Africa

Media personnel watch a digital screen showing leaders of member states gather for a family photograph during the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 13 September 2026. Credit: Arun Sankar/AFP

By Samuel King and Inés M. Pousadela
BRUSSELS, Belgium / MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

At the 18th BRICS Summit, held on 12 and 13 September in New Delhi, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought together presidents Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, along with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed, representing the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Around the table sat longstanding rivals such as India and China and, in the case of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, states on opposite sides of an ongoing war. That the summit produced a joint declaration every member could sign was a modest multilateralist success.

The summit took place against a fast-changing backdrop. With the USA under Donald Trump an unreliable partner and often a hostile power bent on bullying others into submission, numerous states are seeking new alliances as a counterweight. BRICS, whose 11 members account for 49 per cent of the world’s population and 28 per cent of the global economy, could become a more significant forum as a result. But what is on offer is a profoundly old-fashioned, state-centric form of multilateralism, in which the people in whose name states claim to act have little say.

A hollow declaration

At the summit, Xi called for international rules to be ‘written by all countries’, even though he leads a one-party state where increasingly only he writes the rules. Putin urges greater representation for Africa, Asia and Latin America at the UN Security Council, while routinely wielding his veto to stop the council acting on his war in Ukraine.

The New Delhi Declaration’s silences speak loudest. It is explicit on Palestine, calling on Israel to end its war on Gaza and backing a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. But on the war in Iran, it only urges ‘maximum restraint’ without naming the warring parties, reflecting the fact that Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE sat around the same table. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not mentioned at all, a regression from past declarations and a troubling sign that Putin has no interest in ending the fighting. The text condemns ‘indiscriminate rising tariffs’ and ‘unilateral sanctions’ without naming the USA, sparing the blushes of members such as India, which is reportedly finalising a trade deal with Washington. The declaration preserves consensus at the expense of resolve.

Closed civic space, open defiance

Most BRICS governments have no fear of being held domestically accountable for the compromises they have made. Civic space is closed in seven of BRICS’ 11 states and obstructed or repressed in the rest. Russia jails and exiles opposition voices and has made protest almost impossible. China subjects its people to mass surveillance and crushes any expression that departs from ruling-party lines. Iran violently suppresses protest movements, including through the death penalty. Saudi Arabia and the UAE recognise no legitimate role for independent civil society. Host and self-styled mediator India has seen Modi’s government erode press freedom, restrict civil society funding and stoke hostility towards religious minorities.

Domestic repression translates directly into a closed international forum. After 18 summits, BRICS still has no treaty, no published membership criteria, no permanent secretariat, no budget and no mechanism for civil society to hold its members to account. This is no accident. It leaves powerful leaders free to pursue their interests, and it means civil society has less influence in BRICS than in comparable blocs such as the G20, and much less than in UN processes.

Civil society mobilised regardless. Three weeks before the summit, over 200 delegates from farmers’ organisations, people’s movements, trade unions, women’s organisations and other civil society groups gathered in New Delhi for the People’s BRICS Summit. Its resolution denounced BRICS states for reproducing extractivist, inequitable development models, and insisted that cooperation between global south states be judged by the dignity and rights it delivers to people and communities, not by the freedom it grants states and capital. It called for debt restructuring, a publicly accountable energy transition, food sovereignty, universal social security, women’s political representation and an end to the persecution of civil society activists, and for BRICS to take a clear stand against military intervention, occupation and genocide. BRICS governments chose not to listen.

Ambition without accountability

BRICS’ biggest ambition, on display in the New Delhi Declaration, is to reshape international finance. Development of payment systems independent of the US dollar would chip away at the USA’s unique ability to sustain its power by printing more dollars, despite mountainous debt, to meet unceasing demand. But it would also let repressive states such as Iran and Russia sell oil and gas more easily, funding their repression while blunting international sanctions.

This ambition comes with no commitment to accountability. The bloc has no channel through which the people most affected by its decisions can make their voices heard, and no human rights conditions are attached to its initiatives.

None of the emerging responses to the rapidly changing international order promises to be more democratic than the current system. So far, neither BRICS nor any of the other alternatives now taking shape has matched its growing ambition with greater accountability.

