Africa

The Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee has adopted a report supporting the Citizens’ Initiative “My Voice, My Choice: for safe and accessible abortion”.
Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Morocco suffer a blow before the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations as their captain Achraf Hakimi injures an ankle injury playing for PSG.

Ahmed Salem Lebsir, battalion chief and director of the Polisario Front Military School, stands beside an installation marking Morocco’s invasion of the territory 50 years ago. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
ROME, Nov 5 2025 (IPS)

Ehmudi Lebsir was 17 when he trudged more than 50 kilometres across the desert to stay alive. Half a century on, the Sahrawi refugee still has not gone home to what was then Spanish province of Western Sahara.

On 6 November 1975, six days after Moroccan troops pushed into the territory, hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians streamed south under military escort. Branded the “Green March”, it was, in effect, an invasion and the start of a military occupation of Sahrawi land.

The UN has now set aside a principle it has long held sacrosanct: the right of peoples to self-determination. That was the framework that had guided its approach to the Sahrawis for more than three decades

Dubbed “Africa’s last colony,” Western Sahara is roughly the size of the United Kingdom and remains the continent’s only territory still awaiting decolonisation. Yet on 31 October this year, that goal slipped further from reach.

Marking the 50th anniversary of Morocco’s incursion, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution that, by endorsing Rabat’s autonomy plan, lent weight to Morocco’s sovereignty claim over the territory.

The UN has now set aside a principle it has long held sacrosanct: the right of peoples to self-determination. That was the framework that had guided its approach to the Sahrawis for more than three decades.

Lebsir speaks to IPS by videoconference from the Tindouf camps in western Algeria. Nearly 2,000 kilometres southwest of Algiers, this harsh desert where summer temperatures can touch 60C has been the closest thing to home the Sahrawi people have known for 50 years.

“We faced a choice: remain in Algeria as refugees, or build the machinery of a state, with its ministries and a parliament,” recalls Lebsir, now a senior representative of the Polisario Front. Founded in 1973, it is recognised by the United Nations as the “legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people”.

 

A man walks past a mural in the Tindouf camps in Algeria, where the Polisario Front has managed life in exile while building state institutions. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

 

On arriving in Tindouf in 1975, Lebsir was tasked with setting up schools in the camps. He later oversaw cohorts of Sahrawi students in Cuba, spent a decade in the Sahrawi Parliament and served in the SADR’s Ministries of Justice and Culture.

It was in that parliament that the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was proclaimed in February 1976.

“After a century of Spanish presence, we never imagined Madrid would leave and abandon us to our fate,” he says. “There’s no going back: either we have an independent state, or our people will be buried.”

After the Polisario declared independence in 1976, the UN reaffirmed the Sahrawis’ right to self-determination. But the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), created in 1991, has never delivered the vote it was set up to hold.

Tomás Bárbulo was also 17 when Moroccan forces moved in. The son of a Spanish soldier based in Laayoune —Western Sahara’s capital, 1,100 kilometres south of Rabat—, he had returned to Madrid three months before that 6 November.

“The Sahrawis have survived napalm and white phosphorus, persecution, exile, the systematic plunder of their natural resources, and attempts to erase their identity through the influx of hundreds of thousands of settlers,” the journalist and author tells IPS by phone from Madrid.

Bárbulo, whose La Historia Prohibida del Sahara Español (Destino, 2002) is a standard work on the conflict, lays the stalemate chiefly at the door of “Morocco’s unyielding position, often blessed by the Security Council’s major powers.” The UN, he says, “has capitulated to Rabat”.

Ironically, even the UN does not recognise Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The occupied territory has been on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories since 1963. In legal terms, the decolonisation of Western Sahara remains “unfinished.”

 

Mohamed Dadach in Laayoune, the capital of occupied Western Sahara. Released in 1999 after 24 years in prison, he is known as the “Sahrawi Nelson Mandela.” Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

‘Open-air prison’

The UNHCR estimates that between 170,000 and 200,000 Sahrawis live in Algeria’s desert camps. However, life inside the Moroccan-held territory itself is harder to gauge, since Rabat does not even acknowledge the Sahrawi people exist.

Understanding living conditions there is equally difficult. Senior observers such as Noam Chomsky have labelled the territory as a “vast open-air prison”.

