Africa

DR Congo must not be over-confident when the Leopards take part in inter-confederation play-offs for a spot at the 2026 World Cup, says Gabriel Zakuani.

Gary Baker (right), CEO of Equimundo speaks on the SDG Media Zone panel "The Manosphere: Understanding and Countering Online Misogyny" with, from left to right, Janelle Dumalaon, Panel Moderator and US Correspondent for Deutsche Welle; Jaha Durureh, UN Women Regional Goodwill Ambassador for Africa; and Ljubica Fuentes, Founder of ‘Ciudadanas del Mundo’. Credit: UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 2025 (IPS)

As the digital landscape continues to expand and integrate into various aspects of daily life, humanitarian experts have raised concerns about the associated risks, particularly as artificial intelligence (AI), online anonymity, and the absence of effective monitoring frameworks heighten the potential for abuse and harassment. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by digital abuse, facing heightened risks, with nearly half of them worldwide lacking effective legal protections.

Ahead of the annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign, which aims to leverage digital platforms to empower women and advocate for gender equality, UN Women raises the alarm on the digital abuse crisis affecting women. According to their figures, roughly 1 in 3 women globally experience gender-based violence in their lifetime, with anywhere from 16 to 58 percent of women having faced digital violence.

“What begins online doesn’t stay online,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous. “Digital abuse spills into real life, spreading fear, silencing voices, and—in the worst cases—leading to physical violence and femicide. Laws must evolve with technology to ensure that justice protects women both online and offline. Weak legal protections leave millions of women and girls vulnerable, while perpetrators act with impunity. This is unacceptable. Through our 16 Days of Activism campaign, UN Women calls for a world where technology serves equality, not harm.”

In recent years, online harassment has become increasingly prevalent, fueled by the rise of platforms such as Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok. The use of generative AI tools have also contributed to a surge in cyberstalking, non-consensual image sharing, deepfakes, and disinformation aimed at humiliating and intimidating women. According to figures from the World Bank, fewer than 40 percent of countries worldwide have adequate legal frameworks to protect women from online harassment, leaving around 44 percent of women and girls—approximately 1.8 billion—without legal protection against digital abuse.

The rapid advancement of generative AI in recent years has streamlined the process of image-based abuse against women, with user-friendly platforms allowing abusers to create highly realistic deepfake images and videos, which are then shared on social media platforms and pornographic sites. AI-generated deepfakes can be replicated multiple times and stored and shared on privately owned devices, making them difficult to monitor and remove. Accountability remains a significant issue due to the lack of adequate protections and moderation to ensure safe and consensual use.

According to UN Women, image-based sexual harassment has surged over the past few years, with schoolgirls facing increased rates of fake nude images of themselves being posted onto social media, as well as female business leaders being met with targeted deepfake images and coordinated harassment campaigns.

“There is massive reinforcement between the explosion of AI technology and the toxic extreme misogyny of the manosphere”, Laura Bates, a feminist activist and author, told UN Women. “AI tools allow the spread of manosphere content further, using algorithmic tweaking that prioritizes increasingly extreme content to maximize engagement.”

“In part, this is about the root problem of misogyny – this is an overwhelmingly gendered issue, and what we’re seeing is a digital manifestation of a larger offline truth: men target women for gendered violence and abuse,” added Bates.

Digital violence can take many shapes and forms, such as inappropriate messages, actions of abuse and control from intimate partners, and anonymous threats, impacting women from all walks of life. While women and girls in low-income or rural areas are disproportionately affected by digital violence, women and girls in nearly all contexts can be vulnerable to its impact.

“Online abuse can undermine women’s sexual and reproductive rights and has a real-life impact. It can be used to control partners, restrict their decision-making, or create fear and shame that prevents them from seeking help, contraception, information or care,” said Anna Jeffreys, the Media and Crisis Communications Adviser for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

“Young people who experience online harassment or extortion often avoid health services altogether. In extreme cases, it can impact mental health, career progress and even threaten lives,” Jeffreys told IPS.

According to UN Women, young women, journalists, politicians, activists, and human rights defenders are routinely subjected to sexist, racist, or homophobic slurs, with migrant, disabled, and LGBTQ+ individuals being met with misogyny merged with additional forms of discrimination.

“When you get away from your abusers, you feel kind of safe, but digital violence is following you around everywhere you go”, said Ljubica Fuentes, a human rights lawyer and the founder of Ciudadanas del Mundo, an organization that promotes education free from gender-based violence across all education sectors. “You always have to be 120 per cent prepared to make an opinion online. If you are a feminist, if you are an activist, you don’t have the right to be wrong. You are not allowed to even have a past.”

Recent studies from UN Women shows that digital violence, assisted by AI-powered technology, is rapidly expanding in both scale and sophistication, yielding real-world consequences that permeate digital platforms entirely. Digital violence has been increasingly associated with rising rates of violent extremism as abuses silence women and girls in politics and media. Additionally, it is associated with increased rates of femicides in contexts where technology is used for stalking or coercion.

In the Philippines, 83 percent of survivors of online abuse reported emotional harm, 63 percent experienced sexual assault, and 45 percent suffered physical harm. In Pakistan, online harassment has been linked to femicide, suicide, physical violence, job loss, and the silencing of women and girls.

In the Arab states, 60 percent of female internet users have been exposed to online violence, while in Africa, 46 percent of women parliamentarians have faced online attacks. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 80 percent of women in public life have restricted their online presence due to fear of abuse.