Samuel King is a researcher at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, working on ENSURED: Shaping Cooperation for a World in Transition, a Horizon Europe-funded project. Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Research and Analysis, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report. She is also Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

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

 

 

 

 

Member of Smallholder Farmer Alliance in Haiti with tree she is about to plant. Credit: A.F. Cortes/SFA

By Hugh Locke
NEW YORK, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

Years ago, standing in a small farmer’s field in Haiti, I began to suspect that we had agriculture backward. The development world saw a man in need of rescue. I saw a farmer who might help rescue the rest of us.

That distinction matters. Over the next 25 years, humanity will need to grow much more food on a planet with degraded soils, shrinking biodiversity and a destabilizing climate. The usual instinct is to seek a technical fix. I want to suggest another source of help: a moral idea rooted in religion.

I am not a theologian. I am a development worker. In 2010, Haitian agronomist Timote Georges and I co-founded the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. We now work with about 10,000 farmers throughout Haiti who grow more food while rebuilding degraded land. Our “tree currency” rewards them for planting and caring for trees with credits they can exchange for seeds, tools and training.

Hugh Locke

Development programs often define smallholder farmers by what they lack: financing, equipment, training and market access. Yet the farmer in that Haitian field had land, labor, family, community and intimate knowledge of one patch of earth. The Baha’i Faith offers a useful principle: people should be regarded as protagonists in their own development, not merely recipients of assistance.

Roughly 475 million smallholder farms, each under five acres, already produce about 30% of the world’s food despite limited access to finance, markets or technical support. In my new book, Whole Earth Farming, I argue that if even half of these families received support to adopt regenerative methods, they could produce the additional food humanity will need through 2050 on 12% of the world’s arable land, with a climate benefit comparable to offsetting the aviation industry’s annual emissions.

The Green Revolution averted famine, but its gains often came with degraded soils, diminished biodiversity and polluted water. Regenerative farming aims not merely to limit damage but to restore soil, rebuild biodiversity, improve farmers’ wellbeing and deliver a net climate benefit.

That is the language investors expect. Yet a case study more than a century old anticipated this approach, and its foundation was not market logic but morality.

From 1901 to 1921, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, one of the central figures of the Baha’i Faith, directed a farming settlement called ‘Adasiyyih in the Jordan Valley. Long before the term “regenerative agriculture” existed, the community used crop rotation, agroforestry, water conservation and integrated livestock management to make the land productive without exhausting it. Just as important was the framework behind those techniques: the belief that the earth is one country and humanity one interdependent family, expressed through consultation, equality and a rejection of extraction for its own sake. Farming at ‘Adasiyyih was not simply commodity production. It was a way to build community.

Regenerative agriculture does not require religious belief. Many successful regenerative farmers are secular, and the science stands on its own. But ‘Adasiyyih addressed, on a limited scale, a coordination problem that still hinders the movement: how can independent farmers, financiers, governments and companies be persuaded to treat soil health, water and biodiversity as a shared obligation?

‘Adasiyyih began with a moral premise rather than a technical formula. That premise is worth borrowing, whether one calls it stewardship or enlightened self-interest. Farmers, buyers and governments must act as though what happens to one plot of land is everyone’s concern, because increasingly it is. For generations we have asked how much the earth can give us. We should also ask what we owe in return.

Regenerative agriculture is at a fragile moment. By my estimate, some 15 million farms and ranches worldwide now use regenerative practices, and some 25 million acres, mostly in the United States, are certified under third-party standards, though almost none of that land is farmed by smallholders. The movement is growing faster than the systems meant to support it. Farmers can face lower yields and higher costs during the transition, there is no consensus on how to measure results, and financing, training and market rewards lag well behind farmers’ interest. A shared obligation is what can turn these isolated successes into lasting change.

This is not a case for religious agricultural policy, which would be unworkable in a pluralistic world. Smallholders are not waiting for a new theology. They need capital, training and markets. But the case for providing that support may rest more persuasively on the old idea of shared stewardship than on another spreadsheet of carbon calculations.

