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Voting by secret ballot. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 29 2026 (IPS)

The year 2026 seems to be an eventful year at the United Nations –a new President of the General Assembly (PGA), who will officially preside over the 81st session in mid-September, plus the election and appointment of a new Secretary-General (SG) who will takeover in January 2027 after the conclusion of a 10-year tenure by the outgoing SG Antonio Guterres.

When UN member states competed in elections– or sought votes for membership in the Security Council or in various UN bodies– the voting in the 1960s and 70s was largely tainted by cheque-book diplomacy — while promises of increased aid to the world’s poorer nations came mostly with heavy strings attached.

In the 1950s and 60s, voting was by a show of hands, particularly in committee rooms. But in later years, a more sophisticated electronic board, high up in the General Assembly Hall, tallied the votes or in the case of elections to the Security Council or the International Court of Justice, the voting was by secret ballot.

In one of the hard-fought elections many moons ago, there were rumors that an oil-soaked Middle Eastern country was doling out high-end, Swiss-made wrist watches and also stocks in the former Arabian-American Oil Company, then one of the world’s largest oil companies, to UN diplomats as a trade-off for their votes.

So, when hands, both from right-handed and left-handed delegates, went up at voting time in the Committee room, the largest number of hands raised in favor of the oil-blessed candidate sported Swiss watches.

As anecdotes go, it symbolized the corruption that once prevailed in voting in inter-governmental organizations, including the United Nations — perhaps much like most national elections the world over.

Just ahead of a crucial election, one Western European country offered free Mediterranean luxury cruises in return for votes while another country dished out — openly in the General Assembly hall— boxes of gift-wrapped expensive Swiss chocolates.

Fathulla Jameel, a former UN Ambassador and later Foreign Minister of the Maldives told Inter Press Service of how his resource-poor island nation, categorized by the UN as a Small Island Developing State (SID), would appeal to richer nations to help fund some of country’s infrastructure projects.

At least one rich Asian country, a traditional donor, was the first to respond – and magnanimously too, he said. The project would be fully funded —free, gratis and for nothing. But there was a catch: “If there is a vote at the UN, and it is not of any national interest to your country”, said the donor country’s foreign ministry, “we would like to get your vote.”

Perhaps for life – the life of the island nation itself which was threatened with sea-level rise and in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth. The offer was a clever political payback. Development aid with no visible strings attached.

There was at least one instance when the president of the General Assembly, the highest policy making body at the United Nations, was elected, on the luck of a draw -– following a dead heat.

With the Asian group failing to field a single candidate, the politically-memorable battle took place ahead of the 36th session of the General Assembly back in 1981 when three Asian candidates contested the presidency: Ismat Kittani of Iraq, Tommy Koh of Singapore and Kwaja Mohammed Kaiser of Bangladesh (described as the “battle of three Ks”—Kittani, Koh and Kaiser).

On the first ballot, Kittani got 64 votes; Kaiser, 46; and Koh, 40. Still, Kittani was short of a required majority — of the total number of members voting. On a second ballot, Kittani and Kaiser tied with 73 votes each (with 146 members present, and voting).

In order to break the tie, the outgoing General Assembly President drew lots, as specified in Article 21 relating to the procedures in the election of the president (and as recorded in the Repertory of Practice of the General Assembly).

And the luck of the draw, based purely on chance, favored Kittani, in that unprecedented General Assembly election. But according to a joke circulating at that time, it was rumored that the winner was decided by the flip of a coin — but the tossed coin apparently had two heads and no tail.

In more recent years, however, the regional groups, including the Asian, African, Latin American and Caribbean and the Western and Other Groups (WEOG) have called for a virtual ceasefire as they took turns according to geographical rotation. The Groups would name their candidates who get elected without any opposition.

But the seriousness of the UN’s far-reaching mandate has been tempered by occasional moments of levity which have rocked the Glass House by the East River— with laughter. The UN is a rich source of anecdotes—both real and apocryphal– in which the General Assembly (UNGA), takes center stage, along with the Security Council (UNSC) as a political sidekick.

When UN ambassadors and delegates congregate in the cavernous General Assembly hall at voting time, they have one of three options: either vote for, against, or abstain.

The most intriguing, however, is a fourth option: to be suddenly struck with an urge to rush to the toilet. The frantic attempt to leave your seat vacant — and consequently be counted as “absent”– takes place whenever the issue is politically-sensitive.

When delegates are unable to vote with their conscience– don’t want to incur the wrath of mostly Western aid donors or are taken unawares with no specific instructions from their capitals– they flee their seats and head for the toilet

At a lunch for reporters in his town house bordering Park Avenue in Manhattan, (“this was once owned by Gucci, now it is Fulci”), Ambassador Francesco Paolo Fulci, an Italian envoy with a sharp sense of humor, described the fourth option as the “toilet factor” in UN voting.

And he jokingly suggested that the only way to resolve the problem is to install portable toilets in the back of the General Assembly hall so that delegates can still cast their votes while contemplating on their toilet seats. But for obvious reasons, there were no takers.

In most instances, the various regional groups and coalitions—including the Group of 77, the Latin American and Caribbean States, the African Union (AU) and the Western European and Others (WEOG)— take decisions behind closed doors ahead of voting and voted by consensus,

In the 1970s and 80s, the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), founded in Belgrade in 1961, was one of the largest and most powerful political coalitions at the UN led by countries such as Yugoslavia, India, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Zambia, Cuba and Sri Lanka.

As a general rule, all 116 countries vote in unison on General Assembly resolutions rarely breaking ranks. A Sri Lankan ambassador once recounted a message transmitted from his Foreign Ministry in Colombo – primarily directed at newly-arrived delegates which read— “If you are faced with an unscheduled surprise vote, and do not have any instructions from the Foreign Ministry, look to the right to see how Yugoslavia is voting and look to the left to see how India is voting. If both ambassadors are seen bolting from their seats, just follow them to the toilet”.

This article contains excerpts from a book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That” authored by Thalif Deen, Senior Editor at Inter Press Service news agency. A former member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the General Assembly sessions, he is a Fulbright scholar with a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, New York, and twice (2012-2013) shared the gold medal for excellence in UN reporting awarded annually by the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA). The book is available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

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LED street lights have been installed in the area around Hyderabad's famous Necklace Road, a scenic boulevard in the heart of the city that curves around the Hussain Sagar Lake. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, May 28 2026 (IPS)

Ahead of the Eighth Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly in Samarkand, governments and development institutions are grappling with a familiar challenge: How to finance environmental action at the scale required to meet rapidly growing needs.

As public budgets tighten and biodiversity and climate risks intensify, attention is increasingly turning to blended finance – an approach that combines concessional public funding with commercial investment to mobilise large-scale capital.

Supporters say this model can reduce investment risks and unlock private capital for projects that might otherwise struggle to secure funding. Critics caution that such approaches still depend heavily on public support and may not be easily replicable everywhere.

In Hyderabad, India, one of the world’s largest municipal LED streetlighting programs has emerged as a prominent example of how blended finance can work in practice.

Turning Streetlights into Climate Finance

Hyderabad, a rapidly expanding and climate-vulnerable metropolis, has sought to address rising temperatures and growing energy demand by retrofitting its street lighting system with energy-efficient LEDs under India’s Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP). The initiative was part of a broader programme – Creating and Sustaining Markets for Energy Efficiency – implemented by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), with support from the GEF.

The program combined GEF grant funding with more than USD 434 million in co-financing to deploy energy-efficient technologies at scale.

“The environmental financing gap runs into hundreds of billions of dollars annually. This is a scale that grants and ODA alone cannot close,” said Fred Boltz, Head of Programming at the GEF.

“Mobilising private capital is essential to sustaining a healthy planet.”

Blended finance works by reducing risks for private investors – through concessional loans, guarantees, or grant support – making projects viable in markets where returns are uncertain. By absorbing part of the risk, public or philanthropic funding enables commercial investors to participate in sectors such as renewable energy, biodiversity, and sustainable infrastructure, which are often perceived as too risky.

In Hyderabad, EESL financed the installation of LED streetlights and recovered costs through future energy savings, eliminating the need for large upfront spending by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).

More than 450,000 streetlights were replaced during the initial phases, with further expansion extending coverage across the city. Electricity consumption linked to public lighting dropped by roughly half, generating annual savings of more than ₹1 billion (about USD 12 million) while significantly reducing carbon emissions.

How Savings Became an Asset

The financing structure relied on a “deemed savings” model. Instead of paying upfront, municipal authorities repaid investments over time using verified reductions in electricity and maintenance costs.

Supporters say such arrangements help cities modernise infrastructure, despite budget constraints. But analysts warn that they depend on accurate projections, reliable maintenance, and strong institutional capacity.

Experts agree that blended finance works best when public institutions remain actively involved in implementation and oversight.

In Hyderabad, the programme incorporated a Centralised Monitoring and Control System (CCMS), allowing authorities to track electricity use, detect faults, and monitor performance in real time.

The system improved operational oversight while generating the data needed for performance-linked financing – where payments are tied to independently verified outcomes.

Newly retrofitted LED street lights on the eastern edge of Hyderabad, in India. LED lights are a cost- and energy-efficient alternative to other lighting and bring a sense of security to the areas where they are installed. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Beyond Carbon: From Climate Finance to Everyday Life

For residents, the effects of the LED transition are often experienced less in financial or technical terms than in everyday routines and perceptions of safety.

Kavitha Ramavath (27) and her husband, Ravi Ramavath (35), recently moved with their two young children to Uppal Bhagath, a fast-growing neighbourhood on the eastern edge of Hyderabad. They previously lived in Uppal Kalan, about four kilometres away, where housing was cheaper, but the infrastructure was poor. Kavitha works as a domestic worker, while Ravi drives an auto-rickshaw.

Although their rent has nearly doubled, improved lighting has changed their daily lives.

“This area is more lively, with wider and better-lit roads,” Kavitha said, pointing toward an LED streetlight outside her lane. “Earlier, I used to feel scared walking alone to drop or pick up my children from tuition classes.”

Now, she says, her children can play outside longer in the evenings and nearby shops keep their shutters open later. Ravi adds that he can park his auto-rickshaw outside their home without worrying about theft or damage.

Urban planners say improved public lighting can influence mobility, informal economic activity, and perceptions of public safety – especially for women and children.

Last week, Kavitha started a small fruit cart outside her home. The brighter street allows her to continue working after dusk, when customer footfall increases.

For her family, the benefits are not measured in emissions reductions or financing structures but in the possibility of earning a little more income while feeling safer in public spaces.

From Local Streets to Global Finance Models

While Hyderabad’s experience highlights blended finance in climate mitigation, the model increasingly extends far beyond energy efficiency.

Across the world, GEF-backed blended finance initiatives are channelling investments into biodiversity conservation, ocean protection, and sustainable supply chains. These projects demonstrate how public funding can unlock private capital in sectors that have traditionally struggled to attract investment.

In Brazil, for instance, the Living Amazon Mechanism combines capital market instruments with philanthropic funding to support sustainable supply chains in the Amazon. It links cooperatives and local producers with financing while reducing risk through the participation of a corporate buyer, Natura, which acts as an investor and off-taker.

