The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
ANTALYA, Türkiye, Nov 11 2026 (IPS) - As COP31 gets underway in Antalya, two realities demand attention. The World Meteorological Organisation reports that 2015–2025 were the 11 hottest years on record, with 2025 about 1.43°C above pre-industrial levels.
The World Health Organisation projects that the number of people aged 60 and over will rise from one billion in 2020 to 1.4 billion in 2030 and 2.1 billion in 2050, roughly one in five people.
These trends are connected: together, they define the population that climate policy must serve. Yet representation in climate negotiations has barely changed.
The UN climate process recognises nine NGO constituencies, including women and gender, youth, Indigenous Peoples and farmers, but none for older people. These constituencies coordinate interventions, nominate speakers and facilitate participation in mandated events. An older minister at the negotiating table cannot be assumed to represent older people facing drought, displacement or unaffordable electricity.
Source: WHO, Ageing and health, 2030 and 2050 values are projections.
There are reasons to defend the COP process. Dubai’s COP28 operationalised the loss and damage fund and agreed a transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems. Baku’s COP29 established a goal of at least $300 billion annually for developing countries by 2035, with developed countries taking the lead, alongside efforts to scale finance from all sources to $1.3 trillion a year. Belém’s COP30 called for tripling adaptation finance by 2035, adopted 59 adaptation indicators and agreed a just transition mechanism.
Yet appearing on a list of vulnerable groups is a limited form of inclusion. Recognition must bring authority, resources and accountability across climate institutions, long after a summit closes
These decisions offer a route from dialogue through consensus towards delivery, although targets are not disbursements and promises are not protection.
The COP31 agenda brings finance, adaptation measurement, emissions cuts and a just transition into focus, alongside loss and damage funding. Its action priorities include food security, resilient cities, health systems, clean energy and youth and education. Each has an ageing dimension. The test is whether the institutions delivering these priorities explicitly recognise older people as rights holders and partners, and reflect that recognition in investment.
Recognition has consequences. Women have a Gender Action Plan; Indigenous Peoples have dedicated institutional spaces; children and youth have an established constituency and a youth climate champion in the presidency. These gains were won through sustained advocacy and remain incomplete.
They demonstrate that institutions can change. Recognition exists in fragments: the Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda identifies older people among populations requiring heat protection. But being named in a vulnerability list is a limited form of inclusion. Recognition must carry authority, resources and accountability across climate institutions, long after a summit closes.
Source: Falchetta, G., De Cian, E., Sue Wing, I., & Carr, D. (2024). Global projections of heat exposure of older adults. Nature Communications, 15, 3678.
WHO reports that heat-related mortality among people over 65 increased approximately 85% between 2000–2004 and 2017–2021. Europe’s summer of 2022 brought an estimated 61,672 heat-related deaths. The 2025 Lancet Countdown, summarised by WHO, estimates an annual global heat death toll of 546,000 across all ages. “Every fraction of a degree of warming costs lives and livelihoods,” WHO’s Jeremy Farrar warned.
The risks accumulate. Heat can aggravate heart, lung and kidney disease. Isolation, inaccessible transport, inadequate housing and interrupted electricity or health services can turn exposure into catastrophe.
An early warning delivered only through a smartphone, or an evacuation plan that assumes everyone can walk, can exclude precisely those it is meant to protect.
A 2024 Nature Communications study projects that by 2050 more than 23% of people aged 69 and over will live in climates where the hottest days exceed 37.5°C, compared with 14% in 2020. Depending on the scenario, an additional 177–246 million older adults could face this acute heat exposure.
Population ageing magnifies the consequences of delayed adaptation. Every clinic without backup power, every unshaded settlement and every inaccessible shelter becomes a longer-term liability as the population it serves changes.
Ageism or institutional inertia?Is this exclusion ageism? The UN’s Global Report on Ageism estimated that one in two people worldwide holds ageist attitudes towards older people. That does not establish climate negotiators’ motives. It does make it implausible to assume that climate institutions are insulated from a prejudice embedded elsewhere in society.
Perhaps overloaded institutions have developed inclusion fatigue: another constituency, another consultation, another demand on scarce finance.
But population ageing is not a fashionable new issue. It is a foreseeable transformation of the societies that these institutions exist to serve. The division between “today’s older generation” and “tomorrow’s climate victims” is also false. Someone aged 40 today will be 64 in 2050. Adaptation that neglects ageing fails both people who are older now and those who will grow old under harsher conditions.
The people still tending the landThe case for inclusion goes beyond preventing deaths. Older people continue to produce food and sustain the knowledge on which adaptation depends. Eurostat found that 33.2% of EU farm managers were at least 65 in 2020; they managed 16.9% of utilised agricultural land.
