Balkan News

Members of the Uyghur delegation pose with the director of their host organisation, CADAL, during their visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, 23 August 2026. The sky flag is strictly banned by the Chinese government under anti-separatism laws. Credit: CADAL.

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 15 2026 (IPS)

On 24 August, I took part in a human rights conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Days before it opened, the city legislature cancelled the intended venue after the Chinese ambassador complained to the Argentine government about the participation of prominent Uyghur human rights defenders, including Dolkun Isa, an activist exiled in Germany. Beijing has waged a campaign of mass detention and forced assimilation against the mostly Muslim Uyghur population for years.

The organisers found another venue at the last minute, and the conference went ahead, but the episode was revealing. This was a small gathering, of no great consequence to anyone beyond those in the room, in a global south city over 19,000 kilometres from Beijing, yet China still went out of its way to stop it. The episode showed how China aims to deny its critics any platform, however modest, anywhere. A phone call to a compliant government is the least of what it does in pursuit of this objective.

China’s global campaign

China is the world’s leading perpetrator of transnational repression, the practice of reaching beyond borders to intimidate, punish and silence critics in exile. Its new ‘Ethnic Unity Law‘, in force since July, lets the government target dissidents abroad when they are deemed to be ‘undermining ethnic unity’ or ‘creating ethnic division’. Freedom House has documented at least 319 instances of China’s physical transnational repression targeting Hong Kong democracy activists, Tibetans and Uyghurs, in addition to Taiwanese civil society and political figures, whom it treats as if they were Chinese nationals.

China’s transnational repression spans the spectrum of severity. At the far end, dissidents disappear. Chinese dissident Yi Haihua reportedly vanished in Dubai in April, having fled China via Hong Kong the previous November. China also uses prosecution and imprisonment to punish dissent abroad. Those targeted include a student who was handed a six-year sentence when he returned to China after participating in a pro-democracy protest in Australia.

Less extreme but far more widespread are surveillance, intimidation and repression by proxy, through which China monitors and threatens dissidents abroad and pressures family members back home. China also applies economic leverage against states, as seen in April when the government of Zambia, a state heavily indebted to China, called off the RightsCon digital rights conference, over the participation of Taiwanese activists, days before it was due to open in Lusaka.

Beyond China

China is not alone. Vietnam and Russia are the second and third worst offenders, and at least 54 states have engaged in transnational repression, with six — Afghanistan, Benin, Georgia, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe — identified as using these tactics for the first time in 2025.

Latin America, once largely spared, is now home to transnational repression. In June 2025, former Nicaraguan army major Roberto Samcam, an outspoken critic of dictator Daniel Ortega, was shot dead at his home near San José, Costa Rica, the third such killing of a Nicaraguan exile there in recent years. Nicaragua has also taken the lead in stripping dissenters of nationality. Since 2023, the government has removed citizenship from over 300 former journalists, opponents and political prisoners and confiscated their assets, leaving them stateless and unprotected.

Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro pursued its opponents with similar determination. In February 2024, men in fake police uniforms abducted exiled former army lieutenant Ronald Ojeda from his apartment in Santiago de Chile. His dismembered body was found buried under concrete nine days later. Chilean prosecutors concluded the killing was ordered by the Venezuelan government and carried out through a Venezuelan gang, part of a growing practice of outsourcing violence that offers plausible deniability. In October 2025, gunmen in Bogotá opened fire on exiled activists Yendri Velásquez and Luis Peche. Fortunately, they survived their multiple gunshot wounds.

Weak response

In March 2025, a New York jury convicted two members of an Eastern European crime ring hired by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard over a 2022 plot to kill exiled journalist Masih Alinejad at her Brooklyn home. This June, a UK court convicted two men of spying on UK-based Hong Kong democracy activists, and in July, it convicted those responsible for a knife attack on exiled Iranian television presenter Pouria Zeraati. The USA has imposed visa bans on Thai officials responsible for forcibly returning Uyghurs to China.

Yet these are exceptions in a pattern of host states quietly enabling the repression they claim to oppose. On top of failing to do enough to prevent transnational repression on their soil, many are facilitating it through their border and immigration systems, with geopolitical calculations and political pressure to curb immigration numbers trumping human rights protections.

In June, Germany deported Tajik opposition activist Asadullo Boboev and his son despite a documented risk of arrest. Tajik authorities detained Boboev on arrival. The USA has repeatedly returned Russians to the authoritarian government they fled, and has let officials from Iran’s consulate into US detention facilities to help process Iranian asylum seekers for deportation, including Christian converts and women’s rights protesters. In 2025, the UK reopened the door to extraditions to Hong Kong, five years after suspending cooperation over the territory’s draconian national security law. The Trump administration’s 2025 dismantling of USAID and freeze on democracy funding have cut off support that once helped threatened activists relocate and rebuild their lives.

