The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
SEATTLE. USA, Apr 27 2026 (IPS) - This is the third part of a three-part commentary. Read Part 1: No Kings? Meet King Don and King John – Part 1 of 3, Part 2 of 3
Whose head?In foreign relations, as in immigration, King Don the Con appears to be channeling King John the Bad and often surpassing him.
However, our wannabe monarch should consider one more exemplar, this one fictitious: Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen could be another spiritual ancestor of the Golden Emperor. After all, his Bling Dynasty has been a creature of fiction more than fact.
Carroll wrote in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
“Let the jury consider their verdict.” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”
“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.
“I won’t!” said Alice.
“Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.
As we’ve seen, King Don has demonstrated a similar disdain for legal niceties. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards” could be the motto of much of his foreign policy as well as immigration enforcement. He often skips indictment, trial, and verdict, and jumps straight from accusation to carrying out the sentence.
There is one striking difference between the two monarchies, though: the Red Queen’s courtiers understood that she was not playing with a full deck, and so they ignored her ranting. The Golden Emperor’s toadies are too cowardly to tell him that he’s acting increasingly unhinged, and have become immune to shame about their North Korea-like sycophancy. A possible exception is “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, who may be even more deranged than his boss. His speeches sound like they’re written by a B-grade action-movie screenwriter torqued on crank. Economist Paul Krugman said in an interview that some people in the Pentagon are calling him the Secretary of War Crimes.
In the summer and fall of 2025, Trump marshalled a massive armada of ships, air power and troops in the southern Caribbean. The official name was Operation Southern Spear, and they were clearly positioned to threaten Venezuela. But while they were waiting to carry out the eventual abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros, Trump reportedly ordered them to unleash military strikes against small boats that he said were smuggling drugs.
Instead of ignoring the President, as the Red Queen’s courtiers did, Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio obediently began extrajudicial executions of civilians in small boats. The victims reportedly included sailors, fishermen, bus drivers, laborers, and possibly some small-time smugglers.
The Defense Department reportedly confirmed to Congress that as of March 17 the U.S. military had killed at least 157 people in military strikes on 47 alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. More strikes have allegedly occurred since, raising the death toll to at least 163 people.
As an Elizabethan connoisseur of royal mayhem might have put it: “As flies to wanton boys are we to King Don. He kills us for his sport.”
If Trump had wanted to make a serious case to the world that he was actually combatting drug smuggling, he could have ordered normal policing operations: intercept and impound the boat, display the packets of drugs and weapons captured, perp walk the smugglers and publicize their indictments and convictions. However, the his government has not publicly presented evidence that drugs were being smuggled or that the crews were connected with drug cartels or terrorists.
U.S. forces did not give the boats or crews a chance to surrender. They simply blew them (and any evidence of their alleged crimes) to smithereens. In one case, they reportedly slaughtered two survivors of an initial strike who were still clinging to the wreckage. Some boats were apparently carrying more people than would be needed for a crew, so perhaps some were just passengers. In another strike in which two survivors were rescued, they were not arrested by the U.S., but instead returned to their respective countries, Colombia and Ecuador. This was an improbable outcome if they were in fact smugglers or terrorists.
Here’s the lowdown: regardless of whether the crews or passengers were smuggling anything, they were civilians. Even if a war had been in progress, it would have been illegal under international and U.S. military law to kill non-combatants. But this was not a war with a foreign government, nor an attack on the U.S. by terrorists. Given that many of the strikes killed four or more people, the customary threshold for mass homicide, the operation should be investigated as serial mass murders.
Even before the strikes began, the senior Judge Advocate General (JAG, a military lawyer) at the U.S. Southern Command in Miami questioned the legality of the strikes and voiced concerns that they could amount to extrajudicial killings, NBC News reported. This JAG’s opinion was reportedly overruled by more senior officials.
Many other military lawyers and other officials also voiced concerns about the strikes’ legality up their chains of command. The “Former JAGs Working Group”, formed by victims of Hegseth’s earlier mass firings of JAGs, issued a statement that it “unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both.”
Questions about the operation’s legality also apparently troubled the head of the U.S. Southern Command. Admiral Alvin Holsey abruptly announced that he would step down from his post in December, without offering any explanation for his decision. But the New York Times reported that Holsey, too, had expressed concern about the legality of the killings. This brought him into conflict with Hegseth and the White House. Ultimately, Hegseth pushed out the Admiral.
Six Democratic members of Congress who are veterans made a video that simply told serving military members: “Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders.” This is advice commonly given to soldiers. Trump responded hysterically on Truth Social: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”, and reposted another user: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” [Buchanan 11/20/2025]
Trump reserved his nastiest blast of vitriol for the only U.S. senator in the group, Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy combat pilot and astronaut. Defense Secretary Hegseth moved to demote and censure Kelly and reduce his retirement pay. In February, a federal judge temporarily blocked the demotion and criticized Hegseth for trying to punish a veteran and member of Congress for First Amendment-protected speech. Ironically, the attacks on Kelly seem to have supercharged his political fund-raising and helped establish him as a credible Democratic presidential candidate for 2028.
The rationales for killing civilians on small boats followed an opportunistic trajectory: first frame the strikes as tools to intimidate Maduro, then claim to be interdicting drug smuggling to save American lives. Next up the ante to fighting narco-terrorists. Finally, admit that the main goal of the whole operation was to take back oil from Venezuela that somehow belonged to the U.S.
After the abduction of Maduro, the usefulness of boat strikes to intimidate the now deposed president, if it ever existed, should have expired. But since then, Trump has continued to claim he is protecting U.S. citizens from “narco-terrorists” by destroying small boats.
The U.S. Southern Command claims with each strike that it is targeting boats along “known smuggling routes” that U.S. intelligence has identified. But it has yet to provide evidence that these boats were actually carrying drugs – perhaps because it is hard to collect it when the boat is blown to bits remotely from the air. And whether or not smuggling goes on along those routes, people living on the coasts of Latin America use small boats for public transportation, carrying legal goods, fishing, and many other purposes. Unsurprisingly, some may follow the same routes that smugglers use (as I have witnessed traveling in a small passenger panga on the Caribbean).
As the case of the Venezuelan deportees established, Venezuela is not a major drug producer; it serves primarily as a conduit for illicit substances produced elsewhere in South America and bound for European markets, not the U.S. Furthermore, in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the main drug being moved is cocaine, which is rarely fatal for users. The fentanyl that Trump flagged as responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. is produced almost exclusively in Mexico and smuggled into the U.S. from there.
As a congressional interrogator at a hearing on the strikes asserted, any amounts of drugs the strikes may have destroyed were insignificant, and are having no impact on the volume or price of drugs entering the U.S.
Furthermore, small boats are only one of numerous modes of drug transport from South to North America and Europe. Drug enforcement has been playing Whac-A-Mole for a half-century with submersibles, commercial shipping, air freight, small planes, drones, tunnels, parcel post, package express, U.S. citizen travelers, and the list goes on. Despite high-profile drug seizures, arrests of drug lords, and spasms of violence, drug markets keep calm and carry on. Meanwhile, fatal overdoses, almost exclusively from fentanyl, spiral upward.
And narco-terrorism? Sorry, but in the non-fiction world, organized crime and terrorism are fundamentally different beasts.