Furthermore, Japan’s agriculture ministry reports that 71.7% of its core agricultural workers were 65 or older in 2024, with an average age of 69.2. These are different statistical categories, not a global comparison. Both findings expose the folly of designing agricultural resilience without older producers. In remote rangelands, forests and mountain environments, experience can be an adaptation resource.
UNESCO’s African climate work identifies elders as holders of detailed, often undocumented knowledge about weather and coping practices. The IPCC finds that exchanges between Indigenous elders and youth can strengthen adaptive capacity, and that pastoralists’ local knowledge can complement scientific research.
The ecological stakes are substantial: IPBES estimates that Indigenous Peoples traditionally own, manage, use or occupy at least a quarter of global land. That figure describes Indigenous Peoples collectively, not older people alone. It nevertheless underlines the importance of supporting the elders who help transmit ecological knowledge within these communities. Excluding elders can weaken the transfer of knowledge needed to sustain landscapes. Their expertise should be tested alongside contemporary climate science, supported and remunerated, rather than treated as a free substitute for investment.
Recognition must change where the money goesClimate funding criteria should recognise older people and include them in decisions. The Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund should require proposals to assess age-related risks, consult older people’s associations and fund relevant measures.
Country programmes should support heat plans with home outreach, accessible cooling and evacuation, and resilient primary health and care services. Projects should report spending and outcomes by age, sex and disability, distinguishing older age groups.
Loss and Damage applicants should involve older people in assessing losses and selecting responses, including accessible temporary housing, livelihood recovery, and continued access to medicines and care. Assessments should capture non-economic losses, including cultural knowledge and community ties, not only wages and property.
Eligibility and delivery must not depend on employment records, land titles or digital access. The Santiago Network should help countries and communities assess older people’s losses and plan responses. National adaptation plans and early warning systems should identify who needs accessible information, transport or assistance, and release finance when agreed forecast triggers are met. Fund older people’s associations to plan, conduct outreach and monitor outcomes.
Finally, the UNFCCC should establish a transparent, time-bound pathway towards recognising an older people’s constituency. Meanwhile, governments and climate bodies should include representatives of older women, Indigenous elders and older people with disabilities in national delegations, adaptation consultations and relevant advisory processes, with accessible participation and travel support.
Intergenerational programmes should pay elders and young people to combine ecological knowledge with climate science. None of this requires postponing action until another negotiating agenda is created. It requires institutions to recognise the demographic reality already before them and make existing commitments serve it.
The writing is on the wall: the world is growing hotter and older. How many more summits will pass before climate institutions let that reality shape who decides, what is funded and whose lives are protected?
Hari Krishna Nibanupudi is a global climate change and ageing adviser with HelpAge International
Excerpt:
The world is growing hotter and older. Climate institutions must recognise both realities in whose voices count and where their money goes.
ANTALYA, Türkiye, Nov 11 2026 (IPS) - Gabriel Sheunopa Manyangadze holds a placard reading “No nuclear spin, let renewables win” as a campaigner leads protesters against nuclear energy in Africa at the United Nations climate summit in Antalya, Turkey.
The activists warned African leaders of the investments required to establish nuclear energy and the dangers its waste poses.
“We have realised that when people put nuclear forward as a solution, they are only looking at it from a short-term perspective. They do not look at the long-term effects that include pollution,” Manyangadze, a food and climate justice manager at the Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute based in South Africa, told IPS during a protest against nuclear energy as a climate solution at the ongoing Conference of the Parties, or COP31.
South Africa is the only country on the continent that has a commercial nuclear power plant.
Located in Melkbosstrand near Cape Town, the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station has an installed capacity of around 1,854 MW, providing roughly 5% of the country’s electricity. Its units will operate until the 2040s.
But there are concerns about the sustainability of this nuclear power plant.
False Climate Solution
Manyangadze said the power generation company is struggling to dispose of nuclear waste.
“They are dumping the liquid waste and the solid waste that is being generated from the power plant in a place called Vaalputs, but the area is still radioactive, affecting the environment in the surrounding areas,” he said.
The Vaalputs National Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility is South Africa’s primary and only radioactive waste disposal site in the Northern Cape. The 10,000-hectare site handles near-surface disposal of solid and solidified low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste from Eskom’s Koeberg Nuclear Power Station. Nuclear waste remains radioactive for up to 300,000 years.
Though the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) licenses and regulates it, with continuous environmental and seismic monitoring showing no detectable radiological impact outside safe limits since operations began, farmers fear leaks into nearby water could affect agricultural productivity.
Manyangadze said that communities who live around this area have not prepared for a disaster. “We work with the people around the nuclear facility, and they are not clear on what to do in case of a disaster,” he says.
There are concerns about the capacity of African governments to handle and prevent a nuclear disaster.
There have been major nuclear disasters around the world after explosions released radioactive materials into the environment, affecting thousands of people and polluting the environment.