In a report released last July, UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted that Morocco has blocked visits by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) since 2015.

“OHCHR continues to receive allegations of human rights violations, including intimidation, surveillance and discrimination against Sahrawi individuals, particularly those advocating for self-determination,” he wrote.

Despite restrictions, international rights groups continue to document abuses. Amnesty International’s 2024 report says Rabat curtails “dissent and the rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly in Western Sahara” and “violently represses peaceful protests”.

Human Rights Watch denounced that courts hand down long sentences based “almost entirely” on activists’ confessions, without probing claims they were extracted under police torture.

At 36, Ahmed Ettanji is one of the most prominent Sahrawi activists in the occupied zone, something he has paid for with 18 arrests and repeated torture.

Speaking by phone from Laayoune, he says the visibility afforded by international NGOs is the only thing keeping him out of prison, or worse.

“We are marking fifty years of a harsh military blockade, extrajudicial killings and every kind of abuse,” he says. “There are thousands of disappeared and tens of thousands of arrests. The economic interests of world powers always trump human rights.”

After five decades, entire generations have been born in the Algerian desert, many families knowing each other only through video calls. Yet Ettanji insists not all is bleak.

“Born under occupation, people my age were expected to be the most assimilated, the most pro-Moroccan. That has not happened. The desire for self-determination is very much alive among the young.”

 

Sunset on a beach in occupied Western Sahara. In addition to a coastline rich in fishing resources, Sahrawis watch helplessly as Rabat exploits the rest of their natural wealth with the complicity of powers like the US, France, and Spain. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

‘Autonomous Region of the Sahara’

The autonomy plan that the UN has now effectively endorsed is Rabat’s sole political offer in five decades. First floated in 2007, it was backed by the Trump administration in 2020.

How this “Autonomous Region of the Sahara” would actually work is left largely undefined, beyond talk of local administrative, judicial and economic powers.

Polisario rejects the scheme, but rejection has not brought the Sahrawis any closer to deciding their own future.

For many Sahrawis, the timing of the Security Council’s move, on the very anniversary of Morocco’s 1975 incursion, felt less like coincidence than calculated cruelty.

People like Garazi Hach Embarek, daughter of a Basque nurse who treated the first displaced families half a century ago and a founding member of the Polisario Front. The 47-year-old has spent years taking the cause into classrooms, universities, town halls and any forum that will listen.

In an interview with IPS in Urretxu, 400 kilometres north of Madrid, Hach Embarek does not hide her dismay. “Active resistance is extremely difficult, and the Moroccan lobby remains highly influential,” laments the Sahrawi activist.

“We live in turbulent times, where anything seems to go, but this is neither just nor legal. Under the guise of peace, the real aim is simply to legitimise injustice,” she adds, before stressing the need “to forge new alliances.”

“Colonialism is far from over, and we’re merely the casualties of continued misgovernance in Africa’s last colony.”

Related Articles

• Ahmed Salem Lebsir, battalion chief and director of the Polisario Front Military School, stands beside an installation marking Morocco’s invasion of the territory 50 years ago. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS
• Sunset on a beach in occupied Western Sahara. In addition to a coastline rich in fishing resources, Sahrawis watch helplessly as Rabat exploits the rest of their natural wealth with the complicity of powers like the US, France, and Spain. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS
• Mohamed Dadach in Laayoune, the capital of occupied Western Sahara. Released in 1999 after 24 years in prison, he is known as the “Sahrawi Nelson Mandela.” Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS
• A man walks past a mural in the Tindouf camps in Algeria, where the Polisario Front has managed life in exile while building state institutions. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

A professor describes Mamdani as "one of us" while some young Ugandans take inspiration from the 34-year-old's victory.

A professor describes Mamdani as "one of us" while some young Ugandans take inspiration from the 34-year-old's victory.

A professor describes Mamdani as "one of us" while some young Ugandans take inspiration from the 34-year-old's victory.

While Spain's latest contracts are simply holding to the original timeline, the move shows that Madrid has not given up on the project

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Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein has opened its first brick-and-mortar store in France. Frédéric Merlin, head of the Société des Grands Magasins (SGM), which owns the BHV Paris department store where Shein is establishing its retail space, hailed the move as a "revolution". Merlin's decision to enter a partnership with Shein triggered a storm of protest because the latter has been repeatedly been accused of disregarding social and environmental standards.