Big drug cartels resemble legal transnational corporations in many ways. Their main purpose is to make money – and then they have to launder it, which also requires business acumen. They have vast decentralized networks that include voluntary and involuntary sub-contractors and investors. They spin off subsidiaries in different countries. They can be very violent when competing over plazas, treating migrants as a profit center, or responding to attacks by governments, but usually they want to run their businesses without visibility or drama. The most successful organized crime executives have been the cagey facilitators and deal-makers.
Occasionally, when the gangs have become stronger than the police forces, governments have had to use the military to confront them. But only patient use of law enforcement tools like the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and socio-economic programs to offer foot soldiers ways to get out of the life can ultimately disentangle their roots from society.
On the other hand, organizations that practice terrorism use violence or the threat of it for political, social, or ideological purposes. They want to visibly menace and destroy their enemies, and they are not primarily concerned with making money.
Many political movements from the American Revolution onward have practiced terrorism – in that case against Tory sympathizers with the British crown. And as in most wars, the British army also practiced terrorism against civilian colonists. Whether a given armed group is classified as terrorists or freedom-fighters generally depends on which side of the conflict the observer stands.
Organized crime may sometimes pursue socio-political objectives, and terrorists may sometimes use illicit activities to fund themselves. But defending against each phenomenon requires very different approaches. The Global War on Terror and the War on Drugs have both been long-running failures because neither terrorism nor organized crime can be eliminated militarily.
When King Don calls an organization “narco-terrorists”, he is simply slapping a label on it that gives him legal cover for using military force to blow things up and kill innocent bystanders. (“Oopsie!”, as his buddy Bukele might say with a smirk.) And as a bonus, the violence may distract his followers from his rich stew of corruption, juicy emoluments and tender pardons garnished with a soupçon of Epstein.
Despite the smoke screens, international efforts to hold Trump responsible for serious human rights violations have begun in a few venues.
A panel of experts convened by the United Nations Human Rights office in September 2025 concluded that the boat strikes violated the right to life under international law and the law of the sea. Their statement asserted: “International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers. Criminal activities should be disrupted, investigated and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of law, including through international cooperation.”
The U.S. had accused the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua of mounting “an ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion’ of the U.S., at the behest of the Venezuelan Government.” But the experts found that “There is no evidence that this group is committing an armed attack against the U.S. that would allow the U.S. to use military force against it in national self-defence.”
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an organ of the Organization of American States, also held a hearing on the boat strikes in March. It heard testimony from several human rights organizations and the U.S. government. “We are doing everything in our power to hold the Trump administration responsible for its egregious violations of both U.S. and international law”, Jamil Dakwar of the ACLU testified. “These extrajudicial killings,” said Angelo Guisado of the Center for Constitutional Rights, “were poorly veiled cover to justify the illegal overthrow of the Venezuelan government, as admitted by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.” A State Department spokesman responded: “The IACHR lacks the competence to review the matters at issue.” He also accused the Commission of interfering in domestic litigation.
The Trump administration has not released the names of the slain. But a few families have come forward to identify their loved ones. Human rights groups are representing two of them seeking redress from the government.
Although we have focused on the boat strikes as Trump’s most literal implementation of “Off with their heads!”, the operation that they were supposedly a warm-up for – the ousting of Venezuela’s president – also resulted in pointless and illegal bloodshed.
On January 3, 2026, Trump cried “Havoc!” and let slip the dawgs of Delta Force. The U.S. invaded Venezuela, abducted its president, Nicolás Maduro, and charged him in a U.S. court with heading a drug-smuggling cartel and illegally possessing firearms. During the operation, U.S. officials estimated that at least 75 people were killed by U.S. forces. The Venezuelan defense minister later said that 83 were killed and more than 112 injured by U.S. forces. He confirmed that the operation killed 47 of its personnel, and the Cuban government said that 32 of the dead were Cuban citizens. Some reports have suggested that additional civilians may have been killed.
As mentioned previously, an investigation by U.S. intelligence services had already found that the Venezuelan government did not direct or cooperate with Tren de Aragua, and was instead generally hostile towards the gang. So whatever his other faults, Maduro was evidently not a drug lord.
These charges also beg the question of how a president who is the commander-in-chief of an army and under protection of a presidential guard can be guilty of illegally possessing firearms. Stay tuned to Maduro’s trial in federal court in New York City for more details.
In any case, just for the record, it is generally illegal under international law for one country to invade another, kill its citizens, and capture or assassinate its leaders.
To understand Operation Southern Spear, it may help to compare the capture and abduction of Maduro with Trump’s pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who was convicted in a U.S. court of large-scale drug trafficking and imprisoned. His brother Tony had already suffered the same fate.
Trump’s pardoning of JOH at the same time he was detaining Maduro on similar charges was widely seen as contradictory. But on the contrary, the message was eloquent: the law means nothing, and King Don the Con doesn’t care if friends break it. All that matters, even if you’re a convicted narco, is that you shamelessly genuflect to him and declare undying fealty.
Despite U.S. criticism of the Maduro government, the abduction of the Venezuelan president left his vice-president in charge as the temporary president, and did not remove any other high officials from the existing Venezuelan government. So much for régime change.
In an outburst of candor, Trump confirmed afterwards that his main motivation was to force Venezuela to give back “our oil” to the United States. This was apparently done under what he calls the “Donroe Doctrine”. The reality was that since long before Maduro, Venezuela had expropriated the assets of some foreign oil corporations, as many developing countries have done. But Trump conveniently omits the backstory that foreign oil companies had originally expropriated Venezuela’s oil from Venezuela. This was fueled by concessions from dictators in the first half of the 20th Century. [Wolfe 1/9/2026]
Treachery, lechery, mendacity and cruelty? Sorry, King John the Bad: in immigration, foreign policy and many other domains, King Don the Con has elevated those qualities far above your crude medieval badassery.
Kings and lawsWhen the New York Times asked Trump if there were any limits on his global powers, he replied: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. … I don’t need international law.”
It is true that Trump has a finely calibrated moral compass. The problem is that it always points to himself.
Conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig laid out the challenge starkly: “Once more, we must ask, as Lincoln did, whether a nation so ‘conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,’ can long endure. …We have been given the high charge of our forebears to ‘keep’ the republic they founded a quarter of a millennium ago. If we do not keep it now, we will surely lose it.”
The millions of partisans of No Kings and other resistance initiatives are working overtime to organize the massive and diversified political insurgency necessary to throw King Don the Con into the toxic waste dump of history and to re-establish something resembling the rule of law. Some of the political opposition seems to be slowly awakening from its torpor and showing signs of life. However, if the MAGA fever has not broken by 2028, I fear that our democracy and human rights will be languishing in hospice.
The last word goes to Tom Paine, the sharp-tongued English pamphleteer who lit a fire under colonial revolutionaries in 1776 with Common Sense: “[A]s in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”
This is the third part of a three-part commentary. Read Part 1: No Kings? Meet King Don and King John – Part 1 of 3, Part 2 of 3
About the author
SAINT LUCIA, Apr 27 2026 (IPS) - The gap between global environmental ambition and real-world progress is widening, with less than five years left to meet key climate and biodiversity targets.
