The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
SEATTLE. USA, Apr 24 2026 (IPS) - This is the second part of a three-part commentary. Read Part 1: No Kings? Meet King Don and King John – Part 1 of 3 to start from the beginning.
Habeas tattoo?Among Trump’s most outrageous assaults on the rule of law has been an array of legal wrecking balls demolishing due process, habeas corpus, related foundational rights, and the separation of powers in the bargain.
For many years, his target of choice for these efforts has been immigrants. But in his second term, not only has he escalated his persecution of those with and without protected immigration status, he has also increasingly attacked the rights of U.S. citizens to free speech, assembly, the press, due process, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. The targets have included journalists and news sources, academics and universities, state and local governments, corporate officials, military officers, Federal employees, and members of Congress.
One operation of Trump’s mass deportation machine stands out as a template for negating the rule of law: the summary removal, without anything resembling due process, of 261 mainly Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo – Terrorism Confinement Center). They were given no prior notice of their deportation and were not told their destination. For 137 Venezuelans, The Trump administration invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA) which, it claimed, allowed summary deportations without recourse to habeas corpus or other due process. The other 101 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans were also summarily deported, under uncertain statutory authority. Once in CECOT, many were disappeared indefinitely without appeal, held incommunicado without contact with families or attorneys, and routinely tortured.
The Alien Enemies Act allows nationals of enemy countries during wartime to be summarily expelled or detained. It was last invoked during World War Two to imprison American citizens of Japanese ancestry in concentration camps, an injustice for which the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 formally apologized.
President Trump justified the use of the AEA because, he claimed, the Venezuelans were members of Tren de Aragua (TdA – Train of Aragua), a metastasized former prison gang. He claimed that TdA was a “narco-terrorist” organization controlled by the Venezuelan government that had invaded the U.S. and was in a state of war with this country. He used these assertions to justify invoking the AEA, posting on Truth Social: “These are the monsters sent into our Country by Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats. How dare they! Thank you to El Salvador and, in particular, President Bukele, for your understanding of this horrible situation.” In effect, Trump was trying to outsource his violations of constitutional rights to a small friendly dictatorship.
On March 15, 2025, the date the removal flights were scheduled to take the detainees to El Salvador, the non-governmental American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency petition in federal court to stay the removals. Federal Judge James Boasberg, a George W. Bush appointee, immediately ordered the deportations paused. All the deportees, he ruled, had to be brought back to the U.S. and offered due process to defend themselves against removal.
Although Boasberg demanded that even planes already in the air be turned around, the Trump administration said that the orders came too late and it couldn’t recall the planes. It also claimed to have no control over El Salvador, although it had paid that country at least $6 million to imprison the men. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, the self-described “world’s coolest dictator”, posted sardonically on X: “Oopsie!” The court rejected all of these arguments, but nevertheless the planes delivered the deportees to the Salvadoran mega-prison.
Later in March, Boasberg told the government that it must prove that those targeted for removal are in fact “alien enemies” and allow them to challenge the designation before deporting them. The Trump administration ignored the court’s ruling, and went on expelling more Venezuelans and Salvadorans to El Salvador, arguing that courts had no jurisdiction over what it called foreign policy.
In this stalemate, some observers questioned whether the executive branch was effectively placing itself above constitutional restraints such as habeas corpus by intentionally ignoring valid orders from the judiciary.
Trump and Congressional Republicans bitterly attacked Judge Boasberg and called for his impeachment. This prompted Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to issue a rare rebuke, reminding them that impeachment is not an “appropriate response” when disagreeing with a judicial decision.
An appeals court ruled in March that the Trump administration was denying the detainees’ due process. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act,” commented one judge.
In April, the Supreme Court allowed the government to continue deportations on the technicality that the detainees had filed for relief against summary removal in the wrong court. But it also affirmed that “an individual subject to detention and removal under that statute [the AEA] is entitled to ‘judicial review’” and advance notice.
Outside of the courts, the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch accused the U.S. and Salvadoran governments of “enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention” of the Venezuelan deportees. “These enforced disappearances are a grave violation of international human rights law,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at HRW. “The cruelty of the US and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families.”
Several news organizations investigated the alleged criminal records and gang affiliations of the Venezuelan men, and found them mostly non-existent. The New York Times reported that “most of the men do not have criminal records in the United States or elsewhere in the region, beyond immigration offenses” and “very few of them appear to have any clear, documented links to the Venezuelan gang.”
The ACLU filed Homeland Security’s “Alien Enemies Act Validation Guide” as an exhibit in a lawsuit. Verónica Egui Brito of the Miami Herald analyzed this “scorecard”, which the agency had used to determine whether the accused were members of Tren de Aragua.
It turned out that two of the criteria that supposedly indicated gang membership were certain tattoos and “urban street wear” such as jerseys and sneakers featuring basketball great Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls. But experts on Latin American gangs pointed out that TdA did not use specific tattoo images to identify its members. USA Today reported that internal Federal Bureau of Investigations and Department of Homeland Security documents have for years questioned the validity of using tattoos to identify TdA members. As to the Jordan and Bulls merch, it has long been among the most popular street fashions in much of the world, and could probably be used to falsely accuse thousands of young men in most cities of gang membership.
The whole “validation guide” appeared less a serious tool for criminology than the Trumpian equivalent of a Dick Tracy Magic Decoder, designed to help immigration “crimestoppers” detain anyone whose markings, clothing, accent, or skin tone struck them as suspicious.
Some of the men’s families also challenged the deportations, denying that the men were gang members or criminals at all. A few deportees became causes célèbres.
Most notoriously, the U.S. government admitted that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man with a U.S.-citizen wife and child, had been removed by mistake. The Supreme Court ordered that the government bring him back to the U.S. Yet even after that, the Trump administration tried to prevent Abrego Garcia from returning, and at first Bukele flatly refused to let him go. After Abrego Garcia was finally repatriated, the Trump administration tried to charge him with an unrelated minor infraction, then to deport him to one of several African countries. Costa Rica offered to take Abrego Garcia and he accepted, but the Trump administration refused. In February 2026, a judge ruled that ICE could not re-detain him. But the government continues to litigate his case.
In the face of strong exculpatory evidence for most of the deportees, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem opined: “They should stay there [in the Salvadoran prison] for the rest of their lives.”
Finally, after four months of imprisoning the Venezuelans in CECOT under its proprietary interpretation of the Alien Enemies Act, the Trump administration abruptly sent most of them back to Venezuela in a swap of prisoners.
In December 2025, Judge Boasberg rejected most of the government’s arguments on the merits of the case, including Trump’s premises for invoking the AEA, and found that the U.S. denied the men due process. Finally in February, he issued an order that any of the deported Venezuelans who still wanted to challenge their removal had to be allowed to return to the U.S., with travel expenses paid by the U.S. government, to continue their immigration cases in court. The judge and the Venezuelans’ counsel, however, recognized that only a few of the men were likely to accept the offer.
In the emerging reality, there was a remarkable lack of evidence that any of the 200-plus deportees were actually members of Tren de Aragua, or that more than a handful had committed any serious crime. Beyond that, the Trump administration’s cases rested on a series of evidentiary dominos that cascaded down with a few pushes from legal and journalistic investigations.