The European Parliament, the G7 and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have all formally acknowledged transnational repression as an assault on human rights and state sovereignty, but recognition hasn’t brought stronger responses. Democratic states must resist pressure, impose consequences on foreign officials who order transnational repression and refrain from returning exiles to face danger. Democracies must not prioritise calculations of trade and diplomacy over the protection of the people seeking safety.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Research and Analysis, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report. She is also a Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

 

 

 

 

By Roberto Savio
Sep 15 2026 (IPS)

On 11 September 2001 I was in New York, on one of my frequent visits to the United Nations, to which I was tied by a consultancy contract. That morning I woke up late, around eleven, sleeping off the jet lag of the flight from Italy. I was staying at the Hyatt Park, today the Millennium. A hotel a few metres from the Glass Palace, built to serve the world of the United Nations.

Roberto Savio

When I came down to the lobby, I was taken aback by an extreme state of agitation, from the staff to the guests. I tried to speak to a bellboy I knew, but he ran off without answering. So I went to reception, where everyone was on the telephone and no one paid me any attention. Finally, someone I knew told me: “They’ve attacked the Twin Towers!” And then she too rushed away.

At that point, with the professional deformation of the journalist, I went out into the street to take a taxi and get to the scene. But the street was deserted. Not a car in sight, and the few passers-by were running as well, certainly to get home.

So I did the only intelligent thing left to me, which was to watch television. The images were clear and terrible. But the anchors were groping in total darkness, in a bewilderment I had never seen. It was clear that this was an attack and not an accident. But by whom? And why? The CBS presenter was asking: “But who could wish America harm, when we have always helped the whole world?” And the one on NBC: “The Evil Empire is over, it set with the fall of the Berlin Wall two years ago. Where does this hatred come from?”

New York comes to a halt

On the day of the attack, as on the day after, New York ceased to exist. The streets were deserted. Shops, restaurants, supermarkets, closed. There was no public transport. In my hotel, where the staff had not turned up, the managers improvised pathetic sandwiches, which was all that could be offered to the guests to keep them fed. Everyone was at home digesting the shock, avoiding unpredictable dangers, and watching television. Only on the second day, beyond the appalling images of people falling from the sky, of office workers and firemen covered in a mantle of ash, did figures and data begin to appear. And in those days, the American dream vanished.

The American myth and its crisis

The United States had been the clear winner of the Second World War. And from then on, the undisputed leader of the world, opposed only by the Evil Empire, the Soviet Union. But American citizens saw the socialist world as politically absurd and economically backward, a place people were constantly fleeing in order to take refuge in the world of freedom, democracy and prosperity, the United States. It was they who had set in motion the reconstruction of Europe, which, though historically the centre of the West, was by then an arm of American hegemony. And their aid to the development of the Third World had saved millions of people from hunger and famine. In the collective imagination, this took on enormous proportions, which had nothing to do with reality. Shortly before 11 September, the New York Times had published a survey according to which the American “in the street” believed that development aid amounted to anywhere from a minimum of 5 per cent of Gross Product up to 10 per cent. In fact it was 0.10.

The common feeling in those days was disbelief. In the history of the United States, Americans had first read about and then watched wars, massacres and every kind of violence as distant events, even when their own sons were involved, as in the Second World War. But they had never suffered an attack at home. And the fact that this had been possible was the first, subconscious feeling of distrust towards the institutions — which, with other events and with time, would become an important part of today’s political reality. Until then, polls had always recorded a serene confidence in a State that guaranteed security.

From the American dream to Trump and Musk

To make an effective analysis of how the American dream progressively faded would require far more space than we have. But let me try to summarise the threads of the carpet that slowly covered the United States we knew, replacing them with those of Trump and Musk.

First of all, it should be remembered that in the decade of the Eighties a number of things happened that carried great significance not only globally, but with great weight inside the United States.

The first was the Conference of Heads of State in Cancún, in 1981, convened by the United Nations to continue the dialogue for a New World Order based on cooperation and international solidarity, adopted by acclamation by the General Assembly in 1973. I was head of communications for the Summit, and I lived it from the inside. The 25 most representative heads of state of the moment were there, and from Indira Gandhi to Mitterrand, from Nyerere to Trudeau, all spoke of the need to strengthen international cooperation. When Reagan’s turn came, elected shortly before, his speech was categorical, and was later taken up by Thatcher: “American citizens elected me to serve their interests and not those of others. And therefore I do not accept the straitjacket of United Nations resolutions. From now on, America will choose its own road.”

In those same years, at American urging, the international community adopted the Washington Consensus, drawn up by the American Treasury, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank. The consensus broke with the economic doctrines that had prevailed since the end of the war. It eliminated every social component, making the market and its laws of absolute competition the centre of society. The State was to withdraw from its central role and let the market take its place. Expenditure that was not immediately productive, such as health and education, was to be taken over by the private sector. And competition, at every level, from the individual to the global, was to be the yardstick by which success is judged.