Against that backdrop, attention is increasingly turning to how international environmental finance can deliver faster, deeper change on the ground.
Earlier this month, nations pledged $3.9 billion to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) for its latest funding cycle, known as GEF-9, running from July 2026 to June 2030.
The new cycle is being positioned as part of the response to lagging global environmental action. The GEF will aim for an important upscaling of conservation efforts across terrestrial and marine environments and, importantly, will also aim to influence and transform how economies produce, consume and develop.
What GEF-9 Is Trying to Change
The Global Environment Facility is the world’s largest multilateral environmental fund, supporting developing countries to meet commitments under multilateral environmental agreements on climate change, biodiversity, land degradation, chemicals and ocean governance.
That comprises six global environmental agreements, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
But officials say GEF-9 reflects a shift in thinking, adding that incremental environmental action is no longer enough to keep pace with accelerating ecological decline.
“The global community has set very ambitious goals for 2030 and, regrettably, we are nowhere close to achieving them,” said Fred Boltz, Head of Programming at the GEF. “As a consequence, the shared environmental challenge we now face is to manage a changing Earth system to sustain a healthy planet for healthy people.”
In this context of change and uncertainty, existing approaches have reached their limits.
“Upscaling conventional solutions is not sufficient to address our planetary-scale, existential challenge,” Boltz said.
From Projects to Systems Transformation
At the core of GEF-9 is a deliberate shift toward what the organisation describes as “systems transformation”, consistent with the GEF Integrated Programs (IPs) which are an important complement to funding traditional environmental projects that are necessary but not sufficient to address planetary challenges. Systems transformation through the GEF IPs aims to change underlying incentives, institutions and pathways that currently drive climate change, ecosystem and biodiversity loss, land degradation, and pollution.
Rather than treating environmental damage as a series of isolated problems, the GEF IPs are built around the idea that economies themselves must be reshaped to operate within ecological limits. That includes the major systems that determine environmental outcomes at scale: food systems and agriculture, urban development, production supply chains, and land, water and ocean use.
The approach reflects what GEF describes in its strategic framework as a response to “accelerating global environmental crises” and the need for a more integrated response that aligns multilateral environmental agreements and development efforts.
“In addition to conserving the most important areas, restoring degraded ecosystems and preserving the adaptive capacity of our Earth, we must urgently focus on transforming human production and consumption practices,” said Boltz, pointing to the scale of change required to meet global environmental targets.
Under GEF-9, this shift is being operationalised through four linked pathways.
The first is expanding and diversifying environmental finance, including through blended finance models that combine public funding with private investment to close persistent financing gaps.
The second is embedding nature more directly into national development planning, ensuring environmental priorities are not treated as stand-alone goals but integrated into economic decision-making, fiscal policy and sector planning.
The third focuses on what the GEF calls “valuing nature in the economy”, including internalising the value of nature in economic designs and decisions, mobilising private capital, and aligning investment flows with environmental agreements through tools such as natural capital accounting and nature-positive value chains.
The fourth is broader “whole-of-society” engagement, which places Indigenous peoples, local communities, civil society, youth and women more centrally in the design and implementation of environmental programmes. The GEF considers that, as stewards of the Earth, all of them must take part in its conservation while also benefiting from the wealth of nature.
Taken together, these approaches reflect what the GEF describes as a shift toward nature-positive development. This is where economic growth and environmental protection are no longer treated as competing priorities but as interdependent goals.
Rather than funding isolated conservation projects, GEF-9 is therefore designed to operate across entire landscapes and seascapes, recognising that ecosystems, economies and communities are deeply interconnected and must be managed as such.
A Shift in How Environmental Finance Works
A key change under GEF-9 is how environmental action will be financed.
The fund is expanding its use of blended finance by combining public funding with private investment to unlock significantly larger flows of capital.
While earlier cycles used this approach in limited ways, GEF-9 is expected to scale it up as part of a broader strategy to close persistent environmental financing gaps.
Boltz said the focus is now on upscaling and transformative change rather than incremental gains.
“We are really focusing on transforming human production and consumption practices and operating at a scale in the conservation of ecosystems that enables planetary adaptation to a changing climate and to unrelenting human demand for ecosystem goods and services,” he said.
New financial instruments, including outcome-based bonds and nature-linked investment mechanisms, are also expected to play a greater role in attracting long-term private capital.
What It Looks Like on the Ground
In practice, the shift is already visible in energy transitions in small island states.
In Dominica, geothermal energy development supported through GEF-linked financing is expected to replace around 65% of fossil fuel-based electricity generation.
The impact goes beyond emissions reductions.
For island economies dependent on imported fuel, such transitions can reduce energy costs, ease fiscal pressure and improve resilience to global price shocks.
“This systems transformation benefits the environment in Dominica and benefits the global community by reducing greenhouse gas emissions while also ensuring lasting human benefits for the people of this island nation, in turn increasing the likelihood of success and sustainability for those investments,” Boltz said.
GEF-9 approach. Graphic: IPS
Integration Replaces Silos
Another defining feature of GEF-9 is integration across sectors and across the GEF “family of funds” – a shift away from treating the conservation of biodiversity, land and ecosystems, marine and freshwater systems, chemicals and waste management, and climate change mitigation and adaptation as separate sectors with distinct investments and isolated efforts.
Instead, projects are increasingly being designed to address these challenges together, reflecting the reality that environmental systems do not operate in isolation.
The approach is driven by both efficiency and impact. Combining interventions is expected to deliver multiple benefits at once, while avoiding fragmented efforts that can undermine long-term results.
Under this model, a single intervention can generate overlapping gains across different environmental priorities. Mangrove restoration, for example, can strengthen coastal protection against storms, support biodiversity habitats and store carbon. Sustainable agriculture initiatives can improve food security while also reducing pressure on soils, forests and freshwater systems.
The approach is also linked to broader GEF-9 priorities around scaling impact across landscapes and seascapes, rather than limiting action to protected areas or project boundaries. That includes managing ecosystems as connected systems, where upstream land use, coastal resilience and marine health are interdependent.
Boltz said this shift reflects how environmental pressures are actually experienced by countries on the ground.
“Countries face a spectrum of environmental challenges that do not neatly fall into different categories and the GEF must operate and support the achievement of lasting environmental outcomes in this reality,” he said.
Focus On Vulnerable Countries and Communities
The new cycle also places stronger emphasis on countries and communities most exposed to environmental risks, reflecting greater equity in how global environmental finance is distributed.
Small island developing states and least developed countries are expected to receive a larger share of resources under GEF-9, alongside increased support for Indigenous peoples and local communities who are often on the frontlines of conservation but historically underfunded.
Boltz said this shift is now embedded in the fund’s programming priorities, including a formal commitment to expand Indigenous-led environmental action.
“We have committed to an aspirational target of 20% of GEF financing to support Indigenous peoples’ efforts in environmental stewardship across the GEF family of funds. We have also significantly expanded a dedicated financing instrument to support Indigenous peoples’ stewardship. That has increased fourfold. It was 25 million in GEF-8. It’ll be 100 million in GEF-9.”
He added that the increase reflects growing recognition that environmental outcomes are stronger when local and Indigenous communities are directly resourced and involved in decision-making, particularly in areas such as forest management, land, water and ocean stewardship and biodiversity protection.