Similarly, global platforms such as the IFC–GEF Green Global Supply Chain Decarbonisation Initiative aim to provide long-term, green-linked loans to manufacturers and suppliers in emerging markets, helping address a critical barrier – access to affordable capital for decarbonisation.

At the sovereign level, blended finance is also enabling innovative debt and bond instruments. The Seychelles blue bond, supported by a World Bank guarantee and GEF concessional financing, has demonstrated how countries can raise private capital for marine conservation while reducing borrowing costs

In Latin America and the Caribbean, a new facility backed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and GEF is using blended finance to expand debt-for-nature conversions, which allow countries to refinance debt at lower costs and redirect savings toward biodiversity conservation and climate resilience.

These models share a common principle: public or concessional capital absorbs risks, enabling private investors to enter sectors where financial returns alone might not justify investment.

Building Markets Beyond Cities

The Hyderabad programme did not stop with municipal infrastructure. Through India’s UJALA initiative, EESL also expanded access to LED lighting in households by aggregating demand and procuring bulbs in bulk.

This approach helped reduce LED bulb prices dramatically, making energy-efficient lighting affordable for millions of households and introducing on-bill financing systems that allowed payments in small instalments.

By addressing both public infrastructure and household demand, the programme aimed not only to deploy energy-efficient technologies but also to create long-term, self-sustaining markets.

“The path to scalable environmental outcomes runs through blended finance. Public capital does what private capital won’t – it absorbs excess risk and funds the rigorous monitoring that turns lessons into lasting change. Crowd out the public, and you crowd out the results,” said Boltz.

A Test Case for Blended Finance

As global discussions on climate and biodiversity financing intensify, Hyderabad is increasingly being viewed as a test case for how blended finance can operate at the city level.

Srinivas Kona, a clean energy expert from the Hyderabad-based consultancy Proventure, says, “The LED programme demonstrated how concessional funding, public-sector implementation, and savings-based repayment structures can work together to expand urban infrastructure without large upfront municipal expenditure.”

At the same time, he cautions that challenges remain. “It’s not clear how easily such models can be replicated elsewhere, especially in smaller cities with weaker revenue systems and lower administrative capacity,” he said, noting reports of maintenance issues affecting some installations.

Still, Hyderabad’s experience offers a glimpse into how global finance debates translate into visible changes in everyday urban life.

Last week, Kavitha Ramavath stood beside her new fruit cart under a bright LED streetlight, arranging guavas and bananas as evening customers passed by.

Fruit vending comes with risks, she says, but the extra income could help her family manage rising rent and school expenses.

For Kavitha, the impact of blended finance is not measured in investment flows or policy frameworks. It is reflected in the ability to work longer hours safely, earn a little more money, and imagine a more stable future for her children.

Note: The Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly will be held from May 30 to June 6, 2026, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

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Credit: United Nations
 
At a time of accelerating global crises and transformation, the question is no longer whether young people should be at the table, but how power is being shared with them. With more than 2.6 billion people aged 15–35 worldwide, this generation is not only the largest in history, but a decisive force in shaping a more sustainable and inclusive future, according to the United Nations
 
Youth participation must move beyond visibility toward real influence and shared responsibility-UN Secretary-General António Guterres
 
Dr. Felipe Paullier of Uruguay assumed his mandate as the first-ever Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs in December 2023 at the age of 32. He is the youngest senior appointment in the history of the United Nations, and the youngest serving member of the Secretary-General’s senior management group.

By Bisma Qamar
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2026 (IPS)

In this exclusive interview, Dr. Felipe Paullier, UN Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) and Head of the United Nations Youth Office shares his leadership approach, insights on youth engagement, and his vision for driving institutional change from the grassroot level — redefining what is possible and proving that age is just a number.

Bisma Qamar: As the youngest and first ASG of the United Nations Youth Office, what drives and shapes your leadership style?

Dr. Paullier: I focus on perspective. Young leaders naturally bring fresh ideas and question why processes exist, fostering creativity and improvement. My approach is human-centered. Issues like mental health and wellbeing indicate societal shifts and must be taken into consideration. Leadership should be accessible and empathetic while understanding one’s potential and well-being. Today’s teams value approachable, realistic leaders rather than authoritative leaders.

“Leadership must blend insight with empathy; people want leaders who understand and support individuals”

From Potential to Performance :

Qamar: As member states become informed and establish programs like the youth delegate program, which strategic aspects are key to truly empowering young voices and ensuring meaningful participation beyond symbolism?

Dr. Paullier: The main challenge is converting narratives into actionable participation. Institutions need inclusivity, structured funding, and support mechanisms. Multilateral collaboration is essential, and power must be genuinely shared with youth. Meaningful participation involves more than representation—it requires influence over decision-making.

UN Youth Forums: Advancing Inclusion and Participation

Qamar: How do forums such as ECOSOC and HLPF contribute to advancing inclusion and promoting equitable opportunities?

Dr. Paullier: ECOSOC and similar platforms provide a structured environment where youth voices can be heard and actively contribute to institutional change. They allow spaces to be created where meaningful dialogue across generations and individuals from diverse backgrounds are possible. These forums emphasize translating strategic narratives into tangible actions at both institutional and grassroots levels, encouraging participants to understand their potential impact as well as the limitations of the processes involved and the power of collaboration to create impact.

Insights from Youth Participation at ECOSOC 2026 :

Qamar: Reflecting on 2026, what are your insights on the impact and engagement such as the ECOSOC for instance?

Dr. Paullier: Geopolitical tensions made participation more difficult for some regions. Nonetheless, enthusiasm remained high. This demonstrates the resilience and determination of young participants who continue to assert their presence and contribute meaningfully, even amid complex global situations.

“Despite such challenges which may occur, youth engagement continues to be a powerful message of hope and influence.”

Conclusion

This conversation highlights the transformative power of human-centered leadership, grounded in trust, collaboration, and vision. Dr. Paullier embodies a model where young leaders not only challenge norms and drive innovation but also inspire inclusion and collective action. His message is clear and compelling: meaningful change is achievable because leaders who step forward, embrace responsibility, and demonstrate possibility.

Through platforms like the United Nations Youth Office, these principles translate into tangible impact, proving that when vision is coupled with courage and collaboration, nothing is impossible — change happens because leaders like him are present to make it so.

As he states “It’s possible, because I am here”

Bisma Qamar is Focal Person for UN and Global Youth Affairs, PMYP.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Vast amounts of valuable materials buried inside old batteries, electronic waste, and end-of-life vehicles should be collected for critical materials. Credit: FutuRaM

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, May 27 2026 (IPS)

Europe’s growing mountain of waste could become one of its most important sources of critical raw materials, according to a major new report that warns of rising geopolitical risks and growing global competition for minerals needed in the green and digital economy.

The report, released by the Horizon Europe-funded FutuRaM project, says Europe’s “urban mine” now contains vast amounts of valuable materials buried inside old batteries, electronic waste, end-of-life vehicles, construction debris and dismantled wind turbines.

Researchers behind the project say Europe must urgently improve recycling, recovery and tracking systems if it wants to reduce dependence on imported critical raw materials, many of which are dominated by a handful of countries.

“The FutuRaM project represents a substantial step forward in strengthening the knowledge base on secondary raw materials and CRMs within Europe’s urban mine,” the report states.

Kees Baldé, Senior Scientific Specialist, Sustainable Cycles at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), told Inter Press Service (IPS) in an exclusive interview that the research mapped 42 Carbon-based Conductive Materials [CMS] in seven waste streams. It shows that the current substitution potential for primary materials in the final consumption of CRMs is a maximum of 27% overall.

“By 2050, the substitution potential could increase to over 50%. At the same time, 10 more than now (so, up to 24 different CRMs) could be sourced from the analysed waste streams. The new ones include rare earth elements found for instance in permanent magnets, such as Nd, Dy, Tb, Sm and Pr, but also Li, Co and Ce in batteries,” Baldé said.

The study comes at a time when European governments are racing to secure supplies of lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements used in electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines, solar panels and digital technologies.

Researchers said the project was developed amid “increasing geopolitical uncertainty, accelerating energy and digital transitions, and growing concerns regarding the security of supply of critical raw materials.”

When asked how vulnerable Europe is today when it comes to materials like lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements, Baldé said that most of them are sourced outside of the EU and supplied from single or only a few countries.

“Yet, they are critical for digitisation, renewable energy technology, and the military. Hence, they are on the critical raw material lists from the EU, and make the EU vulnerable.”

The report covers seven major waste streams, including waste batteries, construction and demolition waste, end-of-life vehicles, mining waste, slags and ashes, waste electrical and electronic equipment, and dismantled wind turbines.

One of the project’s key findings is that Europe still loses significant amounts of valuable materials because of weak collection systems, fragmented reporting rules and illegal waste flows.

“Persistent fragmentation of waste classifications, reporting systems and end-of-waste criteria across EU Member States undermines the functioning of the single market for secondary raw materials,” the report warns.

According to Baldé, the best sectors in terms of highest recovery rates and lowest tonnages of losses in tonnages are end-of-life vehicles and construction and demolition waste.

“Both have high collection rates and separate collection for some CRM rich components, such as Al and Cu. Despite this, there are still losses for several CRMs, such as rare earth metals, as indicated above. Biggest weaknesses in terms of tonnages of losses are industrial residues, such as slags and ashes,” Baldé  said.

Using long-term modelling up to 2050, the project examined how different policies and recycling systems could affect future material recovery. Researchers developed three scenarios called business as usual, recovery, and circularity.

The report says improved recovery systems could significantly increase the amount of usable materials extracted from waste streams. Researchers also created a new recovery model that distinguishes between raw materials hidden inside waste and the materials that can actually be recovered after treatment.

Waste electrical and electronic equipment, commonly known as ‘e-waste’, has emerged as one of the most important future sources of valuable minerals. The study examined critical materials, including silver, gold, cobalt, gallium, neodymium, palladium and tungsten, found in electronic products.

Construction and demolition waste has one of the highest rates of waste recovery. Credit: FutuRaM

The project also studied batteries in detail, focusing on materials such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and copper. Researchers looked at both current recycling technologies and future recovery systems.

At the same time, the report acknowledged major data gaps and uncertainty surrounding Europe’s waste streams.

“A comprehensive assessment of data quality is essential for ensuring that the conclusions and recommendations developed in FutuRaM are scientifically sound and fit for policymaking,” the report said.

Researchers noted that many datasets remain incomplete, commercially sensitive or inconsistent between countries. In some cases, industry data could only be used after anonymisation due to confidentiality concerns.

To improve transparency, the project developed a data quality framework based on six factors, including validity, accuracy, consistency, timeliness and completeness.

The project’s influence has already reached European policymakers. According to the report, FutuRaM worked closely with the European Commission and the Joint Research Centre to support implementation of the EU Critical Raw Materials Act.

“FutuRaM has provided data and intelligence to assist Member States in complying with this Article by identifying products, components and waste streams containing relevant CRMs,” the report states.

Researchers also carried out 20 case studies using a United Nations-based classification framework known as UNFC to assess the viability of recovery projects.

The project has drawn global attention beyond Europe. According to the report, FutuRaM findings were presented at 132 external events and conferences in countries including Singapore, Brazil, Thailand, Canada, Japan, Kenya and Panama.