The next great agricultural transformation may begin not on the world’s largest farms but on hundreds of millions of its smallest. Given the means, smallholders may help determine whether the next 25 years of food production heal the planet or finish degrading it.

Hugh Locke is president of the Impact Farming Foundation and author of Whole Earth Farming: Smallholders and the Great Regenerative Transformation (George Ronald Publisher, 2026).

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Kijanangoma has been crowned amid a dispute over a young heir whom the royal clan does not recognise.

Edward Rukidi Nyabongo I has been crowned king of Tooro in a ceremony attended by Uganda's President Museveni.

Ein Waadtländer wurde am Dienstag in Lausanne zu 13 Jahren Haft verurteilt. Der 33-Jährige misshandelte zwischen 2009 und 2018 rund 15 Opfer auf grausame Weise, darunter Elektroschocks und folterähnliche Gewalt.

Sa Majesté le Roi Mohammed VI vient de nommer pour la première fois une Cheffe du Gouvernement. Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri est chargée de former le nouveau Gouvernement.

Sa Majesté le Roi Mohammed VI, que Dieu L'assiste, a nommé au poste de Cheffe de Gouvernement Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri. La Première ministre chargée de former le nouveau gouvernement a été reçue, ce mardi 29 septembre 2026, par le Souverain au Palais Royal à Rabat, informe le ministère de la Maison Royale, du Protocole et de la Chancellerie dans un communiqué.

Mme Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, coordinatrice de la direction collégiale du Parti Authenticité et Modernité, a été nommée par le Souverain, en vertu de l'article 47 de la Constitution.
La nomination de la cheffe de file du Parti authenticité et modernité (PAM) intervient après que sa formation a remporté les élections législatives du 23 septembre, obtenant, selon les estimations, 97 des 395 sièges de la Chambre des représentants.

Qui est la Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri ?

C'est la première fois qu'une femme est nommée au poste de Cheffe de Gouvernement par le Souverain marocain.

Née en 1976, Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri a étudié le droit à l'université Mohammed V avant de se spécialiser en droit des affaires aux universités de Montpellier et de New York. Elle a exercé comme avocate, notamment dans l'immobilier et les transactions commerciales, avant de s'imposer sur la scène politique au sein du Parti authenticité et modernité.

Élue maire de Marrakech en 2009, elle a retrouvé ce poste en 2021, après un passage à la Chambre des représentants et des responsabilités élevées au sein de son parti. En octobre de la même année, elle a été nommée ministre de l'Aménagement du territoire national, de l'Urbanisme, de l'Habitat et de la Politique de la ville, tout en coordonnant la direction collégiale du secrétariat général du PAM.

Manchester City wurde von einer unabhängigen Kommission der Premier League in 115 Anklagepunkten für schuldig befunden. Der Klub soll Scheinverträge genutzt haben, um Einnahmen aufzublähen und Kosten zu verschleiern. Die Citizens dementieren die Anschuldigungen.

Her appointment by the king makes her only the second woman to lead a government in the Arab world.

Credit: United Nations

By Shihana Mohamed
NEW YORK, Sep 29 2026 (IPS)

“Artificial intelligence (AI) must be shaped by humanity, with humanity, and for all humanity… Life-and-death decisions must never be surrendered to machines. Killer robots must have no place in our future.”

With those words, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres opened the high-level debate of the 81st session of the General Assembly (UNGA 81). He also warned: “Women and girls continue to face discrimination, violence, exclusion and abuse… Their rights are being rolled back. Their voices silenced. Their bodies turned into battlegrounds.”

Both technological transformation and the erosion of women’s rights were placed before the world, yet the political response to each was markedly different.

Opening speeches focused heavily on technology. French President Emmanuel Macron warned that a few powers could decide the planet’s future through AI and urged states to build independent, open-source models; UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham called for global cooperation on transparency and ethics; China’s Vice President Han Zheng stressed a people-centered approach to narrowing the digital divide; and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for the UN to lead AI rule-setting through equal participation.

U.S. President Donald Trump focused on U.S. technological leadership. He declared that the United States was outcompeting the world and called for a change in terminology: “From this point forward, all U.S. documents—and hopefully the world—will use the more accurate term super rather than artificial. So, it’s super intelligence.”

