Africa

One of Sudan's most popular bands, Aswat Almadina, recall being in the studio when the war broke out three years ago.

« L'Amérique ne peut rien faire pour vous, et il n'y a rien, non plus, que vous puissiez faire pour le peuple américain » : le vice-président J.D. Vance avait conclu ainsi une charge d'une agressivité inusitée contre les Européens, dans un discours à la Conférence annuelle de Munich sur la sécurité en février 2025, livré quelques jours après les débuts d'une seconde présidence Trump, qui devait donner le ton aux relations euro-américaines pour les temps actuels, et sans doute à venir... (…)

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The country's biggest musician Teddy Afro laments a lack of unity in the country on his new track.

The Congolese government stresses those expelled from the US are only in the country temporarily.

Die Blockade der Exporte aus dem Persischen Golf hat die Kerosinimporte in der Union halbiert. Die Fluggesellschaften waren bereits gezwungen, Flüge zu streichen.

„Wir raten davon ab, das Preisniveau künstlich niedrig zu halten, denn letztendlich müssen wir Angebot und Nachfrage in Einklang bringen“, erklärte ein Sprecher des Internationalen Währungsfonds (IWF).

„Dies wird eine streng friedliche und defensive Mission sein, um die Handelsschifffahrt zu beruhigen und die Minenräumung zu unterstützen“, erklärte der britische Premierminister Starmer.

For centuries the prized sculptures, central to national identity, have been kept outside Zimbabwe's borders.

For centuries the prized sculptures, central to national identity, have been kept outside Zimbabwe's borders.

Pope Leo XIV is on his third day in Cameroon before he heads to Angola on Saturday.

Mfor.hu: Erősödött pénteken (4. 17.) a forint a bankközi piacon. Az eurót délután hat órakor 361,09 forinton jegyezték a reggel hét órai 364,60 forint után. A dollár jegyzése 305,95 forintra csökkent 309,45 forintról, a svájci franké pedig 392,39 forintra ment lejjebb 395,05-ről, írta az MTI.

A view of the rubble in Jabalia, northern Gaza, after heavy Israeli bombardment. Credit: UNICEF/Rawan Eleyan

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 17 2026 (IPS)

Roughly six months after the ceasefire in the Occupied Palestinian Territory went into effect, the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains precariously fragile, despite a relative decline in hostilities. The crisis, marked by ongoing Israeli airstrikes and shelling, continued blockades on humanitarian aid, and widespread displacement, has pushed the majority of Palestinians in Gaza to the brink. Amid the vast scale of needs, basic services are increasingly strained, and humanitarian experts warn that the situation could deteriorate further in the coming months unless sustained aid and funding are secured.

A new report from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East (UNRWA) on the current conditions in Gaza confirmed a continuation of airstrikes, shelling, and gunfire across multiple areas, including Beit Lahia, Jabalia, Deir al Balah, Khan Younis, Rafah, and Bureij. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that since the eruption of hostilities on October 7, 2023, approximately 72,315 Gazans have been killed and another 172,137 injured.

“The scale and pattern of these actions, occurring alongside mass displacement of Palestinians from their homes and land in Gaza shows once again the ongoing broader policy of ethnic cleansing across the occupied Palestinian territory,” said a group of United Nations (UN) experts on April 13. “This cycle of displacement, terror, and targeted attacks serves an ultimate purpose: to make life unbearable for Palestinians and permanently force them from their land…Targeting areas known to shelter displaced civilians is a grave breach of international humanitarian law and is a grim reminder of the urgent need for international action and accountability.”

According to Palestine’s Ministry of Health, at least 32 Gazans have been killed by Israeli forces in early April alone. Airstrikes, gunfire, and shelling are daily occurrences, with women, children, disabled persons, humanitarian workers, and journalists being routinely targeted. On April 9, a young girl was killed by Israeli gunfire in a crowded classroom-turned-makeshift encampment.

“For the past 10 days, Palestinians are still being killed and injured in what is left of their homes, shelters, and tents of displaced families, on the streets, in vehicles, at a medical facility and in a classroom,” said United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. “Movement itself has become a life-threatening activity. Incidents of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces while walking, driving, or standing outside are recorded nearly every day.”