UN Women is urging for strengthened global cooperation to ensure that digital platforms and AI systems adhere to safety and ethical standards by calling for increased funding for women’s rights organizations to support victims of digital violence, as well as stronger enforcement mechanisms to hold perpetrators accountable.

“The key is to move toward accountability and regulation – creating systems where AI tools must meet safety and ethics standards before being rolled out to the public, where platforms are held accountable for the content they host, and where the responsibility for prevention shifts from potential victims to those creating and profiting from harmful technologies”, said Bates.

The organization also calls on tech companies to employ more women to facilitate inclusivity and a wide variety of perspectives. Tech companies are also implored to remove harmful content and address abuse reports on a timely basis. UN Women also stresses the importance of investing in prevention efforts, such as digital literacy and online safety training for women and girls, as well as initiatives that challenge toxic online cultures.

Jeffreys tells IPS that UNFPA is on the frontlines assisting survivors of gender-based digital violence by working with governments to review and improve national laws and policies while also working directly with communities, schools, and frontline responders to build digital literacy, promote safe online practices, and ensure that survivors can access confidential support.

“Digital platforms can be powerful tools for expanding access to information, education and essential health services — especially for young people. But these tools must be safe,” said Jeffreys. “UNFPA works with governments, educators and youth-led groups to promote digital literacy and critical thinking, and we call for stronger safeguards from governments, tech providers and others to prevent online spaces from being used to harm women and girls. This includes safer product design, better reporting mechanisms, and accountability for harmful content. When digital platforms are made safe, they can help advance gender equality instead of undermining it.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The UN General Assembly in session. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 2025 (IPS)

The 193-member General Assembly (GA), the UN’s highest policy-making body, has long been the repository for scores of long-winded outdated resolutions accumulated over several decades– and lying in cold storage.

As part of the proposed restructuring of the United Nations, which is facing a severe liquidity crisis, there is now a move to streamline and revitalize the General Assembly which has been mired in a bureaucratic backlog.

The President of the General Assembly (PGA), Annalena Baerbock, has called on each Main Committee to review its working methods and propose concrete measures to enhance efficiency, including:

• Merging similar agenda items to avoid repetition;
• Reducing the frequency, length and number of resolutions;
• Using biennial or triennial cycles where appropriate;
• Limiting explanations of vote to five minutes; and
• Simplifying adoption procedures — one gavel, one decision, all texts.

These recommendations, mostly spelled out in a recent resolution, would help re-shape the General Assembly to respond to global challenges with agility and coherence. But unless these reforms are implemented, they remain just words on paper, just another resolution.

“Business as usual will not suffice. We need fewer repetitive resolutions, shorter debates, and smarter scheduling. No more ‘resolutions for resolutions’ sake,” the PGA said.

“We cannot preach on Sunday that we need fewer resolutions, then proceed to submit one for consideration on Monday. And this is, unfortunately, taking place”, she warned.

Dr Palitha Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section and one-time Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, told IPS the UN is burdened under a heavy baggage of resolutions piled up over 80 years.

“Many are no longer relevant, others are superfluous, and some repetitive. Given its current perilous financial situation, it would be appropriate for each department and office to review rigorously the resolutions under their purview and identify those that could be terminated.”

This, he said, may be done through an omnibus resolution. Some might require delicate negotiations with member states which might claim ownership to resolutions that they had proposed. Sensitively, handled, this could deliver considerable financial and staffing dividends.

New resolutions, he pointed out, should be vetted carefully to avoid redundancies. UN staff could proactively assist in this process. Even where resolutions are to be implemented within existing resource allocations, there will be some cost involved, including time.

Where a proposed resolution could not be implemented due to resource constraints, it should be vetoed from the beginning, said Dr Kohona, who until recently, was Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China.

Action officers should be located or moved to an office where a resolution is most likely to be implemented and it would be most effective. For example, the responsibility for implementing UNDP-related resolutions should be allocated to Nairobi, he proposed. Peacekeeping should also be moved to Nairobi as most peacekeeping now happens in Africa, he declared.

Baerbock said: “We have seen the Main Committees put forward resolutions for three-day conferences, with no budget attached, fully aware of the fiscal situation we are debating at the same moment. We have seen over 160 sides events during High-Level Week, despite the call for less, or the call by some, for no side events at all”.

“And we have seen, already, three or four high-level meetings submitted for consideration for the 81st High-Level Week (next year), with four for each of the 82nd and 83rd, despite the decision of this Assembly – so by all of us – to limit this to a maximum of three.”

“While we all want to protect the things we care about, each of us must make concessions in this time of reform”, she declared.

Dr. Purnima Mane, a former Deputy Executive Director (Programme) and UN Assistant-Secretary-General (ASG) at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS the major ongoing effort to review the working methods of each of the Committees of the UN GA and enhance their efficiency is certainly laudable.

It is a golden opportunity to challenge some of the so-called ‘givens’ of the ways in which the GA functions and focus on what matters in a streamlined fashion.

The currently proposed solutions however are somewhat peripheral even if they indicate a desire for change. One of the major problems faced by the Committees is the range of issues taken on without clear prioritization including a lack of focus on neglected, key issues. And the absence of a sense of urgency, she pointed out

“The suggestions offered touch on enhancing efficiency of working but avoid tougher issues perhaps due to lack of time and sometimes will on the part of some members to take the risk of proposing solutions which might necessitate dismantling of well-entrenched methods of working”.

Another barrier, she said, might be concerns about potential difficulties that are likely to be experienced in getting agreement on these methods and more so the possibility of limited involvement by member states in their implementation.