Morocco controls much of Western Sahara, although part of it is controlled by a pro-independence movement.

A session titled Youth Movements and Democratic Futures in South Asia at International Civil Society Week, held at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
BANGKOK, Nov 5 2025 (IPS)

The message is clear: today’s youth are not “wishy-washy.” They are not just the future—they are the present, full partners in shaping it, and “power-sharing” is the new mantra. The veterans of activism are being reminded not merely to listen but to hear and to leave their egos at the door.

These were among the many resonant takeaways from the five-day International Civil Society Week, held at Bangkok’s Thammasat University.

Yet beneath the optimistic rhetoric, a different mood lingered. Many young participants seemed despondent, feeling short-changed by their elders—empowered in words, but excluded in practice.

At a session titled “Youth Movements and Democratic Futures in South Asia,” young voices from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, and Nepal shared their frustrations and fears for the future.

Student activist Ammad Talpur at the Youth Movements and Democratic Futures in South Asia session at International Civil Society Week, held at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

In Pakistan, said student activist Ammad Talpur, nepotism runs deep, inequality is horrific and brutal, and the powerful break laws with impunity. “We long for change, but fear silences us, as those in power will not brook dissent.”

A similar sense of frustration echoes beyond Pakistan.

“Though sometimes its exercise may come at a cost, youth in India are free to say anything and freedom of speech does exist,” Adrian D’ruz, another panelist, told IPS after the session. And journalists, academics, students, and comedians who questioned those in power, he said, reportedly faced legal action, online harassment, or institutional pressure.

To curb dissent, legal provisions are misapplied, resulting in people “leaning towards self-censorship rather than risking consequences,” said D’Cruz, a member of a network of NGOs in India called Wada Na Todo Abhiyan, which promotes governance accountability and inclusion of marginalized communities.

While Pakistan and India illustrate the pressures youth face under entrenched power, in Nepal the response has taken a more visible, street-level form, riding a wave of unrest that began in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

In Kathmandu, “rising unemployment, corruption, nepotism, and broken promises” fueled the unrest, said Tikashwari Rai, a young Nepali mother of two daughters, worried for their future.

Tikashwari Rai, a Nepali mother of two daughters, at the Youth Movements and Democratic Futures in South Asia session at International Civil Society Week, held at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

“We don’t want to work as domestic help in the Middle East; we want opportunities here, in our own country. But because there are none, many young people are forced to leave,” she explained.

Yet, she admitted, the protests came at a heavy cost—lives lost and infrastructure destroyed. “Our youth need guidance and stronger organization to lead social movements effectively,” she added.

Beyond the immediate triggers of street protests, some activists argue that deeper systemic issues fuel youth disenchantment.

Melani Gunathilaka, a climate and political activist from Sri Lanka, at the Youth Movements and Democratic Futures in South Asia session at International Civil Society Week, held at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

Melani Gunathilaka, a young climate and political activist from Sri Lanka, who was also on the panel, believed the roots of disenchantment ran deeper. “While these protests are often labeled as anti-government, at their core, they demand systemic change and true accountability from those in power.”

The immediate triggers seem to spread across corruption, authoritarian governments, repression, lack of access to basic needs and more,” she said.

A closer look at the situation in countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Kenya, however, exposed economic hardship, debt burdens, and deepening inequalities. And this trend is also observed globally, she pointed out.

Despite these frustrations, the conference also explored how young and older activists can work together, not just to protest, but to reshape movements constructively.

“Across civil society, there is growing recognition that youth must be meaningfully included in development and nation-building. While progress varies from group to group, the direction of change is unmistakably forward,” said D’cruz.

Talpur further fine-tuned D’Cruz’s sentiment. “It’s not about taking over; it’s about working together through collaboration.” He also found it “unfair for the boomers to create a mess and leave it to the millennials and Gen Z to fix it.”

Interestingly, the sentiment found an echo among the older generation itself. Founder of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, Debbie Stothard, said it was unfair to leave the mess her generation had created to the young and then expect them to “fix it.”

Speaking at the closing plenary titled “Futures We’re Building: Youth, Climate and Intergenerational Justice, she noted that she had been talking about “intergenerational equity” for 40 years, yet many in her generation of activists still fail to “walk the talk” in how they live and lead. Still, she added, it is not too late: “We can still make space.”