What Success Will Look Like
By 2030, success under GEF-9 will not be measured only by financial commitments or project delivery.
Instead, it will be judged by whether structural changes begin to take hold, whether energy systems become cleaner, ecosystems more resilient and economies less damaging to nature.
Boltz said the benchmark is long-term transformation.
“Success looks like maintaining the core elements of what is necessary for a vibrant and resilient planet,” he said, pointing to shifts in the conservation of large marine, terrestrial and freshwater systems and transformations in food systems, supply chains, and urban development.
Why It Matters Now
With global environmental targets under increasing pressure, GEF-9 represents a test of whether international finance can move at the speed and scale required to influence real-world systems.
The initial $3.9 billion commitment pledged by GEF donors in April secures the financial foundation for the next cycle, but it also raises expectations about delivery.
For countries already experiencing the impacts of climate change, particularly small island states, the question is no longer about ambition.
It is about whether systems can be reshaped quickly enough before environmental thresholds are crossed.
Note: The Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly will be held from May 30 to 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.
IPS UN Bureau Report
Excerpt:
The Global Environment Facility’s new $3.9 billion funding cycle aims to accelerate environmental action by shifting from individual projects to system-wide environmental transformation.
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 2026 (IPS) - The Eleventh Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will meet at the United Nations in New York from 27 April to 22 May 2026. State parties to the treaty will meet with the urgent aim of finding common ground on the issue of nonproliferation.
“The NPT is very often referred to as a cornerstone of the international disarmament and nonproliferation regime and also a very important pillar of international peace and security,” said Izumi Nakamitsu, Under-Secretary-General of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (ODA).
The NPT came into effect in 1970 and was extended indefinitely in 1995. This landmark international treaty calls for all signatories to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and promote nuclear disarmament above all and encourages pursuing more peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It remains the only legally binding agreement that nuclear powers adhere to, with 191 states, both nuclear and non-nuclear, as signatories to the treaty. Review conferences are typically held at five-year intervals beginning in 1970 (the conference originally scheduled for 2020 was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was later held in 2022).
The president of the conference is Do Hung Viet, the Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the UN. The conference is expected to begin with a general debate during the first week, which will be followed by thematic discussions under each of the three pillars of the Treaty.
It will be attended by high‑level representatives, including Ministers of Foreign Affairs, as well as senior representatives of key international organizations. Side events will be held in parallel to the thematic discussions by attending members of civil society. This year’s conference will assess the implementation of the NPT since the last review conference, which ended without countries reaching a consensus on the final outcome document.
Ahead of the conference, Nakamitsu spoke to reporters at UN headquarters on 24 April. She remarked that state parties should take this meeting as an opportunity to converge on common ground when it came to nonproliferation. Ultimately, country representatives would want to avoid both an increase in proliferation and the intentional use of nuclear weapons. It will be a collective responsibility, said Nakamitsu, for the state parties to reach a consensus on the outcome document.
The NPT Review Conference will convene during a period of deepening geopolitical tensions, where major nuclear powers are embroiled in regional conflicts. The current military conflict in Iran and, in particular, the war in Ukraine from 2022, have caused shifts in countries’ attitudes about nuclear proliferation.
Some experts have claimed that the situation has led to a start of a new arms race as more countries hold discussions around “improving” nuclear weapons and even outright expanding into procuring nuclear arms themselves, as some see weapons as the “ultimate guarantor of national security”. Nakamitsu acknowledged this as a “proliferation driver”, or growing public sentiment for nuclear proliferation, irrespective of the formal governments’ position on the NPT. She also expressed concern over the increased rhetoric that threatened the use of nuclear weapons, warning that the more nuclear weapon states there were, the greater the risks of nuclear weapons being used by mistake or by miscalculation.
“[The] prevention of nuclear weapons’ use will have to become also one of the key focuses of the conference because when it comes to nuclear weapons, again, it’s not just one or two countries’ security; it goes beyond the borders. It is the security of all of us,” said Nakamitsu. “We need to put to rest the wrong narrative that more nuclear weapon states would guarantee our security.”
A “shared sentiment in crisis” within all state parties may in fact encourage them to “protect and maintain” the NPT. Despite this, Nakamitsu warned that with a growing leniency around nuclear weapons, this poses a risk to the gains made right after the end of World War II and throughout the Cold War.
In the current strategic security environment, the rapid rise of certain technologies will also be a factor in discussions. The advent of artificial intelligence has sparked great debate within the international community for its application in certain sectors and the risk of misuse without the proper guardrails.
It was only in December 2024 that the UN General Assembly passed a resolution that detailed the use of AI in the military domain and ‘its implications for international peace and security’, though it should be noted that there is no reference to the use of AI in the context of nuclear weapons.
When asked whether the issue of AI in the military-nuclear nexus would be discussed during the NPT conference, Nakamitsu noted that the integration of AI in the nuclear command and communications channel is “beginning to be discussed on different platforms”, and further consultations would also be held in Geneva this year. The NPT conference may not be the forum for further discussions around this issue or regarding AI governance in the military context. However, this is something that state parties recognise will require investigation, including when it comes to placing guardrails on the use of AI in the military domain.
“There is an increasing awareness that when it comes to nuclear weapons’ command and control, obviously humans have to retain oversight,” Nakamitsu told Inter Press Service.
The challenges facing the international world, particularly in the context of the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, are placing “significant stress on the treaty,” according to Nakamitsu.
But it is also what makes the NPT review conference and its outcomes all the more relevant. A shared understanding that nuclear proliferation will only lead to further instability and insecurity is what will push member states to engage in critical dialogue over the next four weeks. This must also yield a shared commitment to uphold the principles of the NPT by the end.
IPS UN Bureau Report
LONDON, Apr 27 2026 (IPS) - Yasmin Ullah, from Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority, is determined to see justice. On 13 April, she filed a complaint alleging genocide against Myanmar’s president, Min Aung Hlaing, to Indonesia’s Attorney General’s Office. Min Aung Hlaing led the 2021 coup that ousted a democratically elected government and this month was named president following a sham election held amid intense repression, rubber stamping the army’s continuing grip on power. However secure he appears in his position, Yasmin Ullah’s legal action offers hope his impunity may not be guaranteed.
The complaint accuses Min Aung Hlaing of genocide against Rohingya people, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group denied citizenship despite being long established in Myanmar. He’s accused of being responsible for the burning of Rohingya villages, forced evictions, killings and mass rape in a 2017 military operation, during which around 24,000 Rohingya people were killed and over 700,000 forced to flee. The UN’s fact-finding mission and its Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar have extensively documented atrocities. Civil society has played a key role in gathering testimonies from survivors and preserving evidence.
The case was made possible by changes to Indonesia’s criminal code that came into effect in January. While civil society has raised concerns about revisions to other parts of the code that restrict Indonesian people’s ability to speak out and protest, this particular change stands out as a positive development, enabling people to bring charges against alleged perpetrators of atrocities in other countries under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
Universal jurisdiction on the rise
Universal jurisdiction applies to crimes under international law, such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, on the grounds that these crimes are an offence against humanity as a whole and as such aren’t bound by borders.