In presidential debates during 2024, Trump falsely claimed that members of Tren de Aragua had “taken over” Aurora, Colorado, and other U.S. cities.
In fact, it turned out that a small number of armed young men, whom the police had not linked to TdA, had committed burglaries and firearm offenses against the residents of a couple of run-down apartment complexes with some Venezuelan residents. One of them, and nine others suspected of ties with the gang, were arrested by the police. The Aurora police chief told USA Today that “the city is not taken over by gangs”, and that, as in most other metropolitan areas, there were gangs there before any Venezuelans moved in.
Further investigations by several news organizations found that TdA is not a major drug smuggling enterprise, just a former prison gang that was evicted from prison and spread out to prey largely on Venezuelan refugees in South America. Around 90 percent of the nearly 8 million Venezuelans who have left their country went elsewhere in Latin America; only about 10 percent came to the U.S. A national survey by USA Today of federal, state and local law enforcement found that, despite claims of thousands of TdA gangsters, authorities had arrested fewer than 135 confirmed members. These have mainly committed petty street crimes such as purse-snatching, retail theft, and jewelry store robberies, many against other Venezuelans.
TdA bears little resemblance to the major cartels and maras of Mexico and Central America. These operate more like big transnational corporations heavy with advanced armaments, lawyers, and accountants. They are the ones who produce and smuggle most of the drugs entering the U.S., particularly fentanyl, the most deadly. The small gangs of Venezuelan petty thieves in a few cities were well within the capabilities of local law enforcement to dismantle with normal police work.
A key element of White House arguments for invoking the Alien Enemies Act was that Tren de Aragua was controlled by the Venezuelan government. However, this claim was also contradicted in an internal assessment by an elite forum of U.S. spy agencies. The National Intelligence Council concluded in a “Sense of the Community Memorandum”: “ [T]he Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.”
Joe Kent, Trump’s former head of counterterrorism, asked the Council to reconsider these findings. It did so, and came back with the same conclusions. Not long after, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard removed Michael Collins, a veteran intelligence analyst, from his post as acting chair of the Council.
The affair suggested that Kent, Gabbard, White House advisor Steven Miller, and their crew were trying to provide Trump with bespoke intelligence, custom tailored to fit whatever fabricated casus belli he was trying to invent. But some career intelligence professionals pushed back, calling bullshit on their manipulations.
Other dominos fell as more Trump claims were discredited by well-established geopolitical realities. The President claimed that he had saved tens of thousands of lives by dismantling Tren de Aragua and keeping drugs out of the U.S. However, the only drug responsible for large numbers of overdose deaths in the U.S. is fentanyl, a powerful opioid, which is almost exclusively produced in and exported from Mexico.
Venezuela reportedly plays little to no role in the fentanyl trade. Nor is it a major producer of cocaine or other drugs. It is mainly a trans-shipment corridor for cocaine from other South American countries headed for Europe, not the U.S.
In the end, the courts upheld the rights of some of the Venezuelan detainees trampled by Trump. But the long delays and tortures they suffered made those rights seem more aspirational than enforceable.
Beyond the Venezuelans, the rejection by the Trump administration of immigrants’ rights to habeas corpus and due process has been pandemic across the U.S.
An investigation by Reuters found that since October 2025, hundreds of judges have ruled more than 4,400 times that the government is unlawfully detaining immigrants, yet the government has continued the illegal detentions undeterred. This ignoring of or delay in complying with court orders has also made a travesty of the separation of powers, which requires that the executive branch respect the rulings of the judiciary.
A federal judge ordered the release of one such detainee, writing: “It is appalling that the Government insists that this Court should redefine or completely disregard the current law as it is clearly written.”
Many of these attacks on immigrants seem to be obvious violations of U.S. and international immigration laws. While some have been successfully remedied in court, they may also be a disturbing test run: the President has openly floated the idea of deporting U.S. citizens who have been convicted of serious crimes to El Salvador and imprisoning them there indefinitely without due process.
He has also tried to criminalize assistance to immigrants by arresting and, in a few notorious cases, killing or gravely injuring U.S. citizens who were trying to defend their neighbors against violence and harassment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other immigration agencies.
“The path to authoritarianism is being built on the backs of immigrants”, asserted Kiko Matos, President of the National Immigration Law Center, in TIME magazine. “While [the Trump administration is] ostensibly targeting immigrants, what is being constructed is both the infrastructure and compliance that will facilitate a broader loss of rights for all Americans.”
There’s a familiar progression that Trump and his cadre have inflicted on their shifting scapegoats. They start by branding immigrants as dangerous individual criminals, a go-to move of nativists for centuries. Then they escalate to alleging that they are gangsters working for foreign cartels. Then they try to link those cartels to an enemy government and declare them “narco-terrorists”.
Moving on to other targets, it’s easy to apply this field-tested stratagem to those who Trump calls “the enemy within”. And so protesters, activists, civil society groups, opposition politicians and other critics end up labeled “domestic terrorists”.
A similar public-relations gambit was used against the crews and passengers of small boats in the Caribbean north of Venezuela and the eastern Pacific.
This is the second part of a three-part commentary. Read Part 1: No Kings? Meet King Don and King John – Part 1 of 3 to start from the beginning.
To be continued in Part 3 of 3
About the author
SRINAGAR, Apr 24 2026 (IPS) - A high-stakes international summit in Colombia starting today (April 24) is expected to sharpen global efforts to phase out fossil fuels, as governments, scientists and Indigenous leaders warn that the world is running out of time to avert irreversible climate damage.
During a virtual press briefing on April 16, Colombia’s Environment Ministry and a diverse panel of experts outlined expectations from the upcoming Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Summit in Santa Marta. The event is being positioned as a critical platform to accelerate energy transition and address mounting pressure from Indigenous communities living on the frontlines of extraction.
It was at the Belém Climate Conference in 2025, wherein a coalition of over 80 countries unanimously decided to act decisively to phase out fossil fuels that have been driving three quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions.
On the sidelines, 24 countries went further: they issued the Belém Declaration, pledging to work collectively toward a just, orderly, and equitable transition aligned with 1.5°C pathways. To this end, Colombia and the Netherlands volunteered to co-host the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels.
The Conference is taking place from 24 to 29 April 2026 in Santa Marta, Colombia. The organisers invited 97 national governments and 30 subnational governments. The high-level segment convenes on April 28–29, 2026.
“We are in a moment of no return. It is clear that there is climate change and that there is no denialism. This is the moment… to accelerate the transition and the progressive elimination of fossil fuels,” said Luz Dary Carmona Moreno, Colombia’s Vice Minister for Environmental Land Use Planning.
The summit comes at a time of growing geopolitical tension and continued global dependence on fossil fuels. Carmona noted that conflicts and economic instability continue to be shaped by oil, gas, and coal and stressed that there is an urgent need for structural change.
“The economy continues depending on fossil fuels,” she said, pointing to global crises that reflect the entrenched role of hydrocarbons.
Colombia has framed the Santa Marta conference around three strategic pillars. The first focuses on overcoming global dependence on fossil fuels. The second addresses transformation of supply and demand systems. The third seeks to rethink multilateral cooperation frameworks.
Carmona emphasised that the conference aims to produce a concrete roadmap, backed by science, public participation, and political will.
