The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
Jun 9 2026 (IPS) - Somewhere in Africa today, a woman will spend more than 30 minutes collecting water that may make her and her children sick. At the same time, her government will face severe fiscal constraints that will limit its ability to provide clean water, among other basic services.
This injustice sits at the heart of Africa’s development challenge. And, with a strong “El Niño” climate cycle currently developing and threatening to disrupt fragile water supplies, the situation can only get worse.
In several countries, debt servicing now consumes between 50 and 70 percent of government revenue, leaving little room for investment in critical sectors like water and sanitation
Africa loses billions of dollars every year through unfair sovereign credit ratings, illicit financial flows, and mounting debt repayments – all symptoms of a global financial system that wasn’t designed with African development in mind. Reforming that system could unlock critical resources for investment in water, sanitation, and the foundations of economic transformation.
Some 418 million Africans still lack basic drinking water services, while 779 million lack basic sanitation. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the only region in the world where the number without access to basic drinking water continues to rise, even as climate change intensifies droughts, floods, and water stress.
No country can industrialize without reliable water systems. No health system can function without sanitation. Agricultural transformation cannot succeed amid worsening climate shocks. And the demographic dividend cannot be realized if women and girls continue to spend hours searching for water instead of pursuing education and economic opportunity.
Yet the financing required to build resilient water and sanitation systems continues to leave governments overburdened with debt repayments, excessive borrowing costs, and illicit financial flows.
Three Essential ChallengesAfrican governments routinely pay borrowing costs that far exceed their actual risk profile. Despite evidence showing Africa’s infrastructure default rates are lower than those in other developing regions, perceptions of risk remain disproportionately high – and those skewed risk perceptions are embedded in sovereign credit ratings. The result is an “Africa premium” that shrinks the fiscal space available for public investment.
Estimates suggest African countries could save up to $74.5 billion if ratings were based on less subjective assessments. Simulations using the Universities of St Andrews and Leicester GRADE model show the human impact of these distortions. In Ghana alone, correcting for bias embedded in sovereign ratings could create enough fiscal space to extend basic water access to more than 417,000 people and sanitation facilities for 381,537 people.
Africa loses vast resources through illicit financial flows, which take three main forms: trade mis-invoicing (falsifying invoices to misrepresent price, quantity, or quality of goods to evade taxes and duties); profit shifting (multinationals exploiting tax loopholes to move reported profits from high-tax countries to low-tax havens); and opaque cross-border transactions (international financial movements hidden by complex customs requirements, poor data transparency, or illicit practices).
UNCTAD estimates that the continent loses $88.6 billion annually to illicit financial flows — resources that could transform access to water and sanitation. In Nigeria alone, curbing trade mis-invoicing could extend water access to 2.56 million people and sanitation services to more than 4 million.
Addressing this challenge requires action globally and domestically. Beneficial ownership transparency, automatic exchange of financial information, and fairer international tax rules must be matched by stronger domestic revenue systems and governance reforms across Africa.
The third challenge is debt.
In 2024, Africa’s external debt service reached $84.4 billion – nearly five times the level recorded in 2010. In several countries, debt servicing now consumes between 50 and 70 percent of government revenue, leaving little room for investment in critical sectors like water and sanitation.
Meanwhile, debt restructuring processes remain too slow and too heavily weighted against debtor countries. The developmental consequences of the current debt burden are already measurable: simulations show that under a scenario in which debt service is capped at just 5 percent of government revenue, Egypt could achieve near-universal access to clean water and sanitation. In Ghana, a more flexible Eurobond restructuring could have resulted in more than a million people gaining access to water and sanitation.
African governments recognize the urgent need for fiscal space to invest in long-term priorities, especially water and sanitation systems that are essential for public health, climate resilience, food security, and economic productivity, hence their adoption, of the Common African Position (CAP) on Debt — a continental strategy for sovereign debt management and reform so that debt becomes a tool for structural transformation rather than placing economies in a chokehold.
So, when our governments advocate for more concessional financing or lower borrowing costs, they’re talking about the lives of real people, often the most vulnerable: women and children.
The international community must take three steps to accompany Africa on its journey to an economic transformation that truly benefits its people.
First, sovereign credit rating methodologies for African economies must be independently reviewed to correct structural distortions that continue to overprice African risk.
Second, the international community must curb illicit financial flows through stronger transparency standards, fairer global tax rules, and meaningful enforcement mechanisms.
Third, the international debt architecture must be redesigned to support development rather than undermine it.
Sixty-three years ago, African leaders gathered in Addis Ababa to declare that Africa would shape its own destiny.