“Perhaps starting small and identifying possibly achievable objectives for how the committees are run and managed might be a good beginning, but without the commitment of member States to the issues being prioritized and to implement the resolutions being proposed, all this change and effort is unlikely to achieve any benefits, including saving of resources”, she said.

Reducing agenda items and avoiding repetitive resolutions and endless debates are all a good start but it requires the will of the member states to implement these resolutions, once passed, she added.

And while the will to implement is understood as a given, in reality that is exactly where the problem sometimes lies. How to encourage and ensure implementation is really the true challenge, said Dr Mane, a former President and CEO of Pathfinder International.

Andreas Bummel, co-founder and Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders, told IPS ironically, the issue of revitalizing the General Assembly itself has become a ritualistic item.

“Tackling the number of annual resolutions and avoiding useless repetition year after year is a no-brainer. This should have been implemented long ago. But deeper changes are needed”.

For instance, he said, there needs to be continuity and institutional memory in the office of the President of the General Assembly. It should be a two-year tenure and receive proper funding.

Further, by creating a Parliamentary Assembly, the instrument of Citizens’ Initiative and Citizens’ Assemblies, the General Assembly can become a center of innovation and inclusion for the entire UN system. This should be on the agenda.

Meanwhile, revitalization is also being extended to the Office of the President of the General Assembly (OPGA).

The 80th session, Baerbock said, benefited from an early, seamless handover from the 79th — allowing us to hit the ground running. Yet the volume of work remains immense.

“Our High-Level Week featured over seven major meetings in just a few days;
The remainder of the session will see nearly twenty intergovernmental processes and multiple mandated High-Level Meetings; And the total number of resolutions has barely changed — many nearly identical to those of past sessions.”

But this is not sustainable, she said. And it’s contradicting the call from smaller missions that they cannot be in three meetings at the same time.

Transitions matter. Preparation matters. “We must ensure each presidency is set up for success”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A new independent evaluation of the Global Environment Facility’s food systems programs says they are delivering strong environmental and livelihood gains in many countries but warns that a narrow focus on farm production, weak political analysis, and shrinking coordination budgets are holding back deeper transformation. The Evaluation of GEF Food Systems Programs, prepared by the GEF […]

Children and youth engaging at COP. Credit: UN Climate Change/Zô Guimarães

By Cheena Kapoor
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 21 2025 (IPS)

Jyoti Kumari missed her online classes again today. Her father, a vegetable seller in West Delhi’s vegetable market, had to go to work, taking with him the only smartphone the family uses. Kumari has been taking online classes since November 11, when the state government declared a shutdown of all elementary schools due to air pollution hitting the “severe” category.

A class five student in a government school, she relies on her father’s mobile phone to attend her classes. But her class timings coincide with her father’s work time, and due to this clash, the 10-year-old has been missing her lessons.

She represents what has become a common story in India—children missing school due to extreme weather events caused by climate change.

“Their schools shut down several times during peak summer months due to heatwaves, and the closing of schools due to air pollution in October/November has become a regular thing over the last few years. Now that the winters are starting, they will close again when the mercury drops to a freezing point,” said her father, Devendra Kumar.

In a country that has seen remarkable progress in girls’ education only in the last decade, these regular disruptions due to climatic events are threatening the progress. The school closures, compounded with poverty and loss of income due to extreme weather, threaten to push girls like Kumari into child marriage.

In Delhi, the Air Quality Index has been hovering between the “very poor” (300-400) and “severe” (over 400) categories since last week. Since November 11, when Kumari’s school shut, the government imposed stage three of the Graded Response Action Plan, or GRAP, under which nonessential construction and industrial activities are banned in the city. Civil rights groups and college students have been staging protests demanding immediate action to improve the national capital’s air quality.

But Kumari, who wants to become a scientist when she grows up, does not understand the government’s imposition and worries about her classes, which she has been missing.

As per a UNICEF report from earlier this year, climate-related extreme events disrupted education for 54.7 million students in India in 2024 alone. “April saw the highest global climate-related school disruptions, with heatwaves as the leading hazard affecting at least 118 million children in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, the Philippines, and Thailand,” stated the report. It also added that fast-onset hazards like cyclones and landslides cause destruction of schools, while environmental stressors like air pollution and extreme heat are hindering school attendance.

Against this backdrop, world leaders have gathered in Belém for the 30th Conference of the Parties, in what is called the world’s largest climate negotiation platform. Decisions taken here will directly affect the future of children like Kumari. But by the 10th day of the summit, it is clear that non-economic loss and damage, or NELD, a term coined for all losses that are not directly related to finance, including mental health effects, loss of biodiversity, education, displacement, and culture, are not a priority.

While negotiators, packed in closed rooms, engage in high-level discussions around climate finance, adaptation targets, and fossil fuels, NELD waits to be noticed through the back door despite its growing relevance. It featured in only one side event where some experts highlighted its urgency, but it remains largely absent from the agenda.

“Social impacts of climate change are already worsening, and long-term impacts can lead to stunted education,” said Saqib Huq, Managing Director at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD). “Within the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, experts are collating data and knowledge regarding NELD, but we keep hearing that we need more data and more policy. Meanwhile, impacts are escalating.”

Part of the challenge, researchers say, is that NELD does not fit into a straightforward financial evaluation. While economic losses like collapsed infrastructure and destroyed crops are easier to quantify and thus draw funding, non-economic harms require more subtle accounting. Lost childhoods and interrupted learning do not fit into traditional finance frameworks.