A related report published for International E-Waste Day 2025 was picked up by almost 900 online news outlets across 55 countries and published in 27 languages.

“All actors that have access to and handle e-waste should report their activities for tracing purposes, while enforcement mechanisms and the role of authorities should be enhanced,” Pascal Leroy, Director General of the WEEE Forum, an international association representing global electronic waste producer responsibility organisations, told IPS News in an exclusive interview.

He said that we should also improve the infrastructure for e-waste management, along with making greater investments in relevant technologies.

“Additionally, awareness campaigns and proper funding are essential, and the Urban Mine Platform should be institutionalised. Finally, adherence to treatment standards must be made legally binding,” he said.

The researchers argue that Europe now needs stronger laws, standardised reporting systems and better recycling infrastructure to turn waste into a reliable strategic resource.

Among its recommendations, the report has pitched for a “harmonised European framework for classification, reporting, and life cycle tracking of secondary raw materials”.

It also urges European governments to strengthen enforcement against illegal waste exports, improve market surveillance and invest in recycling capacity and digital reporting systems.

“Supply from EU-recycling and demand from the EU-manufacturing industry need to be matched together,” Baldé said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Elongo, 12, washes her hands at Epo‑Ville Primary School in Bunia, Ituri Province, DR Congo, on 22 May 2026. She had just taken part in a handwashing demonstration led by UNICEF WASH Officer Ciza Nyalundja. Credit: UNICEF/Carmel Ndomba Mbikayi

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, May 26 2026 (IPS)

Since May 16, there has been a significant increase in the number of laboratory-confirmed and suspected Ebola cases reported across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), primarily in Ituri Province, with additional unrelated cases identified in Kampala, Uganda. Although the outbreak has remained largely confined to that region, it has been heavily linked to areas affected by insecurity, civilian displacement, and mining-related migration, raising concerns among global health experts that the outbreak could spread without effective monitoring and response efforts.

As of May 17, the World Health Organization (WHO) has determined that the Ebola outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo virus in the DRC and Uganda constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued health alerts to healthcare workers and travelers regarding the spread in the region. Current projections of the virus spreading to other continents remain low at this time, with WHO stating that the outbreak does not meet the criteria of a pandemic, as defined in the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR).

“We are now revising our risk assessment to very high at the national level, high at the regional level, and low at the global level,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, on May 22 at a United Nations (UN) press briefing in Geneva, noting that there have been 82 confirmed Ebola cases and seven deaths in the DRC. However, these figures are expected to be far higher, with nearly 750 suspected cases and 177 reported suspected deaths.

Two additional confirmed cases linked with travel from the DRC have also been reported in Uganda, one of which ended in death. Furthermore, two American nationals have been transferred to Europe for treatment after being suspected of contracting the virus following prolonged “high-risk contact.”

Response efforts have been largely limited as a result of widespread civilian displacement and prolonged conflict. On May 21, the UN reported that a hospital in the Ituri province was set on fire by angry relatives after the local police refused to release the body of an infected individual to the family due to concerns of contamination.

Additionally, the outbreak has been most pronounced in the Ituri and North Kivu provinces, which have historically been the center of armed conflict and humanitarian suffering in the DRC. Over the past few months alone, there have been more than 100,000 civilians displaced in this region as a direct result of violence, which has severely constrained humanitarian response efforts.

“These are some of the most difficult operating environments in the world for our life-saving work,” said Tom Fletcher, UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, in a statement shared to X. “We face conflict and high population movement. We are working to secure safe and sustained access for frontline responders, including to areas controlled by armed groups. It is essential that there is no obstruction to our response. We must have access to all routes — air, land, and water — across the affected areas.”

According to Ghebreyesus, approximately four million people are in dire need of humanitarian intervention, two million are displaced, and ten million are facing acute food insecurity. Women will be disproportionately affected, as they often serve in caregiving roles, domestic labour, and frontline services, all of which increase their risk of infection. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable, while quarantine measures have been linked with rising rates of gender based violence.

These risks have been exacerbated by the collapse of health systems in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces, where needs are most dire. In 2025, WHO recorded more than 1.5 million people across these provinces who lost access to primary healthcare facilities. Approximately 85 percent of healthcare centers face critical drug shortages.

“Even if people are sick, they may be suspected cases, they cannot access health services, and therefore they cannot be detected, they cannot be diagnosed,” said Teresa Zakaria, WHO’s Unit Head of Humanitarian Operations. “Within the outbreak response as well, we need to really make sure that essential health services for everyone in the two provinces are safeguarded, especially for those who have been forcibly displaced and extremely vulnerable.”

Humanitarian experts have stressed that restoring the public’s confidence in agencies’ capability to contain the outbreak will be crucial moving forward. Following the 2013-2016 Western Africa Ebola epidemic, many communities are still carrying trauma and have harbored a deep distrust in the humanitarian response.

Many residents across the region continue to seek treatment, while others believe that Ebola is “fabricated,” according to Gabriela Arenas of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

“They remember the fear. They remember the rumours spreading to villages. They remember neighbours disappearing into treatment centres,” said Arenas. “During an Ebola outbreak, trust and community acceptance can mean the difference between containment and wider transmission.”

Supplies handed over by UNICEF Chief Field Office Ibrahim Abdi Shire hands over supplies to the Provincial Health Directorate in Bukavu, South Kivu Province, DR Congo, on 20 May 2026. Credit: UNICEF/Christian Kalengera

On May 22, Fletcher announced that up to $60 million USD from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund will be allocated to support containment, treatment, and monitoring efforts in DRC and surrounding countries. WHO also announced that it has deployed 22 international staff to provide direct frontline assistance and released $3.9 million USD from its contingency fund. The agency, in collaboration with Africa’s CDC, has established a continental incident management team to support frontline responders and protect vulnerable communities.

“We are applying lessons from previous outbreaks,” said Fletcher. “Containment depends on fast, coordinated action at the community level. We need strong communication with governments and effective early warning and detection systems across affected countries. Community trust is essential: we will continue delivering wider humanitarian support to people affected, engage closely with them to understand their needs, preposition supplies where possible, and avoid militarised delivery of support.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Anup Jagwani, Global Director for Farming and Agribusiness at the World Bank Group, addresses the World Seed Congress. Credit: Supplied

By Friday Phiri
LISBON, May 26 2026 (IPS)

It is often said that the quality of seed determines the quality of the produce and, consequently, the sustainability of the entire agricultural value chain, influencing everything from crop yields to nutritional value.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) emphasises that “we cannot have good crops if we do not have quality seeds”, a principle that underpins global efforts to improve food and nutritional security. It may thus be safe to conclude that seed is the foundation of good health.

The week of 18 to 23 May 2026 witnessed two related but parallel global events: one on global health, the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the other on the importance of seeds to global agriculture and food security, the World Seed Congress, organised by the International Seed Federation (ISF).

With a record attendance of more than 1,700 delegates and guests representing over 900 companies and organisations in Lisbon and held under the theme “Joint Actions, Resilient Futures”, the seed congress called for a collective commitment and action at a moment when the multilateral frameworks underpinning global food and nutritional security are under unprecedented strain.

The Congress took place amid mounting pressure on global agri-food systems, sparked by conflicts and worsened by climate change. In 2025, two famines were declared in a single year for the first time. This year, recent geopolitical tensions continue to threaten global trade and economic stability, while an estimated 700 million people worldwide, primarily in Africa and Western Asia, still face hunger each year.

And experts have warned that climate change, including a predicted El Niño event in mid-2026, could push an additional 132 million people in vulnerable contexts into food and nutrition insecurity within five years due to rising temperatures’ impacts on crop yields.

Michael Keller, Secretary General of the International Seed Federation. Credit: Supplied

“It would be easy to look at the state of the world and conclude that international cooperation is in retreat. But the seed industry tells a different story,” says Michael Keller, Secretary General of ISF. “We are here in Lisbon in record numbers in this critical year because we know that collaboration, innovation, and joint actions are practical and appropriate responses to the scale of the truly global challenges we face now and in the future. Unfortunately, in Africa, non-flexible legal and regulatory frameworks still hamper innovation by private seed companies.

And about 2,000 km away in Geneva, WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus delivered a similar message, focused on the theme “Reshaping global health: a shared responsibility”, strongly reinforcing the interconnected nature of global health and climate change resilience with several important social determinants of health, including food systems and nutrition.

Ghebreyesus highlighted the importance of not treating health as a standalone sector but rather ensuring that all social determinants of health are well-functioning in support of resilience, sovereignty, and protection of communities from crises.

The chain is simple: climate change threatens agricultural production, food systems, and access to nutritious food, leading to malnutrition, and malnutrition in turn increases vulnerability to infectious diseases and public health emergencies.

Role of Seed Breeding Innovations for Health

Seed innovations alone account for 74 percent of the yield gains observed in crops in the European Union, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. However, the global system of crop variety development depends heavily on cross-border trade, with the typical novel varieties bred, tested, produced, and distributed across multiple countries before they reach a farmer’s hands.

“Seed companies invest up to 30 percent of their turnover in research and development because we believe that innovation is key to solving problems at scale and for generations to come,” said Arthur Santosh Attavar, ISF President and Managing Chair of the international seed company Indo-American Hybrid Seeds. “ISF continues to work with national and regional seed associations, as well as governments, to create enabling policy environments that help ensure innovations reach farmers quickly and without unnecessary delays or restrictions.”

In the wake of increased climate-induced extreme weather events, one of the key innovations in seed breeding has been ‘climate-resilient seed’ to withstand not only intensified droughts but also the increased prevalence of pests and diseases related to drought conditions.

But the World Bank believes breeding seed that could go beyond being drought tolerant to high nutritional value could be a game changer.

“Until now, we have been dealing with climate resilience largely from the drought and sometimes excess rainfall perspective, but can we also start looking at developing seed varieties by building in additional nutritional aspects such as high protein content? At the World Bank, we are looking at different ways of how to build food systems resilience in a holistic way—covering the entire value chain from seed, infrastructure, markets and all the in-between, with a clear focus on sustainability,” said Anup Jangwani, Global Director of Farming and Agribusiness at the World Bank Group.

Sustained Awareness is Key for Sustainability  

Environmental sustainability has, in recent years, become a buzzword in the wake of increasing climate impacts. Unfortunately, there have been some cases of greenwashing linked to environmental sustainability – the promotion of false solutions to the climate crisis that distract from and delay concrete and credible action.

However, at Companhia das Lezírias the largest agricultural and forestry holding in Portugal, “environmental sustainability is a lived reality,” says Sandra Alcobia, who serves as a biologist and is responsible for tourism and visitation.

“Here we live and practice environmental sustainability in reality; our production is organic in every sense. In 2015, the drought conditions that we suffered provided us with an awakening to make a drastic change, and we have not looked back. We are proud to be a certified carbon-neutral establishment.”

Established in 1836, the farm boasts 20,000 hectares of land for crop farming, animal rearing and forestry – all premised on the principles of sustainability, emphasising organic practices.

But Antonio Farrim, Veterinarian and Director of Agriculture Production at Companhia das Lezírias, believes public awareness is key to the climate-resilient and sustainable agenda.