“This conference seeks common points to accelerate the transition, concrete actions and enablers that allow that acceleration,” she said.
The event has already drawn strong international participation. According to Colombian officials, 45 countries have confirmed attendance, along with 13 ministers and a broad coalition of civil society groups, indigenous organisations, academics, and private sector actors.
More than 2,800 participants, including grassroots organisations, Indigenous communities, youth groups, and labour unions, have registered to take part.
Indigenous Leaders Warn of “Unjust Transition”
For Indigenous leaders, however, the urgency of the climate crisis is matched by frustration over what they describe as a gap between rhetoric and reality.
Oswaldo Muca, General Coordinator of the Organisation of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), said communities continue to bear the brunt of extraction despite promises of a “just transition”.
“We are very concerned. We talk about a just transition, but in practice it is not true,” Muca said.
He described ongoing environmental degradation in Indigenous territories, including illegal mining, deforestation and mercury contamination.
“Mining continues. Extraction continues. Deforestation continues. The territories and Indigenous peoples continue suffering this problem, and it is becoming more serious every day,” he said.
Muca also criticised the lack of direct benefits for local communities, noting that profits from extraction often leave the country while environmental damage remains.
“The resources do not reach Indigenous territories but they destroy the territory and leave the damage,” he said.
He called for Indigenous participation at every stage of policymaking, from design to implementation, across technical, political, legal and financial dimensions.
Science Points to Sharp Cuts
Scientific findings presented during the briefing reinforced the scale of transformation required.
Dr Marcel Llavero Pasquina, a researcher at the University of Barcelona, said limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require drastic reductions in fossil fuel production.
“Eighty-six percent of oil and gas reserves currently under production should be prematurely decommissioned,” he said.
Even under a less ambitious 2-degree scenario, at least 12% of producing reserves would need to be phased out.
Pasquina also warned that no new fossil fuel exploration is compatible with global climate targets. “At least 10,000 of the existing oil and gas extraction contracts should be cancelled,” he said.
He highlighted the economic tensions shaping climate negotiations, noting that fossil fuel companies stand to lose trillions of dollars under transition scenarios.
“Fossil fuel companies… have a material and quantifiable conflict of interest,” he said, arguing they should be excluded from climate policymaking.
At the same time, governments face significant fiscal challenges, with potential revenue losses estimated at US$117 trillion globally under a 1.5-degree pathway. Still, Pasquina stressed that these costs are outweighed by the human and environmental toll of inaction.
“These transition costs are dwarfed by the climate costs communities would otherwise suffer,” he said.
Policy Momentum Builds
Despite the scale of the challenge, policy experts pointed to growing momentum worldwide.
Paola Yanguas Parra, a policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said governments have already begun implementing measures to restrict fossil fuel expansion.
“We found… 58 active restrictions, which go from bans and moratoria to exploration and licensing,” she said.
These measures include protections for ecologically and culturally significant areas such as the Amazon, as well as restrictions on extraction methods like fracking.
Yanguas Parra noted that such policies often make economic sense in addition to environmental benefits.
“You would take a huge environmental, social and climate cost… for something that would not even make you enough profit,” she said, referring to unviable extraction projects in remote regions.
She added that the summit offers an opportunity to shift global discussions from whether to transition away from fossil fuels to how to implement that transition effectively.
“This coalition will focus on implementation, on learning from each other,” she said.
Amazon at a Crossroads
Speakers from across the Amazon basin warned that the region is increasingly being treated as a new frontier for fossil fuel expansion.
Alana Manchineri, an Indigenous leader from Brazil, described the climate crisis as an immediate reality rather than a distant threat.
“There is no more space for delays,” she said.
She warned that oil and gas projects are already causing widespread damage, including water contamination, biodiversity loss and rising conflict.
“It is not just environmental damage but violations of rights and ways of life,” she said.
According to Indigenous organisations, more than 320,000 square kilometres of Indigenous land in the Amazon basin are already affected by oil and gas blocks.
Manchineri stressed that any transition must fully incorporate Indigenous knowledge and leadership.
“This path will only be legitimate and effective with the full participation of Indigenous peoples,” she said.
Beyond COP: Complement, Not Replacement
Panellists repeatedly emphasised that the Santa Marta summit is not intended to replace existing UN climate processes but to complement them.
“There are groups of countries… that have gathered to discuss more focused issues,” Yanguas Parra said, describing the summit as part of a broader ecosystem of climate cooperation.
Pasquina offered a more critical view, arguing that while UN climate negotiations have produced frameworks like the Paris Agreement, they have failed to curb rising emissions.
“The COP has been a great success on paper. In reality, emissions have only been increasing,” he said.
He suggested that initiatives like Santa Marta could increase pressure on countries that have resisted stronger action.
A Test of Political Will
As preparations intensify, expectations for the summit remain high. Colombian officials say the final outcome will be a report outlining actionable steps and mechanisms to accelerate transition.
“We want the report not to remain just another document. We expect people to turn it into action,” Carmona said.
For many participants, the success of the summit will depend on whether it delivers concrete commitments rather than broad declarations.
Indigenous leaders, in particular, say the credibility of the process hinges on real inclusion and tangible change on the ground.
“If we do not take real and effective actions. We can talk about a just transition, but in reality, other mechanisms will continue destroying the territory,” Muca warned.
IPS UN Bureau Report
WASHINGTON DC, Apr 24 2026 (IPS) - About 132 wars are happening in the world today, displacing 200 million people. 80 percent of these conflicts are happening in sensitive biodiversity areas where Indigenous Peoples live.
An estimated 476 million Indigenous Peoples in the world, living across 90 countries and territories, speaking a majority of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages, represent 5,000 different cultures, faiths, and ways of life.
Currently many wars across the world are fought on land where Indigenous Peoples live. Indigenous Peoples live often in contested border areas on the front lines of violent conflict, insurgency, and organized crime with devastating humanitarian impact.
We remember all the lives that we have lost in our territories. We remember the wisdom which will get us through this that and will pave the way for healing people, for peace, and the one planet we all co-habitat together. Peace, not wars, will be the pathway.
Peace-making efforts are usually negotiated at high political levels where Indigenous Peoples are rarely represented. Relations between states and Indigenous Peoples must always be remembered if some of the world’s longest-running conflicts are to be solved.
The protection of peace, peoples and planet cannot be complete if Indigenous Peoples are left behind as also stated in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that nations around the world have pledged at the United Nations– to be achieved by 2030.
Any peace-building efforts in global conflicts must therefore involve and include Indigenous Peoples. The world of today needs meaningful peacebuilding that works for all.
Indigenous Peoples have their own traditions, culture, and spiritual practices that help to resolve violence and build local peace. While often highly successful, Indigenous People’s efforts are underappreciated by the peacebuilding community or ignored entirely in formal peace processes.
Two years ago, we started mapping some of the root causes of these violent conflicts that are currently happening, and we tried to analyze what is happening in the world today. This is what we this is what we found that to mitigate violent conflicts happening in our world today it is imperative that we understand what is happening in territories where Indigenous Peoples live and work with them to provide solutions.
Indigenous women across cultures and nations have also evolved, extraordinary forms of nonviolent protest and mechanisms to confront decades of militarization, weaponization and structural violence that have marked their lives for decades. We must put them in the forefront of national and global peacebuilding efforts.