But for Jyoti, the next few days do not depend on the negotiations and draft text in Belém, but rather on whether the pollution in Delhi falls enough for her to go to school again.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Note: This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security. Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
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Excerpt:

Social impacts of climate change are already worsening, and long-term impacts can lead to stunted education. —Saqib Huq, Managing Director at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development

A growing number of women in South Africa are learning to use guns to protect themselves against gender-based violence.

Oceans contribute to climate regulation by absorbing over a quarter of human-caused CO₂ emissions and around 90 percent of excess heat but attract only 1.7 percent of everything that’s invested in science.

It is urgent to rethink and transform agrifood systems by accelerating mitigation and adaptation measures. But doing so requires addressing a critical financing gap. Credit: @FAO/Miguel Arreátegui

By René Orellana Halkyer
SANTIAGO, Nov 20 2025 (IPS)

Climate change is no longer a future threat; it is a reality that is reshaping agrifood systems and compromising global food security. Its impacts are evident in both the quantity and quality of food, affecting agricultural yields, water availability, pest emergence, disease spread, and fundamental processes such as pollination. Even changes in atmospheric CO₂ concentration are altering crop biomass and nutritional value.

In 2024, climate shocks were the main driver of food crises in 18 countries, affecting 72 million people experiencing high levels of food insecurity. Hurricane Mellisa, which struck Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba, is a recent example of the severe effects these events have on agrifood systems.

Over the past five decades, climate change has reduced global cereal yields by 2%-5%; in Latin America alone, maize yields have declined by around 5%. Since 1961, climate change has reduced global agricultural productivity by 21%, which is equivalent to losing seven years of progress.

If we truly want agrifood systems that are more sustainable and resilient, climate financing must prioritize agriculture and the livelihoods of rural communities. Without sufficient resources, international commitments will remain words on paper rather than concrete results

These figures make one conclusion clear: it is urgent to rethink and transform agrifood systems by accelerating mitigation and adaptation measures. But doing so requires addressing a critical financing gap.

Despite the urgency, in 2023 only 4% of climate-related development financing was allocated to agriculture, livestock, fisheries, and forestry. This imbalance threatens the ability of the most vulnerable countries to adapt and transition toward sustainable production models.

If we truly want agrifood systems that are more sustainable and resilient, climate financing must prioritize agriculture and the livelihoods of rural communities. Without sufficient resources, international commitments will remain words on paper rather than concrete results.

In this context, COP30 is decisive. The promotion of agroforestry projects in the Amazon, which restore degraded lands and directly benefit local communities, is a fundamental element for the sustainability of ecosystems related to food and agriculture.

The presentation of the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF), led by Brazil with support from the World Bank, proposes an innovative model to finance global forest conservation, seeking to mobilize USD 25 billion from countries and USD 100 billion from private investors. This approach shows that sustainability can also be an economic opportunity when there are vision and commitment.

The early approval of the COP30 agenda demonstrates political will to advance on climate financing, energy transition, adaptation, and resilience. The challenge now is to turn commitments into concrete targets, with clear deadlines and real resources. History has shown that promises without action do not feed anyone.

At FAO, we are promoting strategies that combine mitigation and adaptation, such as integrated fire management, whose Call to Action was launched at this COP under the leadership of Brazil and with the support of 50 countries.

COP30 arrives at a crucial moment to place agriculture, food, and the role of Indigenous Peoples and rural communities at the center of global discussions.

The future of food, sustainability, and global stability depends on COP30 being more than a Summit: it must be the beginning of a new era of climate action centered on agrifood systems.

Excerpt:

René Orellana Halkyer, Assistant Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean

Without (land) titles, Quilombolas (an Afro-descendant community) are exposed to invasion and displacement from big companies, ranchers, farmers and land grabbers. —Fabio Nogueira, Menino Jesus Quilombola leader

A Community Health Worker in a door-to-door campaign to vaccinate people in communities in Nanyamba village, Mtwara Region, in southeastern Tanzania. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

By Desta Lakew and Richard Muyungi
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 20 2025 (IPS)

Around the world, the climate crisis is fast becoming the biggest public-health threat of the century. Extreme heat now kills more Europeans than any other natural disaster. Floods in Asia displace millions and contaminate water supplies. Mosquito-borne diseases once confined to the tropics are appearing in southern Europe and the United States.

Nowhere, however, are these impacts more visible—or the responses more instructive—than in Africa, which stands at a pivotal moment in the global climate discourse. Home to 17 percent of the world’s people yet responsible for less than four percent of global emissions, the continent is on the frontline of a crisis it did little to cause.

From the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, droughts, floods, and heatwaves are fueling outbreaks of malaria, cholera, and dengue, while undermining already fragile health systems. The climate crisis is no longer a distant environmental threat; it is a daily public health emergency.

Desta Lakew, Amref Health Africa Group Director for Partnerships & External Affairs

While the Paris Agreement implicitly recognized the importance of health in climate action, it was COP28 in Dubai that marked a watershed moment. For the first time, the world finally began to acknowledge what communities across Africa have long known: climate policy is health policy.

The UAE Declaration on Climate and Health, endorsed by more than 120 countries, acknowledged that every degree of warming worsens public health outcomes and that protecting health systems is essential to climate resilience. Africa’s negotiators were central to that breakthrough—pushing health from the margins to the main stage of climate diplomacy.

