Agrégateur de flux

This discussion paper advances a new vision for the United Nations (UN)’s development function at a moment when the organisation is facing profound pressures and persistent scepticism about its relevance. Although a consensus exists that reform is overdue, past initiatives have been too incremental, focusing on coordination and efficiency without addressing deeper institutional and political pathologies. The result is a UN development system that has grown financially large but is losing political significance. It is increasingly shaped by donor earmarking, entrenched patronage and a project delivery model that bears little resemblance to how national development actually occurs.
Our vision marks a significant departure from the UN’s historical role as an aid channel predicated on the North-South divide. Instead, the UN’s future relevance lies in leveraging its universal legitimacy, normative authority and convening power.
We argue for a UN development system that:
1. Acts as a trusted knowledge facilitator: providing high-level and technical advice, supporting peer exchange and helping governments navigate complex policy trade-offs in ways that are independent, politically informed and normatively grounded.
2. Engages in public advocacy that matters: elevating norms, correcting misinformation and shaping national debates in line with globally agreed standards, with sensitivity to national contexts.
3. Applies universality in practice: moving beyond the outdated distinction between donor and recipient to engage with all member states – including middle- and high-income countries – through global monitoring and peer accountability.
4. Serves as an actor of last resort in fragile settings: providing operational support only where national governments cannot or will not act, with strict sunset clauses and safeguards against unintentional harm.
This reconceptualisation is not primarily about money. It implies a financially smaller but politically stronger UN development system that is less dependent on donors and more relevant to today’s multipolar world. The real benchmark for success is not the volume of aid provided but the quality of advice, advocacy and resulting cooperation.
Reaching this vision will be difficult. The UN’s development apparatus is shaped by vested interests, path dependency and political inertia. Yet, opportunities for change exist. The collapse of traditional aid financing, the insistence of middle-income countries on equitable partnerships and fatigue with the current project-heavy model all point towards the need for a new approach. The Secretary-General’s UN80 Initiative offers a platform for bold ideas, but only if the debate moves beyond technical fixes and acknowledges the political trade-offs inherent in transformation.

Stephen Browne is a visiting lecturer at universities in the UK, Switzerland and India. He spent more than 30 years in the UN development system and has published many books and articles on the UN and foreign assistance.
Frederik Matthys is Senior Advisor at Tomorrow Is Possible with a focus on sustainable development, international cooperation and multilateral reform.
Detlef Palm worked for UNICEF for 30 years in country offices and at headquarters. He served as the focal point for programme policy, an auditor and a representative.

This discussion paper advances a new vision for the United Nations (UN)’s development function at a moment when the organisation is facing profound pressures and persistent scepticism about its relevance. Although a consensus exists that reform is overdue, past initiatives have been too incremental, focusing on coordination and efficiency without addressing deeper institutional and political pathologies. The result is a UN development system that has grown financially large but is losing political significance. It is increasingly shaped by donor earmarking, entrenched patronage and a project delivery model that bears little resemblance to how national development actually occurs.
Our vision marks a significant departure from the UN’s historical role as an aid channel predicated on the North-South divide. Instead, the UN’s future relevance lies in leveraging its universal legitimacy, normative authority and convening power.
We argue for a UN development system that:
1. Acts as a trusted knowledge facilitator: providing high-level and technical advice, supporting peer exchange and helping governments navigate complex policy trade-offs in ways that are independent, politically informed and normatively grounded.
2. Engages in public advocacy that matters: elevating norms, correcting misinformation and shaping national debates in line with globally agreed standards, with sensitivity to national contexts.
3. Applies universality in practice: moving beyond the outdated distinction between donor and recipient to engage with all member states – including middle- and high-income countries – through global monitoring and peer accountability.
4. Serves as an actor of last resort in fragile settings: providing operational support only where national governments cannot or will not act, with strict sunset clauses and safeguards against unintentional harm.
This reconceptualisation is not primarily about money. It implies a financially smaller but politically stronger UN development system that is less dependent on donors and more relevant to today’s multipolar world. The real benchmark for success is not the volume of aid provided but the quality of advice, advocacy and resulting cooperation.
Reaching this vision will be difficult. The UN’s development apparatus is shaped by vested interests, path dependency and political inertia. Yet, opportunities for change exist. The collapse of traditional aid financing, the insistence of middle-income countries on equitable partnerships and fatigue with the current project-heavy model all point towards the need for a new approach. The Secretary-General’s UN80 Initiative offers a platform for bold ideas, but only if the debate moves beyond technical fixes and acknowledges the political trade-offs inherent in transformation.

