Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Afghan media workers face growing restrictions under Taliban rule, with women journalists pushed further from reporting, broadcasting and public visibility. Credit: Learning Together.

By External Source
KABUL, Jun 11 2026 (IPS)

Afghanistan ranks 175th in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index this year. Out of 180 countries on the list, only Iran, Syria, China, North Korea and Eritrea ranked lower than Afghanistan.

Arrests narrow opportunities for work

The Taliban’s arrests and imprisonment of journalists have further narrowed opportunities for journalism.

Several prominent journalists are currently in prison. They include Shakib Ahmad Nazari, who is reportedly being held for collaborating with international media outlets. He was arrested in 2025 and sentenced to three years in prison according to sources.

Spokespersons for government ministries and agencies are reluctant to speak to female journalists and often do not even provide basic information or short statements. In the past, we had to sit in the last row of benches at press conferences, but recently we have not even been allocated seats anymore

Hamid Farhadi, a prominent freelance journalist, was arrested in September 2024 while working for foreign media outlets and the Afghan Etilaat Roz media outlet. He was sentenced to two years in prison. According to the human rights organization Amnesty International, Farhadi was sentenced without right to legal representation.

His arrest was allegedly related to a report he made for foreign media outlets about the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan.

The media in Afghanistan is overseen by the Taliban-run Audit Commission. Journalist and former member of the commission, Bashir Hatef, was arrested in 2025 for collaborating with foreign media and sentenced to two years in prison.

 

Self-censorship has become a daily routine

The arrests of male journalists, however, pale in comparison to the situation of female journalists, who face professional restrictions and are subject to gender-based discrimination. Over the past four years, many have been threatened, arrested, banned from work or treated violently.

Samandar (name changed) has 13 years of experience in television and radio. According to her, journalists currently do not have the right to criticize the Taliban, officials or state institutions.

Journalists are also not able to choose their guests freely. Only experts approved by the Taliban can be invited to programs that cover politics. Regular street interviews are practically impossible.

“We are forced to self-censor or our employer gets into trouble and we are threatened with imprisonment. So we remove criticism of the Taliban from our programs,” says Samandar.

Self-censorship is also visible in practice. A well-known television channel in Kabul – whose name will not be revealed for security reasons – was planning a program on the role of women journalists in communication.

Everything was ready and guests had been invited. However, the program had to be canceled because it was feared that the discussion would cause problems for both the channel and the guests.

 

Female journalists face double restrictions

Salma (name changed) is a female journalist with a journalism degree and nine years of work experience. She describes how spokespersons for government ministries and agencies are reluctant to speak to female journalists and often do not even provide basic information or short statements.

Routine press conference arrangements have also changed, she says. “In the past, we had to sit in the last row of benches at press conferences, but recently we have not even been allocated seats anymore.”

According to her, separate rooms have been built for women, from where they can follow the events but not participate in them equally.

“A partition has been erected in the hall, and we are forced to sit in a separate booth. We can only listen to the speeches of officials but are not allowed to ask questions.”

Even when questions are allowed in exceptional cases, limits are placed on what can be asked. “On rare occasions, when questions are allowed, we are not allowed to ask anything critical.”

Questions can only be asked at certain events where Taliban-approved officials, such as Zabihullah Mujahid, are present. He is considered somewhat more flexible in his approach to female journalists.

According to Salma, the restrictions do not end there. Movement and work are closely monitored.

“At press conferences, officials from the Taliban’s Ministry of Virtue and Prevention of Vice demand to know who we are with and whether we have a male escort.”

Salma also criticizes news directors who favor male journalists. According to her, it is well known in newsrooms that women are practically prevented from doing normal journalistic work and that Taliban representatives do not want to talk to female journalists.

“In most media outlets, we are not treated as employees but rather as interns who are paid only for our travel expenses. The media outlets take advantage of the restrictions imposed by the Taliban on female journalists.”

According to Salma, many women accept the situation because there are few options.

“In addition to the restrictions imposed by the Taliban, we are forced to tolerate this abuse so that we are not completely excluded from editorial and media work.”

 

No more female journalists in many provinces

Due to Taliban restrictions, female journalists are required to be accompanied by a male guardian even when they are supposed to be at work elsewhere, which is often practically impossible. Some women have left their jobs for fear that their family members could be arrested.

A writer in Kandahar, “Shazia,” uses a pseudonym. According to her, the restrictions on interviews imposed by the Taliban have significantly changed the way they work.

Male colleagues conduct the interviews, and female journalists have to rely on their recordings when writing their articles. Male colleagues are not always willing to cooperate in situations when follow-up questions or supplementary interviews are needed for a story.

Articles written by women are often published under the names of male colleagues. Women’s voices are not even allowed to be heard on the radio.

According to Reporters Without Borders, four out of five female journalists and media workers in Afghanistan lost their positions after the Taliban returned to power.

Before August 2021, there were 2,490 women working in the media, of whom only about 410 continued to work after the Taliban took power. According to the organization, there are no active female journalists in 15 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

 

Ban on image further tightens surveillance

Freedom of speech in Afghanistan is also significantly restricted by the ban on the display of images of living beings.

According to the Afghan Journalists Center, the ban is in force in at least 23 provinces. Reports indicate that many media outlets have been forced to switch to audio-only format and at least 20 television stations have been closed.

 

Dwindling female journalists work in the media industry

Recent data highlights the scale of decline in Afghanistan’s media workforce. According to Naeem (not real name), a member of association of media organization, there are currently 4,073 male journalists and 746 female journalists working across the country.

Another female journalist, Nabila (not real name) provided similar figures, estimating that more than 4,700 journalists remain active, around 700 of them women.

These figures reflect a sharp contraction compared to previous years. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), there were previously around 700 women journalists working in Kabul alone; that number has now dropped to fewer than 100

Laila (name changed) was previously part of one of three women-led journalist associations and unions that supported female journalists before the Taliban returned to power.

She says none of these groups is active anymore. According to her, institutions and organizations can no longer be officially registered in women’s names under the Taliban regime.

The media sector in Afghanistan is also structurally restricted. There is no clear legal framework, live broadcasts are prohibited, the number of guests on programs is limited, and access to information is difficult.

Excerpt:

The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons

Kaveh Zahed, Assistant Director-General and Director of FAO’s Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment (left), speaks during a press briefing on agri-food system solutions at the GEF Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he emphasised that agriculture can play a central role in addressing climate and biodiversity challenges. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, Jun 11 2026 (IPS)

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has approved USD 6.4 million for a new conservation initiative in Papua New Guinea that seeks to protect 700,000 hectares of critical highland ecosystems by placing Indigenous Peoples and local communities at the centre of conserving and managing their ancestral lands.
Implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and with expected USD 16.7 million in co-financing, the project aims to strengthen biodiversity corridors, support peacebuilding and improve environmental management across protected and productive landscapes. It is expected to improve management effectiveness across more than 276,000 hectares of protected areas, extend sustainable environmental practices to 1.6 million hectares, directly benefit 21,000 people and avoid nearly one million tonnes of carbon emissions.

The initiative reflects a broader shift in conservation thinking in Papua New Guinea and internationally – away from externally driven protection efforts and toward approaches that connect biodiversity conservation with livelihoods, land rights and local governance.

That shift is especially significant in Papua New Guinea, where roughly 97 percent of land remains under customary ownership, making conservation efforts dependent on local consent and participation.

“In a culturally rich and highly diverse country that is both geographically isolated and challenging to access, community empowerment is essential for achieving sustainable social and economic development,” Aaron Becker, FAO-GEF Regional Coordinator for Asia and the Pacific, told IPS.

“The key to successful conservation efforts in Papua New Guinea is recognising and respecting that 97 percent of the country’s land is held under customary ownership,” Becker said.

According to project designers, conservation in Papua New Guinea can only succeed when it is rooted in customary land systems, respects local cultural realities and builds upon traditional natural resource management practices rather than bypassing communities.

Under the project’s community-led landscape model, local people will determine which areas should be protected, which can continue supporting livelihoods and what conservation rules should apply. The initiative is expected to support recognition of 10 community-led conservation areas across biodiversity hotspots.

The programme will rely on participatory processes grounded in Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) while helping communities strengthen governance systems and develop land-use plans informed by traditional knowledge.

“This project provides the facilitation, training, equipment, and access to finance — and keeps the decisions within the community,” Becker said.

“Importantly, communities are not being asked to implement somebody else’s conservation agenda.”

Project officials say the initiative has also been designed to avoid intensifying land disputes or creating new social tensions.

“The project is designed carefully to avoid making tensions, such as around natural resources, worse,” Becker said, adding that site selection takes into account governance conditions, conflict risks and community readiness.

The emphasis on community ownership reflects a broader evolution in global conservation policy, according to Kaveh Zahed, Assistant Director-General and Director of FAO’s Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment.

“It’s not just about protecting biodiversity – it is about conservation, regeneration and sustainable use of biodiversity,” Zahed told journalists on the sidelines of the GEF Assembly.

“That’s a recognition that much of this biodiversity is linked to people and to livelihoods  – and nowhere is that demonstrated better than with agriculture and agricultural communities, who are custodians of a great deal of that biodiversity.”

Rather than treating conservation as a restriction on development, the project combines environmental protection with biodiversity-friendly livelihoods, including sustainable agriculture, agroforestry, coffee systems, non-timber forest products, ecotourism and small-scale livestock.

Zahed said agriculture and food systems can become part of the solution rather than a source of tension between conservation and economic development.

“That’s where the beauty of agri-food system solutions lies,” he said. “They are interventions that are about food security, producing more with less, and helping communities maintain that food security while at the same time bringing biodiversity and climate benefits.”

For Becker, the broader lesson extends beyond Papua New Guinea.

“So, the message is simple: conservation should not create new insecurity,” he said. “Done well, it will reinforce land rights, support livelihoods, and build cooperation across landscapes that communities already know, use and manage.”

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

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Refugees and staff from the Center for Victims of Torture play soccer and celebrate human rights, Minneapolis, USA, June 2023. Credit: CVT

By Simon Adams
PERTH, Australia, Jun 11 2026 (IPS)

This planet’s biggest sporting event—the FIFA Men’s World Cup—will soon kick off. Millions of people around the world will sit up, bleary eyed, watching matches at unreasonable hours and inventing feeble excuses for why we won’t be at work in the morning. More than one billion are expected to watch the finale on TV in mid-July. That’s a bigger audience than any Olympic sporting event and more than the number of people who have viewed Squid Game on Netflix.

The World Cup is also big business. FIFA predicted the competition might bring in a whopping US$30.5 billion in tourist dollars for the United States, Canada and Mexico—the three 2026 host countries. But all is not well with the beautiful game.

Amnesty International and more than 100 local human rights organizations have issued a travel warning for fans planning to visit the eleven U.S. cities that are hosting World Cup matches. According to figures obtained by Human Rights Watch, ICE arrested 167,000 people around the eleven cities from January 2025 to March 2026. Visitors are warned they may experience invasive searches of their phones at the border, “racial profiling,” and other egregious abuses that breach “the United States’ human rights obligations under domestic and international law.” Even before the first whistle is blown, Africa’s leading referee, Omar Artan from Somalia, was denied entry to the United States at Miami International Airport and will now miss the tournament.

Tourist arrivals in the U.S. were already down 5.4% last year, with a “Trump slump” now impacting the upcoming World Cup. According to a survey of more than 200 host city hotels conducted by the American Hotel and Lodging Association, “nearly 80% said hotel bookings are tracking below initial forecasts.” Some fans are having trouble securing a visa, but spiraling expenses and the threat of being deported for some nasty comment you made about Trump on Facebook are also disincentives.

At a massive “No Kings” protest in Brooklyn last October, I joined my fellow New Yorkers to march against this democratic backsliding in the United States. At least 6 million people protested nationally, with a quarter of million in New York, where I had been working for the past decade.

The day felt like a festival. One protester was blowing a vuvuzela, an annoyingly loud horn introduced to the global community at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Someone else was wearing an inflatable chicken suit and carrying a sign that said, “I’m more mature than the President.”

Despite the frivolity, President Trump had threatened to deploy the FBI against protesters, and his team denounced the No Kings movement as being manufactured by treasonous malcontents. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed the Democratic Party and claimed, “its main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.” The No King’s website, meanwhile, said that “in America, we don’t have kings and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty.” It felt like a clash was likely.

On the day, however, the most aggressive encounter I had was when someone thrust a small bright-yellow card into my hand. It boldly declared, “Know Your Rights,” and offered helpful text to recite if you were detained, including: “The U.S Constitution grants all people rights. I am proud to be exercising mine.” A QR code linked to relevant legal advice.

Those laws still stand between President Trump and the unconstrained power he covets. But given that Trump has now appointed 265 federal judges and three Supreme Court Justices, some legal safeguards appear precarious. Some U.S. federal agencies have already embraced Trump’s authoritarian tilt, with illegal deportations and the extrajudicial killing of two protesters on the streets of Minneapolis being the most disturbing examples of a corrosive trend.

The resulting gap between jurisprudence and justice can be deadly. As president of the U.S.-based Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) I had visited safe houses in the suburbs of Nairobi, Kenya, for LGBT+ refugees from African countries where same sex relationships were illegal. Article 27 of Kenya’s constitution guarantees freedom from discrimination, but on the streets of Nairobi, many refugees remained vulnerable.

A CVT colleague recently texted to inform me that a LGBT+ refugee from Somalia had been murdered. She was in Kenya awaiting legal resettlement to the United States but had been halted by Trump’s ban on refugee admissions. In Kenya, like any other country, the laws that secure people’s rights are only ever as strong as the willingness of police, courts, and parliaments to uphold them.

Only around a dozen countries in the world have comprehensive national human rights laws, enacted by parliament and grounded in international treaties and conventions. These include South Africa, India, Ireland, as well as Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Many other states—including Brazil, Japan, United States and Kenya—protect some fundamental rights and freedoms through their constitution or a bill of rights. Australia is the only major liberal democracy in the world without either a national human rights act or a bill of rights, although there is growing domestic pressure to rectify that perilous legal shortcoming.

The World Cup has already given a lot to global culture. Think not just of the insufferable vuvuzela, the embarrassing macarena and the irrepressible Mexican wave. Its deeper value might be in reminding us that in these times of creeping authoritarianism, all states should strengthen their human rights protections.

Simon Adams is Professor of Human Rights, Murdoch University, Australia

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Children dry fish in the sun at a village in the natural gas-rich Afungi peninsula of the northern Mozambique region. In countries including Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Mozambique, gas is extracted and exported to serve external markets, while domestic energy needs go unmet. Photo courtesy of Justica Ambiental

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Jun 11 2026 (IPS)

A new report examining the economic impact of oil and gas production in Africa has found that fossil fuels have failed to deliver sustained or inclusive economic development, observing that the resources have contributed to economic vulnerability and inequality and have constrained growth through prohibitive commodity prices, inflation, and weak local currencies.

It reveals that oil- and gas-rich countries were running on economies that are ‘extractive’ in nature, while their other economic sectors remained weak and tended to have elevated levels of corruption, benefiting a few rich, thus perpetuating inequality. This is while delivering few job opportunities, and the sectors employ about 0.3% of the national workforce overall.

The document titled Pipe Dreams, based on evidence from 13 oil- and gas-producing countries, finds that the structure of the oil- and gas-producing economy concentrates on exporting wealth while leaving populations to bear the costs of producing it, ultimately fuelling poverty.

Observing that Africa is in the midst of a “fossil fuel crisis” where global energy prices have surged in the wake of the American-Israeli-Iranian war, exposing countries to expensive petroleum, the analysis by advocacy groups Power Shift Africa and Oil Change International note that producing countries have not been spared the price shocks.