The continent possesses the resources, institutions, and ambition to drive its transformation. What remains is the political will — globally and domestically — to build a financial system that enables, rather than constrains, Africa’s development.
Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi is President and CEO of the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET). Francisca Tatchouop Belobe is the Commissioner for Economic Development, Trade, Tourism, Industry and Minerals (ETTIM) Department at the African Union Commission
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2026 (IPS) - As ongoing military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East continue with no signsof winding down, there is increasing focus on nuclear weaponsamid heightened risks of escalation.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI),in its annual assessment of the state of armaments, disarmament and international security, singles out key findings in its SIPRI Yearbook 2026 that “states are increasingly relying on nuclear weapons as instruments of national power—reversing decades of efforts to reduce the numbers and role of nuclear weapons—even as the risks of miscalculation and escalation are rising”.
World’s nuclear arsenals expanded and upgraded
The world’s nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—continued programmes to modernize and enhance their nuclear arsenals in 2025, and most deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems during the year, said SIPRI.
The current military conflicts include a nuclear Russia vs non-nuclear Ukraine, a nuclear US vs non-nuclear Iran and a nuclear Israel vs non-nuclear Palestine and Lebanon.
Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12, 187 warheads in January 2026, about 9,745 were in military stockpiles for potential use.
An estimated 4,012 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft and the rest were in central storage. Between 2100 and 2200 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles, according to the report.
Nearly all of these warheads belonged to Russia or the USA, and to a lesser extent France and the UK, but China and India may now occasionally deploy a small number of warheads mounted on missiles during peacetime.
‘Influential voices, including some world leaders, are advocating nuclear weapons as a guarantee against attack by a hostile state. But making national defence and security strategies dependent—or more dependent—on nuclear weapons could significantly increase nuclear risks,’ said SIPRI Director Karim Haggag.
‘The dangers associated with nuclear weapons are growing due to advances in weapon technology, the breakdown of nuclear arms control and heightened geopolitical tensions, among a range of other factors. At the same time, world events—not least the outbreak of conflict between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan—are challenging nuclear deterrence logic.’
Dr M. V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security, Director pro tem, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told Inter Press Service the continued modernization of nuclear weapons and the increased emphasis on nuclear weapons in military doctrines is a dangerous trend, especially when this is happening when many of the most military powerful countries in the world are resorting to attacking other countries with bombs, missiles, and drones rather than diplomatically settling differences.
“Any of these ongoing wars can easily escalate into ones where some country resorts to using nuclear weapons, which would result in destruction an order of magnitude greater than what is already being wrought by the weapons being used currently,” he pointed out.
Such a contingency becomes even more imaginable with the integration of Artificial Intelligence and other software tools to accelerate the kill chain, and possibly removing people from the process of deciding who to attack and what weapons to use, h argued.
Countries without nuclear weapons currently are also witnessing recommendations from influential spokespeople to consider developing a nuclear arsenal. Such a race can quickly spiral out of control, making it urgent that the world collectively step away from expanding nuclear arsenals and considering their use, and more generally, cease the use of militaristic violence to settle differences, said Dr Ramana.
Since the end of the cold war, says SIPRI, the gradual dismantlement of retired warheads by Russia and the USA has normally outstripped the deployment of new warheads, resulting in an overall year-on-year decrease in the global inventory of nuclear weapons. This trend is likely to be reversed in the coming years, as the pace of dismantlement is slowing, while the deployment of new nuclear weapons is accelerating.
‘The evidence is growing that the nuclear weapon states are sidelining, and even walking away from, their disarmament commitments and are instead flexing their nuclear muscles,’ said Hans M. Kristensen, Associate Senior Fellow with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme and Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
‘By reaching for nuclear solutions, states are creating new risks and fuelling arms-race dynamics,’ he said.
Dr. Natalie Goldring, the Acronym Institute’s representative at the United Nations, told IPS the nine countries with nuclear weapons are engaged in extremely destabilizing behaviors — developing new weapons, increasing the size of their nuclear arsenals, abandoning arms control frameworks and verification systems, and threatening to use nuclear weapons in response to conventional weapons attacks, among other dangerous moves. Each of these choices increases risk; taken together, the potential consequences are terrifying.
Even the existence of nuclear weapons poses enormous military, economic, and environmental threats, among others. Fortunately, there’s a promising way forward — the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which rejects the contention that nuclear deterrence and continued development of new nuclear weapons somehow make us safer.
Under the TPNW, States commit themselves to not develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use, or threaten to use nuclear weapons. The TPNW has 74 States Parties, with an additional 25 signatories that have not yet become States Parties. It’s arguably our best hope of breaking the cycle of continual upgrades and “modernization” of weapons, while decreasing nuclear threats.