Their advocacy has paved the way for the next critical milestone: the Belém Health Action Plan, being launched at COP30 in Brazil. The plan’s pillars—disease surveillance, early-warning systems, climate-smart health infrastructure, and health equity—mirror the priorities laid out in the Common African Position on Climate and Health adopted in Lilongwe and reaffirmed in the Africa Group of Negotiators’ (AGN) Declaration, which came out of the Africa Climate Summit in Addis Ababa.

The AGN was decisive in appointing a climate and health lead coordinator to ensure that health is a key thematic stream within the group, and it is now a key component of their work. The message from Africa is clear: protecting people’s health is the clearest measure of whether climate action succeeds.

Yet the global financing system has not caught up. Less than one percent of adaptation finance targets health, even as climate-sensitive diseases multiply. Despite new pledges at COP28—$300 million from the Global Fund and $100 million from the Rockefeller Foundation—the gap is measured in the hundreds of billions. Africa alone will need roughly $300 billion annually by 2030 to build resilient systems and respond to climate-related loss and damage.

Dr. Richard Muyungi, African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN) Chair

Philanthropy is waking up—the recently formed Climate and Health Funders Coalition brings together 35 institutional and individual funders and they have just committed an initial $300 million at COP30, but structural challenges remain.

Most existing climate funds remain locked behind complex applications or arrive as loans that deepen debt in economies already under strain. That approach is not solidarity—it is self-defeat. Pandemics, heat-related mortality, and vector-borne diseases do not respect borders. A health emergency anywhere can quickly become a threat everywhere.

COP30 offers the chance to change course. The Belém Health Action Plan must not become another well-intentioned declaration—it needs financing hardwired to outcomes that save lives: clinics able to function through heatwaves and floods, vaccine cold chains powered by clean energy, and community health workers trained to respond to shifting disease patterns.

To make that happen, global donors, multilateral banks, and high-emitting nations should agree on three urgent steps. First, earmark a defined share of climate finance for health adaptation—not as an afterthought but as a performance metric in every climate-finance report; second, shift from loans to grants for health-related climate resilience to prevent compounding debt crises; third, invest in African-led solutions that the rest of the world can adopt or learn from—from Kenya’s heat-health action plans in Nairobi to Tanzania’s clean cooking agenda.

Africa’s experiences offer valuable lessons for the world. The ingenuity that kept health services running through droughts and pandemics is precisely what other countries will need as wildfires, vector migration, and heat emergencies escalate globally. The world should be studying and scaling these innovations—not waiting for crises to reach their own doorsteps.

Ultimately, if the climate crisis has taught us anything, it is that health security is climate security. What happens in Nairobi or Niamey reverberates in New York and New Delhi. COP30 must deliver ambitious and just outcomes that strengthen adaptation and protect the most vulnerable. We will consider COP30 a failure if it does not deliver an ambitious adaptation decision that resonates with Africa’s climate change impacts and realities.

Leaving Belém with promises alone would be a failure of vision and of justice. Leaving with funded commitments would signal a turning point: proof that the world finally understands that safeguarding health is not a regional concern—it is the foundation of collective resilience and of our shared future.

Desta Lakew is Amref Health Africa Group Director for Partnerships & External Affairs; Dr. Richard Muyungi is African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN) Chair

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Less than one percent of adaptation finance targets health, even as climate-sensitive diseases multiply. Africa alone will need roughly $300 billion annually by 2030 to build resilient systems and respond to climate-related loss and damage.

Ethiopia has welcomed the return as part of a broader push to repatriate items of national significance.

Delegates met at the Global Climate-Smart Agriculture Conference in Brasília before the COP30 climate talks. Credit: 2025Clim-Eat/Flickr

By Ana Maria Loboguerrero and Dhanush Dinesh
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 20 2025 (IPS)

The language of agricultural sustainability changes like the seasons—from “climate-smart” to “regenerative,” “agroecological,” and “nature-positive.” Each term reflects good intentions, but the growing list risks duplication, confusion and delays.

The recent CSA Conference in Brasília gathered leaders from policy, science and finance ahead of COP30 to focus not on buzzwords but on the shared foundations of sustainable food systems, which is all the more important in the Grave New World. For all the various theories of change, many share the same principles of soil health, crop innovation, inclusive finance and resilient livestock production.

In the midst of the COP30 climate talks, consensus will depend on recognizing that climate action and protecting livelihoods must advance together. Leaders must challenge themselves to measure success not only in emissions reduced, but also in the quality of life sustained by a thriving and resilient rural economy. With Brazil’s COP presidency determined to accelerate agreements into action, the challenge now is to accept and advance context-specific approaches in pursuit of a shared goal.

At present, fragmentation continues to divide institutions, donors, NGOs and producers, with competing ideologies slowing progress toward sustainability at the speed and scale required. For example, while a vast number of organizations are currently backing the concept of regenerative agriculture, others tread the paths of sustainable intensification or climate-smart agriculture. But some of the practices, such as agroforestry, could fall under each of these concepts.

And the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA), established prior to COP26, has been succeeded by Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on the Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security and yet farmers are still waiting for clear national strategies to emerge from years of workshops and working papers. While the principles underpinning these joint work programs are sound, they have not generated action at the speed needed.

On the other hand, the six CSA Conference themes—from soil health and crop innovation to finance and policy—offer a fundamental framework around which there is already much agreement and can deliver results under whichever buzzword it is categorized. The themes also reflect the priorities of Brazil’s Action Agenda and ABC+ Plan, highlighting practical areas of consensus.