The Chernobyl Disaster in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 involved a flawed safety test combined with operator errors that caused an uncontrolled power surge, triggering a steam explosion that released massive amounts of radioactive isotopes across Europe, leading to the deaths of dozens of people and the permanent evacuation of over 160,000 people.
An earthquake and tsunami caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on 11 March 2011. The floods knocked out active cooling systems and backup diesel generators, resulting in explosions, the deaths of dozens of people and the displacement of 164,000 people.
Some parts of Africa are facing climate change disasters like floods, mudslides, landslides, and storms, which are becoming more frequent. Such weather poses a threat to power plants, as happened in Fukushima.
At the United Nations climate summit in the Mediterranean country, the COP31 presidency is pushing for a global target to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35%, up from the current 20%, by 2035.
Proponents of nuclear energy are pushing for investments and the expansion of nuclear reactors to generate electricity to meet this global electrification target.
Rachitaa Gupta from the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice said that nuclear energy is not the solution that is needed to fix the energy crisis in the Global South.
“Most of this nuclear energy is being pushed on indigenous lands. It is our communities that are subjected to uranium mining and its devastating consequences,” she said.
“Our lands are being destroyed for nuclear energy plants, but the power does not even go to the people. It powers data centres that are being promoted by big technology companies. This is not for the people but for corporations.
South Africa’s Eskom and the Department of Electricity and Energy plan to procure an additional 5,200 MW to 10,000 MW of nuclear capacity by 2039 under the Integrated Resource Plan 2025. They plan to start public consultations in late 2026.
Togo, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Morocco, Ghana and Egypt are some of the African countries that are also considering nuclear energy.
Russia’s Rosatom is constructing a four-unit El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant, 320 kilometres northwest of Cairo. The first nuclear power plant in the country and in the region, El Dabaa, will generate 4,800 MW of electricity.
Amos Wemanya, a senior climate advisor at Power Shift Africa, a research group in Kenya, said that nuclear power is not the best energy option for Africa right now because it takes a long time to set up, while the continent needs energy quickly.
“These people need access to electricity as soon as possible so that this power can help them power their development, power their prosperity. It takes a very long time to build a nuclear power plant,” he said.
“So we cannot be investing our limited resources at the moment in an energy system that is not going to help our people achieve our development as soon as possible.”
Nuclear energy requires high upfront investments running into billions of dollars, which are relatively lower once the plant is operational. A kilowatt is $5,300, or about $6bn more for a single large-scale reactor, estimates the World Nuclear Association. This is beyond the reach of most African countries that are struggling to service their debts and provide services like health, jobs and education.
Manyangadze said nuclear energy will ruin the South African economy.
Alternatives
About 600 million people lack access to electricity in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for roughly 85% of the global population lacking electricity.
Gupta said they protested that if there is a push for energy, it needs to be clean, renewable energy, and not polluting energy, like nuclear energy.
“The model must not be the same as the fossil fuel energy systems, which are exploiting our communities,” she said.
Wemanya said that Africa needs an energy source that can transform the lives of communities.
“We need an energy system that is easy to deploy. There are so many alternative sources, renewable sources such as solar, that are easy to deploy and can benefit off-grid communities,” he said.
He said that wind and solar are cheaper alternatives compared to nuclear energy. “We cannot afford to invest in a nuclear energy system that is not fit for purpose for our continent,” he said.
According to the IEA, Africa contains 60% of the world’s best solar resources.
“And in most of the countries, particularly from where I come from in Southern Africa, we have the sun, and we can actually build our energy around renewables like the sun and the wind,” Manyangadze said.
IPS UN Bureau Report
Nov 11 2026 (IPS) -
CIVICUS discusses France’s student protest movement with Aminata and Mariam Touré, two sisters involved in the protests. Aminata is a member of the Popular Youth Front (Front de la Jeunesse Populaire), a collective of young people from working-class neighbourhoods.
Aminata and Mariam Touré
Why did you decide to take action?
In our secondary schools, we have holes in the walls, missing chairs, toilets without doors, overcrowded classrooms and absent teachers. Students completing secondary education also face constant pressure from Parcoursup, the national higher education admissions platform.
During the last heatwave, in Saint-Denis, in the northern suburbs of Paris, pupils fainted during their exams because there was no air conditioning and it was too hot in the exam halls. Pupils who were ill were forced to attend lessons, as these were the only days when teachers were present. With no school nurses on hand, they were unaware they were contagious and passed viruses on to each other.