“We don’t know whether the fact that nuclear weapons haven’t been used in wartime since the United States military dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is because of luck, skill (including deterrence), or a combination of those factors. Proponents of deterrence don’t tend to talk about the role of luck. They also don’t tend to talk about the risk of nuclear use through accident or miscalculation. That’s a short-sighted, high-risk approach. Militaries frequently have accidents; they also frequently fail to correctly calculate their adversaries’ capabilities and motivations.”
“The inherent risks of these weapons are compounded by the individuals involved. For example, US President Donald Trump is a threat to international security. He is unpredictable, prone to fits of rage, disinclined to listen to or learn from experts, and poorly informed about specific and general US military policies. And because of US nuclear weapons policy, he has the authority to order the launch of nuclear weapons without anyone else needing to confirm that order. That’s an extraordinarily dangerous situation, especially given his volatility.”
Recent events also increase risk. For example, the New START Treaty limited the number of deployed nuclear weapons for both the United States and Russia and contained useful verification provisions. Unfortunately, the treaty expired in February 2026, removing both the numerical limits on US and Russian nuclear stockpiles and the verification procedures.
Another example is the recent conclusion of the 2026 Review Conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This conference continued the pattern from the previous two review conferences, as States were not even able to agree on an outcome document. More importantly, the five nuclear weapons states defined by the treaty (the US, Russia, the United Kingdom, China, and France) continue to fail to meet their commitment to disarmament under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“The US’s stated reliance on the idea of nuclear deterrence may have encouraged other countries to do the same. I remember being at a meeting many years ago, where a South Asian diplomat asked me why the US government was so arrogant that it thought it had a monopoly on nuclear deterrence. He said there was no reason that India and Pakistan couldn’t or shouldn’t have a similar set of strategies. TPNW provides a more sensible answer – all of these States should renounce nuclear weapons.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
BRATISLAVA, Jun 9 2026 (IPS) - As South Africa officially launches the rollout of a groundbreaking HIV prevention drug, civic groups in the country have slammed the plan, saying it will not reach anywhere near enough people.
President Cyril Ramaphosa on June 5 launched the roll-out in South Africa of lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injectable HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drug that has been shown to offer almost complete protection against the disease, billing it as a ‘historic event’.
But activists say there is nothing to celebrate, warning the targets set in the rollout are too low, and the volumes of the drug provided by the pharma firm behind its development, Gilead, are tiny.
“In an ideal world, South Africa would not be rolling out lenacapavir as a small pilot. We would be treating it as an epidemic-ending intervention. The objective should be to get millions of people onto lenacapavir as quickly as possible, not a few hundred thousand over several years,” Tian Johnson, founder and strategist of the Pan-African health justice advocacy group, African Alliance, told IPS.
“South Africa has the world’s largest HIV epidemic. We also helped generate the scientific evidence that made lenacapavir possible. An appropriate response would therefore be a national scale-up plan linked to epidemiological need, not constrained by artificial scarcity created by patent monopolies, donor allocations, and supply decisions made outside the country,” he added.
South Africa has the world’s highest burden of HIV, with around 8 million people living with HIV. In 2024 it recorded 170,000 new infections, accounting for roughly 13% of the 1.3 million new cases globally that year.
Lenacapavir has been shown in trials to provide almost complete protection against HIV acquisition. It has been praised not just for its effectiveness but also for its potential for very high adherence, as it is an injection given only every six months.
Civic groups say that if rolled out in a timely manner and with greater volumes, it could avert up to 52,200 new infections per year in South Africa alone.
They also point to modelling which has shown that around 2 million people in South Africa need to be taking lenacapavir annually for it to have a real impact on the number of new HIV infections.
But the government’s rollout is expected to reach only around 450,000 people over the next two years. Moreover, only just under 38,000 doses have so far arrived in the country.
Activists blame adversarial US policy and effective monopolies on the drug’s supply for this and say it has highlighted concerns over who has real control over efforts to end the epidemic in the country.
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria (GF) and the United States President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) have historically been central to funding South Africa’s HIV response.
But days after Donald Trump entered the White House early last year, PEPFAR slashed around half of its funding for HIV in South Africa – what is left of it is due to run out this month.
So far, the Trump administration is refusing to fund lenacapavir for South Africa as the two countries lock horns politically and ideologically.
This means that the doses to be used in South Africa over the next 18 months to two years will be funded by the Global Fund and are expected to be only sufficient for 456,000 people.