Indigenous Peoples have lived for centuries with violence in their lives, yet the resilience that they showed in the face of entrenched violence is note-worthy.
Indigenous Peoples have since time immemorial evolved innovative ways of peacebuilding. We acknowledge the Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee People as well as Loiyunmba Shinyen of Manipur, Indigenous forms of governance and constitution making that evolved in the 12th century in America as well as in Asia and in many other parts of the world.
We recognize the extraordinary role of Indigenous women, our mothers, grandmothers, and ancestors who have forged innovative peacebuilding methods against all odds.
Indigenous Peoples have been trying to engage with the United Nations since the 1970s to resolve, mitigate and prevent violent conflicts. We noted that the first time that special attention was paid to Indigenous Peoples by the peace area of the United Nations was in connection with the peace process in Guatemala in the year 1995 in the UN General Assembly Agenda Item 42 A/49/882 dated 10 April 1995.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) adopted in 2007 contains several articles that are very relevant to preventing conflict. 17 years since the adoption of UNDRIP, conflict in Indigenous lands and territories has increased more than ever. We are now in the search to find new solutions and pathways.
The issues of peace were excluded from the formal original mandate of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and it was only in May 2016 that the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) designated conflict, peace, and resolution as the special theme for its fifteenth session.
Two years ago, to address the issue, we organized the First Global Summit on Indigenous Peace building. The Summit was held in Washington DC on 11 & 12 April 2024 and brought together 120 Indigenous Peacebuilders from over 30 countries. Following the Summit, an International Declaration on Indigenous Peacebuilding was adopted and signed, and the Global Network of Indigenous Peacebuilders, Mediators and Negotiators was born.
Following the Summit, we worked with UN member states which led to a UN General Assembly Resolution on Indigenous Peacebuilding adopted in December 2024.
At the First International Declaration on Indigenous Peacebuilding adopted in April 2024, it was resolved that the Summit will be held every two years until we reduce conflicts in Indigenous territories by 50 percent.
We are therefore meeting for the Second Global Summit on Indigenous Peacebuilding that is bringing together over 200 extraordinary Indigenous Peace builders – Indigenous Elders, Women, Leaders and youth, from 80 countries belonging to seven socio-cultural regions of the world on 25 and 26 April 2026 in New York City alongside the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
The Global Summit is to empower us, to understand what is happening in the world, share Indigenous approaches to peace building, share knowledge, studies, science, research, practices to enable us to work to mitigate violent conflict. The Summit is held in the hope that future generations will help in healing people and the planet.
The aims of the Second Global Summit on Indigenous Peace Building are to find ways to implement the First International Declaration on Indigenous Peacebuilding adopted on 12 April 2024, reflect on 20 Years of UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and call to the UN and member states for an International Decade on Indigenous Peacebuilding, 2027-2037.
The Summit will also see the launch of Global Indigenous Mothers March for Peace, Healing and Unity that will commence from the Summit and go on for two years non-stop in areas around the world which are in conflict and will culminate at the Third Global Summit on Indigenous Peacebuilding in 2028.
Binalakshmi Nepram is Founder-President of Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Peace
IPS UN Bureau
Apr 24 2026 (IPS) -
CIVICUS discusses Gen Z-led protests in Nepal with Abhijeet Adhikari (Abhi), a lawyer and political activist who took part in the protests.
Abhijeet Adhikari
What drove young people onto the streets, and what were their demands?
Since this protest was decentralised, there was no uniform agenda but rather a pile of frustrations with the workings of the political system.
A decade ago, Nepal introduced a new federal democratic constitution that people saw as a new beginning that would lead to development and better living conditions. But politicians didn’t live up to those aspirations and instead played a game of musical chairs with the post of prime minister, with a few politicians from the three biggest political parties taking turns and not allowing new parties or people in their own parties to rise against them. There was no clear separation between government and opposition, and five or six governments would rotate in quick succession during one parliamentary term. It was hard to hold anybody accountable.
Nepal’s economy is highly dependent on remittances sent by migrant workers, and following high school, every young person thinks about where to go to find a job or a better life. This went on for years, and frustration with politicians who only thought about their own benefit continued to accumulate.
The trigger was the government social media ban. Following a trend in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, young people had started comparing their lives with those of politicians’ kids, and a trend called ‘nepokids’ exposing their lavish lifestyle went viral on TikTok. It seems that security agencies advised the then-prime minister that things might get out of control, so he decided to ban the platforms. He didn’t realise our generation was born with the internet and social media, meaning we know how to use VPNs to access the web. The ban only added another layer of frustration at not being able to express our frustration.
Once we were on the streets, we organised our demands. The first was the reversal of the social media ban. The second was an end to the musical chairs game between top-tier politicians. And the third was reform of the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority, the institution that deals with corruption.
We tried to put all of this in language young people would connect with. We used AI tools to generate Gen Z-friendly slogans, such as ‘delete corruption’ and ‘stop putting filters on our democracy’. People also brought anime-inspired posters, particularly One Piece characters. The whole aesthetic was very uniquely Gen Z.
How did events unfold on 8 and 9 September?
We gathered at Maitighar Mandala, a symbolic monument located in the heart of Kathmandu, and planned to march to the Everest Hotel, which is the closest you could get to the parliament building, as the streets beyond the hotel were blocked. When we arrived, we were surprised there were very few security personnel there. We didn’t know that earlier, people had come towards parliament from various sides, with electric fence-cutting machines and kerosene. A few violent groups pushed the crowd towards restricted areas. The police, who weren’t prepared to handle the crowds, panicked and started shooting at protesters. Within four hours, they killed 19 people, including children, some of them in their school uniforms.
Before the protest, there had been rumours of international rules prohibiting shooting at people in school uniforms, and many people thought that if students marched in front, police wouldn’t shoot at them. That sadly wasn’t the case.
The next day, people took to the streets again, and some opportunist groups did too. Someone put up a website with politicians’ home addresses, and mobs marched to their homes and set them on fire. They also burned down government buildings, including parliament, executive offices and the Supreme Court.
The prime minister resigned and protesters pushed for the dissolution of parliament, which the president then did. Following further pressure on social media and in critical circles, a retired Supreme Court judge was brought in as transitional prime minister. Even though this was not the constitutional process, people accepted it as a temporary solution to regain political stability, and it was this prime minister who paved the way to a peaceful and fair election.
How were the protests organised, and what role did social media play?
Protests were decentralised. Two Discord channels were used, which no longer exist because all those violent plans, arson included, were discussed there. But only around 2,000 people were on Discord before the protest, and many more groups joined spontaneously. Those who were already activists posted about the protests on social media.
Some of us joined as a group, and thought we were at the centre of it, but when we reached Maitighar, we felt like drops in the ocean. It was a massive protest, and we didn’t know who was leading it.
The day before, we had got together and planned, and many other groups did the same. We shared the call through Instagram and TikTok. Some went to schools and asked school departments to give a half-day waiver so students could join.
After the protest, the Discord channel grew to around 10,000 people, who started voting on Discord for who should become prime minister. The person who received the most votes on Discord eventually became prime minister. It was a very Gen Z way of doing politics.
