The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2026 (IPS) - In the wake of the largest decline in global health financing on record, the Global Leaders Network (GLN) for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescent Health convened a high-level meeting on September 22 to sustain political momentum for women and children’s health financing. The event, Financing for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescent’s Health in a Time of Austerity, was co-hosted by the Governments of South Africa, Spain, and Tanzania, in addition to the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (PMMCH).
Throughout the meeting, GLN members repeatedly called for a financing reset for women’s, children’s, and adolescent health (WCAH), warning that reduced global assistance and rising debt could reverse decades of progress. In 2025, official development assistance (ODA) fell to USD 174.3 billion, a 23.1 percent drop from 2024 and the largest annual decline on record. Simultaneously, the external debt in low- and middle-income countries reached a record USD 8.9 trillion, with debt-servicing costs remaining at a historic high. The reduction in assistance, with the increase in debt, has limited governments’ abilities to invest in essential services, leading to consequences for WCAH.
In low- and middle-income countries, an estimated 260,000 women died in 2023 from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. In 2024, an estimated 4.9 million children died before their 5th birthday from deaths that are preventable with low-cost interventions and access to quality health care. Members of the GLN framed this challenge less as finding replacement funds for the declining aid, but instead, governments need to ensure that existing resources are allocated, protected, and used effectively to deliver improvements in WCAH.
“We know that issues of women, children, adolescent health and well-being can’t be solved by ministers of health alone. They need head of state support, they need minister of finance support, and there are always political choices to be made about what we protect when the resources are scarce,” said Helen Clark, chair of the board of the PMNCH and moderator of the meeting.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Chebreyesus, WHO Director-General, also called for the protection of health budget lines for WCAH, in particular the protection of sexual and reproductive health in humanitarian settings, and stronger accountability and reporting of results. “A policy without a budget is a press release. A commitment without financing is a promise already broken,” he said.
During Tuesday’s meeting, representatives continued to stress the point of investing in primary health care. In particular, the importance of midwives, community health workers, vaccines, medications, nutrition services, clinics, and referral systems that women, children, and adolescents depend upon. Helga Fogstad, Director of the UNICEF Health Programme, urged governments to protect these foundations when preparing the 2027 budgets. Fogstad urged the prioritization of “domestic resources for what has the greatest impact, ensuring essential medicines, vaccines, and nutrition supplies are available where they are needed and investing in enough trained, equipped, and paid healthcare workers to reach every community”.
Diene Keita, Executive Director of UNFPA, stressed the importance of investing in maternal care and family planning: “World leaders and financial experts agree, investing in women and girls delivers unbeatable returns.”
An audience member at the event “Financing for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health in a Time of Austerity”, hosted by the Global Leaders Network. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías
Country examples presented during the session illustrated how investing in WCAH has been translated into policy. For example, under Nigeria’s Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative, Nigeria has moved away from fragmented donor-led programs towards greater country ownership, stronger alignment of resources and accountability for results. Nigeria has already committed nearly $3 billion in domestic health financing over five years in addition to USD 2 billion of US support. The result of this has been revitalizing more than 4,000 primary health centers, retraining 80,000 frontline health workers, a 34 percent increase in deliveries by skilled birth attendants, and a 22 percent reduction in maternal mortality among women delivered in the facilities.
A tension emerged during the session between greater national ownership for countries and the continuing need for international solidarity. Speakers across the board discussed the need for blended finance, pooled funding, and debt-for-health swaps, while institutions like the World Bank and Islamic Development Bank advocated for moving isolated projects into integrated national systems. Issa Faye, Director General for Global Practices and Partnerships at the Islamic Development Bank, stressed how the “challenge now is to help the countries move beyond the short-term responses”.
“We should go away from project by project to really act in a more massive way through the system. We need to talk about the system, not the project,” said Faye.
In closing, the GLN committed to stronger country-led financing, domestic resource mobilization, and appropriately designed financing mechanisms. In addition, donors were called upon to align assistance with countries’ national plans. The focus was that austerity cannot become health austerity; instead, political declarations and financing plans must protect frontline services and lead to a measurable reduction in preventable deaths.
IPS UN Bureau Report
Sep 28 2026 (IPS) -  :
CIVICUS discusses the role of art in climate and rights struggles in the Brazilian Amazon with Tom Wheeler, executive director and co-founder of Treesistance. Treesistance is a platform operated by the Netherlands-based Sinchi Foundation that partners with Indigenous communities across four Brazilian states on cultural preservation and forest protection.