That space, she explained, begins with a change in mindset. “It’s not our job to empower the youth; it’s recognizing that they have power,” she said—a reminder that true equity lies not in giving power away, but in acknowledging it already exists.

This shift in perspective is already reshaping how movements operate. Youth no longer need to “look up to” traditional authority figures for inspiration, said D’cruz. Many within their generation are already leading change.

Mihajlo Matkovic, a member of the Youth Action Team at CIVICUS, from Serbia, also at the closing, demonstrated how real change required innovation and persistence. “Because our generation did not have any great example of what a direct democracy looks like,” he said, adding, “We had to basically reinvent it.”

But success depends on civil society letting go of their ego and letting the youth enter the arena, he pointed out.

Matkovic’s example showed the potential of youth-led innovation—but for such change to succeed, civil society must genuinely make space and resist old hierarchies it claims to challenge, because these patterns have also fueled a climate of mistrust. “It’s hard to trust civil society,” said Rai. “They’re not sincere to the causes of ordinary people.”

Gunathilaka echoed this sentiment, noting that civil society has often been co-opted by the very systems the youth seek to change. “Ignoring the influence of private capital and international financial structures that prioritize the needs of global trade while sidelining the needs of communities has only deepened the mistrust among youth,” she added.

This climate of mistrust, while not explicitly mentioned in the final declaration of the ICSW—which urged governments to protect democracy, human rights, the rights of minorities and excluded groups, and to ensure environmental protection and climate justice—nonetheless underscored a broader challenge: civil society itself must look inward, confront its shortcomings, and reimagine how it engages meaningfully with the next generation.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Belém - View from the Convention Center where the COP30 summit is to be held. Credit: Sergio Moraes/COP30 Brazil Amazonia

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Nov 5 2025 (IPS)

The world is falling dangerously short of meeting the Paris Agreement goals, with global greenhouse gas emissions rising to record levels and current national pledges still far off the mark, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in its Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off Target.

The report, marking ten years since the Paris Agreement’s adoption, concludes that even with full implementation of all existing pledges, global temperatures are projected to rise between 2.3°C and 2.5°C this century. Should current policies persist, global warming could potentially reach 2.8°C.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his video message posted after the report launch on November 4, said that the new Emissions Gap Report, issued by the United Nations Environment Programme, is clear and uncompromising. If nationally determined contributions, the national action plans on climate, are fully implemented by 2035, global warming would reach 2.3 degrees Celsius, down from 2.6 degrees in last year’s projections. That is progress, but nowhere near enough.

He said that the current commitments still point to climate breakdown. Scientists tell us that a temporary overshoot above 1.5 degrees is now inevitable, starting at the latest in the early 2030s. And the path to a livable future gets steeper by the day. “But this is no reason to surrender. It is a reason to step up and speed up. 1.5 degrees by the end of the century remains our North Star. And the science is clear: the goal is still within reach. But only if we meaningfully increase our ambition. Our mission is simple, but not easy,” he said.

Only about one-third of countries have submitted new or updated climate pledges (NDCs) by the September 2025 deadline. The report warns that despite some progress in renewable energy deployment, overall global emissions reached 57.7 gigatons of CO₂ equivalent (GtCO₂e) in 2024—a 2.3 percent increase from 2023, the steepest annual rise in over a decade.

According to UNEP, deforestation and land-use change accounted for more than half of the increase in 2024’s emissions, with fossil fuels contributing 36 percent. The G20 nations remain responsible for 77 percent of total global emissions, and only the European Union recorded a decline last year. India and China saw the largest absolute increases, while Indonesia registered the fastest relative growth.

Despite the Paris Agreement’s requirement that all parties submit new or revised NDCs by early 2025, only 60 parties, covering 63 percent of global emissions, have done so. Of these, just 13 updated their 2030 targets. Most new NDCs offer little improvement in ambition, with many missing commitments to double energy efficiency or triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. “Costs are falling, investments are rising, innovation is surging, and clean power is now the cheapest source of electricity in most markets and the fastest to deploy. It strengthens energy security, cuts pollution, and creates millions of decent jobs. Leaders must seize this moment and waste no time,” Guterres  said.