“Governments must take full responsibility for sensitising the public on the health benefits of sustainably grown food,” he says. “For example, in beef production, the colour of meat produced organically is not usually appealing to the eye; it is slightly dark with yellow fat. In terms of nutrition, however, this is the most healthy beef one can get, and yet most consumers don’t understand this fact. It is, therefore, incumbent upon governments to undertake sustained awareness for both environmental sustainability and good health. For us here at Companihia, we don’t only produce for sustainability but also for the good health of the consumers.”

Head of External Communication at Syngenta, one of the world’s biggest agricultural innovation companies, Dimitri Houtart agrees with the importance of the public awareness narrative.

Houtart says the growing global population poses a challenge as the global community races to produce enough for everyone, sustainably, with limited land. This, he states, can only be achieved through innovation and sustained public awareness for uptake of innovative technologies that support high productivity.

However, he notes, “misinformation on catalytic research and innovations to improve productivity while preserving environmental integrity is one of the drawbacks.”

“The need for a well-informed cadre of agricultural journalists cannot be over-emphasised. For me, Agricultural journalism is the most important branch of this profession because the agricultural information needs of the public, especially in this era of social media, are immense.”

Breeding Innovations for Africa’s Unique Challenges   

A quick search on post‑harvest losses in Africa reveals that it ranges between 20 and 40%, especially in crops such as maize, cassava, cowpea, and bananas, some of the continent’s staple crops

Losses are largely attributed to pests, diseases, poor storage and climate stress. While technological advancement is a critical means of enhancing agricultural productivity and improving food and nutrition security in many low- and middle-income countries, it has been slow to gain traction in Africa.

Thus, one of the innovations being tried is to breed crops that resist the noted stresses and reduce losses before they happen.

Professor Mohammed Ishiyaku of the Institute for Agricultural Research in Nigeria is one of the lead scientists behind Pod Borer Resistant cowpea – a variety developed by Nigerian scientists over three decades, now approved and growing commercially in Nigeria, with regulatory approvals advancing across the region.

“Legume Pod Borer (Maruca vitrata) is one of the most damaging insect pests limiting cowpea production,” says Prof. Ishiyaku. “The damage caused by the pod borer to cowpea plants reduces the size and quality of the cowpea harvest. It can reduce grain yield by up to 80%. Farmers typically spray pesticides up to 6 – 10 times within a planting season in an attempt to control this insect pest, but this is often not effective because the chemicals do not reach the pest larvae inside the plant tissues. The chemicals are also expensive, their availability to farmers is limited, and inadequate training in their use often leads to unintended dangerous human health and safety impacts. Therefore, a Cowpea product that can protect itself from Legume Pod borer damage makes it easier and cheaper for farmers to produce cowpeas in areas where this pest is a problem.”

An international public-private partnership, managed and coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), is developing Pod-Borer Resistant Cowpeas.

Sticking with innovation, Bruce Knight of Legume Technology, based in the United Kingdom, has been conducting trials on how to support smallholder farmers in Africa with affordable means of accessing inoculants for legume seeds.

With limited resources, most smallholder farmers on the continent still use untreated seeds, usually kept from the previous harvest. To help boost productivity, Dr Bruce Knight has, through support from the Gates Foundation, developed an affordable and tailor-made small-packaged inoculant solution that is able to treat at least a hectare of legume seeds.

“After 10 years of trials, we have finally got it right; we have developed an affordable inoculant solution for smallholder farmers in Africa,” says Knight. “So far, our product has outperformed other inoculant producers on the continent, and we are geared to roll out and support smallholder farmers with this tailor-made solution.”

A well-known health phrase, “You are what you eat”, implies that food is the foundation of good health. What you eat dictates your general well-being. Seed, from which most food is cultivated, is therefore the foundation of optimal health.

The author is the Climate Change and Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Alice Onyango walks through the trees on her farm. She has been an active participant of My Farm Trees, a farmer- and community-led tree-based project aimed at the restoration of degraded landscapes. Credit: Wilson Odhiambo/IPS

By Wilson Odhiambo
NAIROBI, May 26 2026 (IPS)

As 52-year-old Alice Onyango walks through her farm in Siaya county, Kenya, you can tell she is proud of her trees, as some tower over her, providing her with shade, while others seem ready to provide her with fruit for the market.

Onyango has been planting trees on her farm for over a decade, and thanks to a project dubbed ‘My Farm Trees’, she realised just how important her work is to the environment while also managing to earn a couple of shillings to help supplement her livelihood.

“I plant different types of trees on my farm, most of which are fruit trees such as avocados, oranges, mangoes, and papaya, which I can harvest and sell in the market. I also have some trees that I plant for timber and even firewood,” Onyango told Inter Press Service (IPS).

“I have been doing this for many years as my source of livelihood and it was not until recently that my neighbour told me about My Farm Trees and how it can help me better improve on my farm while also earning some token,” said Onyango.

As the world works to find lasting solutions to safeguarding the ever-dwindling forest ecosystems and fighting climate change, smallholder farmers across the globe and especially in Africa can now participate and be recognised in the effort, thanks to an environmental restoration project, My Farm Trees.

My Farm Trees is a digital platform developed by the Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT with the aim of restoring the environment by encouraging smallholder farmers to take up tree planting alongside their daily activities. By doing this, local communities are able to promote climate change mitigation while also improving their lives through the initiative.

Piloted in Kenya and Cameroon, the project has already supported the restoration of thousands of hectares of once degraded land and trained community members and is now scaling globally, giving smallholder farmers essential tools and knowledge for effective, science-based landscape restoration.

The platform works by combining capacity building, monitoring, verification and providing incentives to empower smallholder farmers to take up tree-based restoration projects. In return, the farmers are rewarded with both short-term benefits (direct digital payments enabled by the platform) and, eventually, the long-term benefits of restored landscapes for improved agricultural productivity, water regulation and climate resilience.

“My Farm Trees was designed to help with environmental restoration by encouraging smallholder farmers to plant trees and in return they get to access financial benefits and even get recognised for their contribution to climate change mitigation,” said Fidel Chiriboga, project scaling lead for usage, partnerships, collaborations, impact, and development.

“Apart from the financial incentives, the farmers also get to learn the importance of having these trees (especially the native tree species) in their environment and how they can help with their agricultural activities,’’ Chiriboga said.

In Kenya, the project is currently being implemented in Siaya, Laikipia and Turkana counties, which are regarded as areas with limited tree cover.

This grassroots initiative aligns closely with Kenya’s policy direction, where the country has in place a national ecosystem restoration strategy (2023–2032) that provides a clear framework for restoring degraded landscapes while strengthening community resilience and livelihoods. The strategy prioritises tree growing alongside improved governance and inclusive economic models that place communities at the centre of restoration efforts.

Siaya for instance, currently ranks 44 out of 47 counties, with an estimated 5.26% tree cover, compared to the national average of 12.13%.

Under national targets, Siaya is expected to plant at least 14 million trees per year over the next decade, according to the Siaya county commissioner.

Cameroonian participants of the My Farm Trees project received saplings for planting on their farms. The digital project aims to improve both the environment and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Credit: Marius Ekeu/My Farm Trees

In Cameroon, My Farm Trees has been able to attract thousands of farmers from as young as 18 to as old as 75. These include farmers from the West, Central and extreme North regions of Cameroon.

According to Maruius Ekeu, the project manager, in Cameroon, more than 145,000 seedlings from 60 tree species (45 native to Cameroon) were planted to restore 1,806 hectares of degraded lands, and the areas restored belong to 2,527 individual farmers (21% women), 315 sacred forests and 111 primary schools.

A total of $145,000 was paid through the mobile money account linked to MFT to purchase seeds and seedlings. In addition, over $150,000 was transferred as economic incentives to individual farmers as a reward for the survival of seedlings planted on their farms.

“The farmers were paid for tree maintenance between $22 and $200 per monitoring, but we have yet to carry out a survey to know what they did with the money paid to them, though most seem to prefer using it to expand their tree farms,” said Ekeu.

“On average seed collectors earned between $100 and $3,000 depending on collection efforts (e.g. tree species, seed quantity, and seed quality). Tree nursery managers earned between $200 and $22,000 depending on the number of seedlings produced and their price (varies per species),” Ekeu said.

Alice Onyango shows off a sewing machine she bought with the proceeds of the My Farm Trees project. Credit: Wilson Odhiambo/IPS

As for Onyango, she used part of the Ksh 37000 ($285.94) she received from My Farm Trees to offset her children’s school fees and the rest to buy a sewing machine.

“As my family’s breadwinner, I bought the sewing machine to help me make extra money mending clothes while I am not selling fruits or timber,” Onyango said.

Given that most of the farmers involved in this project come from rural areas which are characterised by poor internet connectivity and limited access to smartphones, the project’s app has been designed in such a way that it can be used offline.

“Farmers do not need to be connected to the internet when using the app, as it allows them to collect data while offline, which they can then share with us later on when they get access to the internet,” said Francis Oduor, project manager, Kenya.

“We also train and provide select locals (village-based assistants) with smartphones fitted with the app, and they can go around using them to help us monitor and keep track of the farmers who have registered with us but lack smartphones. A farmer only really needs to have an identification number and a registered phone number where they can receive their payments,” Oduor said.

Oduor added that the money the farmers received has been used for different purposes that range from expanding farms, buying farm inputs, paying school fees, building houses and even starting other income-generating ventures.

While planting trees is the main objective of the project, My Farm Trees emphasises planting native trees, especially those that are almost extinct in certain areas. Farmers who plant native trees receive more money compared to those who plant exotic trees. Fruit trees also fetch more earnings for the farmers compared to those planted for timber purposes.

And farmers who grow trees in drought-prone areas such as Turkana and Laikipia also receive more compensation as compared to those who grow trees in areas that receive adequate rainfall such as Siaya.

The 2-million-dollar project was funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

“The My Farm Trees project is a great example of GEF’s high-risk–high-reward strategy, whereby a seed funding of $2 million catalyses investments and contributions by many other partners. Eventually, the goal is to upscale the new technology and approach to other countries and to achieve sustainable funding through crowdfunding approaches,” said Ulrich Apel, Senior Environmental Specialist at the GEF.

The My Farm Trees project is a great example of GEF’s high-risk–high-reward strategy, whereby a seed funding of $2 million catalyses investments and contributions by many other partners.

‘’The GEF role as a financial mechanism for the global environment is to provide catalytic funding for innovative projects that test cutting-edge technologies and solutions to achieve positive environmental outcomes,” Apel said.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) serves as the GEF implementing agency for My Farm Trees. It designs the overall project and oversees delivery and coordination, working with the lead executing partner, the Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT, governments, farmers, and other partners.

“The project has been a resounding success, and IUCN and partners are presently working to develop new projects based on this approach to support global and national goals on biodiversity conservation, climate, food security and more,” said Joshua Schneck, Global Initiatives Portfolio Manager, IUCN.

According to Dr Shem Kuyah, a Senior Lecturer from the department of Botany, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and one of Kenya’s leading researchers in agroforestry, agroforestry has received much attention globally and especially in Africa because of its multiple benefits that help address the current challenges of climate change, land use and livelihoods.

Kuyah said that agroforestry has both protective and productive benefits, which allow land users/practitioners to fight environmental challenges without sacrificing or forfeiting livelihoods. Currently, the challenges of climate change, land use change and changing livelihoods require multifunctional strategies, which makes agroforestry important.