Tom Wheeler
How did art become the centre of a forest protection initiative?
Sinchi, the foundation behind Treesistance, was set up in 2016 as a cultural organisation. I believed we needed a societal or spiritual shift, so in our first years we ran festivals, film screenings, galleries, music events and debates, and built art and documentary projects with Indigenous communities across six continents.
At some point I went through a bit of a crisis, questioning what real impact this work was having. Then I met Vandria Borari, a brilliant Indigenous lawyer and celebrated ceramic artist from western Pará, a state in the Brazilian Amazon. She introduced me to the Tapajós and Arapiuns Indigenous Council, an association that represents 14 Indigenous groups in the Lower Tapajós region. In 2021, our focus shifted to the Amazon, and in 2023, together with our Indigenous partners, we co-created Treesistance as a platform built around four pillars: access to justice, communications, renewable energy and sustainable economic development.
The access to justice work is what we’re best known for. We support Forest Guardians, community-led groups that patrol and defend Indigenous territories against illegal logging and other threats, and we help build strong relationships between the territories and Brazil’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, which has a constitutional mandate to defend Indigenous rights.
That shift toward tangible, on-the-ground impact didn’t push art aside. If anything, it made clear how essential it was. Art isn’t a side product or a tool for us. It’s central to the community aspect of this work, to participation and authenticity, and to what the wider decolonial tradition is trying to achieve, of giving voice to communities and centring them in their own stories. Everything we do is co-created, but it’s led by our Indigenous partners. This carries multiple meanings for them, not least the pride of building something of their own from the ground up.
What’s the Tales of Resistance project?
Tales of Resistance is led on the ground by Vivi Borari, a talented young Indigenous woman. The idea was to build an archive, first and foremost for Indigenous communities’ use and records, telling the stories of the Majés and Pajés – plant healers, shamans and spiritual guides within these territories – from the inside out.
The project is about telling their origin stories, how they work within the community, what their roles and responsibilities are and the messages they carry from the spirits to the world. Once those stories exist on the communities’ terms, and with their consent, they can also travel further, which is why we’re now developing them into an exhibition. That kind of storytelling matters because one of the biggest challenges impact organisations face is talking only to people who already agree with them and failing to reach beyond that circle. Art and storytelling are how you break through.
We also took a deliberately different approach to how these stories are gathered. Turning up with a camera and asking people to explain their culture on the spot is a very western way of working. Just imagine how strange it would feel if someone did that to you. So we don’t do that. For us, everything starts as an audio recording while we are sitting together, having tea, walking in the forest, just talking about people’s experiences. Many of these stories would simply never be told in front of a camera. Only afterwards do we do a photo shoot, and that’s when we layer the audio and images together.
What films have you made, and what impact have they had?
Two years ago, we made a short film, Curupira, sharing the story of one of the forest’s spirits as told by one of the communities we work with. It was nominated for awards at film festivals around the world. It’s a tangible example of what storytelling can do for us. It brought in new interest, funders, partners and collaborators, people who wouldn’t otherwise have found their way to this work.
In 2026, we released another short film, Surara – Spirit of Resistance, directed by Lea Hejn, which won the Guardians in Action category at the Santiago Wild Film Festival in Chile. It includes footage from patrols led by Chief Dadá Borari, head of our Forest Guardian programme.
What changes when communities see themselves represented, and why do you call this resistance rather than activism?
The cultural scene, in the global south as much as the global north, is still working through questions of representation, making sure people see the diversity of their context reflected on screen. As Vivi has said, our biggest impact comes when Indigenous people see themselves and their reality reflected. This changes their self-perception. They no longer see themselves as victims but as people with agency, as fighters. That’s a qualitative impact that’s genuinely hard to put into a single sentence or measure in the way we measure hectares protected. But it’s real, and it’s the storytelling and narration that make it happen.
That’s also why we don’t use the word ‘activism’ much. It’s a strange word, a badge of honour to some people, something to avoid for others, and I think it’s fundamentally a western construct. There shouldn’t be anything activist about wanting to protect the health of the planet or stand up for human rights. That should be a key component of being a good person.
For our Indigenous partners, the stakes are different, though. For them, this work is intrinsic to survival, both literally, given the violence they face from illegal and aggressive forces, and culturally, in the sense of keeping traditions such as their graphic art and oral storytelling alive.