The result was that many factories and companies moved to countries with lower labour costs and fewer controls. America lost millions of jobs, of people who until then had been a middle class — white, rural, with a social conscience. But the same happened in the rural world, of white, conservative Americans with little education and an unconscious racism towards workers of colour.

The wars and the financial collapse

Nor should it be forgotten that after the attack on the Twin Towers, the United States began the war in Afghanistan, from which it would withdraw ignominiously twenty years later. And shortly afterwards, in 2003, it began the invasion of Iraq, from which it withdrew in 2011, giving life to the Islamic Caliphate (ISIS), which would become a great element of destabilisation throughout the Middle East. During these years, Americans discover that their country is not invincible. It was supposed to overcome the trauma of Vietnam. Instead, the failure of the most powerful military machine in the world continues. In the end, all that will remain is a tragic balance sheet of ruins and dead, and a total expenditure of around eight trillion dollars. To put it in perspective, the American budget today is thirty trillion dollars.

But in my view, the final blow to the American dream came a few years later, with the collapse of Wall Street, an event which once again found me present while it was happening. Finance without controls had gone so far as to turn the stock exchange into a genuine casino, a place of ever riskier bets. Under Clinton, in 1999, a law was repealed which since 1923 had established a clear separation between deposit banks (those serving citizens and businesses, loans and mortgages) and investment banks, that is, banks of speculation. The capital of the deposit banks, which were not very profitable, flowed into the investment banks. Americans do not say, as we Europeans do, that they “gamble” on the stock exchange, but that they “invest” in it. And a great many citizens do so, as do their pension funds.

In 2008 the speculative bubble bursts, sweeps away Lehman Brothers, an icon of Wall Street, and gives rise to a crisis which obviously affects the whole world. It is calculated that all the countries of the world together had to commit some 20,000 dollars in rescue money for every citizen of the planet in order to avoid a total collapse of finance. In the crisis, millions upon millions of Americans lose their savings. Their pensions too are in danger. Since the decade of the Eighties, the bargaining power of the unions has been in continuous decline. Wages in real, purchasing terms have been steadily falling. Many citizens are struggling with precarious and part-time jobs with which they can barely reach the end of the month. Many have to hold down two jobs in order to survive. The poverty rate rises to 15 per cent, and child poverty to African levels. UNICEF’s figures are dramatic. And so begins the conviction that the elites are the enemies of the people, that politics no longer has anything to do with citizens’ real concerns. Electoral abstention increases. And so the immigrant, the labour force on which America was built, becomes the enemy who takes my job, pollutes my child’s classroom, takes my place in the hospital, and commits crimes and outrages.

Religion, sovereignism and the new right

It is not only politics that digs out this feeling of frustration and anger, which explains Trump’s great success. It is also religion. Fundamentalist evangelicals now number 60 million in the United States, and their message takes up exactly the economic and social vision of the Washington Consensus. We must compete, because God judges us by our success; whoever is poor is poor because he has not fought. They support an Israel that recovers its ancient kingdom of Samaria and Judea (and therefore a vast ethnic cleansing), because they preach that Jesus will make a “second coming”, a return to earth, only when Israel has returned to the time of Jesus. And in this world flourishes the sovereignism of Bannon, who wants to turn the right into a great international (later overshadowed by Musk, who wants an anti-system sovereignism of the far right). Catholic integralism flourishes, embraced by J. Vance, the vice-president placed there by Silicon Valley and a possible next President. The integralism that leads the Secretary of Defense (or rather of War, as he prefers it) to bring religion into the armed forces, to present the war against Iran in terms of religion. And a population in which the level of economic and social distress reaches 20 per cent sees the flourishing of the first trillionaire in history (let us look at a trillion: 1,000,000,000,000), who boasts of paying no taxes, eliminates American development aid, and dismisses tens of thousands of public servants without criterion.

The internet and the end of shared truth

Shortly afterwards comes the development of communications technology. In 2004 Facebook is born, Reddit in 2005, Twitter in 2006. All at once, millions of Americans find themselves connected to one another, bypassing the enormous media system of the United States, which was in any case in few hands. I was one of the great champions of the internet, until (I believe it was Bill Gates) someone launched a slogan: “Now it is not important to know; it is important to know where to look” — which brought me to a state of great concern. If I find, but do not possess, what I have looked for, it will slide off me, like water off a goose’s back.