These catastrophic situations only affect poor regions, rural areas and France’s overseas territories, which are even poorer. You never hear about this in central Paris, where the government concentrates its budget. A parliamentary report has shown that the state spends less per pupil in Seine-Saint-Denis than elsewhere. The result is that every child there loses, on average, the equivalent of a whole year’s schooling over the course of their education. For the start of the 2024 school year, the Seine-Saint-Denis inter-union group estimated there was a shortfall of 5,000 teachers, 2,200 support staff for pupils with disabilities and 175 senior education advisers. This is effectively a two-tier education system.
We’ve been raising these issues with our head teachers, but the government is doing nothing, apart from passing pointless laws. Blocking access to our schools was the only way to make ourselves heard. Thanks to that, we’re now the focus of national and global attention.
How did the movement spread?
The blockades began as early as 31 August in overseas territories. It’s just that, due to media censorship, we always find out too late. The movement then spread to Créteil, in the Paris suburbs, and then to other working-class areas of the Île-de-France region, notably Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne.
At first, everyone blockaded their own school. Then, solidarity among school pupils and support from trade unions brought us together on the streets for a common cause. School and student unions, and the General Confederation of Labour, one of France’s main trade union confederations, helped organise the protests and put forward our demands. Other movements joined us, including the gilets jaunes, the social protest movement that emerged in 2018. This solidarity proved decisive for each and every one of us.
Faced with the state’s contempt, the movement went national. Even privileged young people became aware of their educational privileges and the need to draw attention to this inhumane situation. The media have shown this. Attention paid to the blockades increased tenfold when students also blockaded elite institutions such as the University of Assas, the Catholic Institute of Paris and the Parisian secondary schools Louis-le-Grand and Montaigne.
What are your concerns about the national budget?
We are calling for more funding for education. The government is investing heavily in defence. The defence budget has risen from €32.2 billion (approx. US$34.8 billion) in 2017 to almost €54 billion (approx. US$58.3 billion) in 2026, and is set to reach €64 billion (approx. US$69.1 billion) in 2027. It will have almost doubled in a decade. But for education, the government is content with a mere increase of €200 million (approx. US$216 million) in 2026, while cutting thousands of jobs. This is not investment. It is a publicity stunt.
At the same time, the government is increasing pressure on people while easing the burden on big business. Life is becoming increasingly difficult. All the movements agree on one point: we must invest in education. However, the government continues to arm the police on a massive scale while depriving the education sector of the resources it needs to function.
How do you respond to the looting and violence of 17 October?
We are against all violence, whether it comes from the police or protesters. Looting is regrettable, but it is even more regrettable that greater importance is attached to insured shops than to people who lose a limb or the use of a sense. As a citizen, when I see a young person who has looted a shop receiving a harsher sentence than a man convicted of raping his daughter, my anger redoubles.
The state’s response is so violent that it unfortunately drives some people to loot even more, as this is the only time when anyone looks at you or listens to you. But these excesses backfire on us. The media use them to stifle our demands, which diverts attention from our struggles and weakens the movement.
The movement is torn between those who seem to want revolution and those who want peace, but one cannot exist without the other. Our history books teach us that all France’s great advances have stemmed from revolts, destruction and riots. We don’t find these tools in some shadowy online network or from belligerent leaders. We find them in our textbooks. Nevertheless, like the majority of protesters, we will continue to mobilise peacefully until the government listens to us.
How do you view the police response?
It’s a disgrace. We feel as though we’re at war. Police officers hit, shove, insult and threaten us. One slogan has appeared on several placards, referring to the police’s riot units: ‘We send out SOS signals, we get the CRS instead’. That’s where we’re at. Trust in the authorities was never as low as it has been since the protests began.
These aren’t isolated incidents. It’s a doctrine. Since the gilets jaunes protests, the French approach to policing has been documented as one of Europe’s most brutal. Activist groups have recorded around 20 protesters who have lost an eye and several who have lost a hand, and in Marseille, a local, Zineb Redouane, died after being hit by a teargas canister.
Violence isn’t limited to blows with batons. On 17 October, I was on my period, and I was doused with teargas for no reason, while my friends and I were helping unprotected people, many of them tourists, with saline solution and milk. The next day, I felt excruciating pain in my stomach. I then discovered that many women exposed to teargas report menstrual cycle disturbances.
We are living in an authoritarian state, where violence reigns and the social contract has been broken. The most severe violence is that perpetrated by the state, because it’s supposed to protect us and be legitimate. Yet it maims us without a shred of empathy.
How do you view the president’s reaction?
President Emmanuel Macron’s speech following the protests was shameful, despicable and deeply disrespectful. When he demands we choose sides, then singles out the left as responsible, he shows that he’s not listening to us. Asking us to choose sides ignores the fact that we don’t want to be on his side. Pointing the finger at so-called culprits shows that he fails to grasp the extent of the damage he has caused and continues to cause.
In 2017, Macron was elected by claiming to speak for the people. Two years later, he introduced a series of measures that harmed workers. We see this even in housing policy. Cuts are being made to housing for poor people while multinationals get richer. This is a political choice.