Meanwhile, since Gilead is currently the only manufacturer of lenacapavir and generics are not available on the market yet, there is no alternative path available to secure more doses for the rollout.
Currently the cost of Lenacapavir is about USD 28,000 per person a year in the U.S., but Gilead has issued six licences to companies to manufacture generics, which will be available to 120 low- and middle-income countries. These are expected to become available in 2027, potentially for as little as USD 40 per person per year.
Earlier this year, it was announced the South African government was working to identify a local company to manufacture lenacapavir. Once identified, that company would then be recommended to Gilead for a voluntary licence to produce the drug.
In 2024, Gilead granted such licences to six generic manufacturers across India, Egypt and Pakistan to produce and supply the drug to 120 low- and middle-income countries. At the time, critics pointed out that no South African drugmakers were included.
Gilead has said it is open to adding another licence for local manufacturing in Sub-Saharan Africa. But activists warn that any final decision on a licence will rest with the company.
The groups also highlighted previous delays in the rollout of the programme, which had initially been scheduled to begin in April. When the first doses arrived in South Africa in March and April, they were subject to obligatory regulatory tests. Gilead could have asked for an exemption to the tests but did not, activists claim.
They say all this means properly protecting people against HIV in South Africa is effectively dependent on a pharmaceutical firm and US political policy.
“Gilead currently exercises extraordinary influence over who receives lenacapavir, in what quantities, and on what timeline. When a country with the world’s largest HIV epidemic cannot independently determine access to a medicine that was partly researched within its own borders, something is fundamentally wrong with the balance of power. The uncomfortable reality is that key decisions affecting South Africa’s HIV response are still being made in corporate boardrooms and donor negotiations rather than in South Africa. That should concern everyone, regardless of where they stand on this rollout,” said Johnson.
“Many countries are receiving doses funded by the US, and then also being funded as a result of re-allocation of already committed Global Fund funding repurposed for lenacapavir. The US is refusing to fund South Africa ‘s lenacapavir program, even though there is no better example of a country that needs lenacapavir, and [the programme] would immediately show impact,” Asia Russell, Executive Director of HIV advocacy group Health Gap, told IPS.
“The US government has stated its goal is to bend the curve of new HIV infections, but it is blocking access to the doses urgently needed in South Africa, which means it will fail to reach its goal. It should immediately reverse this decision, stop bullying South Africa, and provide doses – South Africa’s minuscule allocation of lenacapavir only from the Global Fund means the pandemic will continue raging in South Africa,” she added.
It will also have a detrimental effect on wider efforts to tackle HIV outside South Africa, others say.
“South Africa accounts for more than 13 percent of new HIV infections globally each year, and is a home for millions of other public health care recipients from other countries who benefit from the South African health care system. The US government’s refusal to support South Africa with lenacapavir and cut off other funding is not only cruel but also contributes to delays in ending the HIV pandemic,” Bellinda Thibela, Coordinator for Health Justice and Human Rights at Health GAP, told IPS
Meanwhile, activists point out what they see as another huge injustice in the situation.
South Africa was key to the development of the drug – it hosted testing sites, its clinics were used in research, and subjects came from its communities – yet it is now struggling to secure sufficient supplies of that same drug.
“South Africa played a pivotal role in the clinical development of lenacapavir, hosting 25 of the 28 trial sites that participated in the PURPOSE 1 Phase III study of this groundbreaking long-acting HIV prevention tool. Yet, despite this substantial contribution, my country has found itself in the difficult position that, following approval by the US FDA and rollout in several high-income countries, access to lenacapavir at scale for PrEP remains abysmally low and challenging. And not just for South Africa,” Fatima Hassan of the Health Justice Initiative (HJI), told IPS.
“This underscores persistent inequities within the global innovation ecosystem, where countries that bear a disproportionate burden of disease and contribute significantly to research and development often face delays in accessing the very health technologies they helped bring to fruition. It also raises important questions about local manufacturing, technology transfer, regulatory capacity, affordability, and equitable access in markets that are frequently perceived as less commercially attractive, despite their central role in generating the evidence that drives global health innovation and the development of new health technologies,” she added.
In a statement, Gilead said the launch of the rollout was an important step toward expanding access to lenacapavir for communities most affected by HIV.
“South Africa is at the heart of global efforts to end HIV. With the country’s launch of lenacapavir, there is now an opportunity to rapidly accelerate progress,” said Daniel O’Day, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Gilead Sciences. “Through partnerships with country leadership, the Global Fund, and the U.S. State Department via PEPFAR, Gilead is working to bring lenacapavir to the communities most in need, ahead of the broad rollout of generic versions of the medicine.”