But the problem is that the internet was not born as a common good, as a service for humanity. It was born as a source of profit, and with the orgy of available information, being consulted became fundamental. Hence the abandonment of any meaningful mechanism of ethical or professional control over the information in circulation. So, in order to keep the connection and not lose the user, priority went to the most sensational, extraordinary, striking information. Before long this would be exploited by creators of false or tendentious news, with a great flowering of conspiracy theories which, for example, see in the President of the Republic and the Pope a network of paedophiles covered by the secret services. I read, again I think in the NYT, that the FBI estimated at 45 million the number of people adhering to these conspiracies, which stripped the institutions of all legitimacy. And so the internet gave them a megaphone, which carried the most incredible ideas from the bar to the whole of society. And above all to the extremists, infinitely more fanatical than ordinary citizens.

Numerous studies and statistics tell us of the impact of the isolation that leads young people, instead of socialising, to shut themselves up in the internet, in a virtual world in which AI becomes the real friend and adviser. This falls upon a society that has always idealised the individual against the social, and where a winning political line sees in the reduction of the State the freedom of citizens, in taxes an unjust expropriation of the fruit of their labour, and in social spending, such as medical care, a clear socialist imprint.

Obviously, a reaction of suffering is under way in the United States. The Mayor of New York, who declares himself a socialist, has been elected, and other openly progressive figures are entering the field. But this is happening with a strong polarisation, with an intolerant and profound confrontation, which offers no glimpse, in the immediate future, of a path towards national consensus, but quite the contrary. Trump calls the Democrats “communists”, and politics has by now become the great instrument of division. The future does not look at all like a return to the America of dreams.

Bin Laden’s legacy and Europe

Bin Laden could never have imagined, in destroying the Twin Towers, that he would set in motion such a mechanism of destruction.

But his legacy is not measured only in treaties. It is measured also in everyday gestures, which we have stopped recognising as such. Today no one is surprised at having to arrive at the airport two hours before departure: shoes and belts in the tray, liquids in hundred-millilitre bottles, queues, scanners, searches. The new generations experience it as a law of nature, because they never knew the before. It was enough to turn up half an hour ahead, check in, and go straight to the gate. No controls. That world disappeared on a September morning, and it has never come back. This is terrorism’s most silent victory: not to have changed our ideas, but our habits, to the point that we no longer remember having had different ones.

We should also analyse how this mechanism did not remain in the United States. With different characteristics, and in a different reality, it spread to Europe as well. One need only look at the Maastricht Treaty, on which our European Union is based. Concluded in the Dutch town in 1992, at the height of the intoxication with the extreme capitalism of the Washington Consensus, it provides for obligations and competences in the economic field alone. The social field is part of an added document, which has no binding value. And now, out of 27 member states of the Union, a majority are sovereignist, and therefore opposed to any real power for Brussels. Next year we will have elections in Spain, France, Italy and Poland. Countries of great weight. If sovereignism prevails in these too, Europeans — who look upon Trump as an aberration — will have fulfilled his dream: to destroy the European Union.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti-neoliberal global governance. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Credit: Cia Pak / UN

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 15 2026 (IPS)

As the race for the election of a new Secretary-General (UNSG) gathers momentum, the spotlight is on the 193-member General Assembly, the highest policy making body at the United Nations, which has refused to assert itself and continues to play a subservient role in the elections of UNSGs.

Perhaps this year will be no exception either.

According to Article 97 of the United Nations Charter, the Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council (SC), which puts forward a single recommended candidate.

Traditionally, the General Assembly (GA) has always approved that recommendation, usually by acclamation or a resolution

But the GA has never rejected a SC nominee. Despite a growing demand for a female SG in the 81- year history of the UN, what if the SC nominee this year is a male candidate.?

Isn’t it time for the GA to assert its authority and reject any candidates– male or female—who lacks the right credentials for the post of Chief Administrative Officer of the United Nations? Isn’t it also time for the GA to cease being a mere rubber stamp — approving without questioning the Security Council decision?

Richard Gowan, Director for Global Issues and Institutions and a longtime UN watcher at the Brussels-based Crisis Group, told Inter Press Service (IPS): “I really, really doubt that the General Assembly would reject a candidate approved by the Security Council– unless he or she was a certified axe murderer. And even then, it might be a close call.”

There has been a lot of talk about the General Assembly asserting itself more in the selection process. But member states are also worried that the veto powers in the Council will not be able to agree on anyone at all. There is more and more talk of the Council reaching the end of the year without making a recommendation, he said.

“ I think that there will be a deal in the end, but to be frank if the veto powers do agree on a candidate, a lot of countries will conclude that they have to accept him or her. Even if diplomats in New York think the person on offer is sub-standard, their political bosses in capitals will not want to offend Washington, Beijing and Moscow by challenging the choice”.

* I can imagine a situation in which the veto powers force through a candidate from outside Latin America and the Caribbean, leading the Latin Americans to abstain or vote against them in protest over the breach of the regional rotation principle. Although a lot of members do really want a female Secretary-General, I find it less likely that a lot of states would vote against a man on principle.”