Some states, including France and Germany, have passed laws to enable universal jurisdiction prosecutions. Many powerful states however still refuse to recognise the principle, citing national sovereignty, the long-established doctrine of immunity for heads of state and the potential for prosecutions to be politically motivated.
Yet the question of whether government leaders should be immune from prosecution has increasingly been contested. Immunity wasn’t granted when leaders of Sierra Leone and former Yugoslavia were prosecuted for crimes committed during civil wars, and the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), removed the principle of immunity where it has jurisdiction. Ironically, the Trump administration, which resists international accountability over its officials, may have contributed to further eroding the doctrine of immunity by abducting Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and placing him on trial for drug trafficking.
Universal jurisdiction cases have increased since the end of the Cold War. Belgium, Finland and Germany convicted people for their role in the Rwanda genocide. Switzerland secured the first guilty verdict for crimes committed in the Liberian civil war, while France convicted another Liberian war criminal in 2022. Germany convicted a Bosnian paramilitary soldier of genocide and, in 2021 and 2022, found two Syrian officials guilty of atrocity crimes.
Hopes of justice
Rohingya people have no hope of justice in a country that refuses even to recognise them as citizens, so diaspora civil society organisations are seeking it wherever they find opportunities. In 2025, an Argentinian court issued arrest warrants against Min Aung Hlaing and other senior Myanmar officials on crimes against humanity and genocide charges, in a case brought by a Rohingya organisation. Earlier this year, a human rights organisation filed a criminal case against the Myanmar regime in Timor-Leste. When authorities appointed a senior prosecutor to examine the case, Myanmar retaliated by expelling Timor-Leste’s ambassador.
These efforts complement proceedings in international courts. In 2024, the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Min Aung Hlaing for crimes against humanity, while in January, hearings began at the International Court of Justice in a case brought by the Gambian government accusing Myanmar of breaching the Genocide Convention. It isn’t a question of choosing between national jurisdictions and international courts, but rather of taking every avenue available to demand justice.
Universal jurisdiction has its limits. Those accused tend to be safe when they hold power; when states have successfully prosecuted perpetrators, it’s after they’ve lost the power that enabled their crimes. Currently, this means attempts to hold Israel’s leaders accountable for the genocide in Gaza, such as arrest warrants a Turkish court issued against 37 officials, only have symbolic value. Cases motivated by political point-scoring also risk discrediting the principle, as when a body created by Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad found an array of US officials guilty in absentia, without legal basis or consequence.
Actions under universal jurisdiction, when targeted at evident offenders, can nonetheless help build moral pressure and signal that justice may eventually come. At a time when the brutal and illegitimate Myanmar regime is buttressed by China, India and Russia, and with the USA easing its pressure in pursuit of economic benefits, it matters that other countries keep holding the line, isolating the junta and exposing its atrocities.
It matters all the more when pressure comes from Southeast Asian countries, depriving the Myanmar regime of the excuse that human rights accountability is a western imposition. Two members of the Association of Southeast Asian nations, Indonesia and Timor-Leste, have now taken action against a fellow member. But other attempts in the region have faltered. Philippine authorities declined to proceed when five survivors of atrocities filed a case in 2023, while an investigation civil society filed with Indonesia’s national human rights commission that same year, alleging that Indonesian companies were supplying military equipment to Myanmar, has so far seen no progress.
As 2026 president of the UN Human Rights Council, Indonesia is uniquely placed to take the lead in the pursuit of justice for atrocity crimes. Indonesian authorities must treat this case as a priority and give it the attention and resources it needs.
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
WASHINGTON DC, Apr 27 2026 (IPS) - Sub-Saharan Africa’s economies entered 2026 with significant momentum. The region had notched its fastest growth rate in 10 years—4.5 percent in 2025—buoyed by reduced macroeconomic imbalances, rising investment levels, and a generally supportive external environment.
Countries such as Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, and Rwanda led the charge, with growth exceeding 6 percent. The median inflation rate fell to about 3.5 percent and public debt levels had started to decline. These gains were hard-won, the fruit of politically difficult but meaningful reforms such as exchange-rate realignments, better spending allocation, and tighter monetary policies.
Progress on the fiscal front has been particularly impressive. The region’s general government primary balance has been steadily improving and is now near balance. By contrast, primary deficits in both advanced economies and other emerging markets remained noticeably wider in 2025 than before the pandemic.
Sub-Saharan Africa achieved this consolidation while simultaneously sustaining reasonably decent growth and bringing down inflation, thanks to bold reforms and notwithstanding headwinds from elevated global uncertainty and much reduced concessional financing.
And just as the region has begun to secure these gains, the war in the Middle East has brought a significant new shock that threatens to stall, or even unwind, that progress. It has pushed up global prices for oil, gas, and fertilizer, disrupted trade routes, and tightened financial conditions. These developments are weighing on the region’s outlook.
We expect growth to slow to 4.3 percent this year, some 0.3 percentage points below pre-war forecasts, while inflation is projected to rise. That may sound benign by global standards, but for a region where rapid growth is imperative to create millions of new jobs for the rapidly expanding population, any hit to growth is problematic.
Oil importers, many of them low-income or fragile states, face worsening trade balances and rising living costs. Oil exporters may benefit from higher oil prices, but remain exposed to volatility and the temptation of procyclical spending.
And the risks are mounting.
A prolonged conflict could further inflate commodity prices, trigger a risk-off episode in global markets, and force abrupt fiscal adjustments in countries with large refinancing needs.
In a severe downside scenario, as detailed in the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, regional output this year could fall 0.6 percent below pre-war forecasts, with oil importers suffering the most, and inflation could surge by an additional 2.4 percentage points.
The human costs are equally stark. Food insecurity looms large: the region remains acutely vulnerable to food-price shocks, and the war has already driven up fertilizer and shipping costs. A 20 percent rise in international food prices could push more than 20 million people into food insecurity and leave 2 million children under age 5 acutely malnourished.
Climate shocks intensify the strain—the recent floods in Mozambique and Madagascar serve as a reminder of the region’s deep vulnerability to weather disruptions.
The unprecedented decline in foreign aid strips away a critical buffer. Unlike past contractions, 2025 marked a sharp structural break in aid flows, with cuts falling hardest on the most fragile states and threatening to unravel essential services—healthcare above all—in countries with no alternative source of finance.
Debt vulnerabilities are also rising. More than one-third of countries are at high risk of, or already in, debt distress. In 21 countries, fiscal deficits exceed the levels that are needed to stabilize debt. Rising interest bills and dwindling concessional finance are inflating debt-service burdens and crowding out essential development spending.
In some cases, growing reliance on domestic borrowing has deepened ties between government debt and bank balance sheets, raising the specter of financial instability.
In this fraught environment, policymakers must navigate competing pressures. In the short term, they should anchor inflation expectations, shield the most vulnerable from rising prices, and avoid procyclical fiscal policies.
Oil exporters should treat windfalls as fleeting, using them to rebuild buffers and strengthen social safety nets. Oil importers with fiscal space can offer targeted, time-bound support; those without must focus on increasing the efficiency of spending and boosting domestic revenues.