‘Resistência’ is the word I hear most often within Indigenous communities, whether people are talking about protecting their culture or land. It’s not a one-off response to a single government or form of exploitation, but something long-term and intergenerational, and like any form of resistance, the energy behind it runs low if it isn’t renewed. Art is one of the ways that energy gets renewed, generation after generation. That’s why we called the storytelling project Tales of Resistance and the wider platform Treesistance.
What other art initiatives do you run?
Storytelling extends into our product collaborations with local Indigenous artists, who create things such as clothing and notebooks. One example is Guardian of Nature, a T-shirt based on the Guardians’ uniform design. Buying one pays for a uniform for a Forest Guardian on the ground.
We’ve also launched a drink called Purpose, now going into restaurants in the Netherlands. A portion of the proceeds from every bottle sold supports our Forest Guardian projects. The brand itself is built around storytelling. It’s about people identifying their own sense of purpose in the world. So it’s art, but commercially driven, aimed at creating impact on the ground.
We held an open art and design competition for Indigenous artists from the 14 ethnic groups or nations of the Tapajós, focused on expressing their culture and relationship with nature. It brought the artists local and regional recognition through an event where the Indigenous Council, artists and other partners came together to celebrate the work.
How do you avoid the exploitative imagery typical of development fundraising?
Traditional development fundraising tends to rely on a particular kind of emotional imagery – a poor person, a hungry child, an old man in need – because that’s what drives donations from the kind of donor it targets. We deliberately avoid that.
There’s a well-known quote, often attributed to the Aboriginal Australian academic Lilla Watson, although she credits it to a collective of Aboriginal activists, that says, ‘If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together’.
None of the communities we work with are looking for charity. The role they play in protecting the Earth and their culture has real value in itself and, in my opinion, we need their wisdom more than they need us. We never describe ourselves as the communities’ funder. We’re a partner. When we help raise money, we’re clear that it was never ours to begin with. If it comes with requirements attached, the conversation is always about how we meet them together rather than about us imposing them. That’s the same principle whether we’re talking about a grant, a story or art. It has to build something the community owns, not something we extract.
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
Website
Instagram
LinkedIn
SEE ALSO
‘Art is the only weapon that doesn’t hurt or kill’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Tara Abdullah 17.Sep.2026
‘Art has proven itself the one thing that can reach the world and stir it into action’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Iman Aoun 14.Sep.2026
‘Thanks to art, climate change stops being a distant issue – it becomes personal, immediate and visceral’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Nicola Haskins 17.Sep.2024
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 28 2026 (IPS) - The 1944 Bretton Woods (BW) conference accepted the US demand to use the dollar to settle international financial transactions. This arrangement would require a US balance-of-payments deficit to issue enough dollars.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Bretton Woods
At BW in July 1944, 44 allied nations met to design the post-war world monetary system. John Maynard Keynes represented the UK, no longer financially dominant due to its heavy public debt fighting two world wars.
Harry Dexter White represented the US, which then held two-thirds of the world’s monetary gold, while other countries needed dollar loans for trade and reconstruction. The US promised foreign governments and central banks to convert dollars to gold.
With the US BW promise to redeem an ounce of gold for $35, the dollar became the world’s reserve asset. Every other currency’s exchange rate was fixed against the dollar, in principle, adjustable with IMF approval.
Instead, Keynes proposed a reserve currency, Bancor, managed by an international clearing union to avoid any national currency becoming dominant; a payments system using a national currency could eventually force others to accept its national policies and priorities.
Unsustainable by design
The BW agreement also created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Each member nation was assigned a quota, partly paid in gold and its own currency.
A member nation’s quota determined both its voting weight and how much it could borrow if it needed to borrow when its own currency came under pressure.
The dollar-gold peg was vulnerable by design. For the arrangement to function, the world needed a growing supply of dollars for reserves and international transactions.
In principle, the US had to have enough gold to honour all claims against it. This requirement was met in 1944, when its gold reserves were vast, while other economies were ruined. However, these conditions were not met for long.
As currency devaluations were stigmatised, currency pegs were rarely adjusted. Governments defended unrealistic exchange rates, unjustified by their reserves.
Instead of adjusting gradually, fixed exchange rates would adjust abruptly, typically after crises, as with sterling in 1967 and the dollar in 1971.
Keynes had insisted on allowing governments to manage cross-border capital movements, expecting free-flowing speculative capital to undermine fixed exchange rates.
For a decade and a half, most European governments used the IMF’s sixth Article of Agreement to restrict how freely money could leave their countries and thus defend their currency pegs.