However, I think ‘youth-led’ would be a more appropriate label than Gen Z protest. Gen Z might be accurate from the perspective of social media driving it. But while people in the city who have access to the internet may have Gen Z characteristics, the same age group in rural Nepal may not fit the description.
What risks did you and other protesters face?
On the first day, when we reached the Everest Hotel and saw the crowd push further, I was aware I should not go beyond that point. But when we heard on social media that people were entering the parliament building, we ran through another alley. A special task force police officer, there to guard the parliament building, loaded his gun and pointed it directly at me. But he didn’t fire.
After the protest turned violent, the police searched every place where protesters could be hiding, taking people out and beating them. From around noon un late night, eight or nine of us hid in a cubicle. It was dangerous to go back home, because there were lots of police in civilian clothes on the streets. During those two or three days when the army had effectively taken over and there was no functioning government, we had reason to believe our phones were being monitored.
Now there are people in prison and facing criminal charges for throwing stones or making TikTok content while the parliament building was burning. But those who manipulated the crowds and instigated violence supposedly in the name of the movement do not seem to be facing consequences.
How has the movement organised since the protests?
After the protest, people from different circles started forming their own Gen Z groups. There are over 40 now. A few of them, including Gen Z Alliance, Gen Z Civic Forum and Gen Z Front, are still active. Some have remained informal, some have registered as non-governmental organisations and some have formed political parties, although they didn’t receive a significant share of the vote. These are the ones who positioned themselves as guardians of the Gen Z movement, but not in terms of the aspirations and values we actually had.
People continue to take to the streets because the Karki Commission, formed to investigate who is responsible for the 19 deaths on 8 September and for the arson and vandalism on 9 September, has submitted a huge report, but the government has not yet released it. This has happened before: in the 1990s, when democracy was restored, a similar committee, the Malik Commission, produced a similar report that was never made public. In the 2006 transition, the report by the Rayamajhi Commission wasn’t made public either. People won’t have it again and are demanding transparency.
What did the protests achieve, and what lessons have you taken from them?
I believe more in institutions and processes than in charismatic figures and results. So I think it would have been best not to dissolve parliament. By the second day of protests, we could have pushed for any law we wanted, because parliamentarians’ morale was so low that they would have agreed to almost anything protesters demanded. Instead, we demanded the dissolution of parliament.
Negotiations should have been held mostly by the president’s office as the only legitimate institution after the prime minister’s resignation, but instead, the army dominated negotiations. That was another blunder. The negotiation process itself should have been taken into public discussion. After that, the focus should have been on reforming the party system and making the system more accountable, but instead, we thought everything would change if new people were brought in. The problem is that the new will eventually become old, and any new party that doesn’t create radically different structures will end up like the old political parties.
I also think that when it comes to protest, organised leadership is best, because in decentralised structures no one can be held accountable if things go wrong. Also, they allow people to push their own agendas and the real demands of protests risk being lost.
Additionally, I am concerned that while bottom-up protests arising from rural areas may produce more inclusive and progressive results, urban-centred protests arising in reaction to governance failure and lack of economic opportunity may end up leading to polarisation and the rise of authoritarian figures. After this protest, political dynamics have shifted towards delivery. People have started demanding meritocracy, forgetting all about inclusion. Even if this government successfully delivers on people’s aspirations, it could be like the government in India, providing good infrastructure but dismantling political institutions, disrupting the social fabric and promoting religious extremism.
How do you see the future of Nepal’s democracy?
Right now, people have put their expectations and trust in a single person, while trust in institutions is shrinking by the day. Even civil society has lost credibility. Two decades ago, civil society was at the forefront of the change that took Nepal from monarchy to republic. But gradually, civil society leaders have been discredited. Civil society is mostly a launching pad for politics; people don’t remain there for long. Most prominent civil society leaders have become members of parliament for one party or another.
If this government fails, people will start thinking about bringing back the old monarch. Authoritarian nostalgia will take over. I am also concerned about political radicalisation taking on ethnic or religious dimensions, particularly given the fundamentalist elements active along the border with India.
As for the protests, I think the government will continue to allow people to come out in the street, but it won’t listen to our demands.
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.
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Gen Z protests: new resistance rises CIVICUS | State of Civil Society Report 2026
Nepal’s Gen Z electoral revolution CIVICUS Lens 19.Mar.2026
Nepal’s Gen Z uprising: time for youth-led change CIVICUS Lens 10.Oct.2025
SEATTLE. USA, Apr 23 2026 (IPS) - After Donald Trump’s second election as president in November 2024, he said coyly that he wanted to be a dictator … but just for a day. On his first day in office, his sharpie signed an impressive pile of presidential orders, many of dubious legality. The next day he continued to govern like a DIY duce. He has not stopped since.
He has brought family members, incompetent political boot-lickers, and fellow kleptocrats into what is looking less like an administration and more like the Bling Dynasty, ruled by the Golden Emperor, Donald Khan. He continues to troll his opponents by hinting at a third term, which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.
A far-flung grassroots opposition coalition has adopted the motto “No Kings”, which has resonated across a wide political spectrum. After all, British subjects began a war of independence 250 years ago to liberate their colonies from the vagaries of the reputedly bipolar King George III of England.
So far, No Kings has held three spirited days of national action, the last of which reportedly attracted some eight million people to thousands of locations across all 50 states. Many demonstrators carried homemade signs taking the piss out of Trump on a great variety of issues. One favorite read, “Sorry world, grandpa’s gone off his meds again”; another, “Fight Truth Decay”. Big inflatables of Trump as a baby in diapers, penguins, frogs, and other fanciful creatures abounded. Also very visible in Seattle-area demonstrations were Vietnam -era military veterans and American flags.
The movement has been broadened by a wide range of other constituencies challenging mass persecution and deportation of immigrants, defending laid-off public employees, trying to reinstate devastating Medicaid (public health insurance) cuts, opposing military intervention abroad and at home, and getting up in Trump’s face on other critical issues.
In response to the October 18th No Kings rallies, Trump posted what looks like an artificial intelligence-generated video on Truth Social, his personal social media platform. It features a cartoonish figure of him wearing a golden crown, flying a jet fighter that drops massive amounts of excrement on demonstrators in city streets below. It’s the kind of dreck that a troubled third grader addicted to AI might come up with if left unsupervised. (Apologies to the many third-graders who are much more mature than that).
Nevertheless, barring some deus ex machina, the world is stuck with Donald Trump for at least three more years. So as he reinvents royalty as reality show, whom could he adopt as a model and inspiration?
Which king?There have certainly been constitutional monarchs who served their countries honorably in ceremonial and advisory roles. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands earned widespread respect by supporting the resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II. King Juan Carlos I of Spain played a key role in guiding his country back to democracy in the 1970s after decades under Generalísimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde’s fascist dictatorship.
But this does not seem to be the sort of reign Trumpísimo has in mind.
In a more colonialist and mercantilist vein, there’s always el Rey Fernando II of 15th and 16th Century Spain. With la Reina Isabel, he completed the Reconquista, expelling Jews and Muslims from Al-Andalus (an early foreshadowing of Trump’s Muslim Bans). His reign unleashed the mind-bending tortures of Torquemada and the Holy Inquisition (so much more imaginative than the ham-handed bludgeoning at Trump’s Salvadoran rent-a-gulag). Fernando’s conquistadores plundered the gold (so much sexier than tariffs), demolished the temples, and subjugated the peoples of the ancient civilizations of the Americas with sword and cross. Trump is off to a slow start with his incoherent threats and clumsy aggressions against Iran, Venezuela, Greenland, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Canada, and Palestine.