Stephen Browne is a visiting lecturer at universities in the UK, Switzerland and India. He spent more than 30 years in the UN development system and has published many books and articles on the UN and foreign assistance.
Frederik Matthys is Senior Advisor at Tomorrow Is Possible with a focus on sustainable development, international cooperation and multilateral reform.
Detlef Palm worked for UNICEF for 30 years in country offices and at headquarters. He served as the focal point for programme policy, an auditor and a representative.

Parliament will decide its position on simpler sustainability requirements ahead of talks with EU governments at the next plenary session in Brussels on 13 November.
Committee on Legal Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Parliament will decide its position on simpler sustainability requirements ahead of talks with EU governments at the next plenary session in Brussels on 13 November.
Committee on Legal Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Parliament will decide its position on simpler sustainability requirements ahead of talks with EU governments at the next plenary session in Brussels on 13 November.
Committee on Legal Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Die Situation werfe einen Schatten auf unsere Beziehungen, sagte EU-Handelskommissar Maroš Šefčovič. „Deshalb ist eine rasche Lösung entscheidend.“

Une enquête d’Euractiv a révélé des échanges tendus entre les membres de la commission des Affaires juridiques (JURI) du Parlement européen et un haut magistrat belge, laissant présager une confrontation sur le rôle que devrait jouer la justice belge dans le contrôle des institutions démocratiques de l’UE.

The post ENQUÊTE : bras de fer entre le Parlement européen et la justice belge au sujet d’enquêtes pour corruption appeared first on Euractiv FR.

A HorizontPéntek10 webinársorozat az NKFIH Horizont Európa NCP csapat heti rendezvénye, melyen a Horizont Európa keretprogram érdekes témáiról, aktuális felhívásairól nyújtunk áttekintést, gyakorlati ismereteket minden héten.

Mike Tyson was a hit with boxing fans in Kinshasa after embracing his African roots as part of ongoing celebrations for the iconic Rumble in the Jungle.

Die beiden in Belarus und Georgien inhaftierten Journalisten werden mit dem Sacharow-Preis für geistige Freiheit 2025 ausgezeichnet, der am 16. Dezember im Parlament verliehen wird.
Ausschuss für auswärtige Angelegenheiten
Entwicklungsausschuss

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2025 - EP

Die beiden in Belarus und Georgien inhaftierten Journalisten werden mit dem Sacharow-Preis für geistige Freiheit 2025 ausgezeichnet, der am 16. Dezember im Parlament verliehen wird.
Ausschuss für auswärtige Angelegenheiten
Entwicklungsausschuss

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2025 - EP

Belaruszban és Grúziában bebörtönzött újságírók kapják a 2025. évi gondolatszabadságért járó Szaharov-díjat, amelyet a Parlament december 16-án ad át.
Külügyi Bizottság
Fejlesztési Bizottság

Forrás : © Európai Unió, 2025 - EP

Un haut fonctionnaire de la Commission a déclaré que ce calendrier était « faisable », notant que le Parlement et le Conseil s’étaient déjà mis d’accord sur des délais similaires l’année dernière.

The post Loi anti-déforestation : les eurodéputés envisagent une procédure d’approbation accélérée avant la fin de l’année appeared first on Euractiv FR.

The two journalists, imprisoned in Belarus and Georgia, are the laureates of the 2025 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, to be awarded by Parliament on 16 December.
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Committee on Development

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

The two journalists, imprisoned in Belarus and Georgia, are the laureates of the 2025 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, to be awarded by Parliament on 16 December.
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Committee on Development

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

The two journalists, imprisoned in Belarus and Georgia, are the laureates of the 2025 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, to be awarded by Parliament on 16 December.
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Committee on Development

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Les deux journalistes emprisonnés, respectivement au Bélarus et en Géorgie, sont les lauréats du Prix Sakharov pour la liberté de l’esprit 2025, qui sera remis par le Parlement en décembre.
Commission des affaires étrangères
Commission du développement

Source : © Union européenne, 2025 - PE

Ein Machtkampf um Belgiens Rolle bei der Kontrolle europäischer Institutionen bahnt sich an, während das Parlament Korruptionsermittlungen zunehmend ausbremst.