Shanties serving as shops in a village in the natural gas-rich Afungi peninsula of the northern Mozambique region, where poverty remains high. A new report discloses that the government will not receive significant revenues until the mid or late 2030s because contracts allocate most of the early revenues to foreign companies. Photo courtesy of Justica Ambiental

This is because while many of them exported crude, they later imported costlier refined products refined abroad, including petrol and diesel. This happens as hundreds of millions of people across the continent still lack access to electricity and clean cooking energy.

“In some cases, such as Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Mozambique, gas is extracted and exported to serve external markets, while domestic energy needs go unmet,” the analysis explains.

This happens against a backdrop of millions living in extreme poverty, Nigeria and Angola being two such countries where the report acknowledges that an estimated 40% of the population survive on less than USD 3 per day, decades of extracting oil notwithstanding.

“In fact, according to the African Import-Export Bank, Africa’s oil exporters have mostly had lower economic growth and higher inflation than their non-resource-intensive counterparts in recent years,” it explains.

Basing its conclusions on peer-reviewed literature, official data, and independent reports, it asserts that, among others, the fossils sector in Africa is ‘extractive’ in nature, with extraction occurring in ‘enclaves’.

Fishermen at a village in the natural gas-rich Afungi peninsula of the northern Mozambique region, where poverty remains high. The new Pipe Dreams report reveals that the government will not receive significant revenues until the mid or late 2030s because contracts allocate most of the early revenues to foreign companies. Photo courtesy of Justica Ambiental

By breeding an extractive economy where the commodities are mostly exported, the main economic function for producer countries is restricted to generating revenues and export earnings.

This is made worse by the fact that the natural wealth is dominated by multinationals, who often “take a disproportionate share of the revenues either through one-sided contractual terms or through lopsided accounting schemes”.

Citing the example of Mozambique’s Coral South gas project led by Italy’s Eni, which began producing gas in 2023, it discloses that the government will not receive significant revenues until the mid- or late-2030s. The reason is that the contract terms usually allocate most of the “early revenues” to foreign companies to the exclusion of governments.

The report faults fossil sectors for having few links to other sectors in an economy, noting that related sectors, including services and supplies, are “generally imported, while the products and the profits are mostly exported”.

Released on 11 May to coincide with the Africa Forward 2026 summit sponsored by France and bringing together more than 40 African presidents and heads of government in Nairobi, Kenya, it asserts the fossil wealth was creating minimal employment opportunities, even when it constituted a large share of gross domestic product (GDP).

“The enclave effect is especially strong with floating offshore facilities, as companies can tow these facilities into place and load oil and gas onto tankers without ever setting foot in a country”,

For example, in Nigeria and Congo Brazzaville, the oil industry employs only 0.01% of the countries’ workforce and 0.3% in Angola, the document reveals.

Even worse, the extractive economy tended to harm other economic sectors, worsening poverty, a good example being the west African country suffering frequent oil spills that negatively impacted agriculture and food security.

Almost all African oil producers have suffered corruption scandals related to their oil and gas revenues, and between 1989 and 1993, senior executives of French company Elf, now part of TotalEnergies, allegedly paid bribes to politicians in Gabon, Angola, Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville in a USD350 million scandal.

In other instances, the fossils are exposed and vulnerable to the dynamics of international markets, leaving countries heavily indebted during oil price collapses, a good example being 2014 when oil prices crashed, forcing Angola to cut its budget by 25%, with public employees and suppliers going unpaid for months.

The report makes a strong case for accelerated adoption of renewable energy across Africa as a more just and inclusive alternative, explaining that fossils are not a “viable foundation for equitable economic development”.

What Africa needs now is a green and more resilient energy system and rich countries should support the continent financially and technologically for the transition to happen, said Power Shift African head Mohamed Adow.

“What we need right now is an energy future built around people, not exports, because it is obvious that we cannot drill ourselves out of poverty,” he said.

It was a shame that as many as 600 million people had no access to electricity and around 900 million lacked clean cooking energy despite the abundance of renewable resources such as solar all over Africa, he said.

“It is also sad that African countries are locked up in fossil dependency while big countries like China are exporting technologies. Our presidents see oil and gas as shortcuts to wealth. We must adopt development that genuinely serves the people,” he told a media briefing on the report in Nairobi.

“Real prosperity” for Africa, he noted, will come from investing in renewables while ending the tradition of using the limited forex available to “import problems”, in the form of finished petroleum products.

For this reason, international facilities such as climate finance must be made to work and help prove that development and climate action can go together. “It is our duty to help challenge the notion that there is no development without fossils,” he added.

The continent must therefore adopt a development model that serves its people, rather than one that benefits external actors, including for key services such as finance and insurance, all of which take place overseas.

Extracting and shipping resources out of Africa amounted to shipping out value, including jobs, according to Amos Wemanya, Power Shift Africa’s Senior Advisor, Renewable Energy and Just Transition.

The notion that renewables cannot power development across the continent has been debunked, and what is needed is continued scaling up of tested and proven renewable models of development.

“The oil and gas era has failed our continent and the energy revolution is happening on our rooftops, not in the oilfields,” he stated in reference to growing uptake of solar for powering homes and institutions across Africa.

Currently the global financial system has left many countries in distress, with nearly 57% of the African population, or about 751 million people, living in countries that spend more on interest payments than on health and education, according to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

This has resulted in calls for debt restructuring and a review of credit ratings. Wemanya added, “Building resilience in African economies needs a fair international financial system.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The Zarafshan River, outside the venue of the Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly in Uzbekistan, is central to a USD 30 million GEF-funded initiative, the Central Asia Water and Land Nexus Programme (CAWLN). Credit: IISD/ENB/Danny Skilton

By Kizito Makoye
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

As ministers, diplomats and development officials assembled in Samarkand Congress Centre for a ceremonial family photograph, the mood carried unusual symbolism. Behind the smiles and formalities stood a region confronting a harder reality: rivers are shrinking, soils are tiring, temperatures are rising, and the old ways of managing land and water are no longer working.

For decades, Central Asia’s countries have wrestled with environmental pressures separately – water ministries worrying about irrigation, ministries of agriculture chasing production targets, and conservation agencies protecting fragmented ecosystems. But climate change is dissolving those bureaucratic boundaries.

At the Eighth Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly in Uzbekistan held from May 30 to June 6, 2026, the five Central Asian countries officially launched implementation of the Central Asia Water and Land Nexus Programme (CAWLN) – a USD 30 million GEF-funded initiative implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and designed to manage water, land, biodiversity and food systems as one interconnected system.

Supporters say the initiative could become one of the world’s most closely watched experiments in transboundary climate adaptation.

“We all know Central Asia faces increasing environmental pressures linked to land degradation, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and climate change,” said Yerland Nysanbaev Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Kazakhstan, during the high-level roundtable. “But in response to that, the countries have come together to jointly address these environmental issues.”

Senior government representatives and development partners pose for a group photograph during the official launch of the Central Asia Water–Land Nexus Programme at the Eighth GEF Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The initiative brings together the five Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – to strengthen regional cooperation on water security, ecosystem restoration and climate resilience through integrated land and water management. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

Stretching from Kazakhstan’s grasslands to Tajikistan’s mountains and Uzbekistan’s irrigated plains, Central Asia depends on shared river systems and fragile ecosystems that sustain more than 60 million people. Yet the region is warming faster than the global average, glaciers are retreating, drought cycles are intensifying and water competition is growing.

Demand for water has become one of the region’s defining vulnerabilities.

Nearly half of Central Asia already suffers from land degradation, generating economic losses estimated at USD 6 billion annually. At the same time, growing populations and changing consumption patterns continue to place additional pressure on limited natural resources.

Katrina Schneeberger, State Secretary and Director of Switzerland’s Federal Office for the Environment, delivers remarks during the official launch of the Central Asia Water–Land Nexus Programme at the Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

The project seeks to confront those pressures through what officials repeatedly described as a “nexus approach”.

For Switzerland – one of the programme’s strongest supporters – the initiative represents years of regional engagement finally converging into a broader vision.

Addressing ministers and delegates, Katrina Schneeberger, State Secretary and Director of Switzerland’s Federal Office for the Environment, described the programme as a model for the type of environmental cooperation increasingly needed in a warming world.

“It focuses on countries in need, it fosters the integration across environmental topics, and it supports cross-border cooperation,” she said.

Schneeberger argued that environmental policymaking has too often treated ecosystems as disconnected pieces.

“For too long, environmental topics like desertification or water have been tackled separately,” she said. “But in the end, water and land issues are connected.”

Her explanation was simple but powerful.

“Well-managed land will require less water, and properly managed freshwater sources will allow for sustainable and productive agriculture.”

Switzerland’s support for integrated environmental programmes in Central Asia stretches back decades, including transboundary initiatives under the Blue Peace Central Asia framework and previous regional land management programmes.

But officials say the new programme marks a shift in scale and ambition.

At its core, CAWLN seeks to move from managing sectors individually to managing entire landscapes and river systems.

FAO Deputy Director-General Godfrey Magwenzi speaking about the interconnection of climate change, biodiversity loss, water stress, land degradation, and food security across landscapes, river basins, and economies in Central Asia. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

FAO Deputy Director-General Godfrey Magwenzi framed the challenge in global terms.

“Climate change, biodiversity loss, water stress, land degradation, and food security are interconnected across landscapes, river basins, and economies in Central Asia,” he told delegates.

“Integration and cooperation matter to tackle transborder risks, to help countries act together on the drivers of vulnerability, and to accelerate progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Magwenzi noted that since 2009, FAO has helped countries in the region mobilise nearly USD 77 million in GEF financing.

One previous regional initiative restored integrated management across 2.8 million hectares of drought-prone and salt-affected landscapes while avoiding nearly nine million tonnes of emissions and strengthening resilience for millions of farmers.

The new initiative is built around three major levers.

First, strengthening transboundary governance by creating mechanisms for policy coordination and knowledge sharing.

Second, supporting integrated action directly on landscapes – from farms and forests to river basins.

Third, improving evidence-based decisions using satellite monitoring, geographic information systems and integrated data platforms.

Officials say technology will become central to implementation.

Earth observation systems will track water use, land degradation and ecosystem health, while decision-support tools will help governments translate environmental data into practical action.

Those tools may prove critical.

River Zarafshon near Panjakent, Sughd Region, Tajikistan. Credit: Petar Milošević/Wikipedia

The region’s future is closely tied to two rivers – the Amu Darya and Syr Darya.

Flowing from Central Asia’s mountains toward the Aral Sea basin, these rivers connect countries, economies and millions of livelihoods.

The programme combines four national projects with basin-wide interventions and regional coordination mechanisms.

National projects will address priorities ranging from biodiversity conservation and pasture management in Kazakhstan to agro-woodland restoration in Kyrgyzstan, climate-resilient agriculture in Turkmenistan and ecosystem restoration in Uzbekistan.

Regional components will focus on integrated water management across the Amu Darya, Zarafshon, Panj, Syr Darya and Narin river basins.

Together, supporters hope these investments will restore more than one million hectares of land, avoid millions of tonnes of carbon emissions and improve livelihoods for nearly half a million people.

Francesca Carabini, who leads transboundary cooperation work under the UNECE Water Convention, reminded participants that Central Asia’s experiments with nexus governance are already shaping global practice.

One of the earliest river basins assessed under the Water-Energy-Ecosystem Nexus framework was the Syr Darya.

During a separate press briefing, FAO climate and environment chief Kaveh Zahedi argued that agriculture, often blamed for environmental degradation, must become part of the solution.

“The way we produce food and support farmers is directly connected to the health of our climate,” he said.

“It’s directly connected to the health of our soil and land. And it’s directly connected to our water and ecosystems.”

Zahedi cited alarming global trends.

In 2024 alone, more than 96 million people faced acute food insecurity linked partly to weather extremes intensified by climate change, while more than 700 million people continue to live with hunger.

Yet agriculture also offers opportunity.

“Done right, food and farming can deliver up to one-third of the emissions reductions needed while also protecting nature.”

Responding to IPS questions about balancing biodiversity and economic needs, Zahedi rejected the notion that environmental protection and livelihoods must compete.

“The sustainable use of biodiversity is very much at the heart, including sustainable agriculture,” he said.

“It’s not just about protection of biodiversity – it is about conservation, regeneration, and sustainable use of biodiversity.”

He added: “You don’t need to tell a farmer how important it is to have healthy soils.”

Projects such as agroforestry and landscape restoration, he argued, improve resilience while protecting incomes.

At the Assembly’s closing ceremony, GEF Interim CEO Claude Gascon had offered perhaps the clearest political message of the gathering.

“Today marks an important moment for Central Asia and for the global environment as we enter the sprint towards 2030,” he said.

“The five countries in the region have once again joined environmental forces.”

Gascon described the programme as evidence that countries increasingly recognise that “water and land issues are interlinked and are best tackled together rather than in isolation.”

He called the shift toward “whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches” essential for the next phase of environmental action.

Outside the venue, Samarkand’s summer heat offered its own reminder of what is at stake.

The city perched along the Zarafshan River – one of Central Asia’s historic lifelines and a place where questions of water, agriculture and survival have shaped civilisation for centuries.

Today, climate change is forcing those questions back to the centre.

Whether the Central Asia Water and Land Nexus Programme succeeds will depend not only on funding or policy but also on whether countries can sustain cooperation across borders long after the conference banners come down.

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

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Distribution of emergency shelter supplies in Abyan, Yemen funded by the Yemen Humanitarian Fund (YHF). Credit: UN OCHA/Altawasul

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

In Yemen, increasing funding constraints on humanitarian operations have put millions of civilians in dire need of life-saving assistance amid overlapping crises. Acute food insecurity is a persistent issue, as recent reports from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) give a stark warning of conditions without urgent intervention.

According to the IPC Acute Food Insecurity Snapshot, one in two people within Government of Yemen (GoY) controlled areas are experiencing high levels of food insecurity, with percentages only expecting to rise or maintain as the conflict goes on. 3.6 million people are experiencing IPC phase 3 (crisis level), and 1.4 million people are experiencing even worse conditions at IPC Phase 4 (emergency). Such measures indicate “extreme coping strategies” where families are forced to sell their house, land, their last female animal, and beg due to the limited supply of food.

Food Insecurity Projection in Yemen | June – September 2026. Credit: IPC

As the crisis looms, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have “jointly called on the international community to urgently scale up funding for humanitarian food assistance, nutrition services, health, agriculture and resilience programming.” according to the spokesperson for the Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric.

The IPC projects that food supply conditions will only worsen through October and December 2026, with 1.8 million people being in phase 4, 3.6 million being in phase 3, and 3.2 million being in phase 2.

The ongoing conflict is driving heightened amounts of food insecurity due to intensifying macroeconomic pressures, making the local currency, the Yemeni Riyal, highly volatile due to “depleted reserves of halted oil exports”. Insecurity is also impacted by irregular salaries, limited labor opportunities, and a smaller and smaller household purchasing power each day.

Food Insecurity Projection in Yemen | October – December 2026. Credit: IPC

In April, the Houthis, which controls the northwest of Yemen and the capital of Sana’a, threatened to close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. In the event of this strait being closed, the entire red sea and the Suez Canal would virtually be unpassable other than a few exports / imports between Saudi Arabia’s western province, Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea, which would likely still receive pressure at its ports. This would further increase food insecurity in Yemen, as humanitarian assistance is the only lifeline keeping Yemenis under famine levels. Without humanitarian assistance the situation would become increasingly lethal, making this call for action vital for the safety and vitality of Yemeni lives.