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) also confirmed that there have been increasing cases of Israeli forces killing Palestinians based on their proximity to the “yellow line”, a line of demarcation that divides the Palestinian-controlled areas of Gaza and the Israeli-controlled areas. “Targeting civilians not taking direct part in hostilities is a war crime, regardless of their proximity to deployment lines,” said Türk

On April 6, Israeli forces shot at vehicles from the World Health Organization (WHO), killing a driver. Two days later, Israeli drone strikes killed Al Jazeera journalist Mohamed Washah in Gaza City, marking the 294th Palestinian journalist to be killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 2023. Additionally, Israel has continued to ban international journalists from accessing Gaza, further compounding the regional decline of journalistic freedom.

“The number of journalists and humanitarian personnel killed in Gaza is unprecedented, and further compounds civilian harm as it makes reporting on the situation and responding to its humanitarian implications life-threatening,” added Türk.

Internal displacement is particularly rampant, with OCHA estimating that routine evacuation orders and bombardment have affected roughly 92 percent of all housing across the enclave, with the vast majority of affected communities having been displaced multiple times. Civilians residing in overcrowded, makeshift encampments are disproportionately affected by insecurity, freezing temperatures, building collapse, and a severe shortage of humanitarian aid and basic services.

Humanitarian movement remains severely constrained, with all UNRWA staff banned from accessing the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory since March 2025. The agency, which has long acted as a critical lifeline for Palestinians, has pre-positioned food parcels, flour, and shelter supplies at Gaza’s borders, which could help hundreds of thousands of Gazans.

Thousands of Palestinians across the enclave are in urgent need of medical care as Gaza’s health system nears the brink of collapse, facing severe shortages of supplies amid an influx of injured and ill patients. Medications are critically short in supply, and UNRWA has reported a sharp uptick in cases of ectoparasitic infections such as scabies and fleas, as well as chickenpox and other skin diseases, which have been linked to disrupted water and hygiene (WASH) services, overcrowding, and pests.

Despite these challenges, humanitarian experts have expressed optimism that the situation in Gaza could improve as access constraints begin to fade. Following nearly 40 days of closure, the critical Zikim crossing reopened in early April, allowing nutritional and health supplies to reach northern Gaza directly. UNRWA is currently supporting over 67,000 displaced individuals across 83 collective emergency shelters, with over 11,000 personnel providing lifesaving care.

UNRWA, in collaboration with WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and Palestine’s Ministry of Health, reached almost 2,100 children under three years of age with vaccinations between April 5 and 9. WHO and its partners have also been facilitating dozens of medical evacuations through the Rafah border crossing and providing access to medical care, food, water, and psychosocial services to returning Gazans.

The UN experts stressed that a definitive end to hostilities, an expansion of protection services, and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid are crucial in coordinating an effective return to stability in Gaza. Additionally, the experts called on Israeli authorities to ensure a safe and dignified return to Gaza for displaced individuals, as well as the lifting of restrictions for UNRWA operations.

“We reiterate our call on States to bring Israel’s unlawful occupation to an end and ensure the immediate protection of civilians sheltering in displacement sites across the Gaza Strip, including by scaling up vital humanitarian assistance,” the experts said. “States must comply with their legal obligations. They must bring Israel’s unlawful occupation to an end, refrain from recognising it and withhold assistance to it, and take effective measures to ensure investigations and accountability for grave violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian Territory.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The sentence raises huge questions marks over the political future of one of South Africa's most controversial politicians.

The sentence raises huge questions marks over the political future of one of South Africa's most controversial politicians.

Bellarmine Mugabe was arrested in February following the shooting of a 23-year-old man at his home in Johannesburg.

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If you are reading commodity price movements as evidence that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has been absorbed without consequence, you are reading the right data for the wrong time horizon. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

By Máximo Torero
ROME, Apr 17 2026 (IPS)

The headlines are wrong about food prices — but right to be afraid, very afraid. Walk into a supermarket in Chicago, Berlin, or Mumbai today, and you will not find the shelves stripped bare or the prices dramatically higher than last month. Despite weeks of alarming headlines about commodity markets, food inflation in most major economies has risen only marginally — a tenth or two-tenths of a percentage point between February and March of this year. In the United States, food inflation moved from roughly 2.9 percent to 3.1 percent. In Germany, from 0.8 to 0.9. In India, from 7.8 to 8.0.