For sheer absolutist excess, don’t forget Louis XIV of France. His little country place at Versailles throws shade all over Mar-a-Lago. Whereas Lou could rock a moniker like “le Roi Soleil” (the Sun King), Trump will have to settle for “the Tanning Bed King” or perhaps “the Drill Baby Drill King”. And how about “L’état, c’est moi” (The state is me)? Sorry, but does the Donald have anything punchier than “I’d like you to do me a favor, though”? Or “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” (Unfortunately, his supine Supreme Court majority has his back on this one.) Then there’s “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the President.” Sounds like a third-grade class president throwing a tantrum. (Again, apologies to the many third graders who would never behave this boorishly.)
Compared to these historical peers, Trump comes out more mafioso than monarch.
But fear not. British historian Marc Morris has highlighted a promising spiritual forefather for the Trump monarchy.
King John, also known as John Lackland, ruled England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He came to be nicknamed Bad King John for his treachery, lechery, mendacity and cruelty. Morris quotes a contemporary chronicler, Anonymous of Béthune: “He was a very bad man, more cruel than all others. He lusted after beautiful women and because of this he shamed the high men of the land, for which reason he was greatly hated. Whenever he could he told lies rather than the truth … He was brim-full of evil qualities.” Remind you of anyone?
Troubadour Bertran de Born piled on: “No man may ever trust him, for his heart is soft and cowardly.”
“He was a total jerk,” wrote Morris. “He didn’t just kill, he was sadistic. He starved people to death. And not just enemy knights, but once a rival’s wife and son.” In another incident, John locked 22 noble prisoners of war in a castle and left them to die of starvation.
In 1215, the English barons (the most powerful nobles) rebelled against King John and forced him to sign the Magna Carta. This historic accord established a prototype for the rule of law in the English-speaking world. It evolved to apply to kings and paupers, although at the time it was mainly an agreement between the monarchy and the nobility.
“For the first time Magna Carta established publicly the principle that the king was subject to the law,” wrote historian Nick Higham. “It also led indirectly to the development of a new kind of state, in which the money to govern the country came from taxation agreed by parliament.” (Russell Vought take note.)
Article 39 articulated the legal concept of habeas corpus (“you have the body” in Latin), which established freedom from arbitrary detention by the government without just cause. This became a keystone of due process under the law. The Magna Carta also established that the king could levy taxes only with the approval of a council of nobles. This evolved into the first parliament fifty years later.
The Magna Carta was intended to resolve conflicts between the Crown and the barons. But within a few weeks, John disowned it and failed to honor his commitments. The document specified that the remedy for non-compliance was that the nobles could go to war again against the king, which they did. France then invaded England in support of the rebels, and the barons invited the French Prince Louis to assume the throne of England.
When John died of dysentery in 1216, he was widely reviled. Chronicler Matthew Paris wrote an epitaph for the king: “Foul as it is, Hell itself is made fouler by the presence of John.” But after his death, Louis was chased out of England and the Magna Carta was eventually revived again.
As a poster prince for unbridled monarchical power, then, John ended up leaving a mixed legacy from a MAGA point of view. On the downside, Trump might consider him “a loser” because he signed away the unlimited divine right of kings. But on the upside, he rapidly reneged on the Magna Carta and duked it out with the nobles and France until the end.
All told, King John the Bad checked most of the boxes for an early political progenitor of King Don the Con.
The Con?Did you catch the clever double entendre? The President is a felon, convicted on 34 counts of “fraudulently falsifying business records” by concealing a $130,000 payment of hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 elections. He is also a world-class con artist, snagging a $400 million Boeing 747 as an emolument from Qatar. It will initially serve as Air Force One, but the sweet part is that after he leaves office, the “flying palace” will be housed in the lobby of his presidential library and hotel in Miami.
And let’s not forget that Don was also found liable for sexual assault and defamation in a civil lawsuit. A jury awarded plaintiff E. Jean Carroll a settlement of $83.3 million dollars, of which $65 million was for punitive damages. An appeals court upheld the judgement, finding that: “The record in this case supports the district court’s determination that ‘the degree of reprehensibility’ of Mr. Trump’s conduct was remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented”.
On the policy front, the title of the second Trump administration’s master plan, Project 2025, apparently contained a typo: it should have been called Project 1214. In practice, it has become a blueprint for rolling back human rights, democracy and good government to pre-Magna Carta irrelevance, unleashing the king’s unchecked power, and disemboweling essential government functions.
Clearly, in many domains of regal malfeasance, King Don has already surpassed King John. He has made so many efforts to demonstrate that the rule of law does not apply to him that we can only consider a few of the most egregious here.
His pièce de résistance remains his efforts to declare the 2020 presidential election invalid and to overturn the outcome by a violent coup d’état on January 6, 2021. The details have been replayed endlessly: more than 60 lawsuits in nine states against the election, all thrown out of court as baseless; Trump’s speech spurring on the armed, violent mob; the rioters at the Capitol, equipped with gallows and noose, chanting “Hang Mike Pence” (the Vice President responsible for certifying the count of the electoral results); their violent incursion into the Capitol in an effort to stop the electoral process; a rioter defecating on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s desk; the killing and maiming of police trying to protect lawmakers. All this took place in front of the entire nation in newscasts and congressional hearings for long afterwards.
Perhaps the most stunning outcome, however, is that Trump, the MAGA movement, and most of the Republican Party have never acknowledged that in 2020 the electorate told the President, “You’re fired.” Instead, he tethered his return to office in 2024 to a dark-matter constellation of lies about the elections. He called J6 “a day of love”, and pardoned some 1,500 convicted members of the most dangerous rabble of terrorists to attack this country since 9/11. He continues to force gutless Republicans to drink the same Kool Aid for many years after his story has been thoroughly discredited.
Don the Con also has doubled down on other debunked lies about the 2020 election, such as widespread electoral corruption and voting by non-citizens. Using these falsehoods, he is pushing to take control of elections and voter rolls away from the states, to whom the Constitution grants these powers, and give them to himself. He is also trying to make voting harder for lower-income and elderly people with ploys like requiring proof of citizenship to vote – such as a birth certificate or passport – which has never before been a requisite.
Trump’s power to negate the rule of law by spawning alternative realities is one that King John might have envied.
Modern communications technologies give Trump the means to corrode our shared understandings that were inconceivable 800 years ago. The President assaults social and news media like a “leaf blower”, as satirist Stephen Colbert put it, deafeningly flooding the zone with simple, mendacious messages. Don will probably not perish from dysentery as John did, but he has infected global political spaces with informational dysentery. His propaganda machine serves as a disinformation sump pump that sucks out poison from MAGA cesspools and inundates physical and virtual public squares.
During Trump’s first term, the Washington Post counted 30,573 false or misleading claims, around 20 per day. In his second term, the pace seems to have picked up.