According to OCHA, at least USD 2.2 billion will be needed for assistance of twelve million people of the 22.3 million in need. Approximately 14.71 percent of such funding has been covered, leaving a funding gap of USD 1.8 billion. This is likely to become larger as the conflict becomes more costly, increasing food insecurity as the projections suggest.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Chaff being loaded for cutting in a machine for fodder. Credit: Supplied

By Rina Mukherji
PUNE, India, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

Dharashiv is one of the poorest districts in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Located in the semi-arid region of Marathwada, it has no major river and is not blessed with good reservoirs.

The soil quality is poor and unable to retain water, even during heavy rainfall. Farmers depend on borewells and wells. Farm ponds go dry beyond February, leaving farmers bereft. The groundwater level is always low for most of the year. Generally rural, with agriculture as its mainstay, Dharashiv is mostly made up of landholdings averaging 4-5 acres. Rural unemployment is high, and large numbers of able-bodied men and women migrate to towns during the lean seasons.

But the last two years have seen a ‘Tool Bank’ initiated by a social and educational organisation – Jnana Prabodhini – in Harali village gradually reversing the tide.

The Indian government first mooted the idea of an implement or tool bank some years ago. A couple of state governments also initiated it.

However, it did not catch on, owing to many reasons.  To understand the need and importance of a tool bank, it is imperative to understand the general scenario in the Dharashiv district, particularly in the Lohara block, which houses Harali village.

Scenario in Lohara block

Harali village in the Lohara block of Dharashiv district is located around 70km from both Sholapur and Latur towns and is close to the Karnataka-Maharashtra border.

There are no big rivers in the vicinity; the only sources of water are rivulets like Benitura, which is a tributary of the mighty Godavari River, which flows several kilometres away.

The literacy level is quite low, and the population comprises some nomadic tribes as well.

The local population, most of whom depend on agriculture, faces difficult living conditions due to a lack of good schools and colleges, inadequate water, poor soil quality, and a fluctuating electricity supply.

Even otherwise, the entire Lohara block, comprising 25 villages, is semi-arid and drought-prone. The average rainfall is around 735 mm. However, with climate change, the last few years have seen it receive (as high as 147 percent) above-normal monsoon rains and high pre-monsoon rains, causing floods and crop losses for farmers.

It was following the Latur earthquake in the ‘90s that Jnana Prabodhini, a Pune-based organisation, moved to Harali for relief and rehabilitation work.

Keen to make a difference, Jnana Prabodhini set up a school here. In 1996, the school moved into permanent premises. Soon after, a nursery section was added, and by the 2000s, an agricultural college – the Krishi Tantra Vidyalaya and its demonstration farm – was established on the premises.  To facilitate hands-on learning for students, several farming implements had to be purchased.  And thus, the idea of starting a Tool Bank for local farmers came up.

Chaff cutter at work on a farm. Credit: Supplied

“Rural unemployment is a huge concern here. We, hence, thought of training our students, who are local youth, in the handling of implements.  We also popularised the course among farmers. We now have a tool operators group. Youngsters now hire the tools and work for the farmers during the sowing and harvesting season, earning a steady income in the process,” says Jnana Prabodhini Harali (youth cell) Coordinator and Tool Bank head Suresh Margale.

Take the case of Maruti Badgir, who is currently studying for his higher secondary-level exams at a local college.

Badgir completed a diploma in operations and basic maintenance of farm implements at the Krishi Tantra Vidyalaya. He now rents tools from the implement bank and works for farmers in the area during the planting and harvesting seasons.

Farm labour shortages are common in the region, and an operator from the nearby town charges Rs 5500 (about USD 59) to operate a harvester.

A local youth trained to operate the machine, on the other hand, charges only Rs 3000 (USD 32). Similarly, charges for a Chaff Cutter or any machine from town are as high as Rs 1200 (USD 13) per hour, while local charges are only Rs 150 (USD 1.61) per hour. The Tool Bank charges Rs 20 (USD 0.22) per hour as rental and, hence, Rs 60 (USD 0.65) for three hours. Some farmers who own tractors and have undergone training, such as Iqbal Sheikh, hire implements from the Tool Bank and render their services, supplementing their income.

After paying the rental and fuel costs, an operator can earn Rs 800-2000 (USD 8 to 22) per day during the peak farming season, since a minimum of Rs 800 (USD 8.61) is earned for 8 hours of work. “During the kharif and rabi sowing and harvesting seasons, these operators can make a neat Rs 30,000 to 40,000 (about USD 322 to 430) a month, given the labour shortage and the demand for their services,” Jnana Prabodhini Harali Centre in-charge Abhijit Kapre says.

Farmers like Kondiba Pandhre and Shankar Deokar directly borrow and use the implements on their farms, since they have undergone training.

“It saves us a lot of money,” Pandhre and Deokar tell me. It has also helped them expand their farming operations. Deokar, who owns nine acres of land and a tractor, seeder, rotavator, and other equipment, now hires Broad Bed Furrow (BBF) machines, power tillers, cutters, trolleys, and furrowing attachments.

“Farm labour is hard to find nowadays. With these machines, I save a lot on labour charges as well as time. I only need to hire one labourer to operate a manual seeder now,” he says. Deokar’s lush farm grows a wide variety of vegetables besides millets, soybeans, onions and black gram. He has also put up a biogas plant which runs on farm waste.  Pandhre, who owns six acres of land and was earlier cultivating urad (black gram), mung (green gram), soyabean, onion, and carrots, has planted 1600 moringa (drumstick) trees on two acres of his land this year. Since Moringa has commercial value, Pandhre hopes to earn handsomely from his initiative.

Farmers are particularly fond of the BBF machine, which makes raised beds that are 90-150 cm long, with furrows that are 45 cm wide and 30 cm deep. Operating as a seed-cum-fertiliser planter, it brings enhanced aeration and better root development and can help in soil and water conservation in rainfed zones that suffer from irregular rainfall, moisture stress, and waterlogging. Farmers who cultivate sugarcane can avail themselves of Harvesters and Power Tillers too, which are particularly useful for the crop.

The other advantage is the saving of seeds. Deokar especially cites the case of soyabean. “Earlier, I needed 30 kg of soyabean seeds for planting and got eight quintals per acre. Now, I need only 25 kg of soybean seeds, and I can ensure yields of 10 quintals per acre. Furthermore, deep furrowing removes pests and helps us save on pesticides, too.”

Besides rentals being lower than in adjoining cities and towns, availability is guaranteed. “During the harvest and sowing seasons, even if we travelled to adjoining Sholapur, Umargaon, or Latur, availability was never guaranteed,” Vaijnath Kashinath Gavare of Sayyad Hipparga village tells me.

And buying was hardly an option for most farmers, with most implements ranging around Rs 2 lakhs and Rs 4 lakhs (USD 2400 to USD 4800)

A BBF machine also helps ensure that a natural disaster does not ruin a farmer.

Farmer Somnath Vinayak Bairajdar, who owns a 12-acre farm in Sayyad Hipparga village in Lohara block of the district, tells me, “Beds made by a BBF machine ensure that water is held by the soil in dry weather, while during untimely and very heavy rain, water easily flows out. The last two years saw this region experience heavy rainfall and flooding.

Many farmers lost all their crops. But my crops survived.”

A power tiller can help lighten the soil and aerate the roots, while a weeder removes pests, ensuring a better yield, Bairajdar says. “Earlier, I could have 5 to 6 tonnes of tomatoes per acre. But now, it is as high as 8 to 9 tonnes per acre.”

His pigeon pea yield has also climbed up from 6 to 7 quintals per acre to 9 quintals per acre,  while green beans have risen from 2 quintals per acre to 4.2 quintals per acre, “thanks to my use of the power tiller”.

Certain tools can also help farmers supplement their income.

Sharad Patil, for instance, who owns a 25-acre farm, has been able to expand his dairy business. “Earlier, I could only keep four cows, since I only owned a manual cutter to prepare the fodder for my animals. Now, I hire a chaff cutter, which is attached to my tractor, to do the job.”

Patil now has 34 cows in his shed; hiring a Chaff Cutter for three to four days provides him enough fodder to feed his cattle for six months.

Another popular item at the Tool Bank is the electrical armature machine, given the erratic electricity supply in Dharashiv. “Farmers need uninterrupted electricity for their pumps, especially in summer,” Margale tells me. “The government had started a scheme for solar-powered pumps. But it is currently not in operation.”

In the two years of its existence, the Tool Bank has seen rising popularity, especially among farmers in villages in and around the taluka and beyond.

“We are planning to set up a couple of more depots in adjoining villages,” Margale tells me.

Meanwhile, inspired by the progress and well-being of their peers, farmers like Pandurang Haren and Ballu Hakke are keen to start hiring tools from the Tool Bank and enrolling in a skill training programme.

The Tool Bank is breeding hope and positivity in Dharashiv while helping farmers fight the worst effects of climate change.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Niger, Mayahi, Village of Koren Habdjia. At the village health centre supported by UNICEF, mothers come for consultations with their children. This health centre provides care for childhood illnesses, maternal health, and pregnant women. It treats children for malnutrition and also provides delivery services. Credit: UNICEF/Islamane Abdou

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

Over the past few years, the humanitarian crisis in Africa’s Sahel region has expanded considerably, largely driven by a surge of violence—particularly in the Central Sahel. Although the crisis has been described by the United Nations (UN) as having “largely faded from the headlines” since its wake in 2012, millions of people across the region are in dire need of humanitarian assistance as civilian displacement, climate shocks, and widespread hunger rapidly spill across borders.

“The people of the Sahel are not on the sidelines of a global crisis; they are at the very heart of one of the world’s most severe and neglected emergencies,” said Charles Bernimolin, the regional head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for West and Central Africa. “Every funding gap has a human cost. When we cut a program, a child loses a meal, women and girls’ protection, and a family loses hope. We cannot allow a financing collapse to become a death sentence for millions of people.”

On June 3, OCHA published the 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Overview (HNRO) for the Sahel, detailing a pronounced and escalating humanitarian crisis across Chad, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Northeast Nigeria, and the Far North of Cameroon. OCHA estimates that approximately 24.3 million people across the region are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), this includes 7.5 million children in central Sahel alone.

According to figures from the United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe (UNRIC), the majority of terrorism-related murders in the world take place in the Sahel. Additionally, over the course of 2025, OCHA has recorded a sharp rise in civilian exploitation, significant disruptions to local economies, and the uprooting of entire communities across some areas.

The scale of needs is most pronounced in the central Sahel region, which hosts nearly three million internally displaced persons, roughly two million in Burkina Faso, 548,000 in Niger, and 415,000 in Mali. An additional one million refugees have been recorded across numerous neighbouring countries. According to figures from UNICEF, over 3.6 million people have been forcibly displaced as a direct result of violence this year.

In late April, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded a series of large-scale attacks that targeted multiple municipalities across Mali—including the capital, Bamako—resulting in significant civilian casualties and exacerbated displacement. Subsequent attacks between the Mali police and armed groups were reported in the following days

OHCHR also reported numerous allegations of serious human rights violations following the attacks, such as extrajudicial killings and abductions. In May, Mountaga Tall, a Malian politician and lawyer, was abducted from his home, while his wife was assaulted. The whereabouts of Tall, his wife, and several other abduction victims remain unknown.

Additionally, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued findings on May 6 that showed a significant rise in human rights violations against the Fulani ethnic group in Burkina Faso. The Fulani were found to be subjected to extrajudicial killings, abduction, torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and property destruction by state and non-state actors.

OCHA reports that armed groups have begun expanding their influence across the central Sahel and Lake Chad Basin regions, stripping entire communities of protection services and any form of governance. Approximately 12,900 schools are estimated to have been closed as a result of escalating instability, leaving over 2.3 million children without education and leaving them increasingly vulnerable to recruitment and exploitation.

Children have been particularly hard-hit by this crisis, with UNICEF recording over 1,500 serious human rights violations against children. Schools continue to be targets for attacks, as a school in Mopti, Mali, was impacted by the presence of explosive devices and armed activity in May, affecting approximately 300 million. In the same period, UNICEF also recorded an attack on a community health facility in Gao, which disrupted access to medical care for roughly 2,700 children.

Recurring climate shocks across the region continue to exacerbate the crisis, with the Sahel warming considerably faster than the global average. Figures from OCHA show that roughly 590,000 people in the Sahel were impacted by violent floods in 2025 alone, with prolonged droughts and widespread desertification devastating local agriculture
and millions of livelihoods.

Prolonged climate shocks and protracted armed conflict have led to the Sahel region forming one of the world’s most severe hunger crises. OCHA projects that from June to August, approximately 15.4 million people could face crisis-level food insecurity or worse, including 1.5 million who could fall into emergency levels.

UNRIC reports that reduced food rations in Mali have resulted in a 64 percent increase in famine across numerous areas, leaving 1.5 million Malians severely food insecure. Additionally, rising fertiliser costs in the Sahel further exacerbate low agricultural yields, while rising fuel prices drive increasing food and aid costs.

Despite the vast and growing scale of needs, humanitarian funding for the Sahel has plummeted in recent years. Support from the international community for the region has reached its lowest level in a decade, with only 29 per cent of funding goals met in 2025, prompting aid organisations to scale back responses and prioritise the most vulnerable populations.

“Across the Sahel, humanitarian actors are implementing a Humanitarian Reset: refocusing on the most urgent needs, simplifying the response, and making sure limited resources have the greatest possible impact,” said Bernimolin.

“This means making difficult choices, improving efficiency, and bringing decision-making closer to affected communities. It also includes acting earlier through anticipatory action, expanding cash assistance, and strengthening support to national and local organizations, who play a key role in reaching people, especially in hard-to-reach areas,” he added.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese presents her latest report before delegates at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on 23 March 2026. Credit: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

For a few days in May, Francesca Albanese could live more easily. On 13 May, a US federal judge ruled that sanctions the Trump administration imposed on her violated her right to free expression. The government was forced to remove the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories from its sanctions list. But the reprieve lasted barely a week. On 27 May, after an appeals court suspended the ruling, the US Treasury restored sanctions.

The sanctions have been punishing. Due to the dominant role US institutions play in international financial transactions, Albanese can no longer use credit and debit cards. Her apartment in Washington DC has been seized, while Georgetown University ended her affiliation as a scholar. Her offence is to call out Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the occupation policies that preceded it.

An Italian citizen with a legal background, Albanese was appointed in 2022 and began her final term in 2025. She’s consistently been critical of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. In 2024, she presented her Anatomy of a Genocide report to the Human Rights Council. The report found reasonable grounds to conclude that Israel was committing genocidal acts in Gaza, and called for an arms embargo. Her 2025 report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, set out the complicity of major companies in Israel’s human rights atrocities.

Albanese’s demands for justice have brought a fierce backlash from Israel and its allies. Israel called for her to be removed from her post and banned her from visiting Israel and Palestine. The Trump administration followed suit in calling for her sacking. When it imposed sanctions on Albanese last July, it was the first time these had been applied against a UN independent human rights expert.

Sanctions politicised

Albanese isn’t the only target. Democratic states have long applied sanctions against dictators, terrorists and human rights abusers, but the Trump administration is increasingly using them as a weapon against people who defend human rights.

This month, Israel received widespread international condemnation for its actions against the Global Sumud Flotilla, a civil society-led initiative to defy Israel’s chokehold on aid for Gaza and bring vital humanitarian supplies by sea. Israel intercepted the boats in international waters, abducted those on board and subjected them to sickening abuse. When Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a video of himself taunting the abducted activists, democratic states including Canada, Italy and the UK deplored his behaviour, and France and Poland banned him from their countries.

