The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
KABUL, Oct 14 2025 (IPS) - At the end of September, the Taliban abruptly severed Wi-Fi and fiber-optic internet in Afghanistan for 48 hours without any explanation. The disruption caused consternation and suffering among millions of Afghans, especially those who depend on the internet for education and online commerce.
Closing girls’ schools had not entirely stopped students from pursing education, as many found workarounds through online classes. They therefore, targeted Wi-Fi and fiber-optic internet to close off all those possibilities
Even though the internet blockage has been lifted, its speed is significantly lower than normal, and certain social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook appear to be intentionally restricted, according to foreign journalists reporting from the country.
Nilam, 23, recalls, how her online English language lesson was suddenly disconnected, leaving her desperate. “At that moment, my world went dark. I felt like I had lost everything and all my dreams were destroyed right in front of me”. She recounts the previous decrees issued by the Taliban that closed down schools and universities, “and how many times I was forced to stay home”.
Online English courses, she said, was the only available channel left to her to learn a language and find a job, or study abroad. And when it appeared that it was also blocked she was lost and in total despair.
As she colourfully puts it, “It was as if I were living in the century of carrier pigeons; the Taliban have cut us off from the flow of global progress”, she said.
The Taliban’s stated reason for yanking Afghans off the internet was to curb “immorality,” arguing that widespread access among young people to the internet, and the use of smartphones generate moral corruption.
However, media experts reject that explanation as a cover for the Taliban’s main objective, which is to deny girls’ access to education, the flagship policy of the Islamist group since it returned to power four years ago.
Many women in Afghanistan relied on online study; tightening internet restrictions now make it far more difficult. Credit: Learning Together.
They first began by shutting off wireless internet in the provinces of Balkh, Baghlan, Kandahar, and Paktia. This was extended to fifteen other provinces the next day, denying access to internet to millions of Afghans. Closing girls’ schools had not entirely stopped students from pursing education, as many found workarounds through online classes. They therefore, targeted Wi-Fi and fiber-optic internet to close off all those possibilities.
For many low-income households, Wi-Fi was the most affordable option because several family members could simultaneously use a single connection for study and work at a relatively cheaper cost compared to mobile data.
Nooria, in Mazar-i-Sharif, like many women who had lost jobs due to Taliban edicts, turned to online commerce to support her family.
“After the fall of the republic, I turned to online selling to cover living expenses. Through this work, I could meet my own needs and help support part of my family’s expenses. But now, with wireless internet cut off, continuing this work has become nearly impossible for me”, she complained bitterly.
As she explains, mobile data internet is prohibitively expensive. “By paying 2,000 Afghanis (about 26 Euros), our entire family could use wireless internet” she says. “My little sister would study, my brothers would work on their lessons, and I could continue my online work. But now, if we want to buy mobile data, we would have to pay separately for each person, a cost we simply cannot afford.”
Announcement posted at an internet provider notifying customers of an internet ban under new internet restrictions. Credit: Learning Together.
Ahmad, an internet service provider in Herat, emphasizes that limited access provides hardly meaningful internet use.
“Apart from simple messaging on WhatsApp, nothing else will be allowed. That means no education, no online work, no research, and no free connection with the outside world”, says Ahmad.
Last month’s outage was widely described by local users and providers as the most sweeping multi-province shutdown since the fall of the Afghan Republic on August 15, 2021.
At the beginning of 2025, 13.2 million – around 30.5 percent of the population – had access to the internet in Afghanistan, according to the specialist website DataReportal. Around 4.05 million people were using social media.
Experts believe the Taliban are attempting to completely isolate Afghan society from global communication, allowing only a small group of people connected to business or government to access the internet.
They warn that, if implemented, such restrictions would severely cripple the social, educational, and economic life of ordinary citizens. Analysts warn that this move will deal a severe blow to the education of Afghan women and girls, pushing society further into isolation.