* I think that a lot of diplomats would worry about damaging their relations with the next Secretary-General before they even take office. And in the final analysis, there will be a tendency to say that it is better to give the next UN chief a broad endorsement for the sake of the organization. Turning the next Secretary-General into a lame duck in advance would look bad, declared Gowan.

Jesselina Rana, UN Advisor, CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organisations and activists, told IPS in theory the GA can push back if a woman is not recommended, once voting starts. It only takes a simple majority present and voting to appoint the SG. In practice, it never has happened.

Real pressure has to come earlier. This means the GA asking for multiple candidates before the Security Council makes its recommendation or even holding GA straw polls to gauge preferences., she said.

Dr Palitha Kohona, former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, told IPS to seek clarity from the Charter, which substantially reflects the reality of the world after the Second World War, would not be particularly helpful in the appointment of a new SG.

“We continue to be dominated by that reality which in the view of some commentators, including the present writer, is outdated. Practices have been developed which essentially perpetuate that reality. Whatever the P5 decides is likely to prevail.”

The Charter itself says little on the appointment process of the SG. Article 97 stipulates that the General Assembly will appoint a Secretary-General on the recommendation of the Security Council. Resolutions 11/1 of 1946 and 54/246 of 1997 are important in this regard, said Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

The Security Council (SC) has continued to play the preeminent role in the selection of a candidate for the position of SG. In fact, the role played by the veto wielding Permanent 5 (P5) is critical.

In the first instance, he pointed out, the SC will seek consensus prior to recommending a candidate to the GA, although 9 votes in favour of a candidate in the Council would suffice to progress the matter. If consensus is not feasible, the Council will vote on the candidates available.

The practice of conducting straw polls among the members of the SC has become popular in recent times. To the disconcert of many members of the world body, the recommendation is adopted at a private meeting in accordance with Rule 48 of the Provisional Rules of Procedure. The P5 has fiercely hung on to this privilege.

“It is now almost mandatory for aspirants to the post of SG to undertake visits to the capitals of the P5 to seek their blessings and not say or do anything that would cause them unease”.

In South Asia, people are familiar with the somewhat similar practice of making offerings to deities in order to obtain divine blessings prior to undertaking any important task.

This was not always the case. When, in 1951, Trygve Lie was vetoed by the Soviet Union, as he sought his second term, the US had him appointed through a clear majority of votes in the GA.

Given the difficulties that Trygve Lie faced subsequently, especially in dealing with a hostile Soviet Union, it would be unlikely that such a break from accepted practice would be adopted today. The life of a SG appointed in this manner would simply be too difficult, he argued.

While many would consider that at least now a woman should occupy the position of SG, the present writer subscribes to the view, that the best candidate should be picked to head this supremely important global position, irrespective of gender.

“The ideal candidate should be able to work effectively with the P5, maintain the confidence of the members of the Organization, manage a complex universal bureaucracy and advance the goals and ideals of the Character without fear or favour, declared Dr Kohona.

Meanwhile, in an article published in PassBlue last month, Graca Machel, a co-founder and the Deputy Chair of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders, said historically, the selection of a new secretary-general has been treated as the domain of the UN Security Council, especially its five permanent members, known as “the P5.”

But the wording of the UN Charter is clear that while the Council should recommend a candidate, the appointment is made by the General Assembly. If the P5 propose an unsuitable candidate for reasons of realpolitik, the states of the General Assembly can and should reject them and insist that more suitable individuals be put forward said Machel, the only woman in modern history to have served as First Lady of two countries: South Africa and Mozambique.

“The concentration of such power in the hands of only five member states — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — has never been consistent with the democratic spirit of multilateralism. It is particularly indefensible today, when two permanent members, Russia and the US, have recently breached the Charter through launching unilateral wars of aggression,” she pointed out.

The concentration of such power in the hands of only five member states — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — has never been consistent with the democratic spirit of multilateralism. It is particularly indefensible today, when two permanent members, Russia and the US, have recently breached the Charter through launching unilateral wars of aggression.

“As an African woman who fought in my country’s liberation struggle and has spent decades working for peace, justice and human dignity, I find it profoundly troubling that the UN still reflects, at its uppermost levels of the Security Council, the power hierarchies of 1945 and the colonial era”, she declared.

All 193 members of the General Assembly bear responsibility for ensuring a credible process and must affirm their commitment to multilateralism, universal human rights and the rules-based international order. They have an obligation to ensure that those principles are reflected in the candidate they support.

“If the Security Council presents a candidate who lacks the independence, experience, integrity and broad confidence required for the office, the General Assembly is not bound to rubber-stamp that choice. Member states have the right and responsibility to demand a candidate worthy of the Charter and of the peoples in whose name the UN acts”.