Even as policymakers grapple with the immediate shock, the medium-term reform agenda cannot wait. The premium on accelerating structural reforms—to boost growth and resilience—is now even higher. Improving the business climate, strengthening governance, and reforming state-owned enterprises, especially in energy, transport, and telecommunications, can help attract investment and lift productivity. Deepening regional integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area could bolster supply-chain resilience and expand markets for local producers.
Digital transformation offers promise, but also highlights the region’s infrastructure gaps. Artificial intelligence is already helping farmers boost yields, doctors improve diagnoses, and students master difficult concepts faster.
But scaling such innovations will require investing in electricity, internet access, digital skills, and data governance. Today, just 53 percent of the region’s population has access to electricity, and only 38 percent to the internet.
International role
The international community has a role to play, especially when the economic troubles facing many countries stem largely from shocks beyond their control. Predictable financing, technical assistance, and capacity-building support can help countries weather current storms and sustain reform momentum.
Aid should be prioritized for low-income and fragile states, where alternative sources of finance are scarce. The IMF is already deeply engaged, with programs in 22 of the region’s 45 countries, and stands ready to scale up support for members facing acute balance-of-payments pressures linked to the war.
The optimism that greeted 2026 was not misplaced: it was earned, through years of difficult but necessary reform. The fallout from the war in the Middle East is now testing that progress, but it does not need to erase it. African policymakers have demonstrated they can deliver under pressure. The choices they make now—whether to hold the line on inflation, protect the vulnerable from the worst of the shock, and resist the temptation to unwind the reforms that got them here—will determine whether these hard-won gains endure.
The job of the international community is to support that effort. But the boldness and resolve that the moment demands must come from within the region itself.
This IMF blog is based on the April 2026 Regional Economic Outlook for sub-Saharan Africa, “Hard-Won Gains Under Pressure,” prepared by Cleary Haines, Michele Fornino, Saad Quayyum, Can Sever, Nikola Spatafora, and Felix Vardy.
IPS UN Bureau
SEATTLE. USA, Apr 24 2026 (IPS) - This is the second part of a three-part commentary. Read Part 1: No Kings? Meet King Don and King John – Part 1 of 3 to start from the beginning.
Habeas tattoo?Among Trump’s most outrageous assaults on the rule of law has been an array of legal wrecking balls demolishing due process, habeas corpus, related foundational rights, and the separation of powers in the bargain.
For many years, his target of choice for these efforts has been immigrants. But in his second term, not only has he escalated his persecution of those with and without protected immigration status, he has also increasingly attacked the rights of U.S. citizens to free speech, assembly, the press, due process, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. The targets have included journalists and news sources, academics and universities, state and local governments, corporate officials, military officers, Federal employees, and members of Congress.
One operation of Trump’s mass deportation machine stands out as a template for negating the rule of law: the summary removal, without anything resembling due process, of 261 mainly Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo – Terrorism Confinement Center). They were given no prior notice of their deportation and were not told their destination. For 137 Venezuelans, The Trump administration invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA) which, it claimed, allowed summary deportations without recourse to habeas corpus or other due process. The other 101 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans were also summarily deported, under uncertain statutory authority. Once in CECOT, many were disappeared indefinitely without appeal, held incommunicado without contact with families or attorneys, and routinely tortured.
The Alien Enemies Act allows nationals of enemy countries during wartime to be summarily expelled or detained. It was last invoked during World War Two to imprison American citizens of Japanese ancestry in concentration camps, an injustice for which the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 formally apologized.
President Trump justified the use of the AEA because, he claimed, the Venezuelans were members of Tren de Aragua (TdA – Train of Aragua), a metastasized former prison gang. He claimed that TdA was a “narco-terrorist” organization controlled by the Venezuelan government that had invaded the U.S. and was in a state of war with this country. He used these assertions to justify invoking the AEA, posting on Truth Social: “These are the monsters sent into our Country by Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats. How dare they! Thank you to El Salvador and, in particular, President Bukele, for your understanding of this horrible situation.” In effect, Trump was trying to outsource his violations of constitutional rights to a small friendly dictatorship.
On March 15, 2025, the date the removal flights were scheduled to take the detainees to El Salvador, the non-governmental American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency petition in federal court to stay the removals. Federal Judge James Boasberg, a George W. Bush appointee, immediately ordered the deportations paused. All the deportees, he ruled, had to be brought back to the U.S. and offered due process to defend themselves against removal.
Although Boasberg demanded that even planes already in the air be turned around, the Trump administration said that the orders came too late and it couldn’t recall the planes. It also claimed to have no control over El Salvador, although it had paid that country at least $6 million to imprison the men. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, the self-described “world’s coolest dictator”, posted sardonically on X: “Oopsie!” The court rejected all of these arguments, but nevertheless the planes delivered the deportees to the Salvadoran mega-prison.
Later in March, Boasberg told the government that it must prove that those targeted for removal are in fact “alien enemies” and allow them to challenge the designation before deporting them. The Trump administration ignored the court’s ruling, and went on expelling more Venezuelans and Salvadorans to El Salvador, arguing that courts had no jurisdiction over what it called foreign policy.
In this stalemate, some observers questioned whether the executive branch was effectively placing itself above constitutional restraints such as habeas corpus by intentionally ignoring valid orders from the judiciary.
Trump and Congressional Republicans bitterly attacked Judge Boasberg and called for his impeachment. This prompted Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to issue a rare rebuke, reminding them that impeachment is not an “appropriate response” when disagreeing with a judicial decision.
An appeals court ruled in March that the Trump administration was denying the detainees’ due process. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act,” commented one judge.
In April, the Supreme Court allowed the government to continue deportations on the technicality that the detainees had filed for relief against summary removal in the wrong court. But it also affirmed that “an individual subject to detention and removal under that statute [the AEA] is entitled to ‘judicial review’” and advance notice.
Outside of the courts, the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch accused the U.S. and Salvadoran governments of “enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention” of the Venezuelan deportees. “These enforced disappearances are a grave violation of international human rights law,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at HRW. “The cruelty of the US and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families.”
Several news organizations investigated the alleged criminal records and gang affiliations of the Venezuelan men, and found them mostly non-existent. The New York Times reported that “most of the men do not have criminal records in the United States or elsewhere in the region, beyond immigration offenses” and “very few of them appear to have any clear, documented links to the Venezuelan gang.”
The ACLU filed Homeland Security’s “Alien Enemies Act Validation Guide” as an exhibit in a lawsuit. Verónica Egui Brito of the Miami Herald analyzed this “scorecard”, which the agency had used to determine whether the accused were members of Tren de Aragua.
It turned out that two of the criteria that supposedly indicated gang membership were certain tattoos and “urban street wear” such as jerseys and sneakers featuring basketball great Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls. But experts on Latin American gangs pointed out that TdA did not use specific tattoo images to identify its members. USA Today reported that internal Federal Bureau of Investigations and Department of Homeland Security documents have for years questioned the validity of using tattoos to identify TdA members. As to the Jordan and Bulls merch, it has long been among the most popular street fashions in much of the world, and could probably be used to falsely accuse thousands of young men in most cities of gang membership.
The whole “validation guide” appeared less a serious tool for criminology than the Trumpian equivalent of a Dick Tracy Magic Decoder, designed to help immigration “crimestoppers” detain anyone whose markings, clothing, accent, or skin tone struck them as suspicious.