Kuyah praised My Farm Trees, stating that both incentives and training help to mitigate the long waiting period that it takes to realise the benefits of agroforestry and also maximise the benefits of agroforestry and reduce trade-offs by planting and managing the right tree in the right place for the right purpose.

“The best way to implement agroforestry is to contextualise the practice to local conditions, provide support (e.g., incentives) and training for farmers, and develop the agroforestry value chain,” Kuyah said.

“In terms of contextualising agroforestry, I would work with farmers to identify their needs and co-create options that are locally relevant. The support may help absorb some of the cost while the training may focus on helping farmers integrate agroforestry with other farm enterprises that provide short-term benefits.”

 Note: The Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly will be held from May 30 to June 6, 2026, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: Derek Hudson/Getty Images. Source: International Monetary Fund (IMF)

By Mario Mansour and Fayçal Sawadogo
WASHINGTON DC, May 26 2026 (IPS)

Developing countries face major difficulties as income from natural resource extraction industries decreases and wealthier nations reduce their aid.

Nontax revenue from natural resources extraction and foreign aid grants for general spending have fallen by a combined 3.8 percent of gross domestic product since 2000, according to the latest annual update of the IMF’s World Revenue Longitudinal Database.

Gains from tax collection since then amounted to just 2.6 percent, offsetting only two-thirds of the decline, our unique tally of detailed public revenue data shows.

The Chart of the Week shows that the decrease in proceeds from nontax extractive revenue was the biggest driver of the drop for both low-income developing countries and emerging market economies.

These revenues are generally what governments earn from industries like oil, gas, and mining—such as royalties, profit sharing, and dividends from state-owned enterprises. Declining foreign aid grants for general spending also contributed to lower revenues.

Closing the gap often requires collecting more tax revenue, and affected countries won’t be able to deliver on their economic development goals without doing so. To succeed, they need sustained investment in domestic tax policy and tax administration, supported by effective institutions to underpin them.

The IMF supports member countries through its capacity development efforts—customized technical assistance and training services, often delivered through collaboration with donor countries and other international organizations.

Capacity development helps developing countries build expertise and policy frameworks to improve tax systems and institutions. It also reduces dependence on volatile and declining revenues, such as from extractive industries and foreign support.

Helping developing countries with this work, known as domestic revenue mobilization, contributes to fiscal resilience, which ultimately benefits global economic growth.

Evaluating how governments raise more reliable, sustainable revenue from within the economy requires high-quality granular data. Our database tracks decades of tax and nontax revenue consistently across 195 economies using data provided by our members.

The database is also a unique resource for researchers, policymakers, and development practitioners seeking to analyze revenue trends, benchmark performance, and identify reform priorities.

Mario Mansour & Fayçal Sawadogo, International Monetary Fund

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Nurina Malek
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 26 2026 (IPS)

The Federal Reserve Bank’s turn to ‘reserve management’ exposes the limited policy options still available as the US seeks to protect itself against international stagflation stemming from President Trump’s policies.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Ex-Duquesne Capital chairman Stanley Druckenmiller, former George Soros ‘clone’ and right-hand man, has suggested that Fed adoption of reserve management implies it is running out of policy options.

Reserve management
Successive US administrations have long refused to address the roots of the worsening fiscal and debt problems.

As the US Treasury borrows ever more to continue funding federal government spending with less tax revenue, the accumulated public debt of $39 trillion now costs over a trillion dollars a year to service, even more than 2025 defence spending!

Total Fed losses since 2022 exceed $245 billion! But how does a central bank, that literally creates its own money, lose money?

The losses are blamed on the Fed paying banks over 4% interest on reserves after 2008. However, most Treasury bonds the Fed bought to fund the COVID crisis response yield only 1–2%!

This massive ‘negative carry trade’ is booked as a ‘deferred asset’. Such creative accounting implies the US is technically insolvent. But this is not a problem as long as Wall Street shapes its own narrative.

Nurina Malek

In December 2025, Fed chair Jerome Powell announced that the Fed would purchase $40 billion in Treasury bills each month. This new mode of money creation finances government debt.

After over a decade of ‘quantitative easing’ (QE), which created money on a large scale, the Fed claimed it was reducing its balance sheet from 2022 to 2025 to curb inflation.

Risk diversification
Finance ministries and central banks worldwide increasingly worry about their vulnerability.

The US decision to freeze about $300 billion of Russian assets held in Western financial institutions is supported by its Western allies. Such actions have triggered broader concerns.

Threatened by the prospect of a softening bond market, the Fed turn to reserve management, which implies it has exhausted other options, including printing money.

Increasingly weaponised in recent years, the dollar is no longer trusted as a neutral reserve asset. Hence, central banks have been diversifying their heavily dollar-denominated reserve assets to reduce vulnerability.

Physical gold has been quietly acquired to change reserve portfolios. Over the past three years, non-US central banks have bought over 1,000 tons of gold annually.

Horns of dilemma
New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has announced that reducing interest rates and shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet are his policy priorities. Both seem responsible and sensible.

Lowering rates benefits borrowers. But a smaller balance sheet implies less market intervention, requiring greater fiscal discipline and monetary credibility, both of which are desired by markets.

But Warsh’s two goals cannot be realised together in today’s US economy. Over $10 trillion in bonds are maturing and need refinancing over the coming year, as the Treasury borrows ever more to finance its faster-growing fiscal deficit.

The Fed balance sheet cannot be reduced while keeping rates low. The new Fed Chair will also have to choose between printing money and letting the bond market collapse. All his predecessors have chosen to print money.

In 2012, Jerome Powell was sceptical of QE, arguing it would never be enough. But by 2020, Fed chair Powell printed more dollars than ever before.

The Fed has long been expected to buy up Treasury bonds that private interests did not purchase. Increasing the money supply has kept the banking system liquid and depreciated the dollar, as desired by Trump 2.0.

As private investors and foreign central banks lose interest in US Treasury bonds, demand is at its weakest in decades.

Who will buy new US debt if the Fed does not buy Treasury bonds while rates remain low? Outgoing Fed chair Powell came to the rescue.

As ‘reserve management’ requires less market demand, he has given the dollar system an unexpected new lease of life without lowering interest rates, as Trump demanded.

However, the policy change will do little to reverse contractionary and inflationary pressures on the world economy, worsened by Trump’s various policies.

Oil accelerant
The Hormuz oil shock could accelerate this otherwise gradual transition. The slow energy transition away from fossil fuels has increased vulnerability.

In the last half-century, oil price hikes have raised energy costs, exacerbating inflation worldwide. In 1973, the OPEC embargo quadrupled petroleum prices overnight.

Over the following year, the gold price almost doubled. The 1979 Iranian revolution more than doubled crude oil prices, which in turn pushed gold prices even higher.

The conventional central bank response of raising rates to fight inflation could worsen stagflation, as inflation rises while economic growth slows.

Raising interest rates may check some sources of inflation, while increasing borrowing costs, squeezing investment and consumption, and hiking the costs of Treasury debt.

Interest payments on accumulated federal debt will exceed a trillion in 2026. As old debt issued during QE is refinanced at higher rates, fiscal and debt problems will accelerate.

Therefore, the Fed’s turn to reserve management is not merely a minor technical change in balance-sheet bookkeeping. It is trying to address worsening public finances as policy options run out.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Astana’s futuristic skyline and Japan’s urban landscape converge with symbols of clean energy, connectivity and peace, reflecting a partnership shaped by smart-city cooperation, energy security, and shared memories of nuclear suffering.　Credit: INPS Japan

By Katsuhiro Asagiri
TOKYO, Japan, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The relationship between Japan and Kazakhstan is often described in terms of diplomacy, investment and regional cooperation. But at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty, it deserves to be understood in broader terms: as a partnership linking cities, resources, technology and peace.

Kisho Kurokawa

Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, offers a powerful symbol of that evolving relationship. Built on the vast steppes of Central Asia, the city is often described as a futuristic capital, with glass-and-steel towers, broad boulevards and monumental architecture reflecting the aspirations of a young state seeking to define its place in the 21st century.

For Japan, however, Astana is not simply a distant capital. Its master plan was shaped in part by the late Kisho Kurokawa, one of Japan’s leading architects, who sought to combine Kazakhstan’s nomadic heritage, harsh natural environment and state-building ambitions with forward-looking urban design. That historical connection is now taking on new meaning as Japan and Kazakhstan expand cooperation in smart cities, green technologies, energy security and nuclear disarmament.

On May 22, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev met Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike in Astana to discuss cooperation in smart city development, digital technologies, finance, education, emergency response and sustainable urban management. Tokyo, one of the world’s most densely populated metropolitan areas, has developed advanced systems in public safety, disaster preparedness, transportation and administrative services. For rapidly growing Astana, Tokyo’s experience provides a valuable reference point.

Akorda

This is not merely technical cooperation. It points to a new form of urban diplomacy, in which cities work directly together to address shared challenges such as climate change, disaster risk, energy efficiency, digital governance and sustainable growth. In an age when many of the world’s most urgent problems are experienced first and most directly in cities, such cooperation matters.

Yet the deepening Japan-Kazakhstan relationship cannot be explained by urban cooperation alone. Behind it lies a more urgent geopolitical reality: instability in the Middle East and the resulting anxiety over energy security.

Japan has long depended heavily on the Middle East for crude oil. Tensions around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz pose risks that directly affect Japan’s economy and daily life. For Tokyo, diversifying energy sources, critical mineral supplies and transport routes is no longer simply a matter of trade policy. It has become a central element of economic security.

Middle Corridor. Photo credit: TITR

In this context, Kazakhstan has gained renewed importance. The country is rich in oil, natural gas, uranium and critical minerals, while also serving as a logistical hub linking Central Asia and Europe. At the “Central Asia plus Japan” summit held in Tokyo in December 2025, strengthening critical mineral supply chains and supporting the Trans-Caspian Corridor — a route connecting Central Asia and Europe without passing through Russia — were placed at the center of regional cooperation.

For Japan, rare earths, lithium and other critical minerals are essential to batteries, electronics, renewable energy systems and next-generation industries. Diversifying both sources of supply and transport routes is therefore an energy policy, an industrial policy and a security policy at once. Astana is increasingly becoming an important platform for Japan’s engagement with Central Asia.

Semipalatinsk Former Nuclear Weapon Test site. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

The logic of this partnership is not limited to resources. It also extends to technology and sustainability. During Koike’s visit, a Kazakhstan-Japan business event brought together Japanese companies specializing in decarbonization, renewable energy, drone technologies and carbon credit solutions. On the Kazakh side, interest in Japanese expertise has been growing in renewable energy, artificial intelligence and digital transformation.

Urban development, environmental technologies, resource cooperation and logistics infrastructure are no longer separate policy fields. They are becoming part of a wider strategic framework in which Japan and Kazakhstan can complement each other: one with advanced technology and urban management experience, the other with resources, geography and a young capital still in the process of defining its future.

But there is a deeper layer to this relationship that should not be overlooked: the memory of nuclear suffering.

Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic bombings in war, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kazakhstan endured severe radiation damage from repeated Soviet nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk test site, where more than 450 nuclear tests were conducted between 1949 and 1989, leaving long-term consequences for local communities and public health.