Veteran White House correspondent Peter Baker wrote a New York Times piece headlined “Trump’s Wild Claims, Conspiracies and Falsehoods Redefine Presidential Bounds”. He observed, “Truth is not always an abundant resource in the White House under any president, but never has the Oval Office been occupied by someone so detached from verifiable facts.”
Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former White House communications director, told Baker that Trump has completed “50 years of distorting things and telling lies and … 50 years of getting away with it, so why wouldn’t he make the lies bigger and more impactful in this last stretch?”
In one case, Trump accused the United States Agency for International Development of sending $50 million worth of condoms to the Palestinian organization Hamas. After journalists debunked the original story, Trump continued to repeat it, but increased the alleged total to $100 million.
“What were dubbed ‘alternative facts’ in his first term,” wrote Baker, “have quickly become a whole alternative reality in his second.”
To be continued in Part 2 of 3
About the author
GOLBANTI, Kenya, Apr 23 2026 (IPS) - Lydia Hagodana stands next to a bee yard (apiary) in Golbanti, Tana Delta, where she lives. The air carries a low, steady hum as bees move in and out in a constant stream. She lifts the back of one hive slightly, gauging its weight.
“This hive is mine,” she says. “I have two.”
Hagodana is one of 25 members of the Golbanti women’s group, which manages about 50 hives shared between them. Each member keeps a pair, harvesting honey a few times a year. Some of the income is kept individually, while a portion is pooled into group savings to support a small communal vegetable farm.
The apiaries sit along the southern banks of the Tana River, where it begins to split into the channels that form the lower delta. In the rainy season, the land opens into floodplains, drawing migratory birds and supporting wildlife, including hippos, crocodiles and the rare Tana River topi.
Lydia Hagodana in the area where she keeps one of her beehives in the Tana Delta, Kenya. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS
Patches of gallery forest along the riverbanks are home to two critically endangered primates – the Tana River red colobus and the crested mangabey.
In recent years, beekeeping has offered an alternative source of income in a place where livelihoods have long depended on farming, fishing and livestock. For women in particular, managing hives marks a shift from more physically demanding work and from roles traditionally dominated by men.
Before the bees, these same floodplains were at the centre of proposals for large-scale biofuel plantations – plans that raised concerns about converting wetlands into industrial agriculture.
“This was linked to the European Union policy to blend biofuels with fossil fuels,” said Dr Paul Matiku, executive director of Nature Kenya. “Africa was seen as a place with ‘idle’ land that could be converted to these crops, including jatropha and sugarcane.”
At the time, the Kenyan government framed the projects as part of vision 2030 – a way to bring development and jobs to what officials described as an “empty” region.
Land clearing had begun. In some places, fields were ploughed before indigenous families had gathered their belongings. A wildlife corridor used by elephants and other species was carved into plantation blocks.
Tensions Rose
By 2012, violent clashes had erupted, turning the delta into what investors began calling a “red zone”.
“We woke up to a challenge about where the Tana Delta was going,” said Matiku, who helped lead the legal fight to stop the expansion. “You cannot convert wildlife land and food-producing land into fuel for cars. We had to unleash every bit of machinery we had to stop it.”
A coalition of conservation groups and local communities took the government to court.
In February 2013, Lady Justice Mumbi Ngugi halted the proposed large-scale developments in the delta, ruling that the state had failed to account for the rights of local people.
“The court said no one could move forward without a land-use plan developed with the people,” Matiku said.
Over the next two years, communities, county officials and conservation groups worked together to map the delta – dividing the landscape into zones for grazing, farming and conservation under what became the Tana Delta Land Use Plan (LUP).
For the first time, the delta had a formal set of rules.
But another question followed: could conservation pay?
A group of community members gather outside an African Beekeepers Limited facility in Kenya’s Tana Delta to discuss the business of beekeeping. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS
From Idle Land to Natural Economy
With support from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), researchers began calculating the economic value of the delta’s ecosystems – reframing them from “idle land” into a functioning natural economy.
The partners approached the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the world’s largest multilateral fund for the environment. In 2018, after a technical review process, the fund approved a USD 3.3m grant for restoration in the Tana Delta under the Restoration Initiative.
The funding aimed to stabilise a landscape long marked by land disputes and failed biofuel schemes. Working with UNEP and Nature Kenya, the program supported consultations, legal drafting, and the work needed to turn the land-use plan into law.
Between 2019 and 2024, the county enacted 29 policies and legislative instruments aimed at regulating land use, conservation and climate action.
“We have moved from loosely coordinated conservation projects to a law-driven governance framework that integrates land use, climate change and community engagement,” said Mathew Babwoya Buya, Tana River county’s environment executive.
Tana River county has set aside at least 2% of its development budget for climate resilience and ecosystem restoration.
For the 2024/25 fiscal year, the county’s total budget is about KSh 8.87 billion (USD 68.76 million). Of that, roughly KSh 3 billion (USD 23 million) is development spending, implying annual allocations of about KSh 60 million (USD 460,000) for restoration programmes.
The commitment helped secure new funding from the GEF, which approved a grant of about USD 3.35 million for the Tana Delta under its Restoration Initiative.
Project documents show the program mobilised roughly USD 36.8 million in co-financing, about eleven dollars for every dollar of GEF funding, a commonly cited measure of leverage in conservation finance.
The Tana Delta project shows what is possible when country ownership is strong and priorities are clearly aligned.“The Tana Delta project shows what is possible when country ownership is strong and priorities are clearly aligned. This level of leverage reflects deep national commitment, strong engagement from a wide range of stakeholders, and clear links to value chains and local business opportunities. The project’s integrated, landscape-based approach allows it to address multiple challenges at once, making it an attractive platform for partners to invest alongside GEF,” said Ulrich Apel, a senior environmental specialist at the GEF.
The composition of that financing shows that the bulk originates from public agencies and development partners, including multilateral programmes and philanthropic funding. Only about USD 341,000 – less than 1 per cent of the total – is attributable to direct private-sector investment.
Apel explained the figures do not necessarily capture the full extent of commercial activity.
“It is important to understand how co-finance is defined and recorded,” Apel said. “Only capital explicitly committed to a project through formal letters is captured. There can be private sector flows into these value chains that do not show up in the co-financing numbers.”
UNEP officials say the structure is intended to use public funding to reduce land-use risk and attract investment over time.
“The GEF grant was designed to play a catalytic role,” said Nancy Soi, a UNEP official involved in the project.
By funding land-use planning, cooperative structures, and governance systems, she said, the program has helped “derisk” the delta for commercial activity in sectors such as honey, chilli, and aquaculture.
In parallel, other partners are beginning to test that approach in specific value chains.
In aquaculture, the Mastercard Foundation, working with TechnoServe, is supporting a program aimed at about 650 young entrepreneurs in Tana River County.
How that model translates into sustained commercial investment is still being tested on the ground.
In Golbanti, where Hagodana’s hives sit along the riverbanks, one of the emerging value chains is honey production. The work is being developed through a partnership with African Beekeepers Limited (ABL).
Under the model, the company supplies modern hives and technical expertise, manages production, and buys the honey at a fixed price – removing one of the biggest risks in rural markets: price volatility.
Nature Kenya says it has deliberately avoided locking farmers into long-term contracts at this stage, allowing time to assess whether production volumes and pricing can prove viable.