As strong post-war recoveries turned Europe’s dollar shortages into surpluses, capital controls were gradually loosened from the 1960s.
London Gold Pool
The US Congress ignored Triffin’s warning. Instead, in late 1961, the US organised seven European central banks into the London Gold Pool, coordinated by the Bank of England rather than by treaty.
It worked for a while. Whenever private demand pushed the gold price over $35/ounce, participating banks sold their bullion to bring the price down, to buy gold!
From 1962, currency swap lines involving the same central banks withdrew dollars from circulation abroad to reduce demand for gold. Both efforts used a formula based on each country’s original contributions.
Rising US government spending made things worse. The Johnson administration financed both the Vietnam War and Great Society programmes without raising taxes. More dollars flowed out of the US, expanding the supply of Eurodollars.
In March 1967, without any parliamentary mandate or transparent treaty, West Germany’s Bundesbank President privately promised the Fed it would not convert its large dollar reserves from its fast-growing trade surplus into gold.
But France’s president had never accepted Washington’s abuse of the post-war arrangement. In February 1965, De Gaulle complained of the dollar’s exorbitant privilege.
This referred to the US ability to settle its liabilities abroad by issuing more dollars, instead of earning foreign exchange like others. In June 1967, France refused to continue subsidising the dollar peg by withdrawing from the Gold Pool.
Britain devalued the pound in November 1967. As speculative pressure on gold rose, other Pool central banks had to sell even more gold until they gave up on 17 March.
Two tiers
In the subsequent two-tier system, the $35 gold price was only used for transactions between central banks and governments. Another floating free-market price traded well above it.
US gold reserves, almost $20 billion shortly after WW2, were halved by 1971 as foreign governments’ and central banks’ dollar claims rose over $50 billion!
When member governments safely created official liquidity by introducing a new reserve asset, the Special Drawing Right (SDR), in 1969, the problem was highlighted again.
SDRs were allocated directly to member countries rather than tied to either gold or the US trade or current account deficit. The SDR was supposed to supplement, not replace, gold and the dollar as reserve assets.
By mid-1971, when President Nixon unilaterally ended the dollar’s gold convertibility obligation, the debate was no longer about whether the gold window could hold, but over how to close it without triggering a currency-market panic after years of speculation.
IPS UN Bureau
KATHMANDU, Nepal / NEW YORK, United States , Sep 25 2026 (IPS) - On August 26, 2026, deadly flash floods and landslides ripped through Himalayan towns and villages along Nepal and Tibet’s border, devastating communities. The United Nations estimates that in Nepal’s worst-affected districts of Rasuwa and Nuwakot, 157,050 women and girls are directly or indirectly impacted.
Ranjeeta Silwal
Climate change, melting glaciers and Nepal’s catastrophic floods
Shortly after 8:30 am, a catastrophic avalanche of glacial ice and bedrock roughly two square kilometres in size plunged thousands of metres into the river below, triggering a lethal flood of water, ice, rock and sediment. Travelling over 200 kilometres from Tibet into Nepal, the raging torrent swept away people, animals, homes, schools, roads, bridges and other key infrastructure.
World Weather Attribution explains that human-caused climate change is thawing permafrost in the Himalayan mountains and causing glaciers to melt, likely destabilising the slopes that triggered this humanitarian and environmental disaster.
At the time of writing, over 1,450 people are confirmed dead and more than 8,000 remain missing, with only a fraction of bodies identified and returned to their families. Nepal’s National Child Rights Council and Save the Children have reported that over 1,000 children are in temporary shelters without any parents, many of whom are dead or missing.
Ranjeeta Silwal explains how Nepal’s floods have put women and girls at greater risk
“While temporary shelters can be life-saving, if they aren’t designed with gender protection considerations from the outset, they can create new risks associated with overcrowding, lack of privacy, separation from family and community support networks, and limited access to confidential mechanisms for reporting violence. Without safe, accessible toilets, adequate lighting, privacy and safe pathways, women and girls may face risks simply when using the toilet or bathing, particularly at night.
“Systems that would normally prevent and respond to violations, like health and social services, police, courts and local communities, may be damaged or inaccessible. When authorities are focused elsewhere or are themselves absent because of disaster, the risk of violence, exploitation and other abuse increases exponentially.
“Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, women in poverty or from rural communities, those with disabilities, widowed and single women, and women-headed households may face additional barriers in accessing services, facilities and information following natural disasters. Adolescent girls can be especially affected because they have less mobility, less access to information and limited decision-making power.