The company also highlighted what it said was its commitment to supporting broad, equitable and sustainable access to lenacapavir for HIV prevention globally, pointing to its royalty-free voluntary licence agreements with six manufacturers enabling generic supply across 120 low- and lower-middle-income countries to support long-term, lower-cost medication supply.
“As highlighted by today’s announcement and the strong, coordinated leadership demonstrated in South Africa, the continued collaboration between countries, global health partners and industry will be critical to reaching people with new innovations at scale, reducing new HIV infections and advancing our shared goal of ending HIV as a public health threat,” the company said in the statement.
Civic groups have called on South Africa’s government to scale up the volumes for the rollout and expand it to make sure it can be accessed by more people – they have criticised the fact that out of more than 3,000 public clinics, just 300 in 23 districts have been chosen for the rollout, and mobile clinics, which would be more likely accessed by some communities, are not being used.
They also want to see more pressure put on Gilead to drastically expand its current licence territories to help manufacture lenacapavir.
“At the moment, we have a Gilead-driven launch event, but we do not have a credible epidemic-ending plan. The bigger issue is that South Africa appears to have accepted the limits imposed by Gilead rather than challenging them,” said Johnson.
He added that under the current roll-out plan a crucial opportunity to end the HIV epidemic sooner in South Africa was being missed.
“The tragedy is that South Africa is not dealing with a scientific failure – the science worked. Lenacapavir is one of the most promising HIV prevention tools ever developed. What we are facing is a political and access failure. If we know that roughly two million people need access annually to achieve maximum public health impact, then a faux roll out reaching a fraction of that number inevitably means preventable infections will continue occurring.
“Every year we delay large-scale access is another year in which tens of thousands of South Africans will acquire HIV despite the existence of a prevention tool capable of dramatically reducing transmission. This is why the debate is not really about a rollout. It is about whether South Africa intends to end the epidemic or manage it. The current approach manages the epidemic dismally. An epidemic-ending strategy would look very different,” Johnson said.
IPS UN Bureau Report
Inter Press Service (IPS), IPS News,
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 9 2026 (IPS) - When the world learned that Ebola was spreading across parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, one fact stood out above all others: there was no approved vaccine for the virus responsible.
Not because scientists only recently discovered it.
Not because the technology does not exist.
But because the world never made the investment.
No Vaccine Exists Because the World Failed to InvestThe current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, one of several species that cause Ebola disease. The virus was first identified in Uganda in 2007. Nearly two decades later, as hundreds of suspected infections and dozens of deaths are reported across Central and East Africa, health workers are confronting the same deadly disease without a licensed vaccine or treatment approved to prevent or treat it respectively.
This is not simply a scientific failure. It is a health equity failure.
The outbreak is unlikely to become another COVID-19. Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids, making it far less transmissible than airborne viruses. Yet the lesson it offers is no less important. It reveals whose health risks attract sustained investment and whose are allowed to remain neglected.
For years, global health leaders have warned that epidemic preparedness cannot focus only on threats that endanger wealthy countries. Pathogens do not become priorities because of their biological risks alone. They become priorities because of political attention, financial incentives and public visibility.
The result is a troubling pattern: communities facing the greatest risks often have access to the fewest tools.
Bundibugyo virus has caused only a handful of outbreaks since its discovery. Unlike the more common Zaire strain of Ebola, which drove major epidemics in West Africa and eastern Congo, Bundibugyo attracted relatively little research funding and commercial attention. While effective vaccines and treatments were developed for the Zaire strain, investment in countermeasures for Bundibugyo remained limited.
Now the consequences are visible.
The Outbreak Exposes a Global Health Equity GapDoctors and nurses in eastern Congo and Uganda are relying primarily on supportive care, isolation measures, contact tracing and community engagement to stop transmission. Scientists are racing to develop vaccines and treatments, but those efforts are occurring during an outbreak rather than before one.
The contrast is striking. We are witnessing extraordinary scientific mobilization precisely because the crisis has already begun.
The Cycle of Panic and Neglect ContinuesLast week, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, announced up to US$50 million through its First Response Fund to accelerate vaccine development and support outbreak response. CEPI has committed tens of millions more to advance vaccine candidates being developed by Moderna, the University of Oxford and IAVI. The European Union has mobilized humanitarian funding and emergency supplies. The World Health Organization has activated its highest emergency response mechanisms and is coordinating clinical trials of potential treatments.
Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have some of the world's most experienced Ebola responders. Their scientists, surveillance officers, laboratory teams, community leaders and frontline health workers have repeatedly demonstrated remarkable expertise and courage under difficult circumstances
These investments are essential and deserve recognition.