The next secretary-general cannot be merely an administrator of international consensus, especially when consensus itself is often paralyzed. The office requires a leader with moral courage, political judgment and strategic independence — someone to speak truth to power, to work quietly and effectively behind the scenes and to retain the trust of governments without becoming beholden to any of them, declared Machel.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

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Ouattara, senior midwife and head of the maternity unit at the Ayaou-Sokpa Health Centre in Côte d'Ivoire, consults with Awa, a pregnant woman, during a routine antenatal visit. Credit: UNFPA Côte d'Ivoire/Miléquêm Diarassouba

By Diene Keita and Jean Kaseya
NEW YORK / ADDIS ABABA, Sep 7 2026 (IPS)

Tonight, thousands of women across Africa will give birth. Whether they survive to see daylight will largely depend on where they live, how quickly they reach care, and whether the health system around them is ready to respond.

Maternal deaths in Africa have dropped 40 percent since 2000, but progress is now stalling. Africa still accounts for more than 70 percent of all maternal deaths worldwide. A woman facing pregnancy complications on the continent is around 130 times more likely to die than a woman in Europe or North America.

Most of these deaths are preventable. Postpartum hemorrhage remains the leading direct cause of maternal death, while indirect causes such as HIV, malaria, and anemia also account for a substantial share. What connects them is delay: delay in seeking care, delay in reaching a health facility, and delay in providing the best treatment to save a woman’s life. The fact that so many maternal deaths occur within health facilities is telling: the problem is not only the absence of care but also weaknesses in facility readiness, referral systems, teamwork, and emergency response.

Throughout the continuum of maternal care, a well-educated midwife can recognize danger signs before they become emergencies: managing complications, including coordinating timely referrals; and delivering respectful and high-quality care. Midwives already deliver up to 90 percent of essential sexual, reproductive, maternal, and newborn health services, often in communities where health systems are weakest. But midwives cannot do this alone and their impact depends on the strength of the health system: functioning primary health care, community referral and transportation systems, reliable medicines and blood supplies, and access to emergency obstetrical and neonatal care when complications arise. Despite this indispensable role, midwives remain one of Africa’s most overlooked and underfunded health workers.

Based on the latest comparable WHO and UNFPA data, only four of 51 reporting African countries meet the WHO needs-based benchmark of 9.23 midwifery personnel per 10,000 population. Forty-seven remain below the benchmark. But the numerical shortage is only part of the story. Even where midwives are educated, roughly 34 percent of midwifery personnel in reporting countries are unemployed. The challenge, in other words, is not simply to educate more midwives—it is to integrate those already educated and deploy and retain them where needs are greatest.

Ending preventable maternal mortality by 2030 has become one of the continent’s greatest tests of leadership, equity, and health sovereignty.

With the appointment of H.E. Dr. Samia Suluhu Hassan, President of the United Republic of Tanzania, as the AU Champion on Maternal and Child Health, our collective quest to end maternal deaths is elevated with the highest level of political support. In a recent op-ed, President Hassan called on African leaders and partners to rally around a simple yet powerful roadmap: the Three Zeros framework. It includes achieving zero home deliveries where women are cut off from skilled care and emergency referrals; zero preventable maternal and newborn deaths by shifting from access alone to quality, respectful, and emergency-ready care; and zero unvaccinated children by placing zero-dose children at the center of primary health care and last-mile delivery. Investing in midwives is fundamental to achieving these Three Zeros.

The case for investment is not just moral — it is economic. The UNFPA midwifery investment case reveals that investing in midwives can generate as much as a ten-fold return through combined social and economic gains. In Sierra Leone, modeling shows that universal care provided by midwives could save 2,278 maternal lives, save 19,029 newborn lives, prevent 39,970 stillbirths, and avert almost 860,000 unintended pregnancies by 2035. Beyond these clinical and economic gains, midwifery is also a powerful engine for women’s economic empowerment. Since the vast majority of midwives are female, expanding this workforce translates directly into thousands of stable, skilled, and dignified formal-sector jobs for women—particularly in rural and underserved communities where employment opportunities are often scarce. Converting informal, unpaid caregiving into salaried careers saves lives and builds financial independence for women, while strengthening Africa’s broader economic development.

Investing in midwives alongside multi-skilled community health workers creates a stronger continuum of care—from the household and community to the primary health facility and referral hospital. Community health workers can support early identification of pregnancy risks, promote antenatal care attendance, encourage skilled birth attendance, strengthen immunization uptake, and facilitate timely referrals, while midwives provide the skilled clinical care required to prevent maternal and newborn deaths. Together, this workforce forms the backbone of a people-centered primary health care system capable of delivering the AU’s vision of health sovereignty.

Africa has already shown political leadership in achieving a strong health workforce. In 2016, Africa committed to train and deploy two million community health workers as part of addressing the chronic health workforce gap—a target already half met. Under the leadership of H.E. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and AU Champion for Human Resources for Health and Community Health Delivery Partnership (CHDP), the continent is committed to accelerating progress towards the target of two million multi-skilled community health workers by 2030.