But the US government has done the opposite, imposing sanctions on four activists involved in organising the flotilla. The politicisation of sanctions is evident, given that one of Donald Trump’s first acts on returning to the presidency was to lift sanctions on violent Israeli West Bank settlers.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is also a target. Last year the Trump administration sanctioned nine ICC officials. The measures came after the ICC issued arrest warrants on crimes against humanity and war crimes charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ex-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and in retaliation for the court’s investigation into potential US war crimes in Afghanistan.

Trump sanctioned two ICC officials in his first term and has repeatedly attacked the ICC, with reports last year that his administration was threatening further sanctions to try to force revisions of the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, to explicitly prevent it having jurisdiction over non-member states such as the USA. Early in his second presidency, he issued an executive order threatening sanctions against anyone who participates in the ICC’s investigations. This sweeping order enabled the sanctions against Albanese.

Trump has also weaponised sanctions to block climate action. Last year the International Maritime Organization was about to finalise a deal to limit the shipping industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. At the last minute, adoption of the new rules was postponed when Trump threatened sanctions against states that supported the emissions curbs.

Chilling effect

Beyond their immediate effects, sanctions help repressive states smear human rights advocates as criminals and terrorists. For Albanese, sanctions form part of a broader campaign to restrict her right to speak out. She has received death threats, which have also been levelled against her daughter.

A broader chilling effect on civil society is visible. Concern about being penalised for sanctions violations caused two US-based human rights groups to pull out of the ICC’s annual meeting last year. For the Trump administration, sanctions are part of a wider onslaught on the rights of people and institutions to demand justice for Israel’s many human rights violations. They’ve come alongside violence against US protests in solidarity with Palestine, deportations of activists and threats to throw young people out of university and defund education institutions.

The misuse of sanctions also forms part of a broader assault on the institutions and rules of global governance. At the same time that the Trump administration is twisting international norms about how sanctions are used and who they’re applied to, it’s also choosing which organisations to participate in and which rules to follow depending on what it sees as the US national interest, and lashing out at international bodies and processes that bring human rights scrutiny.

A single ruling, now suspended, was never going to be enough against the Trump administration’s increasing use of sanctions as a tool to try to silence people. The democratic states that condemned Israel’s abuses against the flotilla activists must show the same resolve when the world’s most powerful state turns sanctions against people whose only offence is to insist that human rights apply everywhere, including in Gaza.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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

 

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GA During NPT Review Conference. Credit: Jonathan Granoff

By Jonathan Granoff
NEW YORK, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

Martin Luther King Jr. , when he received the Nobel Peace Prize, reminded us of “The fact that most of the time human beings put the truth about the nature and risks of the nuclear war out of their minds because it is too painful and therefore not ‘acceptable’, does not alter the nature and risks of such war. The device of ‘rejection’ may temporarily cover up anxiety, but it does not bestow peace of mind and emotional security.” I have devoted many decades of my life to not ignoring the risk of nuclear annihilation and since 1995 have attended every Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to learn and hopefully contributed to a saner safer world.

The 191 nations which are parties to the third most important legal instrument of the 20th Century, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), recently finished a Review Conference at the United Nations in which the future of humanity was soberly discussed. It took place from April 27-May 22, 2026. Social media, major news outlets, and other media virtually ignored the gravity and importance of the deliberations. Only the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are arguably of greater significance than the NPT.

Without it there would likely be dozens of states with nuclear arsenals. Because of it there are only nine. Five – US, UK, France, China, and Russia — are members of the Treaty and India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea are the only nations in the world not parties to the Treaty.

The NPT arose because intelligence estimates during the 1960s reported that, by the end of the 1970s, there would be twenty-five to thirty states with nuclear weapons integrated into their national arsenals and ready for use. The Treaty entered into force in 1970. It is based on a bargain. In exchange for a commitment from the non-nuclear weapon states (today, some 186 nations) not to develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons and to submit to international safeguards intended to verify compliance with the commitment, the five NPT nuclear weapon states promised unfettered access to peaceful nuclear technologies (e.g. nuclear power reactors and nuclear medicine), and pledged to engage in good faith disarmament negotiations to achieve the elimination of their nuclear arsenals.

This promise of disarmament is the only expression by the five that they are legally bound to negotiate nuclear disarmament. It is reinforced by the historic 1996 Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which unanimously ruled that an obligation exists to pursue in good faith and conclude negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict, effective international control. This finding interpreted Article VI of the NPT as a binding requirement not to just negotiate in good faith but asserted an affirmative obligation to pursue and conclude negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament.

The Treaty had a provision that after 25 years it would be reviewed to be determined whether it would terminate, be extended for another specific period of time, or be extended indefinitely. It was agreed in 1995 that it would be extended indefinitely. However, there is an ongoing legal obligation that every five years there is a review conference to analyze compliance and establish commitments to action to fulfill the core bargain. This process should not be ignored.

A context of previous commitments that have been made and remain outstanding are worth noting. Yes, diplomatic and especially legal language is boring but remember these words are the best tools we have for preventing suffering at scales and horror beyond our capacity to imagine.

The choice is either the tools of law and diplomacy or facing the consequence of explosions giving off heat three times the face of the sun, fireballs tens of miles wide throwing tons of soot into the stratosphere rending the agricultural base of civilization destroyed, radiation spreading across the globe, and the callous use of devices which dwarf the destruction of Hiroshima or Nagasaki by magnitudes the mind cannot easily grasp.

The atomic bombs of World War II were each less than the equivalent of 20 tons of TNT. There are now bombs in the million tons ranges. If used they will not discriminate between children, elderly, or even other species. As the first generation that must decide not to be the last, we will have failed our duty to future generations and our duty to live as human beings during our brief journey together.

So, please look at the progress that has taken place and could take place again if we can generate the knowledge in the public and political will of leaders to simply save humanity from a fire of our own creation.

A bargain to gain the indefinite extension of the NPT was obtained in 1995. It was based on a Statement of Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament which “politically, if not legally, condition[ed] the indefinite extension of the treaty.” The Statement pledged to accomplish the following:

1. Complete a “Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by the end of 1996”
2. Reaffirm the commitment “to pursue . . . nuclear disarmament”
3. Commence “negotiations for a treaty to stop” production “of nuclear bomb material[s]”
4. “[S]harply reduce global nuclear arsenals”
5. Encourage “the creation of nuclear-weapon-free zones”
6. Vigorously work to make the treaty universal by bringing in Israel, Pakistan and India, who have nuclear weapons and remain outside the treaty
7. Enhance IAEA [ Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards and verification capacity 8. Reinforce negative security assurances already given to NNWS (Non-Nuclear Weapons States) “against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against them . . . .” (This means to not threaten to use nuclear weapons against states which have renounced nuclear weapons for themselves .)

At the first Review Conference of the Treaty in 2000 the here are some of the terms upon which unanimous agreement was obtained:

1. Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

The importance and urgency of signature and ratification, without delay and without conditions and in accordance with constitutional processes, to achieve the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

2. Nuclear Test Moratorium

A moratorium on nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions pending entry into force of that Treaty.

3. Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty

The necessity of negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament on a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

6. Elimination of Nuclear Arsenals

An unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.

7. The START II, START III, and ABM Treaties

The early entry into force and full implementation of START II and the conclusion of START III as soon as possible while preserving and strengthening the ABM Treaty as a cornerstone of strategic stability and as a basis for further reductions of strategic offensive weapons, in accordance with its provisions. (These treaties have been ended.)

9. Other Nuclear-Weapon States’ Actions

Steps by all the nuclear-weapon States leading to nuclear disarmament in a way that promotes international stability, and based on the principle of undiminished security for all:

– Further efforts by the nuclear-weapon States to reduce their nuclear arsenals unilaterally

– Increased transparency by the nuclear-weapon States with regard to the nuclear weapons capabilities and the implementation of agreements pursuant to Article VI and as a voluntary confidence-building measure to support further progress on nuclear disarmament

– The further reduction of non-strategic nuclear weapons, based on unilateral initiatives and as an integral part of the nuclear arms reduction and disarmament process

– Concrete agreed measures to further reduce the operational status of nuclear weapons systems

– A diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies to minimize the risk that these weapons ever be used and to facilitate the process of their total elimination

– The engagement as soon as appropriate of all the nuclear-weapon States in the process leading to the total elimination of their nuclear weapons

10. Excess Fissile Material

Arrangements by all nuclear-weapon States to place, as soon as practicable, fissile material designated by each of them as no longer required for military purposes under IAEA or other relevant international verification and arrangements for the disposition of such material for peaceful purposes, to ensure that such material remains permanently outside of military programmes.

13. Verification

The further development of the verification capabilities that will be required to provide assurance of compliance with nuclear disarmament agreements for the achievement and maintenance of a nuclear-weapon-free world.

In 2010 over 60 further commitments to making the world safer were made.

I recount the accomplishment of these commitments to highlight the diplomatic failure of the 2026 Conference where no final statement of agreement could be reached. We must be sober and recognize that the five states with nuclear weapons are either modernizing and thus making more usable their nuclear arsenals and/or expanding them, and the web of agreements that have constrained and contained proliferation and reduced risk have been eliminated by the actions of Russia and the US which possess over 85% of the world’s over 12,000 nuclear weapons. Threats of use are daily reported in the papers.

Treaty words and promises must mean something or else bullets become the verbs of communication. In the nuclear age this is too dangerous.

If the people of the world knew what diplomats could achieve if they were given the authority to use the skills of law and diplomacy, if they knew the daily risk of use of these devices by accident, design, or madness and the dozens of near uses by mistake, if they knew there is a better way, we could follow the path President Reagan and President Gorbachev opened which led to the reduction of the world’s nuclear arsenals by over 80%.

Today fear is an abused currency. In recent times we have seen how much can be created when hope and trust are invoked. The current downward spiral arising from the abusive arrogance of power exemplified by nuclear threats cannot lead to a better place. Our common humanity alone can bring us common security. It has been done before and it can be done again.

The 2026 NPT Review Conference demonstrated a failure by the five nuclear weapons states to work together to make the world a safer place.

Let us take the advice of Martin Luther King Jr. whose words when he won the Noble Peace Prize remain resonant today. “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.‬”

That is why in the face of apathy, ignorance, fear, war, dishonesty, and violence, those of us who know the life lived without caring, compassion, sincerity and the pursuit of truth is hollow cannot turn away from the imperative that is both moral and practical. The work to fulfill the legal duty to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and obtain their legal, verifiable elimination must continue. Working for peace is not an inconvenient truth but a blessing available to all of us.

Jonathan Granoff is President of the Global Security Institute.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The financing required to build resilient water and sanitation systems continues to leave governments overburdened with debt repayments, excessive borrowing costs, and illicit financial flows. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi and Francisca Tatchouop Belobe
Jun 9 2026 (IPS)

Somewhere in Africa today, a woman will spend more than 30 minutes collecting water that may make her and her children sick. At the same time, her government will face severe fiscal constraints that will limit its ability to provide clean water, among other basic services.

This injustice sits at the heart of Africa’s development challenge. And, with a strong “El Niño” climate cycle currently developing and threatening to disrupt fragile water supplies, the situation can only get worse.

In several countries, debt servicing now consumes between 50 and 70 percent of government revenue, leaving little room for investment in critical sectors like water and sanitation

Africa loses billions of dollars every year through unfair sovereign credit ratings, illicit financial flows, and mounting debt repayments – all symptoms of a global financial system that wasn’t designed with African development in mind. Reforming that system could unlock critical resources for investment in water, sanitation, and the foundations of economic transformation.

Some 418 million Africans still lack basic drinking water services, while 779 million lack basic sanitation. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the only region in the world where the number without access to basic drinking water continues to rise, even as climate change intensifies droughts, floods, and water stress.

No country can industrialize without reliable water systems. No health system can function without sanitation. Agricultural transformation cannot succeed amid worsening climate shocks. And the demographic dividend cannot be realized if women and girls continue to spend hours searching for water instead of pursuing education and economic opportunity.

Yet the financing required to build resilient water and sanitation systems continues to leave governments overburdened with debt repayments, excessive borrowing costs, and illicit financial flows.

Three Essential Challenges

African governments routinely pay borrowing costs that far exceed their actual risk profile. Despite evidence showing Africa’s infrastructure default rates are lower than those in other developing regions, perceptions of risk remain disproportionately high – and those skewed risk perceptions are embedded in sovereign credit ratings. The result is an “Africa premium” that shrinks the fiscal space available for public investment.

Estimates suggest African countries could save up to $74.5 billion if ratings were based on less subjective assessments. Simulations using the Universities of St Andrews and Leicester GRADE model show the human impact of these distortions. In Ghana alone, correcting for bias embedded in sovereign ratings could create enough fiscal space to extend basic water access to more than 417,000 people and sanitation facilities for 381,537 people.

Africa loses vast resources through illicit financial flows, which take three main forms: trade mis-invoicing (falsifying invoices to misrepresent price, quantity, or quality of goods to evade taxes and duties); profit shifting (multinationals exploiting tax loopholes to move reported profits from high-tax countries to low-tax havens); and opaque cross-border transactions (international financial movements hidden by complex customs requirements, poor data transparency, or illicit practices).

UNCTAD estimates that the continent loses $88.6 billion annually to illicit financial flows — resources that could transform access to water and sanitation. In Nigeria alone, curbing trade mis-invoicing could extend water access to 2.56 million people and sanitation services to more than 4 million.

Addressing this challenge requires action globally and domestically. Beneficial ownership transparency, automatic exchange of financial information, and fairer international tax rules must be matched by stronger domestic revenue systems and governance reforms across Africa.

The third challenge is debt.

In 2024, Africa’s external debt service reached $84.4 billion – nearly five times the level recorded in 2010. In several countries, debt servicing now consumes between 50 and 70 percent of government revenue, leaving little room for investment in critical sectors like water and sanitation.

Meanwhile, debt restructuring processes remain too slow and too heavily weighted against debtor countries. The developmental consequences of the current debt burden are already measurable: simulations show that under a scenario in which debt service is capped at just 5 percent of government revenue, Egypt could achieve near-universal access to clean water and sanitation. In Ghana, a more flexible Eurobond restructuring could have resulted in more than a million people gaining access to water and sanitation.

African governments recognize the urgent need for fiscal space to invest in long-term priorities, especially water and sanitation systems that are essential for public health, climate resilience, food security, and economic productivity, hence their adoption,  of the Common African Position (CAP) on Debt — a continental strategy for sovereign debt management and reform so that debt becomes a tool for structural transformation rather than placing economies in a chokehold.

So, when our governments advocate for more concessional financing or lower borrowing costs, they’re talking about the lives of real people, often the most vulnerable: women and children.

The international community must take three steps to accompany Africa on its journey to an economic transformation that truly benefits its people.

First, sovereign credit rating methodologies for African economies must be independently reviewed to correct structural distortions that continue to overprice African risk.

Second, the international community must curb illicit financial flows through stronger transparency standards, fairer global tax rules, and meaningful enforcement mechanisms.

Third, the international debt architecture must be redesigned to support development rather than undermine it.

Sixty-three years ago, African leaders gathered in Addis Ababa to declare that Africa would shape its own destiny.

The continent possesses the resources, institutions, and ambition to drive its transformation. What remains is the political will — globally and domestically — to build a financial system that enables, rather than constrains, Africa’s development.

Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi is President and CEO of the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET). Francisca Tatchouop Belobe is the Commissioner for Economic Development, Trade, Tourism, Industry and Minerals (ETTIM) Department at the African Union Commission

(AI image for representative purpose)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2026 (IPS)

As ongoing military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East continue with no signsof winding down, there is increasing focus on nuclear weaponsamid heightened risks of escalation.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI),in its annual assessment of the state of armaments, disarmament and international security, singles out key findings in its SIPRI Yearbook 2026 that “states are increasingly relying on nuclear weapons as instruments of national power—reversing decades of efforts to reduce the numbers and role of nuclear weapons—even as the risks of miscalculation and escalation are rising”.

World’s nuclear arsenals expanded and upgraded

The world’s nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—continued programmes to modernize and enhance their nuclear arsenals in 2025, and most deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems during the year, said SIPRI.

The current military conflicts include a nuclear Russia vs non-nuclear Ukraine, a nuclear US vs non-nuclear Iran and a nuclear Israel vs non-nuclear Palestine and Lebanon.

Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12, 187 warheads in January 2026, about 9,745 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

An estimated 4,012 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft and the rest were in central storage. Between 2100 and 2200 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles, according to the report.

Nearly all of these warheads belonged to Russia or the USA, and to a lesser extent France and the UK, but China and India may now occasionally deploy a small number of warheads mounted on missiles during peacetime.

‘Influential voices, including some world leaders, are advocating nuclear weapons as a guarantee against attack by a hostile state. But making national defence and security strategies dependent—or more dependent—on nuclear weapons could significantly increase nuclear risks,’ said SIPRI Director Karim Haggag.

‘The dangers associated with nuclear weapons are growing due to advances in weapon technology, the breakdown of nuclear arms control and heightened geopolitical tensions, among a range of other factors. At the same time, world events—not least the outbreak of conflict between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan—are challenging nuclear deterrence logic.’

Dr M. V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security, Director pro tem, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told Inter Press Service the continued modernization of nuclear weapons and the increased emphasis on nuclear weapons in military doctrines is a dangerous trend, especially when this is happening when many of the most military powerful countries in the world are resorting to attacking other countries with bombs, missiles, and drones rather than diplomatically settling differences.

“Any of these ongoing wars can easily escalate into ones where some country resorts to using nuclear weapons, which would result in destruction an order of magnitude greater than what is already being wrought by the weapons being used currently,” he pointed out.

Such a contingency becomes even more imaginable with the integration of Artificial Intelligence and other software tools to accelerate the kill chain, and possibly removing people from the process of deciding who to attack and what weapons to use, h argued.

Countries without nuclear weapons currently are also witnessing recommendations from influential spokespeople to consider developing a nuclear arsenal. Such a race can quickly spiral out of control, making it urgent that the world collectively step away from expanding nuclear arsenals and considering their use, and more generally, cease the use of militaristic violence to settle differences, said Dr Ramana.

Since the end of the cold war, says SIPRI, the gradual dismantlement of retired warheads by Russia and the USA has normally outstripped the deployment of new warheads, resulting in an overall year-on-year decrease in the global inventory of nuclear weapons. This trend is likely to be reversed in the coming years, as the pace of dismantlement is slowing, while the deployment of new nuclear weapons is accelerating.

‘The evidence is growing that the nuclear weapon states are sidelining, and even walking away from, their disarmament commitments and are instead flexing their nuclear muscles,’ said Hans M. Kristensen, Associate Senior Fellow with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme and Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).

‘By reaching for nuclear solutions, states are creating new risks and fuelling arms-race dynamics,’ he said.

Dr. Natalie Goldring, the Acronym Institute’s representative at the United Nations, told IPS the nine countries with nuclear weapons are engaged in extremely destabilizing behaviors — developing new weapons, increasing the size of their nuclear arsenals, abandoning arms control frameworks and verification systems, and threatening to use nuclear weapons in response to conventional weapons attacks, among other dangerous moves. Each of these choices increases risk; taken together, the potential consequences are terrifying.

Even the existence of nuclear weapons poses enormous military, economic, and environmental threats, among others. Fortunately, there’s a promising way forward — the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which rejects the contention that nuclear deterrence and continued development of new nuclear weapons somehow make us safer.

Under the TPNW, States commit themselves to not develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use, or threaten to use nuclear weapons. The TPNW has 74 States Parties, with an additional 25 signatories that have not yet become States Parties. It’s arguably our best hope of breaking the cycle of continual upgrades and “modernization” of weapons, while decreasing nuclear threats.

“We don’t know whether the fact that nuclear weapons haven’t been used in wartime since the United States military dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is because of luck, skill (including deterrence), or a combination of those factors. Proponents of deterrence don’t tend to talk about the role of luck. They also don’t tend to talk about the risk of nuclear use through accident or miscalculation. That’s a short-sighted, high-risk approach. Militaries frequently have accidents; they also frequently fail to correctly calculate their adversaries’ capabilities and motivations.”

“The inherent risks of these weapons are compounded by the individuals involved. For example, US President Donald Trump is a threat to international security. He is unpredictable, prone to fits of rage, disinclined to listen to or learn from experts, and poorly informed about specific and general US military policies. And because of US nuclear weapons policy, he has the authority to order the launch of nuclear weapons without anyone else needing to confirm that order. That’s an extraordinarily dangerous situation, especially given his volatility.”

Recent events also increase risk. For example, the New START Treaty limited the number of deployed nuclear weapons for both the United States and Russia and contained useful verification provisions. Unfortunately, the treaty expired in February 2026, removing both the numerical limits on US and Russian nuclear stockpiles and the verification procedures.

Another example is the recent conclusion of the 2026 Review Conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This conference continued the pattern from the previous two review conferences, as States were not even able to agree on an outcome document. More importantly, the five nuclear weapons states defined by the treaty (the US, Russia, the United Kingdom, China, and France) continue to fail to meet their commitment to disarmament under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“The US’s stated reliance on the idea of nuclear deterrence may have encouraged other countries to do the same. I remember being at a meeting many years ago, where a South Asian diplomat asked me why the US government was so arrogant that it thought it had a monopoly on nuclear deterrence. He said there was no reason that India and Pakistan couldn’t or shouldn’t have a similar set of strategies. TPNW provides a more sensible answer – all of these States should renounce nuclear weapons.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi at the official launch of the new injectable drug for HIV prevention, Lenacapavir. Credit: GCIS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jun 9 2026 (IPS)

As South Africa officially launches the rollout of a groundbreaking HIV prevention drug,  civic groups in the country have slammed the plan, saying it will not reach anywhere near enough people.

President Cyril Ramaphosa on June 5 launched the roll-out in South Africa of lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injectable HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drug that has been shown to offer almost complete protection against the disease, billing it as a ‘historic event’.

But activists say there is nothing to celebrate, warning the targets set in the rollout are too low, and the volumes of the drug provided by the pharma firm behind its development, Gilead, are tiny.

“In an ideal world, South Africa would not be rolling out lenacapavir as a small pilot. We would be treating it as an epidemic-ending intervention. The objective should be to get millions of people onto lenacapavir as quickly as possible, not a few hundred thousand over several years,” Tian Johnson, founder and strategist of the Pan-African health justice advocacy group, African Alliance, told IPS.

“South Africa has the world’s largest HIV epidemic. We also helped generate the scientific evidence that made lenacapavir possible. An appropriate response would therefore be a national scale-up plan linked to epidemiological need, not constrained by artificial scarcity created by patent monopolies, donor allocations, and supply decisions made outside the country,” he added.

South Africa has the world’s highest burden of HIV, with around 8 million people living with HIV. In 2024 it recorded 170,000 new infections, accounting for roughly 13% of the 1.3 million new cases globally that year.

Lenacapavir has been shown in trials to provide almost complete protection against HIV acquisition. It has been praised not just for its effectiveness but also for its potential for very high adherence, as it is an injection given only every six months.

Civic groups say that if rolled out in a timely manner and with greater volumes, it could avert up to 52,200 new infections per year in South Africa alone.

They also point to modelling which has shown that around 2 million people in South Africa need to be taking lenacapavir annually for it to have a real impact on the number of new HIV infections.

But the government’s rollout is expected to reach only around 450,000 people over the next two years. Moreover, only just under 38,000 doses have so far arrived in the country.

Activists blame adversarial US policy and effective monopolies on the drug’s supply for this and say it has highlighted concerns over who has real control over efforts to end the epidemic in the country.

The Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria (GF) and the United States President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) have historically been central to funding South Africa’s HIV response.

But days after Donald Trump entered the White House early last year, PEPFAR slashed around half of its funding for HIV in South Africa – what is left of it is due to run out this month.

So far, the Trump administration is refusing to fund lenacapavir for South Africa as the two countries lock horns politically and ideologically.

This means that the doses to be used in South Africa over the next 18 months to two years will be funded by the Global Fund and are expected to be only sufficient for 456,000 people.

Meanwhile, since Gilead is currently the only manufacturer of lenacapavir and generics are not available on the market yet, there is no alternative path available to secure more doses for the rollout.

Currently the cost of Lenacapavir is about USD 28,000 per person a year in the U.S., but Gilead has issued six licences to companies to manufacture generics, which will be available to 120 low- and middle-income countries. These are expected to become available in 2027, potentially for as little as USD 40 per person per year.

Earlier this year, it was announced the South African government was working to identify a local company to manufacture lenacapavir. Once identified, that company would then be recommended to Gilead for a voluntary licence to produce the drug.

In 2024, Gilead granted such licences to six generic manufacturers across India, Egypt and Pakistan to produce and supply the drug ⁠to 120 low- and middle-income countries. At the time, critics pointed out that no South African ​drugmakers were included.

Gilead has said it is open to adding another licence for local manufacturing in Sub-Saharan Africa. But activists warn that any final decision on a licence will rest with the company.

The groups also highlighted previous delays in the rollout of the programme, which had initially been scheduled to begin in April. When the first doses arrived in South Africa in March and April, they were subject to obligatory regulatory tests. Gilead could have asked for an exemption to the tests but did not, activists claim.

They say all this means properly protecting people against HIV in South Africa is effectively dependent on a pharmaceutical firm and US political policy.

“Gilead currently exercises extraordinary influence over who receives lenacapavir, in what quantities, and on what timeline. When a country with the world’s largest HIV epidemic cannot independently determine access to a medicine that was partly researched within its own borders, something is fundamentally wrong with the balance of power. The uncomfortable reality is that key decisions affecting South Africa’s HIV response are still being made in corporate boardrooms and donor negotiations rather than in South Africa. That should concern everyone, regardless of where they stand on this rollout,” said Johnson.

“Many countries are receiving doses funded by the US, and then also being funded as a result of re-allocation of already committed Global Fund funding repurposed for lenacapavir. The US is refusing to fund South Africa ‘s lenacapavir program, even though there is no better example of a country that needs lenacapavir, and [the programme] would immediately show impact,” Asia Russell, Executive Director of HIV advocacy group Health Gap, told IPS.

“The US government has stated its goal is to bend the curve of new HIV infections, but it is blocking access to the doses urgently needed in South Africa, which means it will fail to reach its goal. It should immediately reverse this decision, stop bullying  South Africa, and provide doses – South Africa’s minuscule allocation of lenacapavir only from the Global Fund means the pandemic will continue raging in South Africa,” she added.

It will also have a detrimental effect on wider efforts to tackle HIV outside South Africa, others say.

“South Africa accounts for more than 13 percent of new HIV infections globally each year, and is a home for millions of other public health care recipients from other countries who benefit from the South African health care system. The US government’s refusal to support South Africa with lenacapavir and cut off other funding is not only cruel but also contributes to delays in ending the HIV pandemic,” Bellinda Thibela, Coordinator for Health Justice and Human Rights at Health GAP, told IPS

Meanwhile, activists point out what they see as another huge injustice in the situation.

South Africa was key to the development of the drug – it hosted testing sites, its clinics were used in research, and subjects came from its communities – yet it is now struggling to secure sufficient supplies of that same drug.

“South Africa played a pivotal role in the clinical development of lenacapavir, hosting 25 of the 28 trial sites that participated in the PURPOSE 1 Phase III study of this groundbreaking long-acting HIV prevention tool. Yet, despite this substantial contribution, my country has found itself in the difficult position that, following approval by the US FDA and rollout in several high-income countries, access to lenacapavir at scale for PrEP remains abysmally low and challenging. And not just for South Africa,” Fatima Hassan of the Health Justice Initiative (HJI), told IPS.

“This underscores persistent inequities within the global innovation ecosystem, where countries that bear a disproportionate burden of disease and contribute significantly to research and development often face delays in accessing the very health technologies they helped bring to fruition. It also raises important questions about local manufacturing, technology transfer, regulatory capacity, affordability, and equitable access in markets that are frequently perceived as less commercially attractive, despite their central role in generating the evidence that drives global health innovation and the development of new health technologies,” she added.

In a statement, Gilead said the launch of the rollout was an important step toward expanding access to lenacapavir for communities most affected by HIV.

“South Africa is at the heart of global efforts to end HIV. With the country’s launch of lenacapavir, there is now an opportunity to rapidly accelerate progress,” said Daniel O’Day, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Gilead Sciences. “Through partnerships with country leadership, the Global Fund, and the U.S. State Department via PEPFAR, Gilead is working to bring lenacapavir to the communities most in need, ahead of the broad rollout of generic versions of the medicine.”

The company also highlighted what it said was its commitment to supporting broad, equitable and sustainable access to lenacapavir for HIV prevention globally,  pointing to its royalty-free voluntary licence agreements with six manufacturers enabling generic supply across 120 low- and lower-middle-income countries to support long-term, lower-cost medication supply.

“As highlighted by today’s announcement and the strong, coordinated leadership demonstrated in South Africa, the continued collaboration between countries, global health partners and industry will be critical to reaching people with new innovations at scale, reducing new HIV infections and advancing our shared goal of ending HIV as a public health threat,” the company said in the statement.

Civic groups have called on South Africa’s government to scale up the volumes for the rollout and expand it to make sure it can be accessed by more people – they have criticised the fact that out of more than 3,000 public clinics, just 300 in 23 districts have been chosen for the rollout, and mobile clinics, which would be more likely accessed by some communities, are not being used.

They also want to see more pressure put on Gilead to drastically expand its current licence territories to help manufacture lenacapavir.

“At the moment, we have a Gilead-driven launch event, but we do not have a credible epidemic-ending plan. The bigger issue is that South Africa appears to have accepted the limits imposed by Gilead rather than challenging them,” said Johnson.

He added that under the current roll-out plan a crucial opportunity to end the HIV epidemic sooner in South Africa was being missed.

“The tragedy is that South Africa is not dealing with a scientific failure –  the science worked. Lenacapavir is one of the most promising HIV prevention tools ever developed. What we are facing is a political and access failure. If we know that roughly two million people need access annually to achieve maximum public health impact, then a faux roll out reaching a fraction of that number inevitably means preventable infections will continue occurring.

“Every year we delay large-scale access is another year in which tens of thousands of South Africans will acquire HIV despite the existence of a prevention tool capable of dramatically reducing transmission. This is why the debate is not really about a rollout. It is about whether South Africa intends to end the epidemic or manage it. The current approach manages the epidemic dismally. An epidemic-ending strategy would look very different,” Johnson said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The world often asks whether we can afford to invest in preparedness before a crisis occurs. The more relevant question is whether we can afford not to. Credit: UNICEF/Carmel Ndomba Mbikayi

By Mario Jimenez and Ifeanyi Nsofor
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 9 2026 (IPS)

When the world learned that Ebola was spreading across parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, one fact stood out above all others: there was no approved vaccine for the virus responsible.

Not because scientists only recently discovered it.

Not because the technology does not exist.

But because the world never made the investment.