The government should learn to respect its people, listen to them and consult them. We expect it to take action to improve conditions in secondary schools and for our views to be taken into account, because it’s our future’ at stake.
What impact do you hope to have on the 2027 presidential election?
We hope the candidates will talk more about the problems facing young people and propose tangible solutions. We want to show that secondary school pupils, too, can make their voices heard and that they must not be ignored simply because they are young. I hope all French people will be taken into account in the debates, and that we will stop talking about Islam and migrants and focus more on precarious living conditions, dignity and security. I won’t be able to vote, as I’ll still be 17. It will also be a chance to see whether those who do vote realise that their voice matters, both for them and for us.
In 2024, Macron dissolved the National Assembly following the victory of the far-right National Rally in the European elections. Then, even though the left came out on top in the snap general election, he appointed a right-wing government.
In the wake of the dissolution, we formed the Popular Youth Front, a collective rooted in working-class neighbourhoods, to put voting back at the heart of people’s concerns, as abstention rates are extremely high in those neighbourhoods. Our open letter was signed by over 6,000 young people from working-class neighbourhoods and rural areas. But it’s clear we must fight both against the far right, which is not yet in power, and against the government.
What the world sees as a spontaneous revolt by Gen Z is anything but spontaneous. These are exactly the demands we were putting forward in working-class neighbourhoods two years ago. This uprising is the predictable result of a slow, bipartisan abandonment of working-class and racialised young people. This abandonment is not the work of the far right that everyone fears, but of the centre that claims to be blocking its advance. The proof lies in its response. A government that responds to children with teargas and calls this ‘urban violence’ has already adopted the authoritarian reflex it claims to be protecting our country against.
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.
One of those featured and photographed in this article is a minor. She appears with her parents’ consent, which was obtained in writing prior to the interview. Her name and all details that could identify her are included with her permission, as reconfirmed at every stage of the publication process.
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ASSISI, Italy, Nov 11 2026 (IPS) - Eight decades after atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world is confronting a new and potentially dangerous question: What happens when decisions involving human life increasingly pass from people to machines?
Community of Sant’Edigio
The meeting, organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio from Oct. 25 to 27, marked 40 years since Pope John Paul II brought representatives of the world’s major religions to Assisi to pray for peace.
This year’s theme, “Unarmed and Disarming Peace,” carried particular urgency. Nuclear arms control has weakened, military spending has reached record levels, and artificial intelligence is rapidly entering defense systems whose consequences remain difficult to predict.
The question was no longer simply whether humanity possessed the means to destroy itself. It was whether governments and societies retained the judgment to prevent those means from being used.
Katsuko Tanaka, Hibakusha from Hiroshima (Left). Credit: Beppe Raso/ Soka Gakkai
The human consequences of nuclear warfare formed the moral foundation of a forum devoted to disarmament and proliferation.
Katsuko Tanaka, also known as Toshiko Tanaka, a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor, recalled the bombing of Aug. 6, 1945, when she was six years old.
Her account recalled a catastrophe that killed indiscriminately and left survivors carrying physical and psychological wounds for decades.
Archbishop Peter Michiaki Nakamura of Nagasaki, in his published remarks, drew on the legacy of Takashi Nagai, the physician and atomic bomb survivor who devoted his later life to peace.
Together, their perspectives challenged the language of nuclear deterrence, which measures security in terms of military capabilities rather than the lives potentially lost.
Susi Snyder, the Director of Programmes at ICAN. Credit: Community of Sant’Egidio / Assisi 2026
The expiration of the New START treaty between the United States and Russia in February, followed by the failure of the 2026 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference to reach consensus, has reinforced concerns about the future of nuclear restraint.
Attention is now turning to the first Review Conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, scheduled to begin in late November.
But disarmament advocates face a persistent obstacle: The governments possessing nuclear weapons largely remain outside the treaty.
Teaching a Generation Without Memories of War
Credit: Simone Giara per Senzatomica
Alessja Trama, representing the Be The Hope Foundation, an organization affiliated with the Italian Soka Gakkai, described in her prepared remarks the work of Senzatomica, an initiative that has organized exhibitions and educational activities on nuclear weapons in communities across Italy.
The campaign traces its inspiration to a 1957 declaration by Josei Toda, the second president of the Soka Gakkai, calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Its premise is that remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki must lead to public responsibility, particularly among younger generations who have no personal connection to the war.
Yet even as campaigners seek to reduce the threat from existing weapons, advances in artificial intelligence are transforming the nature of military power.
When Human Judgment Becomes Optional
At a separate forum titled “Humanity in the Age of Technology,” Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia warned that technological capabilities were advancing faster than the institutions meant to govern them.