But they also raise a difficult question: why did it take an outbreak to generate this level of urgency?
Scientists have understood the threat posed by Bundibugyo virus since 2007. Promising vaccine approaches have existed for years. Researchers have identified monoclonal antibodies that demonstrated protection in animal studies. Yet many of these efforts struggled to secure sustained funding once the immediate threat faded.
This is a recurring problem in global health. Funding surges during emergencies and recedes once headlines disappear. Research programs are launched and then abandoned. Preparedness becomes a priority only after vulnerabilities have already been exposed.
The result is a cycle of panic and neglect.
This is where the health equity dimension becomes impossible to ignore.
Health equity is often discussed as a moral imperative. It is that. But it is also a practical necessity.
Countries that rapidly detect outbreaks, share biological samples and alert the world to emerging threats are providing a global public good. The benefits extend far beyond national borders. Those countries should be able to expect that the products of scientific innovation—vaccines, diagnostics and treatments—will also be available to them in a timely and equitable manner.
Instead, we too often ask vulnerable countries to contribute to global security while denying them equal access to its benefits.
Preparedness Requires More Than VaccinesThe outbreak also highlights another reality that deserves greater attention: strong health systems remain the world’s best defense against emerging epidemics.
As Norway’s International Development Minister Åsmund Aukrust recently observed, “No country can face these challenges alone.” Experience from decades of global health cooperation shows that rapid detection, trained health workers, effective laboratories, community trust and resilient primary healthcare systems remain our most powerful tools against infectious disease threats.
Vaccines matter enormously. But vaccines alone are not preparedness.
The countries currently confronting Ebola understand this better than most. Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have some of the world’s most experienced Ebola responders. Their scientists, surveillance officers, laboratory teams, community leaders and frontline health workers have repeatedly demonstrated remarkable expertise and courage under difficult circumstances.
The international response succeeds when it strengthens local leadership rather than substitutes for it.
The broader lesson extends far beyond Ebola.
The next global health security emergency will begin where health systems are weakest, where surveillance gaps are largest and where scientific neglect has been allowed to persist.
The world often asks whether we can afford to invest in preparedness before a crisis occurs.
The more relevant question is whether we can afford not to.
On that test, the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak should make all of us uncomfortable.
Mario Jimenez is a health economist working to increase access to immunization in low-income countries. He is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity.
Ifeanyi Nsofor is a public health physician and co-founder of the Africa Behavioral Science Network. He is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity. In 2015, Ifeanyi co-led the African Union’s Intervention to End Ebola and Strengthen Health Systems in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone (ASEOWA).
SYDNEY, Jun 9 2026 (IPS) - The World Bank considers corruption a major obstacle to eradicating global poverty. The Bank officially has a zero-tolerance policy against fraud and corruption in its projects. Concerned with widespread corruption in Bangladesh, the Bank and the Government agreed on the Governance-oriented Country Assistance Strategy (GCAS) in 2006 and the Bank’s subsequent Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) ostensibly has been more selective on governance and anti-corruption (GAC) issues. Ironically, however, the Bank’s funding enables corruption. The Bank’s recent decision to advance a US$350 million loan allegedly for enhancing energy security is a glaring example.
Anis Chowdhury
The Interim Government’s White Paper on the state of the economy documented the extent of collusion and corruption in the energy sector. It noted the authoritarian kleptocratic government’s inflated demand forecast, disregarding professional projections. Thus, the installed capacity hugely exceeds actual demand. Against the peak summer demand of approximately 17,000 MW, the installed capacity is nearly 32,000 MW (or 30,000 MW considering aging infrastructure). According to the White paper, this artificially “increased capacity was driven by unscrupulous motivations” to benefit the regime’s cronies who formed a monopoly cartel in the power sector.
A series of dodgy moves facilitated unprecedented misappropriation of public money in the sector. The first was the awarding of contracts to 17 private rental plants through ‘negotiation’ in 2010, circumventing the Public Procurement Rules. The second was the Quick Enhancement of Electricity and Energy Supply (Special Provision) Act 2010, which protected energy contracts from competitive bidding and legal challenges. Such indemnity is a license for corruption, facilitating unchecked project approvals and non-transparent often dollar-denominated Power Purchase Agreements.
These agreements enabled the purchase of electricity from furnace-oil-based plants at prices 40-50% above market rates and from gas-fired plants at prices 45% above market rates, according to the Interim Government’s review committee. Initially established for a four-year period to address an emergency supply situation, the arrangement has been extended multiple times, allowing the cronies to be paid an exorbitant excess capacity charge.