Excerpt:
The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 14 2025 (IPS) - The World Bank and other multilateral development banks recently have begun reconsidering their self-imposed restrictions on financing fossil fuel projects. This change is being prompted in part by the new U.S. administration and is also supported by developing country experts. Yet, the reality remains that greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from fossil fuels, and specifically the climate change they induce, can severely undermine multilateral development bank projects and overall developing country growth prospects.
Most of these emissions, however, come from richer big economies, not poorer developing ones. Given the negative effects of these emissions, multilateral development banks need to push richer economies away from fossil fuel-produced GHG emissions, even as they consider softening restrictions on lending for fossil fuel projects in poorer countries.
Last decade, multilateral development banks began restricting funding for fossil fuel projects due to concerns about the negative impact of emissions-induced climate change on development, but also under pressure from the U.S., European and other key stakeholders.
The emissions reduction needed to avoid dangerous levels of climate change must come, unsurprisingly, from the world’s biggest economies. This includes China, with 33 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in 2022, followed by the U.S. with 13 percent, the European Union taken as a block, Russia and then Japan. Together, these countries generate 60 percent of the global total
For example, the World Bank announced in 2017 it would largely stop funding gas drilling and extracting projects. Other multilateral development banks followed suit.
Many have noted the economic benefits being denied to poor countries by these restrictions, such as export revenues and power plants fueled by domestic gas reserves. In contrast, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America have contributed little to historical global emissions — 2 percent and 3 percent, respectively, a trend projected to continue.
As the International Energy Agency consistently highlights in its climate scenarios, the emissions reduction needed to avoid dangerous levels of climate change must come, unsurprisingly, from the world’s biggest economies. This includes China, with 33 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in 2022, followed by the U.S. with 13 percent, the European Union taken as a block, Russia and then Japan. Together, these countries generate 60 percent of the global total. India is also a large emitter, but its level is driven more by a massive population than wealth.
These emissions, and specifically the climate change they drive, present two significant risks for multilateral development banks. First, they undermine the development benefits sought by multilateral development bank projects. Second, they create financial risks for these banks by potentially weakening the capacity of developing country borrowers to repay their loans.
The massive 2022 flooding in Pakistan illustrates the potentially devastating economic impact of climate change, as the country suffered over $30 billion in losses — nearly 10 percent of its GDP. This degree of devastation is not feasible to plan for or adapt to. It needs to be avoided.
Unfortunately, various factors stunt a proper appreciation of climate change’s potential destructive impact. First, there is the ‘past is not prologue’ phenomenon, namely the inevitable uncertainties regarding the future. Looking back or even to the present does not provide a full sense of the future potential destructive impact of climate change.
Second, climate change’s impact grows over time, producing more destruction in a more distant future. Its small impact on today’s stock market where short-term horizons drive valuation contrasts significantly with its potentially large-scale economic damage 15 to 20 years from now as climate change predictably worsens over time. That longer period is particularly relevant to multilateral development banks, whose projects often take years to mature, and whose corresponding loans extend beyond 15 years.
Third, the uncertainty inherent in predicting the future is being exploited by climate minimizers to play down the long-term perils of emissions relative to the shorter-term benefits of fossil fuel projects.
As a result, multilateral development banks are caught in a tricky dynamic: responding to pressures from key shareholders — notably the U.S. — to loosen restrictions on financing for fossil fuels while working to limit greenhouse gas emissions that negatively affect development.
Earlier this year, the World Bank’s president proposed an “all of the above” shift in approach, with more natural gas development projects, as well as nuclear power and other alternatives. Although this proposal was welcomed by some, the World Bank’s board in June deferred a decision on natural gas, even as it approved nuclear power.
This debate will continue, including at the World Bank Annual Meetings this October. But the writing is on the wall as the U.S. pushes multilateral development banks to fund more fossil fuel projects.
This discussion, however, hides a thornier and more important development issue: the pressing and inescapable need in supporting the long-term development of poorer countries to address the fossil fuel emissions of the world’s biggest and richest emitting countries. The prospective destructive impact of climate change on the economies of developing countries is too large to ignore.