Tiziana Catarci, an Italian artificial intelligence researcher, raised a critical distinction: placing a human in a decision-making process does not necessarily mean that person exercises meaningful control.
An operator may formally approve a machine-generated recommendation without fully understanding how it was produced or being able to challenge it.
Embedded gallery image from the Soka Gakkai Italy article ‘Ad Assisi la speranza come scelta di pace: la Soka Gakkai ai forum sul nucleare e sulla tecnologia’. Credit: Beppe Raso
In military operations, that gap could become deadly.
Catarci called for stronger oversight of AI systems and the prohibition of autonomous weapons capable of making lethal decisions without meaningful human control.
Embedded gallery image from the Soka Gakkai Italy article ‘Ad Assisi la speranza come scelta di pace: la Soka Gakkai ai forum sul nucleare e sulla tecnologia’. Credit: Beppe Raso
Nagaoka noted that AI is increasingly being embraced as a source of advice in everyday life in Japan, with some people turning to it for guidance when making deeply personal decisions about their lives.
One example he cited was the case of an elderly woman who turned to generative AI for advice about the medical treatment of her terminally ill husband.
For Nagaoka, the issue was not whether AI could provide useful information. It was whether reliance on such systems might gradually weaken the human willingness to make difficult moral judgments.
He warned particularly against delegating decisions about killing to autonomous weapons, advocating international rules to prohibit systems that independently select and attack human targets.
His argument extended beyond warfare to healthcare, where statistical predictions cannot replace compassion, personal choice and professional responsibility.
A Technology That Can Also Help
Other participants cautioned against viewing artificial intelligence solely as a threat.
Matt Vasey of the Gates Foundation argued that AI could improve access to healthcare, education and agricultural knowledge, especially in communities historically neglected by technological development.
But he also warned that people could voluntarily surrender moral responsibility to systems designed to make decisions easier.
Cisco executive Gianpaolo Barozzi emphasized the need to redesign work around human capabilities, while Rabbi Noam Marans of the American Jewish Committee distinguished the accumulation of information from the exercise of wisdom.
The speakers offered no single regulatory blueprint. They nevertheless returned repeatedly to the need for accountability, transparency and human judgment.
The gathering’s closing Peace Appeal connected these concerns to a broader agenda, urging that resources devoted to weapons be redirected toward food, water, education, healthcare and decent work.
It also identified nuclear threats, rearmament and artificial intelligence as challenges requiring international cooperation.
Closing ceremony. Credit: Community of Sant’Egidio / Assisi 2026
The message underscored a growing dilemma.
Humanity has developed technologies of extraordinary power. Yet the institutions and moral commitments needed to restrain their destructive uses have not necessarily kept pace.
From Hiroshima’s surviving witnesses to researchers confronting autonomous weapons, the warning emerging from Assisi was that security cannot be measured simply by what humanity is capable of building.
It must also be measured by what humanity is prepared to refuse.
This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.
IPS UN Bureau
Excerpt:
At an interfaith gathering in Assisi, nuclear survivors, scientists and religious leaders confronted a troubling question: Can humanity control the destructive powers it continues to create?
NEW YORK, Nov 11 2026 (IPS) - The United Nations knows how to announce a milestone. What interests me, after a career that has included working inside UNICEF and UNDP and evaluating institutions from outside them, is what happens between the announcement and the working day.
Thalif Deen’s IPS article of 3 November 2026 asks whether gender bias at the UN is approaching an “inglorious end.” It is a question, not a declaration, and the reporting gives considerable space to continuing inequalities. Alongside achievements in representation, staff representatives describe barriers to advancement, weaknesses in accountability and fears about reporting discrimination. The article itself supplies reasons to resist a premature obituary for institutional bias.[1]
I bring a perspective to this question, certainly. But the discipline of evaluation requires me to challenge my own expectations as carefully as an institution’s claims. If the evidence demonstrates progress, acknowledge it. If it supports a narrower conclusion than the public celebration, say so.
The UN’s published figures demonstrate substantial progress towards numerical gender parity. They do not, on their own, establish whether discrimination in recruitment, advancement, treatment or access to authority has diminished.
UN Women reports that women’s share of Professional and higher categories across the UN system rose from 47 per cent in 2021 to 48.8 per cent in 2023, reaching 50.4 per cent in 2025. It also reports that parity among the Senior Management Group and resident coordinators has been maintained since 2018. These are meaningful achievements, and dismissing them would weaken any serious critique.[2]
The dates matter. The Secretary-General’s 2025 report principally covers January 2022 to December 2023, with developments through mid-2025. Its figures should not be presented as a fresh assessment of the workforce in November 2026.[2]
But an institutional average is an exceptionally comfortable place to hide an uncomfortable distribution.