Shihana Mohamed

Disparity is also reflected in the numbers. By Saturday, September 26, 2026, 86 of the 174 speakers had raised technology and AI, compared with 46 who raised human rights and gender.

The question is unavoidable: why has the international system shown such urgency in governing emerging technologies while allowing the erosion of women’s rights to remain a secondary concern?

Twin Transformations
The 81st session convened under the theme, “Restoring trust, managing transformation: a United Nations that delivers for all.” That theme highlights two defining transformations: the rapid expansion of generative AI and the growing political backlash against the rights of women and girls.

The United Nations treats both as critical to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, yet world leaders are not giving them equal political weight. AI is being elevated as an urgent global governance challenge, while gender equality is increasingly treated as a goal that can wait.

That is a dangerous disconnect.

AI is already reshaping economies, labour markets and public life. It will influence who gets opportunities, whose work is automated, and whose voices are represented in the systems that increasingly influence daily life.

Declining Gender Momentum
AI has ascended to the top tier of global political concerns. Leaders are focused on governance, innovation, digital sovereignty, security, and technological competition.

Meanwhile, the momentum on gender equality is moving in the opposite direction. UN Women and UN DESA report that one in three institutional mechanisms for gender equality has lost institutional power over the past two years. Around one in four have seen their operating budgets cut, while nearly one in ten have lost control of their budgets altogether.

Globally, progress on women’s political and executive participation is reversing. At the current rate of progress, the report projects that global gender equality could be achieved only by 2197, far beyond the UN’s 2030 target.

There is a basic leadership question that Member States have yet to answer: Why has no woman ever been selected as Secretary-General of the United Nations?

The problem is not a shortage of promises but the widening gap between rhetoric and political action.

The Funding Disparity
The resource gap makes that contrast tangible.

Global venture-capital investment in AI firms reached $258.7 billion in 2025, accounting for 61% of total global VC investment, according to the OECD. Philanthropic investment is also growing, including the Gates Foundation’s September 2026 commitment to spend at least $1 billion over two years on equitable access to AI and AI-enabled solutions.

Funding for women’s rights is contracting.

Funding for gender equality fell 13% between 2023 and 2024, while funding for women’s rights organizations declined by 28% over the same period.

This is not merely a funding problem; it reflects what the international community considers urgent.

The world is mobilizing enormous capital to build the technologies that will define the future while reducing resources for the organizations working to ensure that women have an equal place in it.

Women Left Behind in the AI Economy
The gender gap is already visible inside the AI economy.

UN Women’s 2026 Gender Snapshot reports that women account for around 22% of AI professionals globally and fewer than 14% of senior leadership positions, based on an analysis of nearly 1.6 million AI professionals.

Women are around 20% less likely than men to use generative AI tools. The result is a persistent gap in both the development and adoption of AI—and a fundamental question about whose perspectives are shaping the future of work.

The International Labour Organization finds that female-dominated occupations are almost twice as likely to be exposed to generative AI as male-dominated occupations—29% compared with 16%. Women’s concentration in clerical, administrative, and business-support roles, where many tasks are routine and codifiable, contributes significantly to this disparity.

AI is intensifying digital violence against women in public life. UN Women reports increasing use of AI-generated deepfakes, manipulated images and coordinated online harassment against women in public-facing roles. Such abuse can intimidate women and undermine their participation in public life.

UN Women estimates that 90–95% of online deepfakes are non-consensual pornographic images, with around 90% depicting women.

This is where the two crises converge. The same technology being celebrated as transformative is also being used to threaten women’s economic security, public participation, and personal safety.

Immediate Mandates for AI and Gender Equality
More than three decades after the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action set a global framework for gender equality, the world remains far from its commitments.

The General Assembly must move beyond another cycle of declarations and voluntary targets and act where technology, funding and gender rights now intersect.

• Enforce Financial Reciprocity via a Global Tech Solidarity Fund: The General Assembly should establish a mechanism requiring a fixed share of global digital-transformation investment to support grassroots women’s organizations, and strengthen their technical capacity, infrastructure and advocacy.