Midwifery deserves the same political ambition, together with a clear continental target to close the midwifery gap.

Any midwifery target must sit within a broader health workforce agenda. Accelerating the reduction of maternal deaths depends on a wider multidisciplinary workforce, including nurses, doctors, anesthesia providers, laboratory personnel, pharmacists, blood service staff, and emergency transport teams. This model promotes integrated community health systems where trained, supported, and professional community health workers deliver a comprehensive package of essential services, including health promotion for maternal and child health, disease prevention, immunization, early identification of pregnancy risks, referrals, and links to health facilities.

Just as Africa united around scaling up community health workers, leaders should now rally around a target to educate, deploy and retain the midwives needed to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths on the continent and enhance the health outcomes.

The following priorities, supported by the evidence-driven global initiative The Midwifery Accelerator, offer a practical roadmap:

First, increase and institutionalize financing for the health workforce, including midwives, as a strategic investment for health security and sovereignty.

This means accelerating the Lusaka Agenda and Accra Reset and prioritizing domestic funding for workforce compacts to strengthen primary health care systems in high-burden countries for maternal and child deaths. Establishing dedicated workforce budget lines, and improving the efficiency of workforce financial management through digitalization will require strengthened public finance management capacity and capabilities and cross-ministerial coordination. Aligning partner contributions strategically with national health workforce development plans will improve efficiency and address issues linked to the transition from donor support.

Second, expand equitable access to skilled maternal and newborn care by deploying midwives strategically to underserved high-burden and rural areas.

We must educate, deploy, and retain enough midwives to improve the quality, continuity, and responsiveness of maternal and newborn care. This will require ensuring quality midwifery education aligned to international and national standards, financing new posts and absorbing unemployed midwives, educating more only where the needs are unmet. Retention is equally critical as poor conditions; limited career growth, low pay and migration continue to drain skilled midwives from many African countries. Building a resilient workforce requires investing in decent work, professional recognition, and supportive, accountable workplaces.

Third, we must advocate and empower midwives, building midwifery leadership, strengthening coalitions, and amplifying the voices of women and communities.

Midwives should play a central role in designing models of care, not just delivering them. Professional associations must be seated at policy and financing tables, the Chief Midwifery Officer Network should be formalized, and communities need a stronger say in holding health systems accountable.

Fourth, maternal survival must be addressed as a whole-of-government responsibility.

Backed by political and financial commitments, this requires engagement beyond health ministries, including the finance, education, gender, and planning portfolios, alongside local government and civil society partners.

Through the AU Champion Roadmap on Maternal and Child Health, the AU Commission is collaborating with Member States, Africa CDC, UNFPA, and other partners to strengthen accountability, data systems and peer-to-peer learning. Accountability must drive this agenda: every maternal death should be counted, reviewed, and used to strengthen health systems. What gets measured gets prioritized, and what gets prioritized gets funded.

The AU Champion Roadmap calls for sustained, African-led domestic financing for maternal, newborn and child health. Investing in midwives is an investment in maternal and newborn survival, women’s economic empowerment, resilient primary health care systems, and Africa’s future prosperity. Preventing maternal deaths protects families, creates decent jobs, strengthens trust in public institutions, and safeguards the continent’s greatest asset—its people.

Africa has shown that shared ambition can drive transformative change. That same ambition must be matched with sustained resolve and support to ensure that no woman or newborn’s life is cut short for reasons we can prevent. A strong and resilient midwifery health workforce is within our collective reach – let us use it to secure Africa’s health sovereignty, sustainable development, and future prosperity.

Dr. Diene Keita, Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and
Dr. Jean Kaseya, Director General, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC)

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Kellemes hangulatú, mondhatni családias és szerencsére jóidős repülőnapot rendeztek idén is Pöstyénben északi szomszédaink - nem mellékesen ingyenes részvétellel és ingyenes parkolással az érdeklődő adófizetők számára.

Surfin' Orca :-)

Balti méhecskére szigorúan csíkos lepkefogóval kell menni.

Zord

Am letzten Augustwochenende starben in Davos zwei junge Männer nach einem Verkehrsunfall auf der Flüelastrasse. Eine Frau wurde verletzt. Beide jungen Männer sind mit dem Familienunternehmen Heldstab verbunden – und waren im Rahmen des 50-Jahr-Jubiläums unterwegs.

Szeptember 6-án tartanak tartományi választást a németországi Szász-Anhalt (Sachsen Anhalt) tartományban. Szász-Anhalt tele van történelmileg jelentős helyekkel, itt található például Wittenberg, a reformáció bölcsője, valamint Quedlinburg és Magdeburg csodálatos városai, melyek a középkori Németország, a Német-Római Császárság ékkövei voltak.