In order to reduce this risk to multilateral development banks and their poorer developing country borrowers, these banks should launch an initiative to encourage the largest greenhouse gas emitting countries to reduce their emissions [the “Undertaking to Reduce Global Emissions to support Development” (URGED)].
Although these richer countries aren’t susceptible to being influenced through multilateral development bank lending policies (China’s loan levels have dropped significantly, while the US, most EU countries and Japan aren’t even borrowers), they are all leading shareholders of these banks, active on the executive boards and at shareholder meetings and other convenings. This involvement provides an avenue for multilateral development banks to engage with these countries on this emissions topic that affects development.
For example, the “URGED” initiative — built around analytic work, convenings and outreach regarding the negative development impact of wealthy country emissions — could even be launched at the World Bank’s October annual meetings.
Is that likely in today’s political environment? No, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense.
Philippe Benoit is managing director at Global Infrastructure Advisory Services 2050. He previously worked as division chief at the World Bank and the International Energy Agency, as a director at SG Investment Bank and as senior adjunct research scholar at Columbia University-SIPA’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
[Previously published in The Hill]
NAIROBI, Oct 14 2025 (IPS) - The Gambia’s lead negotiator on mitigation believes that COP30 presents a unique opportunity to rebalance global climate leadership.
“This COP cannot be shrouded in vagueness. Too much is now at stake,” Malang Sambou Manneh says in an interview with IPS ahead of the climate negotiations. He identified a wide range of issues that are expected to define COP30 climate talks.
The global community will shortly descend on the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest intact forest, home to more than 24 million people in Brazil alone, including hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Peoples. Here, delegates will come face-to-face with the realities of climate change and see what is at stake.
Malang Sambou Manneh.
COP30, the UN’s annual climate conference, or the Conference of Parties, will take place from November 10-21, 2025 in the Amazonian city of Belém, Brazil and promises to be people-centered and inclusive. But with fragmented and fragile geopolitics, negotiations for the best climate deal will not be easy.
Sambou, a lead climate negotiator who has attended all COPs, says a unified global South is up to the task.
He particularly stressed the need for an unwavering “focus on mitigation or actions to reduce or prevent greenhouse gas emissions.” Stating that the Mitigation Work Programme is critical, as it is a process established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at COP26 to urgently scale up the ambition and implementation of efforts to mitigate climate change globally.
Sambou spoke about how COP30 differs from previous conferences, expectations from the global South, fossils fuels and climate financing, stressing that “as it was in Azerbaijan for COP29, Belem will be a ‘finance COP’ because climate financing is still the major hurdle. Negotiations will be tough, but I foresee a better outcome this time round.”
The Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T is expected to be released soon, outlining a framework by the COP 29 and COP 30 Presidencies for scaling climate finance for developing countries to at least USD 1.3 trillion annually by 2035.
Unlike previous conferences, COP30 focuses on closing the ambition gap identified by the Global Stocktake, a periodic review that enables countries and other stakeholders, such as the private sector, to take inventory to assess the world’s collective progress in meeting its climate goals.
The first stocktake was completed at COP28 in 2023, revealing that current efforts are insufficient and the world is not on track to meet the Paris Agreement. But while the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, set off on a high singular note when it entered into force in November 2016, that unity is today far from guaranteed.
Malang Sambou Manneh with She-Climate Fellows. Credit: Clean Earth Gambia/Facebook
Unlocking high-impact and sustainable climate action opportunities amidst geopolitical turbulence was always going to be difficult. Not only did President Donald Trump pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, but he is now reenergized against climate programs and robustly in support of fossil fuels—and there are those who are listening to his message.
Sambou says while this stance “could impact the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, many more countries are in favor of renewable energy than against.”
“But energy issues are complex because fossil fuels have been a way of life for centuries, and developed countries leveraged fossil fuels to accelerate development. And then, developing countries also started discovering their oil and gas, but they are not to touch it to accelerate their own development and must instead shift to renewables. It is a complex situation.”
Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, famously described oil as a “gift from God” at COP29 to defend his country’s reliance on fossil fuels despite climate change concerns. This statement highlights the complexity of the situation, especially since it came only a year after the landmark COP28 hard-won UAE Consensus included the first explicit reference to “transitioning away from all fossil fuels in energy systems” in a COP agreement.
As a negotiator, Sambou says he is very much alive to these dynamics but advises that the global community “will not successfully counter fossil fuels by saying they are bad and harmful; we should do so through technology. By showcasing alternatives that work. This is an opportunity for the global South to take the lead and present best practices in renewables.”
And it seems there is evidence for his optimism. A recent report shows the uptake of renewables overtaking coal generation for the first time on record in the first half of 2025 and solar and wind outpacing the growth in demand.
This time around, the global south has its work cut out, as it will be expected to step up and provide much-needed leadership as Western leaders retreat to address pressing problems at home, defined by escalating economic crises, immigration issues, conflict, and social unrest.
It is in the developing world’s leadership that Sambou sees the opportunities—especially as scientific evidence mounts on the impacts of the climate crisis.
The World Meteorological Organization projects a continuation of record-high global temperatures, increasing climate risks and potentially marking the first five-year period, 2025-2029.
Sambou says all is not lost in light of the new and ambitious national climate action plans or the Nationally Determined Contributions.
This past September marked the deadline for a new set of these contributions, which will guide the COP30 talks. Every five years, the signatory governments to the Paris Agreement are requested to submit new national climate plans detailing more ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction and adaptation goals.
“Ambition has never been a problem; it is the lack of implementation that remains a most pressing issue. Action plans cannot be implemented without financing. This is why the ongoing political fragmentation is concerning, for if there was ever a time to stand unified, it is now. The survival of humanity depends on it,” he emphasizes.
“Rather than just setting new goals in Belém, this time around, we are better off pushing for a few scalable solutions, commitments that we can firmly hold ourselves accountable to, than 200 pages of outcomes that will never properly translate into climate action.”
Despite many competing challenges and a step forward, two steps backwards here and there, from the heart of the Amazon rainforest, COP30’s emphasis on the critical role of tropical forests and nature-based solutions is expected to significantly drive action for environmental and economic growth.
Note: This interview is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
IPS UN Bureau Report
Excerpt:
COP30 negotiator Malang Sambou Manneh believes the method of countering growth in fossil fuel development lies in technology. Showcasing alternatives that work provides the opportunity for the global South to take the lead and present best practices in renewables.
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 14 2025 (IPS) - New figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) show that displacement has surged significantly in Haiti, deepening existing security and humanitarian crises in a country where nearly 90 percent of the capital is controlled by armed gangs.
“Children in Haiti are experiencing violence and displacement at a terrifying scale,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director. “Each time they are forced to flee, they lose not only their homes but also their chance to go to school, and simply to be children.”
More than 1.3 million people have been displaced due to rising insecurity, including over 680,000 children—twice as many as last year—who have been forced from their homes by violence. The report notes that the scale of displacement in 2025 has reached “unprecedented” levels, with the number of displacement sites having soared to 246 nationwide. Thousands of children have been displaced multiple times as a result of heightened violence from armed gangs.
UNICEF’s latest Child Alert report highlights the fragile state of displacement shelters in Haiti as roughly 33 percent displacement shelters lack basic protection infrastructure. Women and children bear the brunt of this crisis, facing disproportionate levels of violence, exploitation, and abuse. Additionally, the UN notes that violations of children’s rights are a daily occurrence, especially in areas that are under the control of armed gangs.
It is estimated that over 2.7 million people, 1.6 million of whom are women and children, live under the control of armed gangs. The security situation in the vast majority of Haitian displacement shelters is dire, with the UN noting that gender-based violence is widespread and fear is particularly pervasive among an entire generation of children and adolescents.
“More children are being subjected to trafficking, exploitation and forced recruitment by the gangs,” said Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR).“We can only imagine the long-term impact, for the children of Haiti, and for society as a whole.”
With most schools being used as displacement shelters, education in Haiti has been severely disrupted, affecting roughly half a million students. Over 1,600 schools were closed, and dozens were occupied by armed groups during the 2024–2025 school year. The education sector is also grappling with acute shortages of textbooks, learning materials, and qualified teachers.