In 1991, Kazakhstan closed the Semipalatinsk test site. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it gave up one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals remaining on its territory and chose the path of a non-nuclear-weapon state. That decision has become a defining feature of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy.

Japan and Kazakhstan both know, not as an abstract matter of security theory but through historical experience, what nuclear weapons can inflict on human beings, communities, the environment and future generations. This shared memory gives the bilateral relationship a distinct ethical foundation.

That memory has also shaped sustained cooperation among governments, civil society and international organizations. INPS Japan has reported on nuclear disarmament-related conferences and events involving Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Center for International Security and Policy, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Soka Gakkai International.

A Group photo of participants of the regional conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear-free-zone in Central Asia held on August 29, 2023. Photo Credit: Jibek Joly TV Channel

One notable example was the anti-nuclear exhibition “Everything You Treasure — For a World Free From Nuclear Weapons,” jointly organized in Astana by SGI, ICAN and Kazakhstan’s Center for International Security and Policy. Held in September 2022 at Keruen Mall in central Astana, the exhibition used photographs, illustrations and graphics to educate young people about the dangers of nuclear weapons, from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to the continuing humanitarian consequences of nuclear arms.

A documentary produced by CISP, a Kazakh NGO, with support from SGI.

Such initiatives are important because nuclear disarmament cannot be left to diplomats alone. If the memory of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Semipalatinsk is to shape policy, it must also be passed to younger generations. Exhibitions, survivor testimony, documentaries and civil society campaigns help ensure that nuclear weapons are discussed not only as instruments of deterrence, but also as weapons with catastrophic human, environmental and intergenerational consequences.

In 2023, a regional conference in Astana addressed the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone, testimony from nuclear test victims, and victim assistance and environmental remediation under the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Unlike debates that frame nuclear weapons mainly in terms of deterrence or national prestige, such forums place affected people, their families, communities and environment at the center.

A documentary on Kazakhstan’s nuclear test victims, I Want to Live On: The Untold Stories of the Polygon, produced by Kazakhstan’s CISP with support from SGI, has also helped bring the testimonies of second- and third-generation victims in the Semey region to international audiences. Together with workshops involving the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs and discussions on cooperation among nuclear-weapon-free zones, these efforts keep the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons at the center of global disarmament debates.

Akorda.kz

In 2025, President Tokayev delivered a lecture at the United Nations University in Tokyo, warning that nuclear risks were again on the rise. Referring to Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Semipalatinsk, he stressed that Japan and Kazakhstan are both countries that understand the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons.

That message should be taken seriously. Japan and Kazakhstan do not occupy identical security positions. Japan continues to rely on the United States’ nuclear deterrence as part of its security policy, while Kazakhstan, having renounced nuclear weapons, is a member of the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone. Yet both countries share common ground in seeking to transform the memory of nuclear harm into action for international peace.

Japan and Kazakhstan Draw Closer as Iran Crisis Reshapes Energy and Security Priorities. Credit: INPS Japan

This is why practical cooperation in smart cities, green technologies, energy transition, critical minerals and the Trans-Caspian Corridor carries meaning beyond ordinary transactions. It rests on a wider foundation: mutual trust, shared vulnerability and a common responsibility to help build a safer and more sustainable future.

At a time when crises in the Middle East are shaking the global energy order and nuclear risks are again moving to the forefront of international politics, the Japan-Kazakhstan relationship is no longer merely a story of friendship. It reflects Japan’s own choices in an age of uncertainty: whether to approach Central Asia only as a source of resources, or as a region with which it can build a broader partnership linking cities, technology, energy security and peace.

Astana, the futuristic capital shaped in part by a Japanese architect, has become more than a symbol of Kazakhstan’s ambitions. It is also a reminder that the future of international cooperation will depend not only on markets and infrastructure, but on memory, responsibility and the courage to imagine security beyond fear.

This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Deborah Nyokabi speaking at the 81st African Commission on Human & Peoples' Rights

By Deborah Nyokabi
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The theme of Africa Day 2026, “63 years of unity, integration and development,” offers a stark reminder of the gap that often exists between rhetoric and reality. While commendable regional legal frameworks have advanced legal protections for millions of women and girls, injustice remains written into the fabric of national family laws in many African countries, entrenching gender inequality in the home.

Such is the reality for the young woman in Kampala whose marriage was never legally registered and who, in the eyes of the State, does not exist as a wife.

For the woman in Lagos whose husband took their children after a divorce she did not want, and the law backed him.

For the Muslim widow in Nairobi who cannot inherit the home she shared with her husband for thirty years because property passes to his male relatives.

How the global anti-rights movement is targeting women’s rights in Africa

African countries have made laudable advances in legal rights for women and girls, but many laws governing marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance remain stubbornly unequal.

Deborah Nyokabi

Equality Now’s report, Gender Inequality in Family Laws in Africa, documents how legal frameworks continue to subordinate women within the family. Women face intimate partner violence; some laws permit child marriage; customary and religious marriages frequently operate outside formal legal protections, leaving wives without legal safeguards; divorce settlements do not recognise women’s unpaid domestic work; and custody laws favour paternal authority over equal parental rights.

Reform remains slow, uneven, and increasingly obstructed by a coordinated anti-rights movement that includes transnational ultra-conservative Christian organisations, populist political actors from the Global North, billionaire-funded conservative foundations, and right-wing think tanks and legal advocacy groups. They have found fertile ground in Africa, forging alliances with conservative organisations, religious leaders, and politicians who promote illiberal agendas.

Operating in plain sight and dressed in the language of culture, tradition, and sovereignty, these groups target parliaments, constitutional drafting processes, and regional human rights bodies. They draft model legislation, deploy strategic litigation, lobby policymakers, and cultivate relationships with heads of state and cabinet ministers.

They infiltrate international and regional human rights spaces to weaken protections, and run expensive communications campaigns while channeling cross-border funding to local organisations to portray coordinated efforts as grassroots.

Anti-rights groups seeking to reshape African policy

At the second Pan-African Conference on Family Values, held in Nairobi in May 2025, a declaration was adopted calling the family “not a flexible or negotiable construct” and committing to translate their discriminative doctrine into enforceable laws and regional partnerships. High-ranking Kenyan government officials delivered the opening and closing addresses.

The conference was co-sponsored by Family Watch International, C-Fam, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, all of whom served on the advisory committee of Project 2025, an initiative by the US-based Heritage Foundation seeking to roll back reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and diversity initiatives. These are not fringe actors. They are well-funded, politically connected, and pushing into the mainstream.

These groups have also drafted a proposed African Charter on Family, Sovereignty, and Values, which undermines gender equality by rejecting universal definitions of gender, sexuality, and sexual and reproductive health rights. Tabled at an inter-parliamentary conference in Entebbe in 2025, it calls for withdrawal from international human rights instruments and seeks to shield states from obligations under the Maputo Protocol, the African Union’s legally-binding women’s rights treaty.

Applications for observer status at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights from organisations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom signal an intent to infiltrate the very bodies designed to hold States accountable to their obligation to ensure equality, including in the family.

Harmful bills pass fast while equality bills stall

One of the most devastating patterns is the speed at which homophobic ‘family protection’ legislation moves, while paralysis grips laws to advance gender equality. In Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Act was passed in under three months. In Ghana, lawmakers are promoting the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill; in Kenya, political support for the Family Protection Bill is growing. Backed by far-right organisations in the US, these bills seek to criminalise sexual minorities and promote a rigid, exclusionary vision of the family centred on heterosexual marriage and conservative social structures.

Meanwhile, family law reform bills that would give women equal rights in marriage, divorce, and custody have stalled for decades in Uganda, Cameroon, and Ghana. The contrast is not coincidental. The same movement blocking equality for women and girls in family laws is the one pushing legislation against LGBTQI+ people. It uses the same language: family values, cultural integrity, sovereignty, national cohesion. But when you trace the money and the actors, the strategy becomes clear. The goal is not to protect the family. It is to protect the patriarchy within it.

How African civil society and coalitions are fighting back

None of this goes unanswered.

When the Pan-African Conference on Family Values convened in Nairobi, over twenty Kenyan human rights organisations petitioned for the venue to refuse to host it. Billboards celebrating diverse families lined the road from the airport. Activists disrupted the social media narrative and organised in the streets.

Strategic litigation has compelled the government to reinstate safe abortion guidelines in Kenya. International coalitions, including African women, have pushed back against anti-rights infiltration at the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women. Survivors, lawyers, activists, and advocates are refusing to cede ground.

Working in coalitions is one of the most powerful tools available to those defending gender equality. The anti-rights movement succeeds in part because it is coordinated across borders, sectors, and institutions. The response must be equally organised. Equality Now’s coalition work is grounded in this understanding. Through the Africa Family Law Network, we join with civil society organisations, legal networks, faith communities, survivor advocates, and parliamentarians to build and sustain a stronger common front.

What African governments must do to reform family laws

This year’s Africa Day should serve as a call to action to prioritise family law reform. We are at a perilous moment of global regression in women’s rights, where hard-won legal safeguards are being deliberately dismantled. Discriminatory family law sits at the heart of that regression. The ask is not complicated. The political will is what is missing. We stand ready to work with you to change that:

To the African Union: Advocate for the universal ratification and implementation of the Maputo Protocol, a floor, not a ceiling. Push for lifting of reservations on equality in marriage, family, and reproductive rights by member states. Resist attempts to water down its provisions through model reservations crafted by anti-rights legal networks.

To African parliaments and parliamentarians: Reform discriminatory laws on marriage registration, equal divorce rights, child custody, and inheritance that have been stalled for too long. Every year of inaction is a year of harm. Do not allow parliaments to be used as platforms for movements that entrench inequality in the family under the disguise of protecting it.

To African governments: Enforce the Maputo Protocol, and ratify if not already undertaken. Conduct awareness-raising campaigns on family law rights. Invest in legal aid that reaches women in rural communities and informal settlements. Allocate sufficient budgets to gender equality and family law reform. Recognise unpaid care work. National family protection policies must protect all family members, not only those who fit a narrow ideological template.

To civil society, lawyers, journalists, and advocates: Build and sustain coalitions across borders. Expose the funding and actors behind anti-rights campaigns. Tell the stories of the women these laws fail. Make the abstract concrete. Keep going.

“Until family laws are equal, there is no equality in African society.”

This Africa Day, let us be clear about what we are celebrating, and honest about what still needs to change.

Deborah Nyokabi is a Legal Advisor on Legal Equality at Equality Now, a global human rights organisation dedicated to ending discrimination against all women and girls. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Excerpt:

Millions of African women live under laws that deny them equal rights at home. A well-funded global movement is working to make sure it stays that way.

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

 

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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.

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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Odo Tevi, Permanent Representative of Vanuatu to the UN, speaks at the General Assembly. Credit : UN WEB TV

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, May 21 2026 (IPS)

Member states this week (May 20) deliberated over a draft resolution on states’ obligations in respect of climate change following the advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The General Assembly agreed to take measures to uphold the ICJ’s advisory opinion for member states to meet their existing obligations to climate justice under international law and multilateral frameworks.