• Establish an International Enforcement Mechanism with the Urgency Applied to AI: The UN should address the erosion of women’s rights with the same urgency applied to emerging technological threats. The General Assembly should establish a global monitoring mechanism empowered to impose diplomatic and financial consequences on states that roll back women’s legal protections.

• Criminalize Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Mandate Safety-by-Design: The General Assembly should advance a binding international treaty classifying AI-generated deepfakes weaponized against women in public life as violations of international human rights law. Technology companies should be required to address algorithmic bias and security failures that endanger women’s participation in public life.

If world leaders truly intend to “manage transformation” and “restore trust,” they cannot continue treating women’s empowerment as a secondary issue.

The willingness to govern the digital frontier must extend to protecting the women who live and work within it.

Otherwise, the “super intelligence” that leaders celebrate will not simply become an engine of economic growth. It could also become a powerful tool for reinforcing the structural exclusion of half the human race.

Shihana Mohamed is the President of Asia Global Forum (www.AsiaGlobalForum.org) and a US Public Voices Fellow on advancing the rights of women and girls. She is the founder of the UN Asia Network for Diversity & Inclusion (www.UN-ANDI.org) and a dedicated human rights activist and a strong advocate for gender equality and the advancement of women.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Trevor Mwamba was detained last month with other opposition figures and charged with treason, his son says.

Trevor Mwamba was detained last month with other opposition figures and charged with treason, his son says.

Mohamed Abakar, Head of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition at the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) during the convening in Yaounde. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
YAOUNDE, Cameroon, Sep 29 2026 (IPS)

Agricultural, land, forestry, environmental and trade policies in the Congo Basin remain compartmentalised at country levels, leaving proven agroecological models trapped at pilot stages due to a lack of advisory services, organic inputs, market outlets and sustainable financing.

In a declaration made following the Second Congo Basin Convening on Agroecology held in Yaounde, Cameroon, in August 2026, experts and activists, as well as government representatives, observed that the Congo Basin does not end at the borders of its six countries.

“The trade corridors, timber and charcoal markets, mining, energy and infrastructure investment, transhumance and pastoral movement, displacement and refugee flows, and shared river systems mean that the decisions of neighbouring states and regional bodies can protect the basin or degrade it, and that coherence between them is a condition of success,” reads part of the Yaounde Declaration 2026.

“In several countries as well, agricultural, land, trade, environmental, and fiscal policies are not sufficiently aligned,” noted Mohamed Abakar, Head of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition at the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS).

“Some policies for example, continue to favour use and sometimes offer subsidies on conventional inputs without offering comparable support for bio-fertilisers, bio-pesticides, indigenous seeds, or ecosystem services,” he observed.

He called on countries within the basin to adopt a regional framework for agroecology and organic farming and integrate it into the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Regional Agricultural Investment Plan (RAIP).

“Our ambition is not merely to change the way we produce; it is to build sustainable agrifood systems in the Central Africa region, capable of sustainably feeding populations, boosting rural incomes, creating decent jobs, and preserving the Congo Basin,” said Abakar.

The region, in particular the Congo Basin, hosts the largest continuous tract of forest in Africa that regulates the global climate. But according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), industrial agriculture in different states has been cited as one of major threats to these forests, apart from extractive industries and infrastructure development.

According to the recent World Bank report titled the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem Accounts report and Policy Recommendations, forests in the region store over 90.9 billion tonnes of carbon, ten times the annual global carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector, making the basin one of the planet’s most critical natural carbon sinks.

Yet, the entire ecosystem is under direct threat. Forest loss nearly doubled between 2010 and 2020 compared to the previous decade, driven by shifting agriculture, infrastructure, and mounting land pressures.

During the convening in Yaounde, the delegates affirmed that adopting ecological farming models can sustain farmer incomes, protect biodiversity, and lead to food sovereignty while conserving the forests and the entire ecosystem.

Through the Yaounde Declaration, the delegates called upon Member States and the African Union Commission to write ‘agroecology’ by name in the domestication of CAADP so that National and Regional Agriculture and Food Systems Investment Plans carry explicit agroecology objectives, indicators and budget lines, with at least 30 per cent of allocations across the sectors that shape food systems dedicated to agroecology.