The estimated total excess capacity/rental payment to the private sector from 2010-11 to 2023-24 was approximately US$2.93 billion. In the 2024-25 fiscal year alone the capacity charge was approximately US$3.42 billion, while nearly 63% of installed electricity generation capacity remained idle. According to the review committee, an estimated excess generation capacity of roughly 7,700 to 9,500 MW is causing an additional annual expenditure of US$900 million to US$1.5 billion in capacity payments.
The White Paper estimated that the rental power plants made as high as 35% profit against a standard 15%! The private sector power companies received payments from the government as rent for power plants under the guise of power purchase agreements, where corruption, rather than electricity supply, was the main objective.
Most of the operational private power plants in Bangladesh are owned/controlled by a group of five cronies. They control country’s power sector to loot vast amounts of money. While the kleptocratic regime beat the drum of “self-sufficiency” in electricity, its cronies were pillaging the state coffer.
While the cronies enjoyed excess profits through extraordinary corrupt practices, consumers paid the price. Electricity prices were increased 12 times at the wholesale level and 14 times at the retail level over 15 years during the kleptocratic regime, ostensibly to reduce losses and subsidy requirements. But neither losses nor subsidies declined.
The review committee recommended that contracts containing evidence of corruption should be cancelled immediately. It also recommended renegotiation of high-cost and unequal power purchase agreements to revise and convert them to a “take-and-pay” model following Pakistan’s example.
Instead of taking these recommended measures, the current government has chosen the path of the kleptocratic regime’s looting model. The decision to hike the electricity price will protect the fatty pockets of cronies at the expense of the common people.
The World Bank’s role
The Bank has been a prime advocate of privatisation of Bangladesh’s energy sector, citing widespread corruption and inefficiency of the publicly-owned power sector. It pushed for “unbundling” vertically integrated state monopolies, facilitating Independent Power Producers (IPPs), and mobilising private capital through financial guarantees – a strategy that supposedly should improve energy security and at the same time ease public fiscal burden.
The Bank has been providing loans ostensibly to help Bangladesh improve its energy security. But that has made the country heavily reliant on imported Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and fossil fuels and has locked Bangladesh into steep capacity payments, draining foreign exchange reserves. Thus, the Bank’s loans allegedly for ensuring energy sector security have created a vicious circle of debt burden and plunder of public coffer through hefty capacity payments.
Instead of further advancing loans of US$350 million, the Bank should have told the government to implement the recommendations of the Interim Government’s review committee; i.e., cancel the unscrupulous agreements with IPPs and stop fiscal bleeding through unfair capacity payments. The savings from the capacity charges would have been more than enough to pay for the imports of LNG without incurring additional debt burden.
The Bank’s anti-corruption record
Why does the Bank advance loans to the sector riddled with widespread corruption? The Bank’s anti-corruption record is at best disappointing globally. The Bank once took a firm anti-corruption stance in Bangladesh when it pulled out of the Padma Bridge project alleging corruption. But it scrambled to recover its lost ground when other lenders with strategic interests came forward to fill the gap.
Evaluating the Bank’s engagement in Bangladesh during 2011-2020, the World Bank’s own Independent Evaluation Group concluded, “Despite a trend of deterioration in the country’s institutional quality and economic management, the Bank Group significantly increased financing to Bangladesh over the review period, making Bangladesh one of the largest borrowers”.
As a lending agency, the Bank’s existence depends on debtor countries’ borrowings, regardless of its lofty ideals, such as poverty reduction. A fundamental flaw in the international aid system: “the donors are more desperate to give than the recipients are to receive”. Therefore, the Bank takes a “pragmatic” approach, and tolerates corruption.
Then why did the Bank declare zero-tolerance policy against corruption? Perhaps this is because it has to satisfy the public anti-corruption sentiment in creditor nations; their citizens do not want to see their tax dollars being misappropriated.
Renowned political economist, Robert Wade conceptualises this as gesturing to appease creditor governments while acting to the contrary to appease borrower governments. Thus, the Bank’s “organised hypocrisy” enables corruption in poor borrower countries.
Anis Chowdhury, Emeritus Professor, Western Sydney University (Australia). He held senior UN positions in Bangkok and New York and served as Special Assistant to the Chief Advisor for Finance (with the status and rank of State Minister) in the Professor Yunus-led Interim Government. Anis has written extensively on macroeconomic issues, sustainable development, international financial architecture and political economy. E-mail: anis.z.chowdhury@gmail.com; a.chowdhury@westernsydney.edu.au
IPS UN Bureau
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 9 2026 (IPS) - Recent geopolitical trends threaten more food crises, especially in developing countries. A new IPES-Food report urges a strategy of ‘resilient self-reliance’, proposing available opportunities to improve equity, sustainability and solidarity.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
The New Geopolitics of Food. Navigating policies for resilient self-reliance argues that international food systems have been profoundly transformed by the geopolitical changes of the last four decades.