 

No Vaccine Exists Because the World Failed to Invest

The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, one of several species that cause Ebola disease. The virus was first identified in Uganda in 2007. Nearly two decades later, as hundreds of suspected infections and dozens of deaths are reported across Central and East Africa, health workers are confronting the same deadly disease without a licensed vaccine or treatment approved to prevent or treat it respectively.

This is not simply a scientific failure. It is a health equity failure.

The outbreak is unlikely to become another COVID-19. Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids, making it far less transmissible than airborne viruses. Yet the lesson it offers is no less important. It reveals whose health risks attract sustained investment and whose are allowed to remain neglected.

For years, global health leaders have warned that epidemic preparedness cannot focus only on threats that endanger wealthy countries. Pathogens do not become priorities because of their biological risks alone. They become priorities because of political attention, financial incentives and public visibility.

The result is a troubling pattern: communities facing the greatest risks often have access to the fewest tools.

Bundibugyo virus has caused only a handful of outbreaks since its discovery. Unlike the more common Zaire strain of Ebola, which drove major epidemics in West Africa and eastern Congo, Bundibugyo attracted relatively little research funding and commercial attention. While effective vaccines and treatments were developed for the Zaire strain, investment in countermeasures for Bundibugyo remained limited.

Now the consequences are visible.

 

The Outbreak Exposes a Global Health Equity Gap

Doctors and nurses in eastern Congo and Uganda are relying primarily on supportive care, isolation measures, contact tracing and community engagement to stop transmission. Scientists are racing to develop vaccines and treatments, but those efforts are occurring during an outbreak rather than before one.

The contrast is striking. We are witnessing extraordinary scientific mobilization precisely because the crisis has already begun.

The Cycle of Panic and Neglect Continues

Last week, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, announced up to US$50 million through its First Response Fund to accelerate vaccine development and support outbreak response. CEPI has committed tens of millions more to advance vaccine candidates being developed by Moderna, the University of Oxford and IAVI. The European Union has mobilized humanitarian funding and emergency supplies. The World Health Organization has activated its highest emergency response mechanisms and is coordinating clinical trials of potential treatments.

Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have some of the world's most experienced Ebola responders. Their scientists, surveillance officers, laboratory teams, community leaders and frontline health workers have repeatedly demonstrated remarkable expertise and courage under difficult circumstances

These investments are essential and deserve recognition.

But they also raise a difficult question: why did it take an outbreak to generate this level of urgency?

Scientists have understood the threat posed by Bundibugyo virus since 2007. Promising vaccine approaches have existed for years. Researchers have identified monoclonal antibodies that demonstrated protection in animal studies. Yet many of these efforts struggled to secure sustained funding once the immediate threat faded.

This is a recurring problem in global health. Funding surges during emergencies and recedes once headlines disappear. Research programs are launched and then abandoned. Preparedness becomes a priority only after vulnerabilities have already been exposed.

The result is a cycle of panic and neglect.

This is where the health equity dimension becomes impossible to ignore.

Health equity is often discussed as a moral imperative. It is that. But it is also a practical necessity.

Countries that rapidly detect outbreaks, share biological samples and alert the world to emerging threats are providing a global public good. The benefits extend far beyond national borders. Those countries should be able to expect that the products of scientific innovation—vaccines, diagnostics and treatments—will also be available to them in a timely and equitable manner.

Instead, we too often ask vulnerable countries to contribute to global security while denying them equal access to its benefits.

Preparedness Requires More Than Vaccines

The outbreak also highlights another reality that deserves greater attention: strong health systems remain the world’s best defense against emerging epidemics.

As Norway’s International Development Minister Åsmund Aukrust recently observed, “No country can face these challenges alone.” Experience from decades of global health cooperation shows that rapid detection, trained health workers, effective laboratories, community trust and resilient primary healthcare systems remain our most powerful tools against infectious disease threats.

Vaccines matter enormously. But vaccines alone are not preparedness.

The countries currently confronting Ebola understand this better than most. Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have some of the world’s most experienced Ebola responders. Their scientists, surveillance officers, laboratory teams, community leaders and frontline health workers have repeatedly demonstrated remarkable expertise and courage under difficult circumstances.

The international response succeeds when it strengthens local leadership rather than substitutes for it.

The broader lesson extends far beyond Ebola.

The next global health security emergency will begin where health systems are weakest, where surveillance gaps are largest and where scientific neglect has been allowed to persist.

The world often asks whether we can afford to invest in preparedness before a crisis occurs.

The more relevant question is whether we can afford not to.

On that test, the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak should make all of us uncomfortable.

 

Mario Jimenez is a health economist working to increase access to immunization in low-income countries. He is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity.

Ifeanyi Nsofor is a public health physician and co-founder of the Africa Behavioral Science Network. He is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity. In 2015, Ifeanyi co-led the African Union’s Intervention to End Ebola and Strengthen Health Systems in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone (ASEOWA).

By Anis Chowdhury
SYDNEY, Jun 9 2026 (IPS)

The World Bank considers corruption a major obstacle to eradicating global poverty. The Bank officially has a zero-tolerance policy against fraud and corruption in its projects. Concerned with widespread corruption in Bangladesh, the Bank and the Government agreed on the Governance-oriented Country Assistance Strategy (GCAS) in 2006 and the Bank’s subsequent Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) ostensibly has been more selective on governance and anti-corruption (GAC) issues. Ironically, however, the Bank’s funding enables corruption. The Bank’s recent decision to advance a US$350 million loan allegedly for enhancing energy security is a glaring example.

Anis Chowdhury

Corruption-riddled energy sector

The Interim Government’s White Paper on the state of the economy documented the extent of collusion and corruption in the energy sector. It noted the authoritarian kleptocratic government’s inflated demand forecast, disregarding professional projections. Thus, the installed capacity hugely exceeds actual demand. Against the peak summer demand of approximately 17,000 MW, the installed capacity is nearly 32,000 MW (or 30,000 MW considering aging infrastructure). According to the White paper, this artificially “increased capacity was driven by unscrupulous motivations” to benefit the regime’s cronies who formed a monopoly cartel in the power sector.

A series of dodgy moves facilitated unprecedented misappropriation of public money in the sector. The first was the awarding of contracts to 17 private rental plants through ‘negotiation’ in 2010, circumventing the Public Procurement Rules. The second was the Quick Enhancement of Electricity and Energy Supply (Special Provision) Act 2010, which protected energy contracts from competitive bidding and legal challenges. Such indemnity is a license for corruption, facilitating unchecked project approvals and non-transparent often dollar-denominated Power Purchase Agreements.

These agreements enabled the purchase of electricity from furnace-oil-based plants at prices 40-50% above market rates and from gas-fired plants at prices 45% above market rates, according to the Interim Government’s review committee. Initially established for a four-year period to address an emergency supply situation, the arrangement has been extended multiple times, allowing the cronies to be paid an exorbitant excess capacity charge.

The estimated total excess capacity/rental payment to the private sector from 2010-11 to 2023-24 was approximately US$2.93 billion. In the 2024-25 fiscal year alone the capacity charge was approximately US$3.42 billion, while nearly 63% of installed electricity generation capacity remained idle. According to the review committee, an estimated excess generation capacity of roughly 7,700 to 9,500 MW is causing an additional annual expenditure of US$900 million to US$1.5 billion in capacity payments.

The White Paper estimated that the rental power plants made as high as 35% profit against a standard 15%! The private sector power companies received payments from the government as rent for power plants under the guise of power purchase agreements, where corruption, rather than electricity supply, was the main objective.

Most of the operational private power plants in Bangladesh are owned/controlled by a group of five cronies. They control country’s power sector to loot vast amounts of money. While the kleptocratic regime beat the drum of “self-sufficiency” in electricity, its cronies were pillaging the state coffer.

While the cronies enjoyed excess profits through extraordinary corrupt practices, consumers paid the price. Electricity prices were increased 12 times at the wholesale level and 14 times at the retail level over 15 years during the kleptocratic regime, ostensibly to reduce losses and subsidy requirements. But neither losses nor subsidies declined.

The review committee recommended that contracts containing evidence of corruption should be cancelled immediately. It also recommended renegotiation of high-cost and unequal power purchase agreements to revise and convert them to a “take-and-pay” model following Pakistan’s example.

Instead of taking these recommended measures, the current government has chosen the path of the kleptocratic regime’s looting model. The decision to hike the electricity price will protect the fatty pockets of cronies at the expense of the common people.

The World Bank’s role

The Bank has been a prime advocate of privatisation of Bangladesh’s energy sector, citing widespread corruption and inefficiency of the publicly-owned power sector. It pushed for “unbundling” vertically integrated state monopolies, facilitating Independent Power Producers (IPPs), and mobilising private capital through financial guarantees – a strategy that supposedly should improve energy security and at the same time ease public fiscal burden.

The Bank has been providing loans ostensibly to help Bangladesh improve its energy security. But that has made the country heavily reliant on imported Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and fossil fuels and has locked Bangladesh into steep capacity payments, draining foreign exchange reserves. Thus, the Bank’s loans allegedly for ensuring energy sector security have created a vicious circle of debt burden and plunder of public coffer through hefty capacity payments.

Instead of further advancing loans of US$350 million, the Bank should have told the government to implement the recommendations of the Interim Government’s review committee; i.e., cancel the unscrupulous agreements with IPPs and stop fiscal bleeding through unfair capacity payments. The savings from the capacity charges would have been more than enough to pay for the imports of LNG without incurring additional debt burden.

The Bank’s anti-corruption record

Why does the Bank advance loans to the sector riddled with widespread corruption? The Bank’s anti-corruption record is at best disappointing globally. The Bank once took a firm anti-corruption stance in Bangladesh when it pulled out of the Padma Bridge project alleging corruption. But it scrambled to recover its lost ground when other lenders with strategic interests came forward to fill the gap.

Evaluating the Bank’s engagement in Bangladesh during 2011-2020, the World Bank’s own Independent Evaluation Group concluded, “Despite a trend of deterioration in the country’s institutional quality and economic management, the Bank Group significantly increased financing to Bangladesh over the review period, making Bangladesh one of the largest borrowers”.

As a lending agency, the Bank’s existence depends on debtor countries’ borrowings, regardless of its lofty ideals, such as poverty reduction. A fundamental flaw in the international aid system: “the donors are more desperate to give than the recipients are to receive”. Therefore, the Bank takes a “pragmatic” approach, and tolerates corruption.

Then why did the Bank declare zero-tolerance policy against corruption? Perhaps this is because it has to satisfy the public anti-corruption sentiment in creditor nations; their citizens do not want to see their tax dollars being misappropriated.

Renowned political economist, Robert Wade conceptualises this as gesturing to appease creditor governments while acting to the contrary to appease borrower governments. Thus, the Bank’s “organised hypocrisy” enables corruption in poor borrower countries.

Anis Chowdhury, Emeritus Professor, Western Sydney University (Australia). He held senior UN positions in Bangkok and New York and served as Special Assistant to the Chief Advisor for Finance (with the status and rank of State Minister) in the Professor Yunus-led Interim Government. Anis has written extensively on macroeconomic issues, sustainable development, international financial architecture and political economy. E-mail: anis.z.chowdhury@gmail.com; a.chowdhury@westernsydney.edu.au

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Felice Noelle Rodriguez
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 9 2026 (IPS)

Recent geopolitical trends threaten more food crises, especially in developing countries. A new IPES-Food report urges a strategy of ‘resilient self-reliance’, proposing available opportunities to improve equity, sustainability and solidarity.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Enhancing vulnerability
The New Geopolitics of Food. Navigating policies for resilient self-reliance argues that international food systems have been profoundly transformed by the geopolitical changes of the last four decades.

Geopolitics – referring to political sanctions, trade disputes, military conflicts, multilateral challenges, aid cuts, planetary heating, and corporate interests – is affecting food availability worldwide.

Corporate interests have increasingly reshaped food systems over the last half-century – promoting selective trade liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation, financialization and cost reductions, ostensibly to improve food security efficiently.

Prioritising cost and fiscal savings led to the neglect and closure of buffer stocks. Food systems became more vulnerable as price volatility worsened.

Just-in-time supply chains have also been more susceptible to geopolitical shocks, planetary heating, and market manipulation.

World Bank structural adjustment programmes made developing countries more reliant on food and input imports. Tariffs and sanctions have disrupted food supplies worldwide.

Felice Noelle Rodriguez

Supplies have become more vulnerable to disruption, whether due to poor harvests or political sanctions. Price volatility has also worsened food insecurity, even in large countries.

Wars in Ukraine, Iran and elsewhere have disrupted supplies, spiking prices, and have most hit poor food-importing countries. Powerful governments have also weaponised food supplies for political reasons, as against Cuba.

Major donor countries have cut aid, with lethal consequences for the most vulnerable, as in Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The legitimacy and capacity of multilateral institutions – such as the UN, World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Health Organization (WHO) – have been deliberately undermined by superpowers abusing international arrangements for their own advantage.

Food prices have been much higher since 2020, following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine and Iran wars, and other major disruptions. For instance, the Hormuz fertiliser disruptions will hurt food supply for some time to come.

Import bills have risen sharply, worsening debt burdens in poor food-importing countries. Food inflation has hurt low-income communities most, especially when governments juggle imports with debt servicing.

Corporate concentration has also worsened fertiliser and food supply and price volatility, especially hurting smaller producers. Powerful interests have also abused food crises for profit.

Geopolitics has also worsened environmental crises, as planetary heating intensifies extreme weather events, hurting crop yields and food availability.

Managing markets
To enhance food security, governments must effectively influence markets with appropriate policy instruments.

The report proposes adapting policy tools once widely used before corporate-inspired neoliberal reforms, to improve contemporary market management, supply resilience and price stability.

Public stockholdings (PSHs) involve government procurement, storage, and timely release of stocks to enhance food security, including by stabilising prices. PSHs can thus help smallholdings while improving emergency preparations.

Using minimum support prices with its Targeted Public Distribution System, India subsidises grain for two-thirds of its people, while insulating national food prices from international volatility.

Meanwhile, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has established a Regional Food Security Reserve to pool members’ stocks and collectively respond to crises.

Supply management
Other supply management mechanisms include production quotas, marketing boards, and import controls.

Market management has also supported other policy goals aimed at improving rural vitality, equity, food sovereignty, environmental sustainability, and democratic participation.

Thus, unlike in the US, Canada’s dairy, poultry, and egg production is subject to quotas and negotiated minimum prices to limit price volatility and stabilise farm incomes.

But policy implementation remains challenging. PSH programmes are often complex and costly, and risk leakage, corruption, and inefficiency.

Government commitments, such as trade agreements, limit policy options. Supply management measures may also raise consumer prices and favour wealthier farmers, as neoliberal critics have been quick to exaggerate.

But these policy tools can also support small-scale producers, reduce waste, strengthen national supply chains, and mitigate risks posed by highly centralised industrial agriculture.

Resilient Self-Reliance
The report promotes resilient self-reliance, requiring appropriate market management to stabilise food supplies and improve equity, sustainability, and food sovereignty.

Resilient self-reliance combines resilience (the ability to withstand and recover from shocks) with food self-reliance (the capacity to meet food needs with domestic production and cooperative trade).

The report recommends innovative trade partnerships, including international buffer stocks and cooperative regionalism, citing CARICOM’s regional food strategy.

Resilient self-reliance upholds food sovereignty norms, emphasising farmer rights, agroecology, territorial markets, and democratic governance, stressing equity, diversity, ecological balance, and flexibility.

Managing markets can also support agroecological transitions, culturally appropriate food diversity, territorial markets, and strategic reserves to cushion shocks.

Vulnerable countries, often due to earlier neoliberal reforms, typically try to reduce their susceptibility to international market volatility, but are usually less able to do so.