“We need to ask: who can move safely, who has privacy, who can access food and water, who has information and safety networks? These are not additional considerations; these are basic requirements of a rights-based humanitarian response.
“The emergency doesn’t end when flood water recedes, as the secondary impacts can continue for months, even years. When families lose their house, their income and support networks, women and girls become more exposed and vulnerable to sexual violence, intimate partner violence, sexual exploitation, trafficking and child marriage. We need to understand that protection from gender-based violence must be part of the emergency response; it is not something that can wait until reconstruction begins.”
How does the climate crisis increase the risk of child marriage?
“Nepal has made important legal and policy commitments by raising the legal age of marriage to 20 for both women and men and pledging to end child marriage by 2030. Despite this, child marriage remains an ongoing problem. An Equality Now report on child marriage in South Asia explains how poverty, insecurity and lack of access to education are key factors, and the flood in Nepal has amplified all of these, especially for families who’ve lost their homes, agricultural land, livestock and incomes.
“Climate resilience and ending child marriage cannot be treated as separate agendas. As climate-driven disasters become more frequent and severe, the economic pressures on families can intensify, changing how they view a girl’s future.
“When a family is displaced, or a school is destroyed, returning to education can be extremely difficult. Families who’ve lost everything may be unable to afford transport, uniforms or supplies, and girls may be expected to take on additional domestic and care responsibilities. Parents can see marriage as a way to reduce household costs or provide daughters with perceived economic and physical security.
“Once a girl leaves school, the risk of child marriage, early pregnancy, exploitation, child labour and economic dependence increases. So schooling must be part of emergency responses, with displaced children given access to education as soon as possible. Families need social protection, livelihoods, education, food, housing and other essential support so they don’t turn to child marriage as a coping mechanism.”
What should recovery and reconstruction after the floods look like in Nepal?
“Across South Asia, many women depend on agriculture and natural resources while having less control over land, assets and finance. When natural disasters destroy agricultural land, inequalities deepen. A woman who has lost her livelihood and independent income may become more economically dependent on a partner or other household members, making it far harder to leave an abusive situation or challenge exploitation.
“Recovery should mean more than simply rebuilding what existed before. The first step should be a gender-responsive needs assessment, and plans to restore livelihoods must consider who controls assets and income, and how recovery can strengthen women’s economic security and autonomy. Crucially, recovery policies must be deliberately designed to reach women directly.
“Support can take many forms, including cash assistance, help to restore land and housing documentation, and direct access to compensation, recovery grants, credit and financial services. It should also include skills development, employment opportunities and investment in climate resilience. Unpaid care work is often overlooked, despite increasing significantly following disasters. Women looking after children, older people and injured family members have less time to rebuild their livelihoods, so recovery efforts must address this burden.
“Women and girls are not just victims of climate change. They are also agents of change, knowledge holders and decision-makers. We must ensure women’s meaningful participation in recovery decisions, and they shouldn’t only be consulted on plans that have already been developed. They need meaningful influence over what is rebuilt, where it is rebuilt, and how resources are allocated in the short and long term.”
About Ranjeeta Silwal, South Asia Regional Representative, Equality Now
Ranjeeta Silwal is a human rights lawyer, advocate and programme leader. She has recently joined international women’s rights organisation Equality Now as their South Asia Regional Representative. Licensed to practise law in Nepal, Ranjeeta has represented survivors before UN human rights mechanisms, contributed to strategic litigation, and led advocacy to reform discriminatory laws and advance accountability. Her work has focused particularly on gender-based violence, discrimination, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and strengthening legal protections and access to justice for all women and girls.IPS UN Bureau Report
Excerpt:
Oritro Karim, IPS UN Bureau Correspondent, speaks to Ranjeeta Silwal of Equality Now.
LONDON, Sep 25 2026 (IPS) - On 15 September, Norwegian police and security services raided the headquarters of Telenor in Oslo. Authorities accuse the multinational telecoms company, majority owned by the Norwegian state, of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in Myanmar and breaching sanctions.
Telenor sold its Myanmar subsidiary in March 2022, in the wake of the military coup that ousted the country’s democratically elected government in February 2021. An August 2025 Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation investigation reported that ahead of its exit, Telenor had complied with military requests to hand over customer data. It’s alleged that call log and location data may have helped the military track, capture and kill democracy activists, including campaigner Ko Jimmy, executed in July 2022.