Some of the men’s families also challenged the deportations, denying that the men were gang members or criminals at all. A few deportees became causes célèbres.
Most notoriously, the U.S. government admitted that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man with a U.S.-citizen wife and child, had been removed by mistake. The Supreme Court ordered that the government bring him back to the U.S. Yet even after that, the Trump administration tried to prevent Abrego Garcia from returning, and at first Bukele flatly refused to let him go. After Abrego Garcia was finally repatriated, the Trump administration tried to charge him with an unrelated minor infraction, then to deport him to one of several African countries. Costa Rica offered to take Abrego Garcia and he accepted, but the Trump administration refused. In February 2026, a judge ruled that ICE could not re-detain him. But the government continues to litigate his case.
In the face of strong exculpatory evidence for most of the deportees, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem opined: “They should stay there [in the Salvadoran prison] for the rest of their lives.”
Finally, after four months of imprisoning the Venezuelans in CECOT under its proprietary interpretation of the Alien Enemies Act, the Trump administration abruptly sent most of them back to Venezuela in a swap of prisoners.
In December 2025, Judge Boasberg rejected most of the government’s arguments on the merits of the case, including Trump’s premises for invoking the AEA, and found that the U.S. denied the men due process. Finally in February, he issued an order that any of the deported Venezuelans who still wanted to challenge their removal had to be allowed to return to the U.S., with travel expenses paid by the U.S. government, to continue their immigration cases in court. The judge and the Venezuelans’ counsel, however, recognized that only a few of the men were likely to accept the offer.
In the emerging reality, there was a remarkable lack of evidence that any of the 200-plus deportees were actually members of Tren de Aragua, or that more than a handful had committed any serious crime. Beyond that, the Trump administration’s cases rested on a series of evidentiary dominos that cascaded down with a few pushes from legal and journalistic investigations.
In presidential debates during 2024, Trump falsely claimed that members of Tren de Aragua had “taken over” Aurora, Colorado, and other U.S. cities.
In fact, it turned out that a small number of armed young men, whom the police had not linked to TdA, had committed burglaries and firearm offenses against the residents of a couple of run-down apartment complexes with some Venezuelan residents. One of them, and nine others suspected of ties with the gang, were arrested by the police. The Aurora police chief told USA Today that “the city is not taken over by gangs”, and that, as in most other metropolitan areas, there were gangs there before any Venezuelans moved in.
Further investigations by several news organizations found that TdA is not a major drug smuggling enterprise, just a former prison gang that was evicted from prison and spread out to prey largely on Venezuelan refugees in South America. Around 90 percent of the nearly 8 million Venezuelans who have left their country went elsewhere in Latin America; only about 10 percent came to the U.S. A national survey by USA Today of federal, state and local law enforcement found that, despite claims of thousands of TdA gangsters, authorities had arrested fewer than 135 confirmed members. These have mainly committed petty street crimes such as purse-snatching, retail theft, and jewelry store robberies, many against other Venezuelans.
TdA bears little resemblance to the major cartels and maras of Mexico and Central America. These operate more like big transnational corporations heavy with advanced armaments, lawyers, and accountants. They are the ones who produce and smuggle most of the drugs entering the U.S., particularly fentanyl, the most deadly. The small gangs of Venezuelan petty thieves in a few cities were well within the capabilities of local law enforcement to dismantle with normal police work.
A key element of White House arguments for invoking the Alien Enemies Act was that Tren de Aragua was controlled by the Venezuelan government. However, this claim was also contradicted in an internal assessment by an elite forum of U.S. spy agencies. The National Intelligence Council concluded in a “Sense of the Community Memorandum”: “ [T]he Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.”
Joe Kent, Trump’s former head of counterterrorism, asked the Council to reconsider these findings. It did so, and came back with the same conclusions. Not long after, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard removed Michael Collins, a veteran intelligence analyst, from his post as acting chair of the Council.
The affair suggested that Kent, Gabbard, White House advisor Steven Miller, and their crew were trying to provide Trump with bespoke intelligence, custom tailored to fit whatever fabricated casus belli he was trying to invent. But some career intelligence professionals pushed back, calling bullshit on their manipulations.
Other dominos fell as more Trump claims were discredited by well-established geopolitical realities. The President claimed that he had saved tens of thousands of lives by dismantling Tren de Aragua and keeping drugs out of the U.S. However, the only drug responsible for large numbers of overdose deaths in the U.S. is fentanyl, a powerful opioid, which is almost exclusively produced in and exported from Mexico.
Venezuela reportedly plays little to no role in the fentanyl trade. Nor is it a major producer of cocaine or other drugs. It is mainly a trans-shipment corridor for cocaine from other South American countries headed for Europe, not the U.S.
In the end, the courts upheld the rights of some of the Venezuelan detainees trampled by Trump. But the long delays and tortures they suffered made those rights seem more aspirational than enforceable.
Beyond the Venezuelans, the rejection by the Trump administration of immigrants’ rights to habeas corpus and due process has been pandemic across the U.S.
An investigation by Reuters found that since October 2025, hundreds of judges have ruled more than 4,400 times that the government is unlawfully detaining immigrants, yet the government has continued the illegal detentions undeterred. This ignoring of or delay in complying with court orders has also made a travesty of the separation of powers, which requires that the executive branch respect the rulings of the judiciary.
A federal judge ordered the release of one such detainee, writing: “It is appalling that the Government insists that this Court should redefine or completely disregard the current law as it is clearly written.”
Many of these attacks on immigrants seem to be obvious violations of U.S. and international immigration laws. While some have been successfully remedied in court, they may also be a disturbing test run: the President has openly floated the idea of deporting U.S. citizens who have been convicted of serious crimes to El Salvador and imprisoning them there indefinitely without due process.
He has also tried to criminalize assistance to immigrants by arresting and, in a few notorious cases, killing or gravely injuring U.S. citizens who were trying to defend their neighbors against violence and harassment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other immigration agencies.
“The path to authoritarianism is being built on the backs of immigrants”, asserted Kiko Matos, President of the National Immigration Law Center, in TIME magazine. “While [the Trump administration is] ostensibly targeting immigrants, what is being constructed is both the infrastructure and compliance that will facilitate a broader loss of rights for all Americans.”
There’s a familiar progression that Trump and his cadre have inflicted on their shifting scapegoats. They start by branding immigrants as dangerous individual criminals, a go-to move of nativists for centuries. Then they escalate to alleging that they are gangsters working for foreign cartels. Then they try to link those cartels to an enemy government and declare them “narco-terrorists”.
Moving on to other targets, it’s easy to apply this field-tested stratagem to those who Trump calls “the enemy within”. And so protesters, activists, civil society groups, opposition politicians and other critics end up labeled “domestic terrorists”.
A similar public-relations gambit was used against the crews and passengers of small boats in the Caribbean north of Venezuela and the eastern Pacific.
This is the second part of a three-part commentary. Read Part 1: No Kings? Meet King Don and King John – Part 1 of 3 to start from the beginning.
To be continued in Part 3 of 3
About the author
SRINAGAR, Apr 24 2026 (IPS) - A high-stakes international summit in Colombia starting today (April 24) is expected to sharpen global efforts to phase out fossil fuels, as governments, scientists and Indigenous leaders warn that the world is running out of time to avert irreversible climate damage.