UN Women’s accompanying infographic presents the following figures for 2025, citing the system-wide dashboard in June of that year:[3]
These figures appear in the same published presentation. They show how an overall majority can coexist with women’s underrepresentation at director levels. Under the UN’s operational definition, parity falls within a range of 47 to 53 per cent; the D-1 and D-2 figures above remain below that range.[3] [5]
That distribution does not, by itself, prove discrimination in individual appointments. Nor does a snapshot establish that women progress more slowly than men. It establishes why an aggregate percentage cannot answer the question of equal advancement. For that, we need to follow careers: who applies, who is shortlisted, who is selected, who progresses, how long progression takes, and who leaves.
There is another question beneath the celebration: which UN are we measuring?
The Secretariat dashboard cited in the article explicitly covers a defined population of international staff. Its explanatory notes say General Service and national staff are not shown and are intended for a subsequent phase. It also specifies appointment types and excludes entities with ten or fewer people. These are legitimate statistical boundaries, but they are boundaries all the same.[4]
This does not mean the UN collects no information about those groups elsewhere. It means this particular dashboard cannot establish what is happening across the whole workforce.
The Secretariat and the wider UN system are not interchangeable reporting populations. Neither are international professionals, national personnel and consultants. Every claim should tell the reader whose working lives it describes.
The Secretariat’s own human resources strategy also identifies a measure that reaches beyond headcounts. In A/80/550, the gap between women and men in the employee-empowerment dimension of the staff engagement survey is recorded as eight percentage points in 2021 and nine in 2024. Closing that gap is an explicit objective.[5]
The table does not explain the causes, establish whether the change is statistically significant, or identify which group scored higher. It should not be used as proof that discrimination worsened. It does, however, identify a workplace-experience gap that representation figures alone cannot resolve.
Nor should scepticism escape scrutiny. Shihana Mohamed, quoted in the IPS article, argues that reductions in male-dominated parts of the workforce helped produce the improved percentages. That is an explanation requiring examination, rather than a demonstrated finding we can simply adopt. The article does not provide the underlying analysis needed to establish how much of the change resulted from workforce reductions.[1]
An illustrative example shows why the question matters. An organisation employing 400 women and 600 men has 40 per cent female representation. Remove 200 men, recruit nobody, and it reaches 50 per cent. The calculation is correct; the explanation determines what achievement can reasonably be claimed. This is a hypothetical example, not a description of what happened at the UN.
Conversely, that possibility cannot justify assuming that the UN’s gains are merely arithmetic. We need comparable data on recruitment, promotion, retirement, separation and post abolition, using consistent dates and staff populations. Scrutiny must work in both directions.
What would persuade me that institutional bias was diminishing? Evidence of fairer career progression across grades, nationalities and contract types; greater confidence in raising concerns; credible protection against retaliation; and demonstrable consequences for discriminatory management. These are proposed tests of institutional change, not findings that the representation statistics have already established.
I would also ask whose experience disappears inside the category “women.” An international director, a national officer and a consultant awaiting renewal may share a gender while having profoundly different access to security and influence. An assessment of equality should examine those differences, rather than assume that one aggregate can represent them all.
The UN deserves credit for its documented gains in women’s representation. It should welcome equally rigorous examination of what those gains mean for working lives.
Count the women, certainly. Then examine who advances, who has authority, who can challenge a decision safely, and whose expertise changes the decision. Numerical parity is a meaningful achievement. Establishing that institutional bias is diminishing requires further evidence.
References
1. Deen, Thalif. “Is Gender Bias at the UN Coming to an Inglorious End?” Inter Press Service, 3 November 2026. Syndicated version.
2. UN Women. “Improvement in the status of women in the United Nations system: Report of the Secretary-General (2025).” Publication summary accompanying report A/80/260, 25 July 2025.
3. UN Women. “Representation of Women in the UN System.” Infographic accompanying the 2025 Secretary-General’s report, p. 1; 2025 figures attributed to the UN System-wide Dashboard on Gender Parity, June 2025.
4. United Nations. “UN Secretariat Gender Parity Dashboard.” Coverage and methodological notes. Accessed 3 November 2026.
5. United Nations, Secretary-General. “Implementation of human resources management reforms: outlook for 2026–2029.” A/80/550, 28 November 2025, p. 13: gender-parity definition, employee-empowerment indicators and targets.
Stephanie Hodge, MPA Harvard (2006), is an international evaluator and former UN advisor who has worked across 140 countries. She is a former staffer of UNDP (1994-1996 & 1999- 2004) and UNICEF (2008-2014). She writes on governance, multilateral reform, and climate equity.
IPS UN Bureau
ANTALYA, Türkiye , Nov 10 2026 (IPS) - More than one in three women and girls worldwide – at least 1.5 billion – live in climate hotspots, where high exposure to climate hazards, insecure jobs and deep gender inequality collide, according to a new UN Women fact sheet on “Gender Equality in the Age of Climate Crisis”. UN Women warns that while 73 per cent of countries recognize the climate risks facing women and girls, just over one in three address them comprehensively.