This is not a crisis at the checkout counter. Not yet.

But here is what the headlines are getting wrong, and what they are getting terrifyingly right at the same time: the stability you see today is real, and it is also beside the point. What is coming — if the world does not act quickly and the cease fire does not continue— is a food price shock of a different order, arriving not in March but in the harvests of late 2026 and the markets of 2027.

To understand why, you first have to understand what commodity price indexes actually measure, and what they do not. The FAO Food Price Index — which did rise slightly in March, driven largely by vegetable oils and sugar amid higher crude oil costs — tracks the international price of raw agricultural commodities: wheat, maize, rice, oilseeds, dairy.

It does not track what you pay for a baguette or a box of pasta. By the time wheat becomes bread, the grain itself represents only 10 to 15 percent of the final retail price. The rest is energy, labor, processing, packaging, logistics, and retail margins.

This cost structure is precisely why grocery bills do not lurch upward the moment commodity markets move. It is also why the current calm is not a reliable indicator of future stability specially because of the significant share of energy costs.

Short-term stability is not medium or long-term security. The time between a fertilizer shock and a harvest failure is measured in months. The time between a harvest failure and a food price surge is measured in months more. We are already inside that window

The markets for major cereals are, for now, sending reassuring signals. Wheat and maize prices have held steady. Rice prices actually declined. Global cereal stocks remain high, and the market is correctly reflecting sufficient near-term availability. If you are reading commodity price movements as evidence that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has been absorbed without consequence, you are reading the right data for the wrong time horizon.

The Strait carries roughly 35% of crude oil exports — but its disruption reaches agrifood systems through a less obvious channel, logistics and energy costs for food processing. In addition, the Strait carries 20% of natural gas which can’t be replaced by any other source, and which is essential for nitrogen fertilizer ( specifically urea), 20-30% of fertilizers export depending on the specific type and about 50% of Sulfur exports a key input to produce phosphate fertilizer. All this is still  not showing up in this month’s price indexes. 

According to FAO analysis, the Strait of Hormuz closure has choked off 30 to 35 percent of global urea trade. Urea prices have already jumped between 40 and 60 percent. The feedstock that makes nitrogen fertilizer possible — natural gas — has risen 70 to 90 percent in price. Brent crude is up 60 percent just before the cease of fire.

These are not abstract figures. They are the inputs that farmers in the United States, Europe, South Asia, and across the Northern Hemisphere are confronting right now, as planting season either begins or approaches.

The decision they face is not a comfortable one: pay double for fertilizer when commodity prices are already low, and hope prices recover, or cut application rates and accept lower yields. Some will shift toward nitrogen-fixing crops like soybeans. Others will pivot toward crops destined for biofuel production, reducing the food supply further still.

The consequences of those decisions will not appear on store shelves until the harvest comes in, or the markets decides to incorporate them in future prices. When they do, the combination of constrained yields, elevated energy costs running through every link of the supply chain, and ongoing trade disruptions will drive commodity prices higher, and food prices even higher because of the additional energy cost increases — not by a tenth of a point per month, but meaningfully, in ways that will be felt most acutely by the households that can least afford it.

Short-term stability is not medium or long-term security. The time between a fertilizer shock and a harvest failure is measured in months. The time between a harvest failure and a food price surge is measured in months more. We are already inside that window.

The world’s response cannot wait for the price indexes to confirm what the agronomic and economic data already make clear.

Governments, development institutions, and the private sector must act now on three fronts: ensuring fertilizer access for smallholder farmers and input and food import-dependent nations before their planting decisions become irreversible; protecting and diversifying trade routes so that disruption in one chokepoint does not become a global supply crisis; avoid export restrictions of fertilizers and energy products and pursuing with urgency the diplomatic solutions that remain, for now, within reach.

The supermarket and retail store shelves are stocked. The silos are full. And the window to keep them that way is closing. 