The Kampala Declaration of the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) speaks to achieving sustainable agrifood systems transformation but fails to explicitly recognise agroecology.

“We urge technical and funding partners, including the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, Central African Forest Initiative, the Blue Fund for the Congo Basin and the African Development Bank, to open simplified direct-access windows so that at least 20 per cent of climate, biodiversity and conservation finance flowing into the basin reaches farmer organisations, women, youth, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and to fund multi-year core support rather than short projects,” said Dr Million Belay, General Coordinator at the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).

“We are also asking Regional Economic Communities to adopt a regional agroecology framework within the Common Agricultural Policy of Central Africa and the COMIFAC Convergence Plan, and to establish a standing channel with the EAC, SADC and COMESA on the trans-boundary drivers of deforestation, including timber and charcoal trade, mining and infrastructure corridors, transhumance and displacement,” he said.

Abakar told IPS that ECCAS is progressively integrating agroecology into a broader vision for the sustainable, resilient, and competitive transformation of agrifood systems, both across Central Africa in general and within the Congo Basin in particular.

“This approach is grounded, first and foremost, in the revised ECCAS Treaty,” he said. “Article 63 of the revised Treaty commits member states to harmonising their agricultural policies, improving food production in terms of both quantity and quality, sharing research findings, developing joint training programs, and enhancing the ability of rural populations to master the technical and economic environment.”

At country levels, Ghada Kames Kill, a a Member of Parliament from South Sudan, told IPS that the country is in the process of enacting a law that will safeguard indigenous seeds, among other agroecological practices.

“Most of the seeds grown in South Sudan are imported, and in many times the quality is compromised.

With the right policies, our communities should be able to produce their own seeds that are adopted to their environment,” she said. In Cameroon, Law No. 2025/013, promulgated by President Paul Biya on December 17, 2025, establishes a national legal framework to regulate, promote, and develop sustainable agriculture that respects the environment, human health, and biodiversity.

The Central African Republic has developed the National Multi-Stakeholder Food Systems Platform that promotes local production of biofertilisers and soil restoration models, while the Democratic Republic of Congo has a dedicated agroecology service and national strategy.

For the Congo Basin, the solution lies in harmonised regional policies rather than in isolated, short-lived national projects.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2026 - EP

Quelles sont les nationalités les plus représentées parmi les étrangers en situation irrégulière en France ? Un document officiel déposé à l’Assemblée nationale pointe une […]

L’article Sans-papiers en France : les Algériens dans le haut du classement des interpellations est apparu en premier sur .

Culture and education committee MEPs want the next Erasmus+ programme to be simpler, more predictable, and more accessible.
Committee on Culture and Education

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Junta leader Ibrahim Traoré wants the country to profit more from its mineral wealth.

Rob Jetten, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, addresses the High-level Meeting on Climate Action and the Just Transition on September 23. Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 29 2026 (IPS)

On September 23, the United Nations held its 2026 Climate Summit as part of the High-Level Week of the 81st session of the General Assembly (UNGA 81). Convening civil society actors, climate scientists, major energy producers and consumers, development experts, and world leaders, the summit addressed critical strategies to mitigate the compounding impacts of the climate crisis and accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“The world is crying out for climate justice in mitigation, adaptation, and finance. We must answer that call with action, and we don’t have a moment to lose,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his opening remarks. “But emissions are still rising when they must plummet, and fossil fuel expansion continues, defying science, economics, and common sense.”

“We have seen our fossil fuel dependence wreak havoc, driving up costs, draining budgets, squeezing households, and leaving countries at the mercy of conflicts and decisions far beyond their borders. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies are banking windfall profits while everyday people foot the bill. Doubling down on oil and gas will only lock in vulnerability for decades,” Guterres added.

Nearly a decade after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the summit comes as climate experts warn of a dangerous new phase in the global climate crisis. New findings project it is virtually “inevitable” that global temperatures will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels within the next ten years.