“Nearly 1,600 schools have been attacked, occupied, or closed as a result of unrelenting violence, leaving more than one in four children out of the classroom,” said Giacomo Colarullo, UNICEF’s Emergencies Communications Officer. “ School is not only a place to learn, but a safe haven. When that disappears, we are risking the development and future of an entire generation.”
UNICEF estimates that more than 3.3 million children in Haiti are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, with over one million facing severe food insecurity. This year, an estimated 288,544 children under the age of five are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition. The worsening hunger crisis is largely driven by soaring staple food prices, which have made basic items unaffordable for most families, forcing many to skip meals or rely on nutrient-poor diets.
Additionally, widespread insecurity along border crossings and key access routes has severely restricted the delivery of humanitarian aid, cutting off access to nutrition, healthcare, and protection services. Aid workers continue to face high risks of violence while carrying out their duties
“Hunger is worsening at an alarming speed,” Colarullo said. “Less than half of health facilities in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince remain fully functional, leaving the same children often unable to reach the care they need to survive and thrive. UNICEF and partners continue to stay and deliver therapeutic food, mobile clinics and support for internally displaced families, but access and funding remain major obstacles.”
Conditions for children in Haiti have been further worsened by recent cuts to foreign aid and severe funding shortages for lifesaving humanitarian programs, including the World Food Programme (WFP), on which the country has long depended for food security. Since January 2022, WFP has reached over two million people in Haiti and worked with the Haitian government to provide school meals to thousands of children.
WFP estimates that it will need at least USD 139 million to sustain aid operations for Haiti’s most vulnerable populations for the next twelve months. However, recent funding cuts have forced the agency to suspend hot meal distributions and reduce food rations by half for families in displacement centers. For the first time, WFP has also been unable to pre-position food supplies for climate-related disasters during the Atlantic hurricane season due to a lack of resources.
“Today, more than half of all Haitians don’t have enough to eat,” said Wanja Kaaria, WFP’s director in Haiti. “With our current levels of funding, WFP and partners are struggling to keep starvation at bay for thousands of the most vulnerable – children, mothers, entire families who are running out of options and hope.”
Despite continued access challenges, UNICEF and its partners have been able to make vital progress in addressing the vast scale of needs. So far, the agency has treated over 86,000 children suffering from malnutrition and provided healthcare services to over 117,000 people. Additionally, UNICEF has provided access to safe water for 140,000 people.
UNICEF is urgently appealing for greater international support to expand lifesaving assistance and protection for displaced children—ensuring safe shelter, family tracing and reunification, psychosocial care, and access to essential health, nutrition, education, and sanitation services. However, the organization’s Humanitarian Action for Children appeal for Haiti remains critically underfunded, threatening to halt these efforts.
“The children of Haiti cannot wait,” Russell warned. “Like every child, they deserve a chance to be safe, healthy, and to live in peace. It is up to us to take action for Haiti’s children now.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
ABUJA, Nigeria, Oct 14 2025 (IPS) - Recent research from Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI warns that bias in artificial intelligence remains deeply rooted even in models designed to avoid it and can worsen as models grow. From bias in hiring of men over women for leadership roles, to misclassification of darker-skinned individuals as criminals, the stakes are high.
Yet it’s simply not attainable for annual dialogues and multilateral processes as recently provisioned for in Resolution A/RES/79/325 for the UN to keep up to pace with AI technological developments and the cost of this is high.
Hence for accountability purposes and to increase the cost of failure, why not give Tech Companies whose operations are now state-like, participatory roles at the UNGA?
When AI Gets It Wrong: 2024’s Most Telling Cases
In one of the most significant AI discrimination cases moving through the courts, the plaintiff alleges that Workday’s popular artificial intelligence (AI)-based applicant recommendation system violated federal antidiscrimination laws because it had a disparate impact on job applicants based on race, age, and disability.
