown, including a block on VPN services. The blackout has caused immense economic harm, disrupting businesses and financial transactions and hitting women the hardest. This comes on top of the economic effects of the current US blockade of Iranian ports, sending inflation and unemployment soaring.

Under the cover of war and the internet shutdown, the government has accelerated executions of political prisoners. While precise figures are hard to get, rights groups report close to 200 executions so far this year, most preceded by prolonged torture to extract false confessions. Secret hangings are reportedly being carried out on an almost daily basis. Among those killed are people detained during the January protests. On 4 May, it was reported that three people arrested at protests on 8 and 9 January – Ebrahim Dolatabadinejad, Mohammadreza Miri and Mehdi Rasouli – had been hanged. For families, the suffering doesn’t end there, as authorities reportedly refuse to return bodies and pressure relatives to stay silent.

Local priorities

Democracy and human rights in Iran depend on the regime’s departure. But the latest war isn’t about any of this. For Netanyahu, with an election impending and anger remaining at his corruption charges and Israel’s security failures around the 7 October Hamas attacks, permanent warfare is a political strategy. Donald Trump’s many social media announcements provide little clue of what motivates a president who promised not to mire the USA in foreign wars, but distraction from low popularity ratings and his many appearances in the Epstein files may be a factor.

This war isn’t the way to achieve change. The regime appears entrenched and capable of surviving a longer conflict. Any peace deal would leave it intact, which its rulers would treat as a victory.

Real change will come when protests can grow into a mass movement large enough to withstand the lethal repression the state will inevitably deploy. That can only happen with sustained support that respects the autonomy of local civil society leaders and strengthens their capacity. The immediate priorities must be to protect credible local sources of information amid the information blackout and ensure the safety and security of Iran’s democracy and human rights activists.

Above all, states must press the Iranian government to halt executions and release everyone detained for speaking out, protesting and demanding change, beginning with Narges Mohammadi. Temporary medical release is nowhere near enough. The Iranian regime must let her be free.

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

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

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

  

 

The rare species of Ebola involved - known as Bundibugyo - kills around a third of those infected and has no proven vaccine yet.

Plymouth Argyle striker Owen Oseni says he was in "disbelief" after being called up to the Nigeria squad.

Iliman Ndiaye insists Senegal are African champions in "many people's eyes" despite a legal wrangle over the ultimate destination of the 2025 Afcon title.

Al-Nassr forward Sadio Mane is included in Senegal's 28-man squad for this summer's World Cup.

A village in Ghana will hold a parade with 30 motorcycles and a minibus to celebrate Aston Villa's Europa League victory.