Market management mechanisms, agroecological practices, territorial markets, and cooperative trade arrangements can help ensure more stable and equitable food systems.

Stressing the urgent need for policy reform, the authors argue that recent geopolitics not only threatens crises but also offers new opportunities to reform food systems for greater equity, solidarity and sustainability.

For instance, the Hormuz crisis may spur developing economies to accelerate transitions to more renewable energy, thereby reducing their vulnerability to fossil fuel and other energy imports.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By CIVICUS
Jun 8 2026 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla on its mission to bring humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza with Musa Roshdy, a humanitarian activist who took part in the flotilla.

Musa Roshdy

On 15 April, the flotilla set sail from Barcelona, Spain. Israeli forces intercepted it in international waters on 29 April and detained 180 activists, holding them in a makeshift prison on a military ship for around 40 hours before leaving all but two of them in Crete, Greece. Two people on the Global Sumud Flotilla steering committee, Saif Abukeshek and Thiago Ávila, were taken to Israel and imprisoned until being deported on 10 May. The remaining boats regrouped and were joined by additional vessels. On 14 May, over 50 boats carrying 428 people set off from Marmaris, Turkey. The Israeli military intercepted the flotilla on 18 and 19 May, abducting all on board and taking them to Israel. Videos released on 20 May by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, showing zip-tied detainees as he taunted them, triggered a global backlash. After being processed through Ketziot Prison, most activists were deported to Turkey on 21 May.

What’s the Global Sumud Flotilla and why is it important?

The Global Sumud Flotilla was the second civilian maritime mission launched by a coalition of Palestinian solidarity organisations advocating for aid delivery to Palestinians in Gaza and the end of Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza. While it was the Global Sumud Flotilla’s second mission, this was the 39th sea-based attempt to break Israel’s illegal blockade. The Spring 2026 flotilla was organised in direct response to a call for aid put out by civil society organisations on the ground in Palestine.

On 15 April, we sailed from Barcelona with several hundred activists from dozens of countries including Brazil and Spain, determined to deliver aid to Palestinians facing severe deprivation. Our mission highlighted a crucial reality: if everyday civilians from all over the world can mobilise and get this close to establishing a humanitarian corridor, then governments can certainly do it. What’s missing is not ability or infrastructure, but political will. The flotilla represents civilian solidarity with Palestinians and a direct challenge to the illegal blockade. We were prepared for interception after Israel arrested the previous flotilla last year, but not for the scale of violence that followed.

How were you kidnapped?

I was kidnapped by the Israeli navy in the interception that occurred on 29 April, when we were sailing in international waters over 600 miles from occupied Palestine, off the coast of Crete. They attacked us in the middle of the night. We had little warning before military motorboats approached us at high speed. They pointed rifles at us and announced on a megaphone that they were the Israeli navy, they were boarding our vessel and we needed to go inside immediately or they would shoot us.

That night, the Israeli military stopped 22 of the 54 boats in the flotilla en route to Gaza. There’s no legal precedent for military action so far from Israel’s sea borders. We were in the European Union’s search-and-rescue zone, under Greek jurisdiction. But instead of protecting us, Greek coastguard ships observed Israel’s raid and then received us after we were tortured for two days.

Israel’s legal claims were absurd. They accused us of illegal entry into Israel when we were sailing to Gaza and were kidnapped en route. Most of the 180 activists were released in Greece, but two of us were abducted and brought before Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court in Israel on charges with no legal basis.

This violated fundamental principles of international law. You cannot take military action in international waters so far from your territory. You cannot abduct foreign nationals without due process. You cannot torture detainees. Yet all this happened.

Israel acts with impunity because the international community has failed to hold it accountable.

What did you endure in detention?

It was clear from the start they were trying to denigrate us for standing with Palestinians. I was forced onto my hands and knees and held in uncomfortable positions for hours. Soldiers stole my shoes, then stomped on my feet with their combat boots. I was left in just leggings and a tank top. We were held in makeshift prisons built from shipping containers. The soldiers deliberately manipulated the temperature, wetting the floor to freeze us at night, then forcing us outside under intense heat during the day. I experienced hypothermia both nights, as confirmed by a doctor who was imprisoned with me. When comrades tried to give me sweaters, soldiers took them away. At one point, a soldier pointed a rifle at my comrade and threatened to kill him for offering me a jacket in the cold.

Soldiers banged on containers and shone huge lights while we slept to keep us awake. They threw flashbangs and used force to drag people into solitary confinement. On the last day, they shot activists at point-blank range with rubber bullets. They took photographs and videos that showed us collecting our medications when they kidnapped us, but then denied us access to our medications once we were on the prison boat. Sixty-one people went on hunger strike. The food they provided, mostly bread, was insufficient to feed the rest of us, even with a third of us not eating. This cruelty is consistent with what Palestinians experience in Israeli detention, though what we experienced pales in comparison with the cruelty they face.

The Israeli military intended to deter the humanitarians sailing to deliver aid to the people of Gaza, but they were unsuccessful. People around the world recognise that Palestinians in Gaza still have an overwhelming need for aid, legal protection and solidarity. Many activists who were detained with me on 29 April set sail again a few weeks later on 14 May and were intercepted off Cyprus just days later on 18 and 19 May.

What must change internationally?

What governments must do is clear but consistently absent. They must condemn the kidnapping of their citizens. They must impose targeted sanctions against Israeli officials, not humanitarian activists. They must denormalise diplomatic relations with Israel. For instance, Croatia’s leader just refused to approve Israel’s new ambassador to Croatia due to Israel’s current policies.

The most fundamental step is an arms embargo. If we stop supplying weapons to Israel, it cannot do what it is doing. Last year, civil society in Belgium won a court case preventing the transit of military equipment to Israel. France recognises Palestine but still supplies weapons. Governments know these mechanisms exist but lack the political will to prioritise Palestinian lives over strategic interests.

Western states are also complicit in other ways. Some of our torturers had US accents. Another had a German accent. Western governments allow their citizens to join the Israeli military, which commits war crimes and kidnaps and tortures their nationals, then lets them return home without consequence.

Instead of holding Israel accountable, many western states are restricting the space for pro-Palestinian activism. In the UK, Palestine Action faced an absurd terrorism designation for blocking weapons manufacturing. In Germany, authorities banned the watermelon symbol as antisemitic.

On 19 May, as the Israeli military was kidnapping humanitarians in international waters, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned four leaders of the Global Sumud Flotilla, calling humanitarian aid delivery ‘pro-terror’, and blocking all access to financial institutions in the USA. The mechanism used by the USA to sanction humanitarian activists was recently deemed illegal by a federal judge when applied to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It criminalises support for Palestine and conflates it with support for terrorism.

What lies ahead for activism for Palestinian rights?

Our detention and torture were intended as a deterrent, but they failed. In practice, they had the opposite effect. Frontline work exacts a real human cost and people need time to recharge. But activism will continue because Palestinians in Gaza are still facing genocide.

What this moment teaches is that rights exist because we enact them. When everyday people learn from Palestinian courage how to stand up, call atrocities atrocities, and demand basic decency and access to life itself, movements spread across borders. People will continue to pursue humanitarian work, join future flotillas and resist authoritarian restrictions on civic space. Tactics will adapt, new symbols will emerge – as when the watermelon was adopted because Palestinians couldn’t display their flag – but the work won’t stop.

Credit: D.V. Bakke

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

GET IN TOUCH
Global Sumud Flotilla/Instagram
Humans of the Global Sumud Flotilla/Instagram
Musa Roshdy/Instagram

SEE ALSO
USA: sanctions weaponised against human rights CIVICUS Lens 01.Jun.2026
Gaza: ceasefire an illusion CIVICUS Lens 16.Mar.2026
Palestine: ‘The EU cannot position itself as a defender of human rights while being one of Israel’s primary arms markets’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with 7amleh 26.Mar.2026

 

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Picture alliance/Anadolu/Selcuk Acar. Annalena Baerbock, President of the UN General Assembly and former German Foreign Minister.
 
Germany’s humiliating defeat in the race for a UN Security Council seat reveals the price of a foreign policy increasingly seen as hypocritical abroad.
 
The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday elected Austria, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe to the 15-member U.N. Security Council for two-year terms starting on January 1, 2027.
 
Germany, which had lobbied hard for a seat, came third for the two places contested by the Western European and Others Group, with 104 votes, against 134 for Portugal and 131 for Austria.-- Reuters

By Marcus Schneider
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jun 8 2026 (IPS)

This is the downfall of a diplomatic superstar. Germany’s defeat in the election to the UN Security Council is the consequence of a foreign policy that has proven disastrous in recent times, failing to uphold either the values or the interests of the Federal Republic.

The fact that the second-largest contributor to the UN has been punished so severely by Portugal and Austria highlights a global loss of trust that had not yet been fully realised in political Berlin.

‘We are seen as someone who defends the rules-based order; as an advocate of international law’, Foreign Minister Johann Wampold lectured just hours before the election. And in doing so, he revealed the gulf between Germany’s self-perception and the way it is perceived internationally. It is quite clear that on this very issue – the extent to which the Federal Republic actually stands up for binding rules and international law – there has been massive damage to its reputation, which is now, for the first time, resulting in political consequences.

International law à la carte

Germany’s global alienation can be traced very precisely to the Israeli war in Gaza, which stirred up international passions like hardly any other conflict. The problem here is not merely the stance perceived as highly one-sided in large parts of the world.

It is the palpable discrepancy with Germany’s conduct in Ukraine and with the general self-image of a country that likes to parade through the world with a particularly raised moral finger.

If in one instance – quite rightly – one loudly condemns war crimes and calls on the whole world even more loudly to do the same, yet in the other case remains silent, grants the perpetrators diplomatic and political cover, and even supplies them with weapons (even though the crimes are far more serious by all objective standards), it is hardly surprising to be accused of double standards and hypocrisy.

The damage to Germany’s reputation is all the more severe because the country was regarded for decades as a safe bet in foreign policy. Like hardly any other state, the Federal Republic stood for strengthening multilateral institutions.

First, the former capital of West Germany, Bonn, then Berlin, supported the development of an international judiciary. Precisely as a lesson from its own history and in its own well-understood interest as a country at the heart of a continent once ravaged by war, Germany committed itself with vigour and generosity to peace and the balancing of interests.

It is only in recent times that the ‘reason of state’, now invoked like a mantra, has emerged, towering above all else as a foreign-policy creed imbued with an almost sacred significance.

For a long time, incidentally, it was possible to adopt a stance on the Middle East conflict that did justice both to Germany’s historical responsibility towards Israel and to the legitimate concerns of the Palestinians and Arabs. It is only in recent times that the ‘reason of state’, now invoked like a mantra, has emerged, towering above all else as a foreign-policy creed imbued with an almost sacred significance.

Foreign countries in particular, which do indeed take note of the largely self-referential German discourse, may well ask: does this raison d’état actually have any moral limits? Or does it also cover up war crimes, ethnic cleansing and what even highly reputable experts and institutions describe – to put it mildly – as genocidal conditions?

For the raison d’état is, after all, not a product of realpolitik interests, but is proclaimed as a kind of higher morality, and thus as a lesson from German history that other countries should, please, understand. Many there see rather a German failure to draw universal lessons from its own history, possibly even a kind of unwelcome historical continuity.

The self-portrayal as a ‘champion of international law’ – which was, after all, the main argument put forward for the now-failed German campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council – also seems rather odd in light of a series of statements made by the Chancellor. For instance, Friedrich Merz thanked Israel for doing the ‘dirty work’ with regard to the war of aggression against Iran — which, according to the overwhelming majority of legal opinion, is illegal under international law.

He described the legal assessment of the kidnapping of the Venezuelan head of state as ‘complex’, whilst explicitly refraining from offering lectures on international law regarding the recent Israeli-American war of aggression against Iran. As opposition leader, he had expressed outrage over the arrest warrant for the alleged Israeli war criminal Netanyahu, who is accused of serious crimes against humanity. After all, he claimed, the International Criminal Court had supposedly been established solely to ‘hold despots and authoritarian leaders to account’.

One gets the impression of a Chancellor who – speaking for a significant portion of the country’s political and media elites – seeks to replace the rule of law with a kind of higher moral order. Under this system, the supposedly ‘good’ – that is, ourselves and our democratic allies – are effectively permitted to do anything. They are no longer bound by any rules.

It is international law, if it exists at all, à la carte. Above all, it marks a departure from Germany’s decades-long belief in the civilising of international relations through their codification. From the perspective of many states that have withheld their vote from Berlin, the Federal Republic is now too unreliable a partner for the highest body of the global legal order.

Time for a reassessment

The election defeat is not merely a humiliation; it is accompanied by a real loss of influence and prestige for what is, after all, the largest and economically strongest country in the European Union. In future international crises, Berlin will now find itself at the back of the room. For Germany, this should be a moment of self-reflection at best.

What values and interests should guide our policy? In a phase of extreme geopolitical upheaval, the rise of the Global South and the US distancing itself from the world order it once imposed, Germany is dependent not on less, but on more and on resilient international cooperation.

Clearly, the international legal order is not perfect. The institutions of collective security are frequently paralysed, and, as in the past, there will be dilemmas where interests and values make it necessary to strike a balance between politics and law.

However, a complete descent into a dog-eat-dog world – where military might is the only thing that counts, where wars of aggression are launched at will, where warfare is becoming increasingly brutal, and where the international community is sinking into global cultural conflicts – cannot be in Germany’s interests.

Such a world would, sooner or later, also threaten the enduring peace within the EU. As a country with few natural resources, highly integrated economically and dependent on global trade flows, the Federal Republic is reliant on a reasonably functioning world order in which fundamental principles apply even across the boundaries of political regimes.

It is disconcerting to see how much the German government, particularly its conservative wing, celebrates its friendship with an Israeli government in which war criminals and right-wing extremists call the shots.

The restoration of Germany’s lost soft power will also necessitate a reassessment of German Middle East policy. Hardly anyone expects a triumphant switch to the camp of Palestine’s supporters. But a more measured and balanced approach would certainly be appropriate. It is disconcerting to see how much the German government, particularly its conservative wing, celebrates its friendship with an Israeli government in which war criminals and right-wing extremists call the shots.

The fact that, in the global perception, one aligns oneself so closely with a group that is knowingly threatening to turn its own country into an international pariah state defies any rational explanation. The costs of this stance are very real, and they are damaging to Germany.

The embarrassing defeat at the UN may not be a one-off blunder in this matter. In a few years’ time, the International Court of Justice will rule on the case of genocide in Gaza. Further trouble looms here. For those who, for ethical reasons, cannot bring themselves to resolve the completely untenable conditions in the occupied territories through a solution acceptable to the international community, Germany’s well-understood self-interest should tip the balance by then at the latest.

For unlike so many conflicts where Berlin’s contribution is limited to expressing deep concern, the Federal Republic would actually have influence here. So far, this influence has been used very successfully to block any European pressure on a government that wants a great deal, but certainly not a sustainable peace. As soon as that changes, two things would be on the rise again: peace — and Germany’s tarnished reputation.

Marcus Schneider heads the FES regional project for peace and security in the Middle East, based in Beirut, Lebanon. Previously, he worked for the FES as head of the offices in Botswana and Madagascar, among others.

Source: International Politics and Society, Brussels

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Report say illegal logging, hidden ownership structures, and weak transparency laws are depriving governments of badly needed climate and biodiversity financing. Credit: Financial Transparency Coalition

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Jun 8 2026 (IPS)

A new report has found that billions of dollars linked to illegal deforestation are flowing through global supply chains, with secrecy around land ownership and company records helping timber, soy, and beef products enter international markets unchecked.