The draft resolution (A/80/L.65) passed with 141 votes in favor, 8 votes against, and 28 abstentions. It was brought forward by the Republic of Vanuatu, along with the Core Group of States leading the UN General Assembly resolution responding to the ICJ advisory opinion. The resolution was introduced after a long period of consultations between member states. It outlines member states’ obligations to ensure the protection of the climate system by calling for multilateral cooperation to address what the ICJ has called an “existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet.”

“This day will be remembered. It will be remembered as the moment the United Nations received the considered judgment of its highest court of its defining challenge of our time and decided what to do with it. Vanuatu and the Core Group believe this Assembly should meet that moment with unity, with seriousness, and with respect for the law and one another,” said Odo Tevi, Permanent Representative of Vanuatu to the UN.

Voting Record of Resolution A-80-L.65. Credit: UN TV

When introducing the draft resolution to the Assembly, Tevi remarked that the ICJ opinion “confirms that the protection of the climate system is a matter of legal obligation, not political discretion.” It would not replace or challenge existing agreements such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris Agreement, but rather reinforce them as the primary legislations and forums for the world’s response to climate change.

Amendments to the resolution were brought forward by a small group of member states, which included Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria. Those that argued for the amendments posited that the current resolution required further legal clarity, particularly as it related to the measures required to support developing countries in mitigation and adaptation. At the same time, there were concerns that the amendments weakened the language around the actions and responsibilities of member states, and tabling them so late into the provision would risk undermining the careful negotiations. Ultimately though, the amendments did not pass and the resolution was adopted without them.

In their remarks following the vote, member states welcomed the adoption of the resolution in light of recognizing climate change as a defining existential issue of the modern age, commending Vanuatu for its leadership in pushing for the resolution.

Speaking on behalf of the Pacific Small-Island Developing States (SIDS), Filipo Tarakinikini, Permanent Representative of Fiji to the UN, welcomed the resolution, remarking that it was an “affirmation of survival” for island nations that have been uniquely threatened by climate change, experiencing lasting damages to their homes and their connection to heritage.

“We do not come to this hall asking for mercy. We come demanding justice. Justice that is today grounded in the authoritative voice of the world’s highest court. The Pacific will not disappear, and neither will our resolve,” said Tarakinikini.

Jérôme Bonnafont, Permanent Representative of France, said that this General Assembly decision was welcome in light of an “international context marred by many crises.”

“[France] will continue to defend ambitious climate action, multilateralism, respect for international law, and a science-based approach for sustainable development and for future generations,” Bonnafont said.

James Larsen, Permanent Representative of Australia, hoped that this resolution would “galvanize practical efforts” to protect the climate system and that the case for multilateralism has “never been stronger.” With Australia set to host COP31 later this year, Larsen remarked his country would continue working together with member states to accelerate climate action.

Among those that abstained from voting or were against the resolution are states accused of being major carbon emitters, including G77 members like India and Saudi Arabia. Both the United States of America and the Russian Federation voted against the resolution.

Prior to the vote, the United States expressed that their opposition was based on their “serious legal and policy concerns” about the resolution. The U.S. delegate noted that the resolution called for states to fulfill alleged obligations based on a non-binding ruling from the ICJ, and opposed the resolution’s “inappropriate political demands” to address climate issues.

The Russian Federation’s delegate argued after that member states’ climate obligations, such as the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold, were more of a political obligation rather than normative and that the resolution was an effort to circumvent existing climate agreements.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the adoption of the resolution, commending the leadership of Pacific Island countries, SIDs and the students and activists whose “moral clarity helped bring the world to this moment.”

“The world’s highest court has spoken. Today, the General Assembly has answered,” said Guterres. “This is a powerful affirmation of international law, climate justice, science, and the responsibility of states to protect people from the escalating climate crisis… Those least responsible for climate change are paying the highest price. That injustice must end.”

Reacting to the debate, Yamide Dagnet, NRDC’s Senior Vice President, International, said, “Climate justice prevails! The world sent a loud signal that multilateralism and science matter and can deliver for the people and the planet.”

While congratulating the Small Island States, the youths and frontline communities who refused to stand down for their energy, tenacity and leadership, she noted,  “There will be a lot of noise about the difficulty in enforcing this resolution, but the reality is that it represents a watershed moment for polluter accountability. Moving forward, regulators and courts have an additional tool in their arsenal to force nations and companies to look at how they can put people over pollution and better protect the world’s most impacted communities and countries with dignity.”

The Prime Minister of the Republic of Vanuatu, Jotham Napat, said the country expressed profound gratitude to 141 Member States that voted in favor of the UNGA resolution welcoming the Advisory Opinion of the ICJ on climate change and to the 90 States that stood together as co-sponsors of this historic initiative.

“This outcome is a powerful affirmation that the international community remains committed to the rule of law, multilateral cooperation, and climate justice at a time when these principles are being tested,” Napat said while acknowledging that the resolution was the first step in a new journey.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By CIVICUS
May 21 2026 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses the cancellation of RightsCon 2026 with Barbora Bukovská, Senior Director for Law and Policy at ARTICLE 19, a human rights organisation that works on freedom of expression and information around the world.

Barbora Bukovská

On 29 April – days before RightsCon, the key global gathering of digital rights advocates, was due to open in Lusaka – the Zambian government announced a postponement that effectively cancelled the event. The government stands accused of giving in to China’s pressure over the participation of people from Taiwan. The event had been set to bring over 2,600 participants to sub-Saharan Africa for the first time, with another 1,100 joining online. Instead, it became the latest casualty of growing authoritarian pressure on the spaces where civil society convenes.

Why does the cancellation of RightsCon matter?

This cancellation is significant on three levels. First, it means the loss of community. The human rights movement depends on relationships built across borders and over time. RightsCon was one of the few global spaces where civil society organisations, funders, governments, journalists, researchers and technology professionals could meet without political interference. Losing it means losing opportunities to build solidarity and strengthen the networks the movement runs on.

Second, it was a symbolic blow. RightsCon represented the idea that at least one global space existed where civil society could convene freely, protected from political pressure. That illusion is now shattered. The space proved vulnerable. It is yet more evidence of shrinking civic space globally, and the message it sends is chilling: no space is truly protected from state interference any more.

Third, it caused financial damage. Following funding cuts from the USA in early 2025 and reduced funding from other major donor governments, civil society is struggling to secure resources. Organisations had invested precious funding to attend RightsCon, covering travel, organising side events and preparing advocacy materials. These are resources vulnerable civil society organisations cannot afford to waste.

What does this episode reveal about transnational repression?

The cancellation lays bare how emboldened China feels to globalise its political red lines and exercise transnational repression. For years, it has applied pressure on governments to sideline Taiwanese participation in multilateral forums. Taiwan’s leading role in digital rights and technology has long irritated China. What’s new is other governments’ willingness to yield.

China’s tactics have grown more sophisticated. Rather than open confrontation, it leverages threats of diplomatic fallout or lost investment. The pressure now extends into spaces once thought beyond its reach, such as cultural institutions, rights conferences and universities. China has shown it can coerce governments across sectors and at multiple levels.

The wider context matters too. The USA, once a leading global supporter of internet freedom, has retreated from diplomatic and financial backing for digital rights. China’s influence on the African continent has expanded in the absence of rights-based alternatives. When democratic states withdraw support for civil society, authoritarian influence fills the void.

How do China’s leverage and Zambia’s democratic decline combine?

China’s leverage across Africa has grown substantially in recent years. Chinese funding has built major infrastructure in Zambia, including Mulungushi International Conference Centre, the venue where RightsCon was due to take place. Only days before the cancellation, China signed a new agreement to fund further development projects. Zambia carries roughly US$5 billion in debt to China, and that dependency comes with strings attached.

Domestically, the picture is similarly bleak. Despite President Hakainde Hichilema being elected in 2021 on a promise of democratic renewal, civic space has shrunk steadily since. In 2025, parliament passed cybersecurity laws now used to curtail freedom of expression online and detain political opponents. Ahead of the August 2026 general election, the government is enacting further laws designed to entrench its power. Political control is winning out over democratic commitments.

Yielding to Chinese pressure while restricting civic space at home calls Zambia’s commitment to the rule of law and human rights into serious doubt. The debt creates a channel through which China can extract political cooperation. Together, these dynamics create a dangerous precedent for other global south nations facing similar pressure.

What does this mean globally?

The danger extends well beyond Zambia. If a government can cancel a major international civil society gathering without serious diplomatic or institutional consequences, it sends the wrong signals. States must show that interference carries costs. Democratic states, multilateral organisations and regional institutions must impose costs through sustained pressure and exclusion from future convenings.

International human rights mechanisms, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, have already condemned Zambia’s decision. But statements alone are not enough. Zambia shouldn’t be considered a reliable host for rights-based global dialogue in future.

If governments can yield to authoritarian pressure at the expense of civil society protections without paying a price, the pattern will spread.

What steps should be taken to protect global civil society forums?

Civil society can adapt but cannot insulate its gatherings from state pressure on its own. Real responsibility lies with states that claim to support human rights. They must send a diplomatic and political signal that interference in global forums is costly and prevent other governments from following Zambia’s example. They must reaffirm their commitment to multi-stakeholder forums and invest in civil society’s ability to convene and participate.

That includes member states of international coalitions such as the Freedom Online Coalition and the Media Freedom Coalition. They must act against restrictions on civic space and freedom of expression, using these platforms to impose costs on governments that interfere with civil society. The behaviour Zambia has just normalised must be made costly.

The UN, other intergovernmental organisations and states must work to guarantee the safety and openness of global gatherings. As democratic states withdraw support and authoritarian states expand their reach, the spaces where global civil society can gather, build relationships and advance human rights will continue to shrink. What’s at stake is the infrastructure of global civil society coordination and solidarity.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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SEE ALSO
Democracy: an enduring aspiration CIVICUS | State of Civil Society Report 2026
Zambia: ‘Constitutional changes in an election period tend to be driven by political expediency rather than the public interest’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Gideon Musonda 24.Dec.2025
Zambia: ‘The NGO Bill strengthens legal mechanisms designed to discredit or silence critical civil society voices’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Josiah Kalala 03.Jun.2025

 

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A tea picker in the Bearwell tea estate of Sri Lanka. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Boubaker Ben Belhassen
ROME, May 20 2026 (IPS)

The tea in your cup this morning began its journey in someone else’s hands. Hands whose work most of us never think about. Almost certainly, those hands belonged to a smallholder farmer tending a small plot of land, plucking leaves by hand beneath long mornings of mist and rain.

Two leaves and a bud. Two leaves and a bud. Thousands of times. Smallholders account for about 60 percent of global tea supply. The industry built on their labor is worth US$19.5 billion a year and supports the economies of some of the world’s poorest countries. Yet the conditions that sustain that work – ecological, economic and climatic – are under growing pressure.

Smallholders account for about 60 percent of global tea supply. The industry built on their labor is worth US$19.5 billion a year and supports the economies of some of the world's poorest countries. Yet the conditions that sustain that work – ecological, economic and climatic – are under growing pressure

Tea is the most popular drink on earth after water. Global production reached 7.3 million tonnes last year, and per capita consumption continues to rise steadily. From the outside, the sector appears healthy.

Yet the millions of smallholder farming families driving that growth in China, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Malawi, Rwanda and beyond need stronger support if the sector’s momentum is to endure.