Civil society warned of the dangers when Telenor prepared to sell its subsidiary to a joint venture between a Lebanese group and Thein Win Zaw, a Burmese entrepreneur accused of having close military ties. It has kept up the struggle for accountability. Justice for Myanmar, a covert activist group, worked with the International Commission of Jurists to collect documentary evidence on Telenor’s role and filed police complaints in December 2024 and October 2025.
Telenor is also subject to a lawsuit brought by a group of civil society organisations last October, alleging the company passed on data of over 1,200 people. In addition, the company has been found in breach of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct.
International complicity
The Telenor case focuses attention on the wider networks of companies and states that are propping up the regime and keeping Myanmar’s civil war going.
Following the coup, almost all states refused to recognise Myanmar’s military rulers and continued to regard the exiled National Unity Government as the country’s legitimate representative. But several authoritarian states have since swung behind the junta. Russia leads the pack, with Vladimir Putin hosting junta leader Min Aung Hlaing for repeat visits in Moscow. China, India, Singapore and Thailand have joined Russia in supplying weapons.
Many Chinese companies collaborate with the regime, among them Geedge Networks, a tech company with close links to the Chinese state that specialises in online surveillance. The company is helping the military install a version of China’s ‘great firewall’ so it can systematically restrict internet use, access users’ data and identify and track down dissenters.
The junta made a concerted effort to gain international legitimacy with a sham election in December 2025 and January 2026. It extensively prepared the ground by replacing the civilian electoral commission with a military-controlled body, banning pro-democracy parties and prohibiting political rallies, ensuring a military puppet party faced only token opposition. A new election law enabled it to criminalise over 300 people for criticising the election. Authorities jailed some merely for liking social media posts and handed 37-year sentences to eight activists for taking part in a protest calling for a boycott. There were also reports of threats to withhold aid from displacement camps unless people voted.
After the military’s party duly won, Min Aung Hlaing transitioned from general to civilian and became president in April. That same month, a group of civil society organisations filed a complaint against him in Indonesia over his role in the 2017 genocide of Rohingya people. Despite this legal action and the election’s evident lack of credibility, an array of non-democratic states including Belarus, China and Russia were happy to endorse the result.
While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) didn’t recognise the election, its most authoritarian members, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, backed it anyway, and the bloc has consistently stuck with its failed Five Point Consensus, a plan agreed with the junta in April 2021 that the military has never respected.
The US government has also shifted its position. In 2025, the Trump administration cut funding to independent Burmese media, lifted sanctions against junta-controlled businesses and arms dealers supplying the regime and removed protections from Burmese refugees living in the USA, citing governance improvements. It treated the junta as a legitimate counterpart by sending it a letter about tariffs. In May, it was revealed the junta gives Roger Stone, a long-time Donald Trump ally, US$50,000 a month to rebuild relations with the USA. Mineral deposits are likely in the Trump administration’s sights.
Civil war continues
The Telenor raid has momentarily brought Myanmar back into the headlines. Its civil war has otherwise gone on for almost five and a half years with little global attention. Sparked by the army’s violent suppression of democracy protests, it pits the military against armed pro-democracy forces, both backed by a variety of ethnic militia. The army controls the main population centres and has recently regained some territory, but there’s no end in sight.
The army has committed numerous crimes against humanity and war crimes. A September 2025 UN report painted a harrowing picture of airstrikes on schools and the destruction of villages. This year, the conflict has escalated across the Magway Region, with the army and associated militia mounting armed assaults on villages, burning homes and using drones to kill civilians, including children.
Recent escalations of conflict have driven further displacement. At the same time, monsoon rains across several regions in July and August caused floods that left villages isolated and increased disease risks. As needs have grown, the healthcare system is collapsing due to military attacks on facilities and workers, while humanitarian aid and vital health supplies are further constrained by military checkpoints, road closures and movement restrictions.
The Telenor case has the potential to challenge impunity. It should refocus the minds of democratic states and companies headquartered in them, offering a warning that they can be exposed for complicity in the junta’s atrocities. It should give fresh impetus to civil society’s efforts to hold states and companies to account. By standing with civil society, in Myanmar and around the world, democratic states can put themselves on the side of human rights and justice.
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
UNITED NATIONS & BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Sep 25 2026 (IPS) - World leaders have warned that the most vulnerable people have been left behind as the right to development has promised more than it has delivered, with development seemingly the preserve of the superrich and powerful.