Brazil’s experience offers tangible examples of how shared priorities can move from discussion to delivery. The ABC+ Plan (2020–2030) forms the backbone of the country’s low-carbon agriculture strategy, integrating sustainable practices like no-till farming, pasture recovery and biological nitrogen fixation into a coherent national framework. It represents a direct contribution to the COP30’s Action Agenda’s agricultural pillar, transforming abstract goals on soil health and productivity into measurable outcomes.

Building on this, Brazil’s RENOVAGRO is the financing arm that enables the implementation of the ABC+ Plan, demonstrating how public policy can activate private investment to move all Action Agenda ambitions forward together. By tying credit eligibility to verified adoption of low-carbon practices, the program allows farmers to commit to transitions that would otherwise be out of reach. This realizes the ABC+ Plan’s policy objectives and shows that progress depends not necessarily on new ideas, but on acting decisively on the systems that already work.

At COP30, the challenge is not to settle on the right language but to sustain the right actions—whatever this might look like according to local circumstances and resources. Progress depends on scaling what we already agree on: sound policies, accessible finance that doesn’t exclude vulnerable populations and resilient food systems that keep production within environmental limits. The next phase must prioritize implementation over invention.

Leaders have an opportunity to move from promises to performance. The task ahead is to scale what already works—not to define new concepts, but to deliver proven solutions faster.

Brazil’s example shows that integration works better than focusing on the continued search for a universal solution. There is no single path forward, only a combination of context-specific approaches bound by diplomatic agreement and sustainable financing.

By focusing on fundamentals, we can avoid the paralysis of competing definitions and begin to act collectively by applying the policies and practices we know work in ways that fit local realities.

Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Director, Adaptive and Equitable Food Systems at Gates Foundation
Dhanush Dinesh, Chief Climate Catalyst at Clim-Eat

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
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Excerpt:

In the midst of the COP30 climate talks, consensus will depend on recognizing that climate action and protecting livelihoods must advance together.

Rising debt, geopolitical instability and declining aid flows are intensifying external pressure on African economies. In a briefing to the Africa Group of ambassadors at the United Nations headquarters last July, Claver Gatete, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), highlighted the economic pressures facing African countries and outlined ECA’s response, from budget stabilization and strengthened data systems to advancing regional priorities. Held at the Permanent Mission of the African Union to the UN, the session came amid growing uncertainty for African economies, with many facing debt distress, inflation and trade disruptions driven by global policy shifts.

By Danny Bradlow
PRETORIA, South Africa, Nov 20 2025 (IPS)

The end of South Africa’s G20 presidency does not mean the end of its ability or responsibility to promote the issues it prioritised during 2025. It can still advocate for action on some of these issues through its further participation in the G20 and in other international and regional forums.

In this article, I argue that going forward South Africa should prioritise the financial challenges confronting Africa that it championed in 2025.

South Africa established four overarching priorities for its G20 presidency. Two of them dealt with finance. One sought to “ensure debt sustainability for low-income countries”. The other was to mobilise finance for a just energy transition.

The importance of debt, development finance and climate to Africa’s future is clear. Over half of African countries are either in debt distress or at risk of being in distress. More than half of Africa’s population live in countries that are spending more on servicing their debt than on health and/or education.

In addition, 17 African countries experienced net debt outflows in 2023. This means that they were using more foreign exchange to pay their external creditors than they received in new debts that could be used to finance their development. The continent is also experiencing extreme weather events that are adversely affecting food security and human wellbeing.

In short, African countries are caught in a vicious cycle. The impacts of climate and their struggle to meet their debt obligations are interacting in ways that undermine their ability to meet their sustainable development goals.

South Africa’s priorities

South Africa’s priorities for its G20 presidency were ambitious. Success required meaningful action at three levels:

Awareness. South Africa would need to bring the international community to a better understanding of the nature of the debt and development finance challenges confronting African countries and of the consequences of failing to address them.

Process. South Africa would need to convince the G20 to correct the shortcomings in the Common Framework it had devised to deal with low-income countries seeking debt relief.

The examples of Zambia and Ghana showed that the Common Framework was cumbersome, slow and unduly favourable to creditors. For example, the framework requires the debtor to engage separately with each group of its creditors in a sequential process. This means that it should not negotiate with its commercial creditors until it has successfully negotiated with its official creditors.

Commercial creditors can’t give debt relief until the official creditors are satisfied with their deal and are confident that the commercial creditors will not receive more favourable treatment from the debtor than they have received.

Another complication is the IMF’s multiple roles in debt restructurings as an advisor to and a creditor of the debtor countries. In addition, it does the debt sustainability analysis that determines the amount of debt relief that all other creditors are expected to provide to the debtor country in order for it to regain debt sustainability.

The more optimistic its assessment, the smaller the contributions the various creditors, including the IMF, are expected to provide. These contributions can either be in the form of new funding or new debt terms.

Substance. The current debt restructuring process treats debt as a technical financial and legal problem rather than as the complex multifaceted problem that is experienced by debtor countries. The former perspective limits the scope of debtor-creditor negotiations to the terms of the financial contracts.

The negotiations focus on the adjustments that must be made to these terms because the debtor cannot comply with its originally accepted obligations. They treat as largely outside the scope of the discussions the adverse impact the debt situation has on the sovereign debtor’s other legal obligations and on the social, political, environmental and cultural situation in the debtor country.

This approach in effect leaves the debtor to deal with these other issues on its own. This artificial distinction between the debtors’ other legal obligations and those it owes to its creditors makes it very difficult for the debtor to escape the vicious debt, development and climate cycle in which it is trapped. It forces it to choose between its commitments to its creditors and its development obligations.