During a virtual press briefing on April 16, Colombia’s Environment Ministry and a diverse panel of experts outlined expectations from the upcoming Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Summit in Santa Marta. The event is being positioned as a critical platform to accelerate energy transition and address mounting pressure from Indigenous communities living on the frontlines of extraction.
It was at the Belém Climate Conference in 2025, wherein a coalition of over 80 countries unanimously decided to act decisively to phase out fossil fuels that have been driving three quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions.
On the sidelines, 24 countries went further: they issued the Belém Declaration, pledging to work collectively toward a just, orderly, and equitable transition aligned with 1.5°C pathways. To this end, Colombia and the Netherlands volunteered to co-host the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels.
The Conference is taking place from 24 to 29 April 2026 in Santa Marta, Colombia. The organisers invited 97 national governments and 30 subnational governments. The high-level segment convenes on April 28–29, 2026.
“We are in a moment of no return. It is clear that there is climate change and that there is no denialism. This is the moment… to accelerate the transition and the progressive elimination of fossil fuels,” said Luz Dary Carmona Moreno, Colombia’s Vice Minister for Environmental Land Use Planning.
The summit comes at a time of growing geopolitical tension and continued global dependence on fossil fuels. Carmona noted that conflicts and economic instability continue to be shaped by oil, gas, and coal and stressed that there is an urgent need for structural change.
“The economy continues depending on fossil fuels,” she said, pointing to global crises that reflect the entrenched role of hydrocarbons.
Colombia has framed the Santa Marta conference around three strategic pillars. The first focuses on overcoming global dependence on fossil fuels. The second addresses transformation of supply and demand systems. The third seeks to rethink multilateral cooperation frameworks.
Carmona emphasised that the conference aims to produce a concrete roadmap, backed by science, public participation, and political will.
“This conference seeks common points to accelerate the transition, concrete actions and enablers that allow that acceleration,” she said.
The event has already drawn strong international participation. According to Colombian officials, 45 countries have confirmed attendance, along with 13 ministers and a broad coalition of civil society groups, indigenous organisations, academics, and private sector actors.
More than 2,800 participants, including grassroots organisations, Indigenous communities, youth groups, and labour unions, have registered to take part.
Indigenous Leaders Warn of “Unjust Transition”
For Indigenous leaders, however, the urgency of the climate crisis is matched by frustration over what they describe as a gap between rhetoric and reality.
Oswaldo Muca, General Coordinator of the Organisation of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), said communities continue to bear the brunt of extraction despite promises of a “just transition”.
“We are very concerned. We talk about a just transition, but in practice it is not true,” Muca said.
He described ongoing environmental degradation in Indigenous territories, including illegal mining, deforestation and mercury contamination.
“Mining continues. Extraction continues. Deforestation continues. The territories and Indigenous peoples continue suffering this problem, and it is becoming more serious every day,” he said.
Muca also criticised the lack of direct benefits for local communities, noting that profits from extraction often leave the country while environmental damage remains.
“The resources do not reach Indigenous territories but they destroy the territory and leave the damage,” he said.
He called for Indigenous participation at every stage of policymaking, from design to implementation, across technical, political, legal and financial dimensions.
Science Points to Sharp Cuts
Scientific findings presented during the briefing reinforced the scale of transformation required.
Dr Marcel Llavero Pasquina, a researcher at the University of Barcelona, said limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require drastic reductions in fossil fuel production.
“Eighty-six percent of oil and gas reserves currently under production should be prematurely decommissioned,” he said.
Even under a less ambitious 2-degree scenario, at least 12% of producing reserves would need to be phased out.
Pasquina also warned that no new fossil fuel exploration is compatible with global climate targets. “At least 10,000 of the existing oil and gas extraction contracts should be cancelled,” he said.
He highlighted the economic tensions shaping climate negotiations, noting that fossil fuel companies stand to lose trillions of dollars under transition scenarios.
“Fossil fuel companies… have a material and quantifiable conflict of interest,” he said, arguing they should be excluded from climate policymaking.
At the same time, governments face significant fiscal challenges, with potential revenue losses estimated at US$117 trillion globally under a 1.5-degree pathway. Still, Pasquina stressed that these costs are outweighed by the human and environmental toll of inaction.
“These transition costs are dwarfed by the climate costs communities would otherwise suffer,” he said.
Policy Momentum Builds
Despite the scale of the challenge, policy experts pointed to growing momentum worldwide.
Paola Yanguas Parra, a policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said governments have already begun implementing measures to restrict fossil fuel expansion.
“We found… 58 active restrictions, which go from bans and moratoria to exploration and licensing,” she said.
These measures include protections for ecologically and culturally significant areas such as the Amazon, as well as restrictions on extraction methods like fracking.
Yanguas Parra noted that such policies often make economic sense in addition to environmental benefits.
“You would take a huge environmental, social and climate cost… for something that would not even make you enough profit,” she said, referring to unviable extraction projects in remote regions.
She added that the summit offers an opportunity to shift global discussions from whether to transition away from fossil fuels to how to implement that transition effectively.
“This coalition will focus on implementation, on learning from each other,” she said.
Amazon at a Crossroads
Speakers from across the Amazon basin warned that the region is increasingly being treated as a new frontier for fossil fuel expansion.
Alana Manchineri, an Indigenous leader from Brazil, described the climate crisis as an immediate reality rather than a distant threat.
“There is no more space for delays,” she said.
She warned that oil and gas projects are already causing widespread damage, including water contamination, biodiversity loss and rising conflict.
“It is not just environmental damage but violations of rights and ways of life,” she said.
According to Indigenous organisations, more than 320,000 square kilometres of Indigenous land in the Amazon basin are already affected by oil and gas blocks.
Manchineri stressed that any transition must fully incorporate Indigenous knowledge and leadership.
“This path will only be legitimate and effective with the full participation of Indigenous peoples,” she said.
Beyond COP: Complement, Not Replacement
Panellists repeatedly emphasised that the Santa Marta summit is not intended to replace existing UN climate processes but to complement them.
“There are groups of countries… that have gathered to discuss more focused issues,” Yanguas Parra said, describing the summit as part of a broader ecosystem of climate cooperation.
Pasquina offered a more critical view, arguing that while UN climate negotiations have produced frameworks like the Paris Agreement, they have failed to curb rising emissions.
“The COP has been a great success on paper. In reality, emissions have only been increasing,” he said.
He suggested that initiatives like Santa Marta could increase pressure on countries that have resisted stronger action.
A Test of Political Will
As preparations intensify, expectations for the summit remain high. Colombian officials say the final outcome will be a report outlining actionable steps and mechanisms to accelerate transition.
“We want the report not to remain just another document. We expect people to turn it into action,” Carmona said.
For many participants, the success of the summit will depend on whether it delivers concrete commitments rather than broad declarations.
Indigenous leaders, in particular, say the credibility of the process hinges on real inclusion and tangible change on the ground.
“If we do not take real and effective actions. We can talk about a just transition, but in reality, other mechanisms will continue destroying the territory,” Muca warned.
IPS UN Bureau Report