“Across the world, women are already leading the fight for a better future – in their communities, in laboratories, in parliaments and on the front lines of the climate crisis. We must give women and girls equal rights, resources and the power to lead, and they will help drive the change our world so urgently needs”, said Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women.
On the current trajectory, the world is headed for a minimum of 1.8°C of heating, unleashing even more devastating droughts, floods, wildfires and cyclones, and creating irreversible loss and damage to communities and ecosystems. New data from UN Women shows that women and girls in the countries least responsible for climate crisis are hit hardest by it, from the food they go without to the violence they face, climate change is affecting every aspect of their lives.
• Under a worst-case scenario, up to 141 million additional women and girls could be living in extreme poverty.• Based on data from 24 countries, a 1°C increase in average temperatures is associated with women losing 34 per cent more of their total income than men likely reflecting their more limited ability to shift to non-farm work or migrate when harvests fail.
• Climate change is increasing unpaid care responsibilities, such as collection of water and fuel, and care for family members in the aftermath of disasters. Of the 1.8 billion people without water on their premises, women are primary water collectors in two-thirds of households. Under a high-emissions scenario, the time spent collecting water could increase by up to 30 per cent by 2050.
• Climate-related livelihood losses, displacement and resource scarcity can magnify existing drivers of gender-based violence. Across 14 countries, exposure to prolonged extreme drought was associated with 21 per cent higher odds of sexual violence against adolescent girls and young women.
• Over the past decade, progress in reducing child marriage has nearly doubled in pace. Climate change threatens to undo that progress. In 24 of 46 countries where data on child marriage can be disaggregated by exposure to slow-onset events, rates of child marriage were higher in more arid environments than in more humid ones.
• AI technology drives up energy demand, while 326 million women and girls still lack access to electricity.
• Women remain largely excluded from climate decision-making, holding just 12 per cent of energy portfolios globally, and women environmental defenders face harassment and even death for protecting their communities and the planet.
• Developing countries receive less than a third of the climate finance they need, while just 4 per cent of climate-focused Official Development Assistance prioritises gender equality.
The fact sheet also shows that progress is possible. With the right investments, women could secure up to 66 per cent of net new green jobs, gaining 68 million additional jobs by 2035.
Governments are stepping up; 73 per cent of nationally determined contributions – governments’ self-defined climate action plans – now acknowledge gender-specific climate risks. However, just over one in three addresses them comprehensively.
At COP31, UN Women calls on world leaders to put gender equality and women’s rights at the heart of climate action, to move towards economies that put people and the planet before profits, build resilience for all and advance gender equality. That means guaranteeing the right of all women and girls to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, protecting the women environmental human rights defenders who risk their lives for their communities and the planet, and giving women and girls real power at the decision-making table.
It means delivering gender-responsive climate finance that reaches women and their organizations, advancing a just transition that redistributes care, and tackling the heightened risks of violence against women and girls as the climate crisis deepens. The new Belém Gender Action Plan must be fully implemented and fully financed, so that political commitments become real change for women and girls on the front line of climate crises.
IPS UN Bureau
Excerpt:
As world leaders gather in Antalya for the 31st UN Climate Conference, new UN Women data warns that 1.5 billion women and girls already live in climate hotspots, while climate change could push 141 million more into extreme poverty by 2050.
ANTALYA, Türkiye, , Nov 10 2026 (IPS) - Africa’s transition to clean energy received a potential boost at COP31 with the announcement of a new international financing coalition, co-chaired by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and World Bank from 2027.
The Electrify Now Finance Coalition will bring together governments, development banks and private investors to mobilise funding for electrification in emerging and developing economies.
The initiative forms part of COP31’s ambitious 35-by-35 Global Electrification Pledge, which aims to increase electricity’s share of global final energy consumption from approximately 23% to 35% by 2035.
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) will also support developing countries in strengthening electricity grids, preparing investment projects and accessing finance.
At the COP31 venue, members of civil society demonstrate. Credit: UN Climate Change/Kubilay Ciftci
Highlighting the economic opportunities for Africa and other developing regions, Sustainable Energy for All CEO Damilola Ogunbiyi said, “Electrification presents an opportunity to industrialise, create jobs, improve livelihoods and strengthen energy independence.”
The announcements come as COP31 President Murat Kurum calls for an “Implementation COP”, where climate commitments translate into tangible results.
“Now our promises must be backed by capital. That capital must fund investment. And that investment must deliver results,” Kurum said.
For Africa, the challenge will be ensuring that these initiatives translate into accessible financing, expanded electricity infrastructure and affordable clean energy.
IPS UN Bureau Report