Over the course of 2025, South Africa has been very effective in raising awareness of the African debt crisis and its dire impact on African countries. South Africa persuaded the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors to issue a declaration on debt sustainability at the end of their October meeting.

The declaration is the G20’s eloquent acknowledgement of the problem and of the need for more discussion of how these debt issues are managed by both debtors and creditors. Unfortunately, it does not contain any firm G20 commitments on what it will do to remedy the situation.

There has not been substantial progress at the process and substance levels. This is unlikely to change in the remaining weeks of South Africa’s G20 presidency.

But there are three actions that South Africa can take beyond the end of its term to ensure that the African debt crisis continues receiving attention.

Three actions

First, it should ask a group like the African Expert Panel that it established to advise the president to prepare a technical report that identifies and analyses all the barriers to Africa accessing affordable, sustainable and predictable flows of external development finance.

This report should be submitted to the South African president in the first half of 2026. Next year, South Africa will still be a member of the G20 Troika, which consists of the current, immediate past and the incoming G20 presidents.

Consequently, next year, it will still be able to table the report at the G20. South Africa can also use the report to promote action in other appropriate regional and global forums.

Second, South Africa and the African Union should create an African Borrower’s Club that is independent of the G20. This club should be a forum in which African sovereign debtors can share information and lessons learned about negotiating sovereign debt transactions and about responsible debt management. When appropriate, the club can work with regional African financial institutions.

The club, working with regional organisations like the African Legal Support Facility, can also sponsor workshops in which interested African sovereign debtors can share information and more critically assess their financing options. They can also work to improve their bargaining capacity in sovereign debt transactions.

The African Borrower’s Club should also be mandated to establish an African Sovereign Debt Roundtable that is modelled on the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable. This entity should be an informal forum, based on the Chatham House Rule in which the various categories of stakeholders in African debt can meet to discuss the design of a sovereign debt restructuring process that is effective, efficient and fair and that adopts an holistic approach to a sovereign debt crisis.

Third, South Africa should capitalise on the fact that the impacts of climate, inequality, unemployment and poverty on Africa’s development prospects are now acknowledged to be macro-critical, and so within the IMF’s macro-economic and financial mandate. South Africa should call for a review of the IMF’s operating principles and practices and its governance arrangements.

This call should note that the multilateral development banks have been the object of G20 review for a number of years and that this has resulted in important enhancements in their capital frameworks and operating practices.

On the other hand, the IMF has not been subject to a similar review despite the fact that its operations have had to undergo possibility even more extensive revisions.

Daniel D. Bradlow is Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Ghana rsquo;s Black Stars have climbed one place to 72nd in the November 2025 FIFA World Rankings, though they remain 14th on the African continent, despite recent setbacks. The slight rise follows consecutive defeats on their Asian tour, including a 2-0 loss to Japan and a 1-0 defeat against South Korea, part of their preparations for th .

Former Ghana captain Asamoah Gyan has identified Nigeria, Morocco, and Ivory Coast as the leading contenders for the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON). Speaking to CAF media during the 2025 awards ceremony on Wednesday at the Mohamed VI Polytechnic University in Rabat, Gyan expressed his disappointment over Ghana rsquo;s absence from the .

Entrance to the Hangar Convention Center of the Amazonia in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belém. The climate summit, which began on November 10 and is due to conclude on Friday the 21st, is debating issues such as the phase-out of fossil fuels and adaptation goals. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 20 2025 (IPS)

The heat in the Hangar Convention Center of the Amazonia, in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belém, has reached the negotiation rooms of the climate summit. Over the past 72 hours, one of the most delicate and significant discussions of this climate meeting has been taking place: the path to progressively abandon the production and use of coal, gas, and oil.

In recent hours, a global coalition of rich and developing countries, led by Colombia, has doubled down on pushing for a fossil fuel phase-out roadmap, while major producer countries resist it.

“The plan must have differentiated commitments, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and the reform of the international financial system, because foreign debt payments are punishing us,” Colombian Environment Minister Irene Vélez explained to IPS.

For the official, the 30th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP30) on climate change must result in a roadmap. “People are mobilizing, demanding climate action; we have to start now,” she urged.

In Belém, the gateway to the planet’s largest rainforest, it is no longer just about reducing emissions but about transforming the foundation of the energy system, thus acquiring a moral, political, and scientific urgency. What was initially meant to be the “Amazon COP” has mutated into the “end-of-the-fossil-era-COP,” but the roadmap to achieve it is a toss-up.“The plan must have differentiated commitments, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and the reform of the international financial system, because external debt payments are punishing us” –Irene Vélez.

Two years after the world agreed at COP28, held in 2023 in Dubai, to move away from fossil fuels, Belém is the moment of truth, upon which the effort to keep global warming below the 1.5° Celsius limit largely depends—a goal considered vital to avoid devastating and inevitable effects on ecosystems and human life.

Thus, the discussion among the 197 parties to the United Nations climate convention has shifted from the “what” to the “how,” and especially to the “when,” questions that have turned potential coordinates into a geopolitical labyrinth.

In that vein, a coalition of over 80 countries emerged on Tuesday the 18th to push the roadmap, including Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, and Panama among the Latin American countries.

One challenge for the roadmap advocates is that the issue is not explicitly part of the main agenda, a resource that the Brazilian presidency of COP30 could use to shirk responsibility on the matter.

The issue appears on the thematic menu of COP30, which started on the 10th and is scheduled to conclude on the 21st, and whose official objectives include approving the Global Goal on Adaptation to climate change and securing sufficient funds for that adaptation.