A sajtó figyelmének középpontjába azonban nem a régió szépsége vagy a választás puszta ténye repítette a tartományt. Történelmi jelentőségét az adja ennek a választásnak, hogy először fordulhat elő olyan, hogy a hagyományos pártoktól jobbra található csoportosulás egyedül kormányozzon egy tartományt. Az AfD most erre készül. A jelenlegi felmérések alapján reális esélye lehet a pártnak a szükséges mandátumok összegyűjtésére. Az INSA legfrissebb felmérése szerint az AfD 43%-on, a centrumban elhelyezkedő CDU 22%-on, a szélsőbaloldali Linke 12%-on, míg a szociáldemokrata párt 7%-on áll. Ők úgy tűnik, biztosan bekerülnek a tartományi döntéshozásba. Akiknél ez még kérdés, azok a Zöldek (5% körül), valamint a szélsőbaloldali BSW (4%).

Az Alternatíva Németországért párt népszerűségének hátterében a mainstream pártokkal szembeni elégedetlenség áll. A német választók szerint az elmúlt évtizedek CDU-SPD kormányzata nem adott megfelelő választ a migráció, a klímaváltozás, az orosz–ukrán háború, valamint az európai versenyképesség helyzetét érintő kérdésekre. A rendelkezésre álló információink alapján kétféle eredménye lehet ennek a választásnak. Vagy az AfD sikeresen megszerzi a mandátumok 50%-át (42 helyet a 83-ból), vagy az összes többi párt összefogva (CDU-Linke-SPD-Zöldek) próbál meg valamiféle tartományi kormányzást végezni. Az AfD sikere a központi források elvesztésével járhat, míg a négypárti koalíció a tartományi stabilitás teljes felszámolásával (ahogy látjuk azt Türingiában, ahol a legutóbbi választáson 30% feletti eredménnyel az AfD nyert, de kormányt nem tudott alakítani, azóta pedig már bőven 40% felé mérik a pártot helyben).

Sokaknak furcsa lehet, hogy miért kell az AfD-nek a mandátumok 50%-át megszerezni, miért nem fog össze inkább valamelyik kisebb párttal a szükséges mandátumok megszerzése érdekében. Erre a válasz igen egyszerű: a német politikából ismerős kifejezés, a tűzfal (Brandmauer). Ez a mainstream pártok által felállított fal arra szolgál, hogy az AfD-t távol tartsák a hatalomtól. A német média és a mainstream pártok által szélsőségesnek vélt AfD-vel ennek okán senki nem kíván együttműködni, vagy koalícióra lépni.

Biztonságpolitikai szempontból is érdemes megközelíteni a kérdést. Németország Európán belül az egyik leghatározottabban Oroszország-kritikus ország, ezzel szemben az AfD pragmatikusabb Oroszország-politikát követel, valamint a kapcsolatok újraértelmezését, az északi gázvezetékek újbóli megnyitását. Különösen érdekes helyzetet teremthetne tehát, ha a központi Ukrajna-politikától lényegesen eltérő nézetrendszerrel rendelkező párt kerülne hatalomra. Sajtóinformációk szerint a berlini kormányzat már kidolgozott egy potenciális cselekvési tervet egy AfD-győzelemre. Ebben a forgatókönyvben a központi kormányzat szövetségi kényszert (Bundeszwang) alkalmazhat a tartománnyal szemben, amennyiben az nem hajlandó eleget tenni az ország NATO-vállalásainak (például nem engedi át a fegyvereket, vagy nem támogatja külföldi katonák állomásoztatását). Érdemes azonban megjegyezni, hogy a honvédelem és a külpolitika Németországban kizárólagos szövetségi hatáskör (Bundessache), így egy tartományi kormánynak jogilag nagyon minimális mozgástere van a nemzetközi biztonságpolitikai és katonai kötelezettségek blokkolására.

A választás eredményétől függetlenül a kérdés marad: meddig tartható távol az AfD a hatalomtól, és vajon a vele szemben felállított tűzfal nem hajtja-e a vizet inkább a jobboldali párt malmára? Nem tudjuk, de a választás kapcsán ma este okosabbak leszünk.

 

– Nagy-Bato Jonatán Imre

A Történelmi választás Németországban bejegyzés először Biztonságpolitika-én jelent meg.

ENTWURF EINES BERICHTS über die Umsetzung der Gemeinsamen Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik – Jahresbericht 2026
Ausschuss für Sicherheit und Verteidigung
Nathalie Loiseau

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2026 - EP

Ferrari landet beim vorerst letzten Holland-GP in Zandvoort neben dem Podest. Beide Piloten sind unzufrieden. Wäre mit einer besseren Teamstrategie mehr möglich gewesen?

Vier Skorerpunkte in vier Spielen: Publikumsliebling Lewin Blum macht seit dem Saisonstart Werbung in eigener Sache. Bleibt der Ur-Berner YB erhalten? Derweil ist klar: Jaouen Hadjam ist auf dem Sprung.

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