Keeping the Strait of Hormuz open is therefore not just about preventing food inflation — it is about averting a broader surge in overall inflation that would directly undermine economic growth, while also shielding every other sector dependent on the energy and input prices that flow through this strategic chokepoint.

 

Excerpt:

Máximo Torero Cullen is Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Frank McCourt, founder of Project Liberty, speaking with Foreign Policy CEO Andrew Sollinger at the Geoeconomics Forum. Credit: IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Apr 17 2026 (IPS)

As war in the Middle East ripples through global markets, policymakers, economists, and industry leaders gathered in Washington this week to agree that economics is no longer separate from geopolitics. It is now its core instrument.

At the Geoeconomics Forum hosted by Foreign Policy alongside the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, speakers repeatedly pointed to a world shaped by shocks, where supply chains, energy flows, and technology have become tools of power.

“Geoeconomics is no longer a backdrop to global politics. It is the key and critical element,” said Foreign Policy CEO Andrew Sollinger in his opening remarks.

The urgency of that shift is tied closely to the ongoing conflict in the Gulf, which has disrupted energy markets and exposed vulnerabilities in global trade systems. The war has made the world understand how quickly regional crises can cascade into worldwide economic instability, affecting everything from fuel prices to industrial production.

Participants at the forum described a transformed global order where governments increasingly deploy economic tools once considered neutral or technical.

Trade policy, capital flows, and supply chains now serve strategic goals. Critical minerals, essential for semiconductors and artificial intelligence systems, have become geopolitical leverage points. Energy routes such as the Strait of Hormuz have turned into potential choke points with global consequences instead of just transit corridors.

“Geopolitics and economics have always been linked. We are going back to a school of thought that sees them as inextricable,” Jacob Helberg, U.S. Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, said in his address.

Helberg pointed to growing competition over rare earth minerals, where China dominates processing and has begun using export controls as a strategic tool. At the same time, logistics corridors and manufacturing hubs have emerged as additional pressure points in the global system.

“The stack is totally interlinked,” he said, referring to the chain from raw materials to finished technology. “There are choke points at every layer.”

The forum repeatedly returned to a central theme: fragmentation.

Countries are adapting to a “shock-prone” world marked by conflict, pandemics, and financial instability. This has led to a shift away from global integration toward more regional and strategic economic blocs.

Middle powers, in particular, face difficult choices. As competition intensifies between the United States and China, many nations are weighing how to align their economic and technological futures.

Dr Pedro Abramovay, Vice President, Programs, Open Society Foundations, argued that the moment offers both risk and opportunity for these countries.

“We need to make sure that middle powers act as middle powers and not just middlemen,” he said, stressing that democracy can shape their role in a changing order.

Abramovay said the current moment has exposed long-standing imbalances in the global system.

“It unveils the reality that existed before,” he said, referring to earlier global arrangements that often did not serve the interests of the Global South.

He noted that domestic political pressure is now reshaping how countries engage globally. Leaders can no longer align externally without responding to internal constituencies.

“That internal pressure can empower those middle powers to assert their sovereignty and negotiate effectively,” Abramovay said.

The forum highlighted growing calls for a reworked international order grounded in sovereignty and public interest rather than narrow economic gain.

“We need to have clear clarity of agenda. We need to have commitment of those leaders expressing that they are there, not representing big corporations or, again, interests and organisations that speak for themselves, but exactly speaking in the name and representing the majority of the world,” Abramovay added.

Frank McCourt, founder of Project Liberty, warned against framing the future as a binary choice between U.S. private-sector dominance and Chinese state-led models.

“This is a false dichotomy,” he said, arguing for a third path that aligns technology with democratic values.

He highlighted growing unease among countries that feel caught between competing systems, noting that many are exploring alternative frameworks for digital governance and economic cooperation.

Human Impact Behind the Strategy
While much of the discussion focused on high-level strategy, speakers acknowledged the human consequences of geoeconomic shifts.

Energy shocks translate into higher costs for households. Supply chain disruptions affect jobs and access to goods. Decisions made in boardrooms and ministries ripple outward to communities worldwide.

“The best-laid plans can be interrupted by unforeseen circumstances. You have to pivot, adapt, and build better,” Sollinger said.

That message echoed throughout the event.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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