Judge Rita F. Lin of the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in July 2024 that Workday could be an agent of the employers using its tools, which subjects it to liability under federal anti-discrimination laws. This landmark decision means that AI vendors, not just employers, can be held directly responsible for discriminatory outcomes.
In another case, the University of Washington researchers found significant racial, gender, and intersectional bias in how three state-of-the-art large language models ranked resumes. The models favored white-associated names over equally qualified candidates with names associated with other racial groups.
In 2024, a University of Washington study investigated gender and racial bias in resume-screening AI tools. The researchers tested a large language model’s responses to identical resumes, varying only the names to suggest different racial and gender identities.
The financial impact is staggering.
A 2024 DataRobot survey of over 350 companies revealed: 62% lost revenue due to AI systems that made biased decisions, proving that discriminatory AI isn’t just a moral failure—it’s a business disaster. It’s too soon for an innovation to result in such losses.
Time is running out.
A 2024 Stanford analysis of vision-language models found that increasing training data from 400 million to 2 billion images made larger models up to 69% more likely to label Black and Latino men as criminals. In large language models, implicit bias testing showed consistent stereotypes: women were more often linked to humanities over STEM, men were favored for leadership roles, and negative terms were disproportionately associated with Black individuals.
The UN needs to take action now before these predictions turn into reality. And frankly, the UN cannot keep up with the pace of these developments.
What the UN Can—and Must—Do
To prevent AI discrimination, the UN must lead by example and work with governments, tech companies, and civil society to establish global guardrails for ethical AI.
Here’s what that could look like:
Working with Tech Companies: Technology companies have become the new states and should be treated as such. They should be invited to the UN table and granted participatory privileges that both ensure and enforce accountability.
This would help guarantee that the pace of technological development—and its impacts—is self-reported before UN-appointed Scientific Panels reconvene. As many experts have noted, the intervals between these annual convenings are already long enough for major innovations to slip past oversight.
Developing Clear Guidelines: The UN should push for global standards on ethical AI, building on UNESCO’s Recommendation and OHCHR’s findings. These should include rules for inclusive data collection, transparency, and human oversight.
Promoting Inclusive Participation: The people building and regulating AI must reflect the diversity of the world. The UN should set up a Global South AI Equity Fund to provide resources for local experts to review and assess tools such as LinkedIn’s NFC passport verification.
Working with Africa’s Smart Africa Alliance, the goal would be to create standards together that make sure AI is designed to benefit communities that have been hit hardest by biased systems. This means including voices from the Global South, women, people of color, and other underrepresented groups in AI policy conversations.
Requiring Human Rights Impact Assessments: Just like we assess the environmental impact of new projects, we should assess the human rights impact of new AI systems—before they are rolled out.
Holding Developers Accountable: When AI systems cause harm, there must be accountability. This includes legal remedies for those who are unfairly treated by AI. The UN should create an AI Accountability Tribunal within the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to look into cases where AI systems cause discrimination.
This tribunal should have the authority to issue penalties, such as suspending UN partnerships with companies that violate these standards, including cases like Workday.
Support Digital Literacy and Rights Education: Policy makers and citizens need to understand how AI works and how it might impact their rights. The UN can help promote digital literacy globally so that people can push back against unfair systems.
Lastly, there has to be Mandates for intersectional or Multiple Discriminations Audits: AI systems should be required to go through intersectional audits that check for combined biases, such as those linked to race, disability, and gender. The UN should also provide funding to organizations to create open-source audit tools that can be used worldwide.
The Road Ahead
AI is not inherently good or bad. It is a tool, and like any tool, its impact depends on how we use it. If we are not careful, AI could lengthen problem-solving time, deepen existing inequalities, and create new forms of discrimination that are harder to detect and harder to fix.
But if we take action now—if we put human rights at the center of AI development—we can build systems that uplift, rather than exclude.
The UN General Assembly meetings may have concluded for this year, the era of ethical AI has not. The United Nations remains the organization with the credibility, the platform, and the moral duty to lead this charge. The future of AI—and the future of human dignity—may depend on it.