Members of the elephant response team (ERT) in the Inani forest range under the Ukhiya upazila of Cox’s Bazar. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Oct 22 2025 (IPS)

When wild elephant herds come down from the hills in search of food, Sona Miahm, with community volunteers, steps forward to help prevent human-elephant conflicts.

Miah is leading a 14-member elephant response team (ERT) in the Inani forest range under the Ukhiya upazila of Cox’s Bazar, one of the last natural elephant habitats in Bangladesh.

“For lack of food in reserve forests, wild elephants often rush to localities and damage crop fields. And, once we get informed, we go to the spot and try to return the elephant herd to the forest,” he said.

According to the Forest Department, there are now about 64 wild elephants in the reserve forests in Ukhiya and Teknaf in Bangladesh’s southeastern coastal district, Cox’s Bazar.

Community volunteers often risk their lives in returning the wild elephants to the forests, but they do so to protect the country’s last wild mammoths.

He explained how they mitigate human-elephant conflicts in their locality in the Inani area.

“The elephant response teams use hand-mikes and torches to encourage the elephants to return to the forest,” he said.

Members of the elephant response team (ERT) examine an elephant believed to be electrocuted.

With a small grant from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Arannayk Foundation, a Dhaka-based conservation organization, formed four elephant response teams (ERTs) in Inani and Ukhiya forest ranges in Cox’s Bazar, comprising 40 men.

Working alongside the Bangladesh Forest Department, these ERTs aim to minimize human-elephant conflicts and support wildlife rescues. The ERTs have helped prevent 127 potential human-elephant conflicts in the past two years.

Dr. Mohammed Muzammel Hoque, national coordinator of UNDP’s GEF Small Grants Program, said the UNDP provided a small grant of USD 39,182 in September 2023 to the Arannayk Foundation to implement its two-year Ecosystem Awareness and Restoration Through Harmony (EARTH) project.

Programme coordinator Abu Hena Mostafa Kamal said the project was implemented to restore forest ecosystems and involve local communities in wildlife conservation.

Human-Elephant Conflicts Rise

Due to the destruction of their natural habitats caused by deforestation, hill-cutting, and unplanned industrial expansion, the wild elephants come into localities in search of food, resulting in the rise of human-elephant conflicts.

Conflicts have resulted in the deaths of both community members and elephants.

Elephants are often being killed by electrocution in the Bangladesh southeast region since farmers install electric fences around their crop fields to protect crops from damage.

The most recent incident of an elephant being killed occurred in the Dochhari beat within the Ukhiya forest range in Cox’s Bazar on September 17, 2025. Mozammel Hossain, a resident of Ukhiya, said farmers had used electrified traps around their croplands and this electrocuted the elephant

He said food shortages push elephant herds to enter crop fields, while some farmers resort to illegal and lethal methods against the mammoths.

The Ukhiya and Teknaf regions have reported at least four elephant deaths in the past year.

Abdul Karim, an ERT member in the Boro Inani area of Cox’s Bazar, said elephants often attack human settlements and damage crops and orchards, increasing their conflicts with humans.

“We try to mitigate human-elephant conflicts and save both humans and mammoths. But, since 2021, four people have been killed in elephant attacks near the Inani forest range,” he said.

According to the Wildlife Management and Nature Conservation Division of the Bangladesh Forest Department, from 2016 to January 2025, 102 elephant deaths were recorded alone in Chattogram.

Retaliatory killings, electrocution, poaching, and train collisions have caused many of these deaths.

Saiful Islam, a resident of the Inani area, said wild elephants have been trapped within their habitat too after the influx of Rohingyas there in 2017.

Introduce Elephant Non-Preferred Crops

Crops typically eschewed by elephants, including citrus, pepper, bitter gourd, chili, cane, and okra, should be introduced around the elephant habitats.

“We are encouraging farmers to start such crops to avoid conflicts with elephants. We are also making them aware of elephant conservation,” Saiful Islam, also a community volunteer at Choto Inani, told IPS.

Firoz Al Amin, range officer of the Inani forest range in Ukhiya, said the Forest Department arranged 12 awareness programmes on elephant conservation in the Inani range.

Arannayk Foundation identified elephant non-preferred plots adjacent to high human-elephant conflict zones within the buffer area. With community involvement, five demonstration plots were created on portions of land belonging to five beneficiaries to mitigate elephant crop raiding.