The geography of tea production is also a geography of economic necessity, linked to patterns of economic dependence and rural livelihoods. Kenya is the world’s largest tea exporter.

Sri Lanka, Uganda, Malawi and Rwanda rank among the global top ten. In these economies, revenues from tea exports help finance food imports and sustain rural livelihoods across entire regions. The sector remains a major source of employment and income for millions of poor families worldwide.

That income is more fragile than the industry’s headline numbers suggest. International tea prices, adjusted for inflation, have been declining for four decades.

The sector’s nominal value has expanded, while the real purchasing power of many producers has stagnated. FAO has documented what this means at the household level: when farmgate prices fall, smallholder families reduce spending on food, education and health care.

Smallholder producers also face limited market access, inadequate extension services, weak access to credit and technology, and persistent asymmetries in how value is distributed across the supply chain.

As production costs rise and price increases transmit unevenly through markets, many farming families struggle to generate sufficient returns to reinvest in farm renewal, climate adaptation or productivity improvements. These pressures heighten income volatility and make long-term planning increasingly difficult.

Tea production and processing are major sources of employment and income for women across East Africa and South Asia. When smallholder tea farming families prosper, women’s economic participation will determine whether that prosperity and stability hold.

Programmes that support women directly through training, market access and financial resources consistently produce stronger outcomes for both households and communities. In many tea-growing regions, women sustain not only household economies, but also the continuity of the knowledge and labor on which the crop depends.

Tea cultivation relies on highly specific agro-ecological conditions: altitude, rainfall patterns and temperatures shaped gradually over centuries in the regions where production became concentrated.

These conditions are becoming harder to predict and increasingly difficult to sustain. More erratic rainfall, fluctuating temperatures, and extreme weather events are already impacting both yields and quality.

For a smallholder farmer without savings or insurance, a lost harvest is not a temporary setback. It immediately affects household spending on food, medicine and schooling.

The unevenness of that burden is a central challenge. Larger operations often possess greater capacity to adapt through irrigation, diversification, upgrading and financial reserves.

Smaller producers, by contrast, frequently get trapped between increasing climate risks and limited investment capacity. Investment needs to be calibrated to the realities of smallholder tea farming rather than assumptions drawn from larger commercial operations.

What is at stake extends beyond a commodity market. Several tea-growing landscapes have been formally recognized by FAO as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems. These landscapes were shaped over generations through accumulated farming knowledge and long relationships between land, crop and community.

Tea cultivation depends on delicate balances of shade, slope, rainfall, soil health, and inherited knowledge built gradually over generations. Climate-related stress threatens these landscapes alongside the livelihoods and agricultural continuity they sustain.

More efficient, inclusive and sustainable value chains, including greater local value addition and stronger producer participation in markets, are essential if the benefits of the growing tea economy are to reach both the people and the environments that sustain it. Per capita tea consumption in many producing countries remains relatively low, meaning the sector’s growth potential is still substantial.

Ensuring the sector’s viability, however, requires more than rising consumption levels. Smallholder producers need better access to finance, markets, technology, and climate adaptation support calibrated to their realities.

More transparent and balanced value chains, targeted investment that reaches women directly, and stronger incentives for reinvestment at farm level will determine whether the industry’s future growth will remain economically and socially sustainable.

The farmer who grew your tea will get up again tomorrow morning before sunrise. The future of the sector depends on ensuring this remains a viable livelihood option.

You want to see a bright tea future? Join us in celebrating International Tea Day on 21 May!

Boubaker Ben-Belhassen is Director of the Markets and Trade Division at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

The ongoing crisis in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continue to put immense stress and risk on the global economy. A new UN report highlights that slowing growth, re-emerging inflation rates and heightened uncertainty affect the world entirely, but they are playing out differently across different economic brackets. Developing […]

U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Aquidneck (WPB-1309) in the Strait of Hormuz, with a large container ship visible in the background as it transits the critical global trade route (Dec. 2, 2020). Credit: MC2 Indra Beaufort

By Lulseged Desta and Jonathan Mockshell
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, May 20 2026 (IPS)

Sharp surges in energy, fertilizer, and food prices triggered by the ongoing conflict in the Persian Gulf strikingly illustrate the deep interconnections between geopolitical conflict, food insecurity, and the fragility of fossil fuel–dependent food systems.

Besides carrying roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day (about 27 percent of global oil exports), the Strait of Hormuz also handles 20–30 percent of internationally traded inorganic fertilizers, which uses natural gas as a key ingredient in its production. Its closure has immediately disrupted the flow of these essential commodities, triggering sharp price spikes in fuel and key agricultural inputs.

This situation demonstrates how geopolitical instability can rapidly disrupt essential agricultural functions under current input-dependent, industrial production systems that rely heavily on external energy and supply chains. This crisis highlights, more clearly than ever, a critical reality: food systems tied to fossil fuels are inherently unsustainable, continually undermine food sovereignty, and disproportionately affect farmers, particularly smallholders in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). World Food Programme estimates warn that, if the conflict continues, the soaring oil, shipping and food costs will push an additional 45 million people into acute hunger, driving the global total beyond its record 319 million1.

Reducing food systems’ reliance on fossil fuels and external inputs is essential to strengthen our collective resilience to future shocks. The truth is that fossil fuels courses through every stage of the food system – from fertilizers and pesticides to processing, preservation, transportation, packaging, food waste disposal, and even food preparation. Moreover, entrenched economic and political structures lock in this fossil-fuel dependence through massive subsidies and price protections – estimated at over $1 trillion in recent years2.

Food systems account for at least 15 percent of total fossil fuel use – mostly through synthetic fertilizers 4 – but also to power machinery and vehicles, and generate electricity and heat for key processes like irrigation, grain drying, livestock housing, and food storage.

Agroecological approaches to food production offer an alternative to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels while still meeting the needs of a growing global population. This supports a transition from energy-sink systems to regenerative ones, radically enhancing food systems’ resilience in the face of escalating geopolitical instability and environmental vulnerability.

Agroecology is based on natural processes and local resources for sustainable soil fertility. Crucially, many of these practices draw directly from indigenous knowledge systems, where local communities have long maintained soil health through time. Practical steps include the use of organic fertilization (often blended with minimal synthetic inputs), efficient soil microorganisms, nitrogen-fixing plants, and soil health practices like crop rotation, cover cropping, intercropping, reduced tillage, and crop-livestock integration.

Research consistently shows that agroecological approaches – such as farm diversification and tree integrated systems – outperform conventional systems in climate resilience, nutrient cycling, and soil health5,6, often while boosting yields7-9. Agroforestry also provides a source of wood fuel, making it a valuable alternative during fossil fuel shortages and price spikes.

Examples can be found worldwide. Peruvian cocoa farmers are using bokashi and bio-oil amendments to restore soil organic matter, regenerate microbial activity, and enhance nutrient cycling10. In Vietnam, rice-fish coculture systems optimize nutrient cycling, curb pests, and diversify outputs – lowering costs while stabilizing farmer incomes11. Ethiopian farmers practicing wheat-fava bean rotations are cutting fertilizer needs while improving soil structure and building long-term fertility11. India’s agroecology programme, ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF)’, delivers biodiversity benefits while more than doubling farmers’ economic profits and maintaining comparable crop yields, than chemical-based farming 12,13.

Other farm-level steps to curb fossil fuel dependence include integrating renewable energy sources for on-site generation and operations – like solar panels, biogas digesters, and wind turbines; solar water pumps, adopting fuel-efficient engines and draft animals; and embracing practices such as minimum tillage, precision irrigation, integrated pest management, and low-input crop-livestock systems.

More fundamentally, shifting from global, industrial commodity chains toward territorial, agroecological food networks can relocalize production, processing, and consumption – shortening supply chains and reducing energy-intensive operations. Shorter, localized supply chains reduce reliance on long-distance transport, lower packaging demand, and promote reusable packaging systems, thereby decreasing fossil fuel consumption.

These efforts can be reinforced by complementary practices that strengthen food sovereignty, such as home gardens and urban agriculture. Crucially, agroecology also aligns with reduced production of ultra-processed foods – among the most energy-intensive products – helping to curb fossil fuel use while potentially improving public health.

In the short term, it is crucial that the allocation of emergency funds are earmarked to procure or purchase organic alternatives to synthetic fertilizers, particularly in the most affected regions. Longer-term, it is necessary to reduce structural barriers to farmers’ adoption of these agroecological approaches including reforms to agricultural subsidies and strengthening support for technical assistance and local governance.

References
1. Farge, E. Iran war may push 45 million people into acute hunger by June, WFP says. Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-war-may-push-45-million-people-into-acute-hunger-by-june-wfp-says-2026-03-17/ (2026).

2. IPES-Food. Fuel to Fork: What Will It Take to Get Fossil Fuels out of Our Food Systems? https://ipes-food.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/FuelToFork.pdf (2025).

3. FAO, UNDP, and UNEP. A Multi-Billion-Dollar Opportunity – Repurposing Agricultural Support to Transform Food Systems. (FAO, UNDP, and UNEP, 2021). doi:10.4060/cb6562en.

4. Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Power Shift: Why We Need to Wean Industrial Food Systems off Fossil Fuels. https://futureoffood.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/ga_food-energy-nexus_report.pdf (2023).

5. Niether, W., Jacobi, J., Blaser, W. J., Andres, C. & Armengot, L. Cocoa agroforestry systems versus monocultures: a multi-dimensional meta-analysis. Environ. Res. Lett. 15, 104085 (2020).

6. Beillouin, D., Ben‐Ari, T., Malézieux, E., Seufert, V. & Makowski, D. Positive but variable effects of crop diversification on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Glob. Change Biol. 27, 4697–4710 (2021).

7. Dittmer, K. M. et al. Agroecology Can Promote Climate Change Adaptation Outcomes Without Compromising Yield In Smallholder Systems. Environ. Manage. 72, 333–342 (2023).

8. Rodenburg, J., Mollee, E., Coe, R. & Sinclair, F. Global analysis of yield benefits and risks from integrating trees with rice and implications for agroforestry research in Africa. Field Crops Res. 281, 108504 (2022).

9. Jones, S. K. et al. Achieving win-win outcomes for biodiversity and yield through diversified farming. Basic Appl. Ecol. 67, 14–31 (2023).

10. Altieri, M. A. & Nicholls, C. I. Agroecology and the reconstruction of a post-COVID-19 agriculture. J. Peasant Stud. 47, 881–898 (2020).

11. FAO. The State of Food and Agriculture 2022. (FAO, 2022). doi:10.4060/cb9479en.

12. Berger, I. et al. India’s agroecology programme, ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming’, delivers biodiversity and economic benefits without lowering yields. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 9, 2057–2068 (2025).

13. O’Garra, T. Agroecology benefits people and planet. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 9, 1973–1974 (2025).

14. IPES-Food. Food from Somewhere: Building Food Security and Resilience through Territorial Markets. https://ipes-food.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FoodFromSomewhere.pdf (2024).

15. Einarsson, R. Nitrogen in the Food System. https://tabledebates.org/building-blocks/nitrogen-food-system (2024) doi:10.56661/2fa45626.

Lulseged Desta, CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program; Jonathan Mockshell, Alliance Biodiversity International – CIAT

IPS UN Bureau

 

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