Chimdi Chukwukere is an advocate for digital justice. His work explores the intersection of technology, governance, Big Tech, sovereignty and social justice. He holds a Masters in Diplomacy and International Relations from Seton Hall University and has been published at Inter Press Service, Politics Today, International Policy Digest, and the Diplomatic Envoy.
IPS UN Bureau
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 14 2025 (IPS) - Global South cooperation arrangements must evolve to better respond to pressing contemporary and imminent challenges, rather than risk being irrelevant straitjackets stuck in the past.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
In 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established, initially to address regional tensions following the formation of Malaysia in September 1963.
The creation of Malaysia had led to problems with the Philippines and Indonesia, while Singapore had seceded from the new confederation in August 1965.
ASEAN was not a Cold War creation in the same sense as the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), one of several regional security arrangements established by the Americans in the early 1950s, the only significant one remaining being NATO.
ASEAN’s most significant initiative was to declare Southeast Asia a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) in 1973, two years before the end of the Indochina wars.
Regional economic cooperation
The region has since seen four major economic initiatives, with the first being the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA).
AFTA was established at the height of the trade liberalisation zeal in the early 1990s. Beyond the initial ‘one-time’ trade liberalisation effects, there has been little actual economic transformation since then.
Trade liberalisation mahaguru Jagdish Bhagwati’s last (2008) book, Termites in the Trading System, saw preferential plurilateral and bilateral FTAs as ‘termites’ undermining the WTO promise of multilateral trade liberalisation.
While seemingly mutually beneficial, such FTAs are akin to termites that surreptitiously erode the foundations of the multilateral trading system by encouraging discrimination, thereby undermining the principle of non-discrimination.
Naive enthusiasm for all FTAs has thus actually undermined multilateralism, also triggering pushback since the late 20th century.
Following the 2008-09 global financial crisis, the G20’s developed economies all raised protectionist barriers, confirming their dubious commitment to free trade.
Meanwhile, US trade policies since the Obama presidency, and especially this year, have made a mockery of the WTO’s commitment to the multilateralism of the 1994 Marrakech Declaration.
Asymmetric financialization
The 1997-98 Asian financial crisis should have served as a wake-up call about the dangers of financialization, but the West dismissed it as simply due to Asian hubris.
Under Managing Director Michel Camdessus, IMF promotion of capital account liberalisation even contravened the Fund’s own Articles of Agreement.
When Japanese Finance Minister Miyazawa and Vice Minister Sakakibara proposed an East Asian financial rescue plan, which was soon killed by then US Treasury Deputy Secretary Larry Summers.
Eventually, the Chiang Mai Initiative was developed by ASEAN+3, including Japan, South Korea, and China as the additional three. Ensuring bilateral swap facilities for financial emergencies have since been multi-lateralised.
ASEAN+3 later led the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), still conceived mainly in terms of regional trade liberalisation.
Non-alignment for our times
Developing relevant institutions and arrangements in our times requires us to pragmatically consider history, rather than abstract, ahistorical principles.
2025 marks several significant anniversaries, most notably the end of World War II in 1945 and the 1955 Bandung Asia-Africa solidarity conference, which anticipated the formation of the non-aligned movement.
The world seems to have lost its commitment to creating the conditions for enduring peace. Despite much rhetoric, the post-World War II commitment to freedom and neutrality in the Global North has largely gone.
The world was deemed unipolar after the end of the Cold War. However, for most, it has been multipolar, with the majority of the Global South remaining non-aligned.
As for peace-making, the US’s NATO allies have increasingly marginalised the United Nations and multilateralism with it. Already, the number of military interventions since the end of the Cold War exceeds those of that era.
While ASEAN cannot realistically lead international peace-making, it can be a much stronger voice for multilateralism, peace, freedom, neutrality, development, and international cooperation.
East Asian potential
The world economy is now stagnating due to Western policies. Hence, ASEAN+3 has become more relevant.
Just before President Trump made his April 2nd Liberation Day unilateral tariffs announcement, the governments of Japan, China, and South Korea met in late March without ASEAN to coordinate responses despite their long history of tensions.