Addressing a session on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly in New York to commemorate the occasion, global leaders marked the 40th anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development with a call to do more to eliminate deep inequality resulting from uneven development in the world.
The Declaration, adopted by the General Assembly in December 1986, proclaims that “the right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised.” But the Declaration, espoused as a fundamental shift in humanity’s progress, has not delivered on its promise.
“For millions around the world, promises made in the declaration remain unfulfilled, yet we know how to make it real,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders, noting that the declaration’s anniversary is a call to action and pointing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the blueprint to leave no one behind.
“Development, human rights and peace are not separate ambitions. They advance together. In today’s divided world, this vision can still unite us, and the Sustainable Development Goals are the roadmap to get us there.”
Under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the 17 SDGs contain goals and targets that are lifting people out of poverty and protecting their rights. However, 36% of 139 SDG targets are on track or have made moderate progress.
Guterres said the promise of development faces new tests today, from widening inequalities and persistent food insecurity to rising debt, conflicts and economic instability that are impeding development and economic growth.
“The climate crisis is reaching devastating new levels each year, reminding the world that there can be no development on a degraded and unhealthy planet,” said Guterres, warning that while the digital revolution and artificial intelligence hold enormous potential to improve lives, they can also be drivers of exclusion and division.
“The declaration unequivocally establishes development as a right and puts people at the centre of the development process,” he said.
Ensuring food security forms part of the right to development, according to the United Nations. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
Some Progress, but More Needs to Be Done
Development is not about economic growth but about the constant improvement of human well-being through their active, free and meaningful participation in development, said Khalilur Rahman, President of the 81st UN General Assembly.
“We measure progress not only by aggregate growth but by whether people can live in dignity, exercise their rights and shape their own futures,” he said, emphasising that the Declaration should be honoured through action and by protecting the “hard-won gains of the past four decades” and addressing the inequalities and structural barriers that persist.
“Let us make multilateralism more representative, more responsive and more capable of delivering for all,” he emphasised.
Citing that global life expectancy has increased, along with access to education and health for many, Rahman said 1.5 billion people have escaped poverty in the past four decades. However, he bemoaned that many countries suffer from unsustainable debt burdens and unequal participation in global decisions, which have provided lessons over the last 40 years: development is inclusive and cannot be separated from human rights, environmental concerns, peace and security.
The cost of debt is $1.4 trillion in developing countries, and 3.4 billion people are currently living in countries that spend more on debt interest than on education or health.
Noting that the goal of development was broader and calling for the elimination of several barriers to development, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the current financial system was grotesquely out of balance and squeezed human rights out of budgets. Budget cuts, he said, affected the poorest more, calling for the elimination of human misery alongside insatiable military and economic power.
Türk said 2025 marked the 11th consecutive year in which military spending hit $2.8 trillion, which is eight times more than the cost of ending poverty globally.
“Development must be equitable and environmentally sustainable,” he said. “Sustainability cannot be equated to economic growth achieved at any cost to people and the planet. We need a strong shift to greater equality, participation, dignity, freedom and mutual respect, and we need to recommit to the principle of international cooperation, which is at the core of the right to development.”
Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar. Credit, Oxfam International
The Rich Growing Richer and the Poor, Poorer
According to Oxfam’s 2026 report, Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power, the unprecedented rise of the ultra-wealthy has deepened the global divide. Billionaire wealth surged by $2.5 trillion last year—an amount roughly equal to the total assets held by the bottom 4.1 billion people combined.
Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International, said the right to development remains in principle, despite progress made in the 1990s and 2000s, but there has been some regression in the last few years. The right to development was being questioned because, for instance, the right to education and health were being converted into commodities and privatised.
Behar said rights arising from agreements at international platforms should be translated at the national level to ensure people understand their rights and that there is a movement towards their realisation.
“For any right to become a real right, it’s really important that we build it from the bottom up. If we do not invest time, energy and resources in building from the bottom up, the realisation of these rights will remain inadequate,” Behar said.
Behar noted that the right to development speaks to the indivisibility of human rights and that governments have demonstrated the political will to start delivering on these rights, but this progress can only be realised when people start demanding their rights.
“We are seeing an economic system where the money is going upward and getting concentrated in the hands of the few super-rich billionaires, so the government must tax them and get revenues for the people and ensure that they are investing in making sure the right to development is a reality for everyone,” Behar said.