He added that tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency by 2030, building modern grids and large-scale storage, and ending all new coal, oil and gas expansion in a just and equitable manner. “The clean energy revolution must reach everyone, everywhere. But developing countries face crippling capital costs and a fraction of global investment,” he added.

UNEP’s analysis indicates that the new NDCs narrow the emissions gap for 2035 only marginally. The world would still emit 12 GtCO2e more than what is consistent with a 2°C pathway and 23 GtCO2e above the level required for 1.5°C. The gap widens further by 2050 unless countries drastically change course.

Overshoot of 1.5°C Now Inevitable

The report warns that global temperatures are set to exceed the 1.5°C limit within the next decade, with 2024 already marking the hottest year on record at 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels. The remaining carbon budget for a 1.5°C future without overshoot is just 130 GtCO₂, which is enough for barely three more years of current emissions.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, said the findings show governments have “missed the target for a third time.” She called the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement a major setback that would add roughly 0.1°C to projected warming.

“The task now is to make this overshoot as brief and shallow as possible,” Andersen said. “Every fraction of a degree matters. Each 0.1°C increase brings more droughts, floods, and losses, especially for the poorest.”

What Needs to Happen

To have a 66 percent chance of returning global warming to 1.5°C by 2100, the world must cut 2030 emissions by 26 percent and 2035 emissions by 46 percent compared with 2019 levels. This would require reducing global greenhouse gas output to about 32 GtCO₂e by 2035.

The “rapid mitigation from 2025” scenario explored in the report shows that immediate and deep reductions starting next year could still limit peak warming to around 1.7–1.9°C before gradually returning to 1.5°C by the end of the century. But UNEP warns that each year of delay makes the path “steeper, costlier, and more disruptive.”

The report emphasizes two imperatives: implementing aggressive near-term mitigation to minimize temperature overshoot and scaling up carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies to reach net-zero and eventually net-negative emissions.

Unequal Progress and Missed Opportunities

Seven G20 members are on track to meet their current NDC targets, but most are far from achieving their net-zero pledges. Many developing countries still lack financing and technical support to implement their climate commitments. The report urges developed nations to provide “unparalleled increases in climate finance” and to reform international financial systems to make green investments accessible.

Despite setbacks, UNEP highlights that 70 percent of global emissions are now covered by net-zero pledges, a sharp increase from zero in 2015. Falling costs of wind and solar energy, along with advancements in battery storage, have made clean energy transition more viable than ever.

“Climate action is not charity,” Andersen said. “It is self-interest. It delivers jobs, energy security, and economic resilience.”

Science and Legal Mandates

The report also references the July 2025 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, which ruled that states have legal obligations to protect the climate system under human rights law. It reaffirmed that limiting warming to 1.5°C remains the primary goal of the Paris Agreement, despite temporary exceedance.

UNEP scientists caution that even brief overshoots of 1.5°C could trigger irreversible tipping points, including the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and thawing of permafrost releasing methane. Each 0.1°C rise beyond current levels increases risks of extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and health impacts, particularly in vulnerable regions.

Path Ahead to COP30

The findings come ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, where nations are expected to present enhanced NDCs. UNEP urges governments to treat the conference as a turning point.

“The Paris Agreement has driven progress, but ambition and delivery have lagged,” the report states. “Each missed opportunity now adds to future costs, instability, and suffering.”

Guterres said that COP30 in Belém must be the turning point, where the world delivers a bold and credible response plan to close the ambition and implementation gaps, to mobilize USD 1.3 trillion a year by 2035 in climate finance for developing countries, and to advance climate justice for all. “The path to 1.5 degrees is narrow but open. Let us accelerate to keep that path alive for people, for the planet, and for our common future,” he said.

The 2025 report was prepared by 39 scientists from 21 institutions in 16 countries, coordinated by UNEP’s Copenhagen Climate Centre. It states that while 1.5°C is still technically achievable, the window is “narrow and closing fast.”

“Global warming will exceed 1.5°C, very likely within the next decade,” it says. “The challenge now is to ensure that this overshoot is brief and reversible. Every year, every policy, every ton of CO2 counts.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

United Nations Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off Target concludes that even with full implementation of all existing pledges, global temperatures are projected to rise between 2.3°C and 2.5°C this century. Should current policies persist, global warming could potentially reach 2.8°C.

Operation Dudula has been picketing clinics and hospital, turning away those without South African papers.