ASEAN risks becoming increasingly irrelevant, due to the limited progress since the Chiang Mai Agreement a quarter of a century ago. Worse, ASEAN’s regional leadership has rarely gone beyond trade liberalisation, now sadly irrelevant in ‘post-normal’ times.
Rather than risk growing irrelevance, regional cooperation needs to rise to contemporary challenges. Working closely with partners accounting for two-fifths of the world economy, ASEAN countries only stand to gain from broader regional cooperation.
President Trump’s ‘shock and awe’ tariffs and Mar-a-Lago ambitions clearly signal that ‘business as usual’ is over, and Washington intends to remake the world. Will East Asia rise to this challenge of our times?
IPS UN Bureau
Oct 13 2025 (IPS) -
CIVICUS discusses enforced disappearances in Mexico with a member of the International Network of Associations of Missing Persons.
The crisis of disappearances in Mexico has reached alarming proportions, with over 52,000 unidentified bodies in morgues and mass graves. On 1 July, the Mexican Congress approved controversial changes to the General Law on Disappearances, which promise to modernise the search process through a national biometric system, but which human rights organisations and victims’ groups claim could establish an unprecedented system of mass surveillance.
What are the main changes and how will they affect searches?
The changes seek to strengthen the mechanisms for searching for, locating and identifying missing persons. The main innovations include the creation of a National Investigation File Database and a Single Identity Platform that will integrate various databases. The revised law also provides for the strengthening of the Unique Population Registry Code (CURP) through the incorporation of biometric data such as iris scans, photographs and fingerprints.
The law obliges authorities and individuals to provide information useful for search processes and incorporates new institutions such as the National Guard and the Ministry of Security into the National Search System. It also increases the penalties for the crime of enforced disappearance.
The new system aims to ensure faster and more efficient searches through technology and inter-institutional coordination. It also provides for the use of satellite imagery and advanced identification technologies, under the coordination of the National Search System.
What risks are posed by the authorities’ access to biometric data?
There are serious concerns that the changes give security and justice institutions, including prosecutors’ offices, the National Guard and the National Intelligence Centre, immediate and unrestricted access to public and private databases, including those containing biometric information. The official argument is that this will speed up searches.
However, civil society warns that the Single Identity Platform and the biometric CURP could become instruments of mass surveillance. It is feared the authorities could misuse the information and, instead of helping to find missing persons, use it to help control the population, putting the rights to privacy and security at risk.
How have victims’ groups reacted?
Victims’ collectives have rejected the reform as opaque and rushed. They complain that, although round table discussions were organised, these were merely symbolic and their proposals were not taken into account.
The families of missing persons argue the changes focus on technological solutions that don’t address the underlying structural problems of corruption, cronyism, organised crime and impunity. But no technological solution will work as long as the institutions responsible for abuses and cover-ups remain in charge of implementing it.
This law runs the risk of repeating the mistakes of the 2017 General Law on Enforced Disappearances. That was an important step forward, as it criminalised the offence, created a national search system and sought to guarantee the participation of families in locating and identifying missing persons. Unfortunately, it was never properly implemented. There are fears this new law, in the absence of effective enforcement mechanisms, will only deepen frustration and perpetuate impunity.
What alternatives do victims’ groups propose?
Their demands go beyond legislative changes: they demand truth and justice through thorough investigations, the prosecution of those responsible in state institutions and organised crime groups and an effective search in the field, with the coordination and active participation of victims’ groups.
The collectives also stress the urgency of identifying the over 52,000 unnamed people in morgues and mass graves, and are calling for the creation of an Extraordinary Forensic Identification Mechanism. And they demand real protection for those searching for their relatives, who continue to face threats and attacks.
Above all, they demand an end to impunity through the dismantling of the networks of corruption and collusion between authorities and organised crime. As one local activist summed it up, at the end of the day, without a genuine National Plan for Missing Persons, none of this will work. Each state also needs its own plan. Otherwise, we will remain in the same situation: without results, without reports and without answers about our disappeared.
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