Harjeet Singh, global convenor of the Fill the Fund campaign, warned that “we must confront an uncomfortable truth: the dominant global economic model has spent four decades betraying the core of that declaration.”
Singh, who is also the founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation and engagement director at the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, warned that “we must confront an uncomfortable truth: the dominant global economic model has spent four decades betraying the core of that declaration.”
“Development was meant to be an emancipatory project centred on the human person, affirming everyone’s right to active, free and meaningful participation and an equitable share in economic and social progress,” Singh told IPS. “Today, however, global finance capital has hijacked it, serving multinational corporations and private bondholders rather than smallholder farmers, indigenous peoples, or urban workers.”
Singh highlighted that developing countries that contributed least to climate change are forced to divert significant portions of their budgets to disaster recovery, driving them deeper into debt. “On this 40th anniversary, governments in the Global South and their allies should demand a Binding Fossil Fuel Treaty and create an explicit international framework to equitably phase out fossil fuels, end expansion, and fund a global just transition.”
“The 1986 Declaration was designed as a charter for liberation and justice. Unless the UN General Assembly anchors development in human rights, climate reparations, a fossil fuel phaseout, and systemic economic reform, this milestone will mark four decades of unfulfilled promises.”
Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.
IPS UN Bureau Report
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2026 (IPS) - On September 21, just prior to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly Debate (UNGA81), the NCD Alliance held its fifth Multi-stakeholder Gathering, “Strategies for a Sustainable NCD and Mental Health Response,” during the UN High-level Week.
“This meeting may be on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, but the issues discussed here are central to the global health agenda,” emphasized Mary-Ann Etiebet, President and CEO of Vital Strategies and moderator of the event. She opened by highlighting the continuing global burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and the gap in funding and resources dedicated to addressing it.
The discussion centered on how countries can sovereignly lead, scale, sustain and strengthen their responses, with a particular emphasis on country ownership and “putting the country in the driver’s seat”.
The gathering focused on how countries can move from policy commitments to implementation and build sustainable responses to NCDs and mental health through governance, financing, and cross-sector partnerships.
Fleming Kondradsen, a panelist and Chief Scientific Officer at Novo Nordisk Foundation, emphasized the importance of supporting more horizontal approaches to health. Rather than creating parallel systems and new structures, he argued for strengthening and integrating NCD prevention and care into existing health systems wherever possible.
For Paula Johns, another panelist from Brazil and Executive Director of ACT Health Promotion Brazil, meaningful participation begins with a fundamental question: How do we include the public in public health? Maintaining strong relationships with communities, she argued, is essential to ensuring that health policies and interventions reflect the realities of the people they are intended to serve.
Johns also raised concerns about the growing pressures affecting young people in Brazil, describing a “mental health global pandemic”. Among the issues she highlighted were social media and sports betting, calling for greater attention and regulation of environments that can affect young people’s health and wellbeing.
The discussion reinforced the importance of looking beyond the health sector itself. Addressing NCDs and mental health requires collaboration across government, civil society, communities and other sectors that shape the environments in which people live.
For Prisca Githuka, founder of the Pink Hearts Cancer Support Foundation from Nairobi, Kenya, one of the most important questions when it comes to addressing NCDs and mental health is meaningfully engaging people with lived experience. Consulting people who have experienced a disease, she said, is only the beginning. Meaningful engagement means involving people with lived experience in co-creating solutions and participating directly in decision-making structures. This distinction, she noted, separates genuine participation from tokenism.
People with lived experience should not simply be invited to share their stories. They should have a meaningful role in shaping decisions that impact their health, and their contributions should be fairly compensated. Githuka also stressed the importance of measuring whether people’s input actually influences outcomes. Engagement should not end when feedback is collected. Instead, stakeholders should ask: What changed as a result of that feedback? And did the final implementation actually benefit the people with lived experience?
Her own advocacy work has included petitions and efforts to secure funding and support for cancer patients, including advocacy around oncology packages and the National Health Insurance Fund.
The emphasis on advocating for lived experience at the forefront of decision-making also highlighted the impact of smaller organizations and community-based groups. For many of these organizations, their most important contribution is their proximity to the communities affected by NCDs and mental health conditions. Their stories can provide insight into gaps that may not be visible in national strategies or global commitments.
For people with lived experience with NCDs and mental health conditions, being in the room is only the first step. The measure of meaningful engagement is whether they have a voice in decisions, whether that voice influences what happens next, and whether the resulting policies and services improve their lives.
IPS UN Bureau Report