The report, Financial Secrets of the Forests: How Secrecy Fuels Deforestation in Brazil and Cameroon, was released by the Financial Transparency Coalition in partnership with the Center for Economics and Finance for Latin American Development (CEFILAT) on May 26, this year, examined forest loss and illicit financial flows in Brazil and Cameroon, two countries that hold some of the world’s largest tropical forests.

Researchers behind the report say illegal logging, hidden ownership structures, and weak transparency laws are depriving governments of badly needed climate and biodiversity financing. They argue that while countries have passed anti-deforestation laws, the lack of public access to company ownership records allows those benefiting from environmental destruction to remain hidden.

The report estimates that trade mispricing linked to timber exports cost Cameroon an average of US$289 million every year between 2013 and 2023. In Brazil, unexplained discrepancies in timber exports amounted to around US$214 million over a similar period.

When asked whether the report argues that financial secrecy is central to illegal deforestation and what the biggest obstacles were faced while trying to identify the real beneficiaries behind timber, soy, and cattle businesses in Brazil and Cameroon, one of the report’s lead authors, Matti Kohonen, Executive Director of the Financial Transparency Coalition, told Inter Press Service (IPS) in an exclusive interview that they weren’t able to identify the beneficial owners of these businesses despite using the best available data, including satellite GIS data.

“For the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil, which represents a fifth of the country’s total deforestation, we identified hundreds of thousands of plots of land which had been illicitly deforested from 2010 to produce soy and cattle but could only find the ID of the plots and, in some cases, companies behind them, but not their beneficial owners. When we asked the local authority for this information for the top plots of land, they replied this could not be provided due to privacy concerns despite this being a clear example of a public interest request,” he said.

“For Cameroon, on the other hand, we focused on timber and were able to map the main timber concessions (Forest Management Units (FMUs) and Sales of Standing Volume (SSVs), described in the report) and the companies that had these concessions were mostly identifiable in the datasets, but we could not find out using the best data whether these were shell companies owned by foreign firms and also could not identify their beneficial owners.”

According to him, Cameroon does have a BO database, but this is not publicly accessible.  Matti said that there is some data on mining and fossil fuel companies through the EITI (extractive industries transparency initiative), but forestry is not in their scope.

“When we asked for this information from the Cameroonian government, we didn’t get any reply, not even about the updated list of sanctioned timber companies, which we actually found were still being given concessions as late as July 2025.  Some of these sanctioned timber companies were available online, but not for the most recent years and there was no historical data that we found through earlier reporting by Pulitzer.”

The findings suggest that existing international regulations are failing to stop products linked to deforestation from entering global markets. Matti said that the biggest enforcement gaps in producer countries or importing countries are the inability to identify the companies and their beneficial owners responsible for deforestation and the lack of transparency in the supply chains which prevent tracing products to the source.

“This is a good study by WRI highlighting these issues. Another key problem is the lack of political will to tackle these issues. This is reflected in our report in the case of Cameroon, whose authorities didn’t provide us with any data, as well as the state of Mato Grosso, which refused to reveal the beneficial owners of the top plots of land linked to illicit deforestation despite the freedom of information legislation in Brazil.”

Matti added that the lack of publicly available beneficial ownership registries is a key problem as well, preventing NGOs and journalists from finding out those benefitting from the illicit clearing of forests.

“From the importing countries, the lack of political will to stop products from deforested land from entering global markets is also a major problem, especially now in major importing countries like China and Vietnam, which keep importing these products from companies that have been denounced and sanctioned in the past, as we see in Cameroon. That’s why we’re saying that without financial ownership and supply chain transparency it’s largely impossible for initiatives such as EUDR to succeed.”

The report argues that forests are not only being destroyed by chainsaws and fires, but also by opaque financial systems that make it difficult to identify who profits from deforestation.

“Financial and land ownership secrecy is a key driver behind illicit deforestation,” the report states.

In Brazil, investigators focused heavily on Mato Grosso, a state known as one of the world’s largest hubs for soy and cattle production. Satellite data showed that from 2010 to 2023, vast stretches of land were cleared without proper permits. Researchers found that 48 percent of soy production areas and 15 percent of intensive grazing pasture overlapped with plots lacking deforestation permits.

The environmental impact has been severe. Illegal cattle grazing linked to deforestation in Mato Grosso produced an estimated 502 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions between 2001 and 2023. Soy cultivation linked to illegal forest clearing generated another 250 million tonnes of emissions during the same period.

Researchers say tracing responsibility is extremely difficult because ownership information is often hidden or inaccessible.

Brazil maintains land and environmental registries, but public access to the real individuals behind companies and land holdings remains restricted. Investigators said even official requests under Brazil’s transparency laws failed to reveal the identities of people linked to illegally cleared land.

One case study highlighted a massive ranch in Mato Grosso called Fazenda Santa Silvia, where more than 3,000 hectares were allegedly cleared illegally between 2022 and 2023. Investigators connected the property to companies involved in soy and cattle production and traced supply chain links to meatpacking giants including JBS and Marfrig.

“We only analysed Mato Grosso but this state we strongly believe reflects the reality across Brazil, so the fact that such a large percentage of land for soy and beef has been illicitly deforested is really concerning. Afterwards, some of these plots get permission to grow soy/pasture but the literature suggests they’re the minority and doesn’t replace the fact that they were illicitly deforested in the first place,” Alfonso Daniels, lead author, said.

“Our data appears to reflect global research done by NGOs, such as a report from the NGO Forest Trends a few years ago that found that at least 69% of tropical forests cleared for agricultural activities such as ranching and farmland between 2013 and 2019 was done in violation of national laws and regulations, with other research showing similar percentages,” he added.

The report says such investigations currently depend on time-consuming fieldwork by journalists and environmental groups because public databases do not reveal beneficial ownership details.

The Congo Basin rainforest, where Cameroon is located, is the second largest rainforest system in the world after the Amazon. Cameroon lost more than 100,000 hectares of forest in 2025 alone, producing an estimated 130 million tonnes of carbon emissions.

Researchers found large discrepancies between the value of timber exports reported by Cameroon and the import figures recorded by trading partners such as China, Vietnam, and European Union countries. Between 2013 and 2023, the trade gap reached US$1.2 billion with China and US$760 million with Vietnam.

The report says this may point to underreporting of exports to evade customs duties and taxes.

Cameroon has introduced reforms requiring companies to disclose beneficial ownership information to tax authorities. However, the registry is not public, making it difficult for watchdog groups and journalists to track who ultimately controls logging companies and forest concessions.

Investigators also found that some companies sanctioned for illegal logging continued receiving logging permits years later. One table in the report lists several firms that were granted new concessions even after being penalized by authorities.

Environmental groups say weak enforcement in importing countries is adding to the problem.

Although the European Union, United Kingdom, and United States have laws banning illegal timber imports, the report argues that companies linked to deforestation continue accessing major markets because ownership structures remain hidden.

The European Union’s new Deforestation Regulation, expected to take effect in late 2026, will ban products linked to recently deforested land. But researchers warn that enforcement will remain difficult unless governments make ownership records fully public.

The report has pitched for public beneficial ownership registries, stronger supply chain transparency, public databases on environmental crimes, and a global asset registry that would reveal who owns forests, farmland, and logging concessions worldwide.

Researchers argue that tackling climate change and biodiversity loss will require more than promises to protect forests. They say governments must also confront the financial secrecy systems that allow environmental crimes to remain profitable.

The report estimates that money lost through illegal logging, tax evasion, and hidden financial flows could help close major global funding gaps for forests, biodiversity, and climate action.

When asked why Cameroon and Brazil both have beneficial ownership registries, yet public access remains limited and why governments continue to resist transparency around land and company ownership despite the environmental stakes, Daniels said that the laws that established these beneficial ownership registries are narrow in their scope concerning the use of the data, often such registries are made in compliance with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recent changes in its recommendations 24 and 22 that now require government-run and centralised beneficial ownership registries for anti-money laundering purposes.

“In the case of Cameroon, they are on the FATF grey list and establishing a high-quality and centralised government-run registry gets them off that list, and that’s one of the motivations to establish a BO registry, but there is no requirement to make it public under existing frameworks.

“Only in the case of extractive industries defined as mining and oil/gas do we have the requirement, as Cameroon is a signatory to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and they should comply with its requirement for public access, and some data on these is publicly accessible, but forestry is not considered an extractive industry and is outside of its scope,” said Daniels, adding that also, public pressure thus far from inside the country has not made this data fully public for any other reason.

“In the case of Brazil, the federal tax authority runs the beneficial ownership registry established before the FATF rule to comply with the OECD information exchange provisions from 2016 onwards, largely for tax collection reasons,” Daniels said.

According to him, the data is shared also with anti-corruption authorities to comply with later FATF rules.  However, Daniels said that this data is not made public.  “As Brazil is not a member of the EITI, it also does not make this data public even in the scope of mining, oil and gas companies.  There isn’t enough internal pressure from any section of society to make BO registries public, even if this could tackle illicit logging that is a major political concern for the current presidency.”

According to Kohonen, illicit financial flows linked to illicit deforestation can arise at different stages.  “If logging takes place without the proper licences, it is considered illegal, and the whole value of timber is therefore illicit.  It is important to ensure that sanctions and fines are promptly administered to deter anyone from illegal logging, but currently it is still far too commonplace that land is illegally logged, as up to 30% of all timber comes from land that was illegally logged.  This is an enforcement gap, where you can automatically issue sanctions and fines to companies that, based on satellite data, have deforested without adequate licences,” said Kohonen.

“Another stage is at the point of exporting (some 10-15% of all timber in Brazil is exported; the domestic consumption is quite high, while in Cameroon, most of the timber is exported), so at this point, the customs authorities could be checking if the timber is correctly valued at the point of export and if there are irregularities in customs declarations that may then lead to trade mispricing (unexplained value gaps between the export at the source and import prices at the destination country).”

He added that finally, there are also issues with tax authorities, where mispriced timber is often also a case of tax evasion, if this leads to paying less in VAT, royalties or export taxes.  Also, according to Kohonen,  companies may misdeclare their corporate taxes if they don’t report adequate sales of timber or wood products or if they don’t declare their products grown on deforested land correctly (e.g., soy/beef).

“Finally, companies may engage in profit-shifting activities, where they move taxable profits to offshore tax havens where they are taxed at a lower rate or may attract tax exemptions, or profits could be moved to tax havens through intra-firm transfers that are mispriced (e.g., mispriced internal financing or internal use of brand or IP).  These all contribute to making deforestation and deforestation-linked commodities more profitable and less likely to be detected.”

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Claude Gascon, interim CEO of the GEF and Aziz Abduhakimov, Minister of Environment of the Republic of Uzbekistan, at the closing ceremony of the Eighth GEF Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Gascon was presented with a traditional Uzbek outfit. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Cecilia Russell
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, Jun 5 2026 (IPS)

“While pressures on public budgets are growing and geopolitical tensions rising, it can be tempting to see environmental finance as optional. It is not,” GEF Interim CEO and Chair Claude Gascon told the closing plenary of the Eighth GEF Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, today.

For developing countries, least developed countries, small island developing states and fragile and vulnerable countries, overseas development aid is the cornerstone.

“Because what is at stake is not only a set of international targets. What is at stake is the future quality of life on this planet. What is at stake is whether children inherit rivers that still run clean, forests that still stand tall, coastlines that still protect communities, and economies that can thrive without destroying the natural systems on which all prosperity depends.”

Assembly chair Aziz Abdukhakimov, Advisor to the President of Uzbekistan on Environment and Chairman, the National Committee on Ecology and Climate Change, noted the event had been highly productive with over 50 side events, bilateral meetings, and informal exchanges.

“The GEF council reviewed and improved key decisions, including the GEF-9 programming directions and (the last) GEF-8 work program,” he said, while welcoming a strong focus on integrated programming, innovative financing, and inclusive participation, including the aim to direct at least 20 percent of GEF-9 resources to Indigenous peoples and local communities.

He said that Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s message that Uzbekistan would become a donor country reflected the country’s “commitment to environmental sustainability.

“This shows our readiness not only to benefit from cooperation but also to contribute to global environmental relations,” Abdukhakimov said.

Earlier in a high-level panel discussion, Dr Rosina Bierbaum, Chair of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) of the GEF, reminded the Assembly that while half of the global GDP depends on nature, there is a “USD 700 billion annual biodiversity financing gap”.

However, she said, an analysis by management consulting firm McKinsey confirms that implementing the 30 by 30 biodiversity goals, aimed at effectively conserving at least 30% of the Earth’s land and oceans by 2030, will generate significant conservation and socioeconomic goals and lift people out of poverty.

While the discussion about funding was coming at a difficult time, Kenneth Lay, Senior Managing Director at RockCreek and former Treasurer of the World Bank, said the good news was that the private sector could help tackle the problems.

Detailing how the global savings pool has grown dramatically “driven by 15 years of exceptional markets”, he said there were trillions of dollars available in pension and sovereign wealth funds, insurance sector reserves, and others, and these funds could become available to invest in nature, but “asset owners were not in the room”.

Lay suggested that the GEF convene the players who run central banks, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and securities regulators among others and ensure that “investing in nature is as natural as investing in infrastructure.” Ensure that investing in nature is as natural as investing in infrastructure.

Valerie Hickey, Director, Environment, World Bank Group, said the GEF had a role to play in building enabling regulations and policy predictability to help the private sector manage risk – with a focus on what she called the ‘Goldilocks’ blend of concessional and commercial finance to cushion investment failures while ensuring the investment has commercial returns and is financially solid enough to unlock private capital that has “measurable environmental outcomes.”

There were warnings too.

Rachel Kyte, Special Representative for Climate, United Kingdom, warned that a study showed her country was “highly vulnerable to ecosystem collapse.

“What does that mean? It means that for a British family, their ability to fill their supermarket trolley with the things they need to keep their children healthy is entirely linked to the integrity of the Congo Basin. And that if anything were to further threaten it, there would be security and defence implications.”

Getting local communities and Indigenous people involved through people-centred, inclusive, and economically viable solutions was key, Joyelle Clarke, Minister of Sustainable Development and Environment, Climate Action and Constituency Empowerment, Saint Kitts and Nevis, said. She explained how the blue carbon market was underappreciated and often hard to grasp.

Clarke gave an example of a UNESCO world heritage site that conserves turtles – in an area where the fishing community’s diet included turtles. By offering alternative job opportunities in the tourist industry, they were able to garner the community’s support for the site.

Leaders and delegates from the Uzbek government and the GEF pose for a group photo at the conclusion of the Eighth GEF Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Gascon reminded the plenary that the environment was not a “side issue”.

“First, we must defend and strengthen continued public development assistance for countries… Continued public ODA is therefore not only a moral commitment. It is an investment in global stability, in human security, and in the shared future of all nations.”

Then, he said “countries need to align national policies with the environmental outcomes they seek. We cannot say we are committed to sustainability while still rewarding the destruction of ecosystems, the overuse of natural resources, or the pollution of air, land, and water.”

Third, the GEF should unlock the full power of private capital and ensure that the private sector becomes “not just a source of finance but a true partner in governance and delivery of global environmental outcomes”.

And finally, “cabinet-wide commitment and society-wide participation” were needed for the environment goals to be achieved.

“We need national leadership, but we also need local ownership. That means listening to and working with communities, Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, civil society, scientists, local authorities, farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs. It means recognising that durable solutions are not imposed – they are built together.”

Finally, Gascon said the final push to 2030 “must be more than a countdown. It must be a turning point.”

Note: The Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly held its final plenary today, June 6, 2026, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

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

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