It established four chili-coated rope bio-fences: two at Mohammad Shofir Bill and one each at Boro Inani and Imamerdeil to reduce crop damage caused by elephants. These bio-fencing interventions have benefited 85 vulnerable households in these locations. The fences consist of coconut ropes coated with a deterrent blend of chili powder, tobacco, and grease, suspended at human height between trees to prevent elephant access to agricultural and residential areas.

Urgent Measures Needed to Save Elephants

A 2016 survey by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said that there were only 457 elephants left in Bangladesh, of which 268 were wild, 93 were migratory, and 96 were captive.

However, about 124 wild elephants died across Bangladesh’s main elephant habitats—Cox’s Bazar, Chattogram, Chittagong Hill Tracts and Mymensingh—over the last decade.

Experts suggest a comprehensive strategy for restoring elephant habitats to prevent their extinction, which requires long-term planning, reducing encroachment on forest areas, and removing unlawful occupants.

Dr. Monirul H. Khan, a zoology professor at Jahangirnagar University, said forests and elephant habitats must be protected at any cost to save the mammoths, as their number is dwindling day by day in Bangladesh.

Many new settlements and crop cultivations have taken place inside the country’s elephant habitats, he said, accelerating human-elephant conflicts.

Growing crops that elephants typically do not prefer, improving bio-fencing with trip alarms, and creating salt lick areas can all help reduce human-elephant conflicts.

The experts say implementing beehive fencing not only safeguards crops but also generates job and income opportunities for the local community. Therefore, it is possible to achieve elephant conservation while simultaneously minimizing human-elephant conflicts.

Monirul said the Bangladesh government has taken on an elephant conservation project with its own funding for the first time. “I hope the project will help conserve the mammoths in Bangladesh,” he added.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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VIENNA, 22 October 2025 - The OSCE Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media (RFoM) and the Forum on Information and Democracy (FID) launched today a new policy manual on “Safeguarding Media Freedom in the Age of Big Tech Platforms and AI”. The publication for OSCE participating States aims to protect freedom of expression and media freedom, as well as promoting information integrity and independent public interest journalism in the digital era. The manual was presented as part of the OSCE RFoM’s “Healthy Online Information Spaces: From Policy Guidance to Pathways Forward” conference, held in Vienna and online.

The publication was developed in co-operation with the FID and with the support of an international steering committee consisting of renowned experts from across the OSCE region. It is the outcome of over a year of in-depth research and analysis, several expert roundtables, and consultations involving over 150 leading scholars and practitioners.

Highlighting the profound impact of AI and digital platforms on information spaces, as well as challenges related to the concentration of power and the lack of transparency, accountability, and human rights due diligence, the policy manual provides concrete guidance to promote the visibility and viability of public interest journalism as well as the safety of journalists online.

“States have an obligation to protect and promote media freedom, by ensuring an enabling environment that fosters democratic debate, and the free exchange of ideas and information. This includes ensuring that Big Tech doesn’t employ strategies that limit access to journalistic content. Our new policy manual offers analysis, tools and principled guidance, grounded in international human rights standards and OSCE commitments, to support States in designing frameworks that safeguard media pluralism, independence and public interest,” said the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Ambassador Jan Braathu.

Journalism finds itself in a complex relation with Big Tech, increasingly depending on it for audiences, financial models, and — to a large degree —the dissemination of news content. This results in a struggle for news visibility, which affects access to accurate, fact-based information as well as the economic and financial sustainability of media outlets.

Camille Grenier, Executive Director of the Forum on Information and Democracy, underlined that: “The behaviour of Big Tech has shown us that we can only guarantee media freedom and access to reliable information if States implement democratic rules in the information space. Building upon international human rights law, OSCE commitments, and the Declaration of the Partnership for Information and Democracy, this policy manual provides guidance enabling States to act urgently and in multilateral co-operation.”

Anya Schiffrin and Natali Helberger, co-chairs of the Steering Committee, highlighted that “the current concentration of economic, technological and political power in the hands of a few Big Tech platforms that control large parts of the digital information infrastructure is a threat to democracy”. They underlined that “the policy manual formulates concrete steps to safeguard media freedom in the age of Big Tech platforms and AI”.

The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media observes media developments in all 57 OSCE participating States. He provides early warning on violations of freedom of expression and media freedom and promotes full compliance with OSCE media freedom commitments. Learn more at www.osce.org/fom, Twitter: @OSCE_RFoM and on www.facebook.com/osce.rfom