Approximately 40,000 people are attending this climate summit, including government representatives, multilateral agencies, academia, and civil society organizations.

An unprecedented indigenous presence is also in attendance, with about 900 delegates from native peoples, drawn by the ancestral call of the Amazon, a symbol of the menu of solutions to the climate catastrophe and simultaneously a victim of its causes.

Also present and very active in Belém are about 1,600 lobbyists from the hydrocarbon industry, 12% more than at the 2024 COP, according to the international coalition Kick Big Polluters Out.

The clamor from civil society demands an institutional structure with governance, clear criteria, measurable objectives, and justice mechanisms.

“The roadmap has become a difficult issue to ignore; it is already at the center of these negotiations, and no country can ignore it. The breadth of support is surprising, with rich and poor countries, producers and non-producers, indicating that an agreement is about to fall,” Antonio Hill, Just Transitions advisor for the non-governmental and international Natural Resource Governance Institute, told IPS.

Activists protest on Wednesday the 19th against fossil fuel exploitation at the entrance to the venue of the Belém climate summit, in the Amazonian northeast of Brazil. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Poisoned

The push for the roadmap comes from the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, promoted by civil society organizations, strongly adopted by Colombia, and which so far has the support of 18 nations, but no hydrocarbon-producing Latin American country, such as Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, or Venezuela.

Colombia, despite also being a producer and exporter of fossil fuels, has presented its Roadmap for a Just Energy Transition, with which it seeks to replace income from coal and oil with investments in tourism and renewable energy.

Colombia’s 2022-2052 National Energy Plan projects long-term reductions in fossil fuel production. The country announced US$14.5 billion for the energy transition to less polluting forms of energy production.

But for the rest of the region, the duality between maintaining fossil fuels and promoting renewable energies persists.

A prime example of this duality is the COP30 host country itself, Brazil. While the host President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, have insisted on the need to abandon fossil fuels, the government is promoting expansive oil and gas extraction plans.

In fact, just weeks before the opening of COP30, the state-owned oil group Petrobras received a permit for oil exploration in the Atlantic, just kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon River.

But Lula and his team committed that this summit in the heart of the Amazon would be “the COP of truth” and “the COP of implementation,” and the issue of fossil fuels has become central to the negotiations, which Lula joined on Wednesday the 19th to give a push to the talks and the outcomes.

In their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—the set of mitigation and adaptation policies countries must present to comply with the Paris Agreement on climate change signed in 2015 at COP21—Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, or Chile avoid mentioning a managed phase-out of fossil fuels.

Simply put, they argue they cannot let go of the old vine before grasping the new one. This stance also involves a delicate aspect, as nations like Ecuador depend on revenues from hydrocarbon exploitation.

Therefore, the Global South has insisted on its demand for funding from rich nations, due to their contribution to the climate disaster through fossil fuel exploitation since the 17th century.

The result of the presented policies is alarming: although many countries have increased their emission reduction targets on paper, they lack details on phasing out production. The only existing roadmap is the growing extractive one.

In fact, the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement process, originating from COP28, demanded that countries take measures to move towards a fossil-free era.

The argument is unequivocal: various estimates indicate that fossil fuels contribute 86% of greenhouse gas emissions, the cause of global warming.

But a key point is where to start. For Uitoto indigenous leader Fanny Kuiru Castro, the new general coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin –which  brings together the more than 350 native peoples of the eight countries sharing the biome–, the starting point must precisely be at-risk regions like the Amazon.

“It is a priority. If there isn’t a clear signal that we must proceed gradually, it means the summit has failed and does not want to adopt that commitment. We will have another 30 years of speeches,” she told IPS, alluding to that number of summits without substantial results.

In the Amazon, oil blocks threaten 31 million hectares or 12% of the total area, mining threatens 9.8 million, and timber concessions threaten 2.4 million.

And in that direction, a major obstacle arises: how to finance the phase-out. The roadmap has a direct link to the financial goals aimed at the Global South, with a demand for US$1.2 trillion in funding for climate action starting in 2035.

“Can the COP deliver the financial backing that countries need to reinvent their economies in time to guarantee just and inclusive development?” Hill questioned.

The atmosphere in Belém is of a different urgency compared to Dubai or Baku, where COP29 was held a year ago. The roadmap to a world free of fossil fuel smoke remains a blurry map, drawn freehand on ground that is heating up far too quickly.

In Belém, humanity is deciding whether to brake gradually or to accelerate, with the air conditioning on and a full tank.

Ghana rsquo;s recent sporting successes are the result of deliberate reforms and strategic investment, the Minister for Sports and Recreation, Kofi Adams, has affirmed. Speaking at the Sports Writers Association of Ghana (SWAG) Awards last Saturday, Adams highlighted that bold initiatives over the past two years to restructure and strengt .

Former Black Stars captain Andr eacute; Dede Ayew has described Ghana rsquo;s 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup triumph as a moment that ldquo;brought the whole world to Ghana rdquo; and expressed hope that the nation will soon claim another global football title.

Communications Director of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Henry Asante Twum, has defended the federation rsquo;s handling of squad selection for the Black Stars rsquo; November friendlies. The Black Stars suffered a 2-0 defeat to Japan and a 1-0 loss to South Korea, with several key players, including Jordan Ayew, Mohammed Kudus, T .

Achraf Hakimi and Ghizlane Chebbak deliver a double success for Morocco as they are named 2025 African men's and women's footballer of the year respectively.