“We managed to pay 76 farmers about KSh700,000 (USD 5,400) from honey harvested in the delta,” said Ernest Simeoni, director of ABL, referring to the project’s first production cycle.
Numbered beehives in a conservation area of Kenya’s Tana Delta. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS
Not Just Beekeeping, It’s the Business of Beekeeping
Simeoni said the approach differs from many donor-led initiatives, which typically focus on training farmers to manage hives independently.
“There are hundreds of modern hives across Kenya, but they don’t produce honey,” he said. “The missing link is expertise.”
Instead, ABL keeps production under the company’s control, deploying its teams to monitor colonies, harvest honey, and oversee processing.
“We’re not training farmers how to do beekeeping,” he said. “What we’re doing is business – showing how to make money from honey.”
Community groups provide land and security for the hives, while the company manages harvesting and processing. Simeoni said that structure helps maintain consistent production volumes.
Even so, he cautioned that the model remains fragile. Access to affordable finance is limited, and much of the sector still depends on donor-backed projects to absorb early risk.
“If donor funding disappears tomorrow, most of these projects stop,” he said.
Looking beyond small-scale value chains, the county is also trying to attract larger investments through a proposed development plan known as the “Green Heart”.
A 60-hectare site in Minjila has been earmarked for an industrial hub intended to support agroprocessing, logistics and green manufacturing, according to Mwanajuma Hiribae, the Tana River county secretary.
“We are working to establish an investment unit to coordinate engagement with private firms,” she said. Funds have also been allocated to develop a masterplan for the site.
But the project remains at an early stage. The land has yet to be formally transferred to the county’s investment authority, and proposals from potential investors are still under review.
Officials say any future development will need to align with the delta’s land-use plan and environmental safeguards.
For now, however, the flow of private capital to the delta remains limited.
Experiences elsewhere in Kenya suggest the model, while technically replicable, depends heavily on political will, security conditions and sustained public financing – factors that vary widely between regions.
In western Kenya, a similar land-use planning approach has been introduced in Yala Swamp, with mixed results. While Busia county has formally adopted the framework, neighbouring Siaya has yet to approve it, with local officials citing competing political and commercial interests around large-scale agriculture.
“The science is replicable,” said Matiku. “But political interests can slow or block implementation.”
In Golbanti, the idea of a restoration economy is beginning to take shape in small ways.
Beekeepers at the African Beekeepers Limited facility in Kenya’s Tana Delta. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS
Welcome Income
Income from honey, though modest and still irregular, is starting to filter into daily life.
For Hagodana, it helps pay school fees for her six children, supports a small farm, and contributes to a shared fund used to grow vegetables. Some of the money is spent, some saved, and some reinvested.
She has been keeping bees for two years. Before that, she says, life was harder. Now there is at least something to rely on.
She does not plan to stop. Whether or not outside support continues, she says she will keep the hives and hopes eventually to learn how to process honey into other products.
Back in the apiary, the bees move in and out of the hives in a steady rhythm.
Note: The Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly will be held from May 30 to June 6, 2026 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.
IPS UN Bureau Report
KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 23 2026 (IPS) - The world of 2026 is marked by overlapping crises that continue to expose the fragility of our systems and the persistence of inequality. Geopolitical conflicts enrich a few while devastating many, intensifying the already catastrophic impacts of climate change. These political choices are not neutral—they shrink civic spaces, reinforce political extremism, and unleash coordinated assaults on gender equality and human rights. These attacks are not incidental; they are deliberate strategies to undermine multilateralism and global solidarity, eroding the foundations of peace and planetary well-being.
Against this backdrop, the struggle for gender equality and human rights cannot be timid or reactive, it must be as ambitious and bold as the attacks themselves—if not bolder. It must be transformative, deeply rooted in dismantling the harmful power structures that oppress, exclude, and discriminate. It does not require loudness and spectacle, but it does demand depth, strength, and unwavering resolve.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call. Even before the virus spread, commitments to gender equality and human rights were far from realized. The pandemic exposed complacency in global health and revealed the limitation of institutions that claimed authority but failed to deliver equity. Mistrust grew, funding evaporated, and self-interest prevailed. Bilateral agreements driven by commercial interests vastly outstripped development funding, fueling nationalist responses and shaping uneven outcomes.
The struggle for gender equality and human rights cannot be timid or reactive, it must be as ambitious and bold as the attacks themselves—if not bolder. It must be transformative, deeply rooted in dismantling the harmful power structures that oppress, exclude, and discriminate
Yet, amid this devastation, experts, reflecting on the pandemic and responses, offered insights that remain vital today. They challenged dominant narratives that frame health preparedness as merely technical or emergency-driven. Instead, they emphasized that vulnerability and resilience are shaped by political choices. At the heart of these choices lies the indispensable need to continually invest in gender equality—not as a token gesture, but as a non-negotiable priority.
Today, more evidence than ever supports the need for structural transformation. Research demonstrates how gender inequalities exacerbate health vulnerabilities, undermine resilience, and perpetuate cycles of poverty and exclusion. Evidence also shows that when women’s rights organizations and women-led organizations are empowered, societies become more resilient, equitable, and prosperous.
This evidence enables us to strategically address blind spots, confront deeply rooted structural challenges, and build a stronger foundation for gender equality and human rights as central health sector priorities. It underscores that change is not optional—it is urgent.
Transforming harmful power structures requires alliances that cut across regions, sectors, and movements. Feminist organizations must connect with climate justice advocates, disability rights groups, and grassroots activists and unions to build collective strength. Solidarity is not just a moral imperative; it is a strategic necessity.
These alliances must be grounded in trust, diversity, and shared vision. They must resist co-optation by market interests and remain steadfast in their commitment to justice. Only through such alliances can we counter the fragmentation that continues to weaken movements and confront the global forces that seek to divide and dominate.
The path forward is clear: we must demand societal change that dismantles harmful power structures. This requires personal development, legislative reform, representative leadership, and unwavering political commitment. It requires investment in feminist movements, particularly in regions where civic space is shrinking and pushback is intensifying.
Change will be uncomfortable. It will challenge entrenched interests and disrupt familiar patterns. But it is necessary. The alternative is a world where oppression deepens, exclusion widens, and discrimination becomes normalized.
The crises of 2026 reinforce that gender equality, and human rights are not peripheral concerns—they are central to health equity, economic and social justice, and sustainable development. Gender equality and human rights are under attack precisely because they challenge entrenched, exploitative power structures.
Their transformative potential threatens the preservation of existing systems of power, making them targets of deliberate and coordinated attacks. Our response must be equally bold, ambitious, and transformative. It is not enough to defend what has been achieved. We must reimagine and rebuild. We must demand societal change that transforms harmful power structures. Only then can we secure healthier, more equal lives and sustainable futures.
Many of these challenges will be addressed at the Women Deliver 2026 Conference, taking place from April 27 to 30 in Melbourne, a key platform to advance gender equality and strengthen collective action globally.
The event will bring together diverse stakeholders to foster strategic alliances, strengthen feminist leadership, and advance concrete solutions in areas such as sexual and reproductive health and rights, sustainable financing, and accountability. At a decisive moment for the global agenda, it offers an opportunity to translate dialogue into tangible action and measurable commitments.
Johanna Riha is Policy Research Lead, United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH)
Asha George is Professor, School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town