This overshoot presents widespread, multifaceted risks—from extreme weather patterns to escalating public health emergencies. Intensifying heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, storms, and floods continue to cause millions of deaths annually, drive mass displacement, and destroy critical infrastructure, particularly in low-lying coastal regions.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman of Bangladesh—one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions—warned the General Assembly that up to 18 percent of the country’s coastal land could be entirely submerged by rising seas, endangering the security and livelihoods of tens of millions. President Naiqama Lalabalavu of Fiji also emphasized that over half of his country’s population lives within a kilometer of the shore, leaving communities at a significant risk of being exposed to natural disasters. He further noted that the stock of fish available to each Fijian is estimated to decline by nearly 25 percent by 2050, threatening widespread food insecurity across the region.

The compounding impact of these disasters is also linked to depressed crop yields—which significantly impact food insecurity, accelerate biodiversity loss, and cause widespread disease outbreaks. Higher temperatures directly drive the spread of vector-borne illnesses, while rising sea levels and flooding exacerbate waterborne diseases. As a result, countries worldwide continue to sustain massive economic and human costs while aid organizations and health sectors struggle to keep up with the influx of needs.

Tarique Rahman, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, addresses the High-level Meeting on Climate Action and the Just Transition. Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

“We just lived through the hottest July and August on record. Global sea surface temperatures are at a record high, and the worst is yet to come,” said Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). “We enter a dangerous terrain where we’re likely to cross a number of tipping point systems that not only regulate the stability of the climate system, but also fundamentally determine life support for human development.”

Numerous speakers also underscored the severity of an immensely powerful “Super El Niño” rapidly forming in the Pacific Ocean, which WMO has described as potentially the strongest in at least a millennium. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center indicate a 90 percent chance that this El Niño will mark one of the most extreme weather events of the 2026-2027 winter season.

Saulo warned that the global impacts of the impending El Niño will be massive and long-lasting, and will cause 2026 to become the hottest year on record. Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, told the General Assembly that damages in Africa alone could exceed USD 20 billion, with comparable losses projected across other highly climate-vulnerable regions.

The summit sets new goals for the international community: to return global temperatures to below 1.5°C as quickly as possible, limit the severity and duration of ongoing impacts from the overshoot, and facilitate the global transition to renewable energy. Guterres warned that the current generation sits at a critical turning point—it is the first to possess the tools to end the climate crisis, and the last with the opportunity to avert a “climate catastrophe.”

The main pathways for climate action highlighted during the summit included increased intergovernmental cooperation, sustained investment in climate adaptation and resilience monitoring systems, and wider-scale deployment of renewable energy. In recent years, renewables have become significantly cheaper than traditional fossil fuels—such as coal, oil, and natural gas—while generating far lower emissions, facilitating sustainable development, and potentially averting hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-related losses worldwide.

While countries representing roughly 90 percent of all global emissions have submitted updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—signaling widespread political commitment to the Paris Agreement in the midst of heightened geopolitical tensions—current NDCs are projected to continue to fall short of the emission reductions required to prevent an overshoot of the 1.5°C target.

Michael R. Bloomberg, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, and also founder of Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies, told the General Assembly that current financial contributions from the international community are insufficient, warning that these gaps in funding “can mean the difference between life and death.”

“More countries recognize that clean energy is essential to their security and economic stability. At the same time, while there’s still not enough climate funding going to developing countries, the amount has more than doubled since the Paris Agreement took effect,” said Bloomberg. “Now, we all know that’s not enough. Every day brings new evidence of the worsening harms of climate change.”

“No place on Earth is safe from climate change. Countries need more investment in resilient measures that protect people and in modern connected grids that will support the waves of clean energy installation. Both will require more of the kind of collaboration that has enabled progress over the past decade across government and business, philanthropy, nonprofits, and community leaders.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

Bei einem Luftangriff des myanmarischen Militärs auf einen Markt und eine Brücke im westlichen Bundesstaat Rakhine am Montagmittag sind mindestens 49 Menschen getötet worden. Fast 60 weitere wurden teils schwer verletzt.

Kijanangoma is being crowned amid a dispute over a young heir whom the royal clan does not recognise.

Giulio Regeni's tortured body was found days after he went missing on a research trip to Egypt in 2016, while studying at Cambridge University.