Geopolitics – referring to political sanctions, trade disputes, military conflicts, multilateral challenges, aid cuts, planetary heating, and corporate interests – is affecting food availability worldwide.
Corporate interests have increasingly reshaped food systems over the last half-century – promoting selective trade liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation, financialization and cost reductions, ostensibly to improve food security efficiently.
Prioritising cost and fiscal savings led to the neglect and closure of buffer stocks. Food systems became more vulnerable as price volatility worsened.
Just-in-time supply chains have also been more susceptible to geopolitical shocks, planetary heating, and market manipulation.
World Bank structural adjustment programmes made developing countries more reliant on food and input imports. Tariffs and sanctions have disrupted food supplies worldwide.
Felice Noelle Rodriguez
Wars in Ukraine, Iran and elsewhere have disrupted supplies, spiking prices, and have most hit poor food-importing countries. Powerful governments have also weaponised food supplies for political reasons, as against Cuba.
Major donor countries have cut aid, with lethal consequences for the most vulnerable, as in Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The legitimacy and capacity of multilateral institutions – such as the UN, World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Health Organization (WHO) – have been deliberately undermined by superpowers abusing international arrangements for their own advantage.
Food prices have been much higher since 2020, following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine and Iran wars, and other major disruptions. For instance, the Hormuz fertiliser disruptions will hurt food supply for some time to come.
Import bills have risen sharply, worsening debt burdens in poor food-importing countries. Food inflation has hurt low-income communities most, especially when governments juggle imports with debt servicing.
Corporate concentration has also worsened fertiliser and food supply and price volatility, especially hurting smaller producers. Powerful interests have also abused food crises for profit.
Geopolitics has also worsened environmental crises, as planetary heating intensifies extreme weather events, hurting crop yields and food availability.
Managing markets
To enhance food security, governments must effectively influence markets with appropriate policy instruments.
The report proposes adapting policy tools once widely used before corporate-inspired neoliberal reforms, to improve contemporary market management, supply resilience and price stability.
Public stockholdings (PSHs) involve government procurement, storage, and timely release of stocks to enhance food security, including by stabilising prices. PSHs can thus help smallholdings while improving emergency preparations.
Using minimum support prices with its Targeted Public Distribution System, India subsidises grain for two-thirds of its people, while insulating national food prices from international volatility.
Meanwhile, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has established a Regional Food Security Reserve to pool members’ stocks and collectively respond to crises.
Supply management
Other supply management mechanisms include production quotas, marketing boards, and import controls.
Market management has also supported other policy goals aimed at improving rural vitality, equity, food sovereignty, environmental sustainability, and democratic participation.
Thus, unlike in the US, Canada’s dairy, poultry, and egg production is subject to quotas and negotiated minimum prices to limit price volatility and stabilise farm incomes.
But policy implementation remains challenging. PSH programmes are often complex and costly, and risk leakage, corruption, and inefficiency.
Government commitments, such as trade agreements, limit policy options. Supply management measures may also raise consumer prices and favour wealthier farmers, as neoliberal critics have been quick to exaggerate.
But these policy tools can also support small-scale producers, reduce waste, strengthen national supply chains, and mitigate risks posed by highly centralised industrial agriculture.
Resilient Self-Reliance
The report promotes resilient self-reliance, requiring appropriate market management to stabilise food supplies and improve equity, sustainability, and food sovereignty.
Resilient self-reliance combines resilience (the ability to withstand and recover from shocks) with food self-reliance (the capacity to meet food needs with domestic production and cooperative trade).
The report recommends innovative trade partnerships, including international buffer stocks and cooperative regionalism, citing CARICOM’s regional food strategy.
Resilient self-reliance upholds food sovereignty norms, emphasising farmer rights, agroecology, territorial markets, and democratic governance, stressing equity, diversity, ecological balance, and flexibility.
Managing markets can also support agroecological transitions, culturally appropriate food diversity, territorial markets, and strategic reserves to cushion shocks.
Vulnerable countries, often due to earlier neoliberal reforms, typically try to reduce their susceptibility to international market volatility, but are usually less able to do so.
Market management mechanisms, agroecological practices, territorial markets, and cooperative trade arrangements can help ensure more stable and equitable food systems.
Stressing the urgent need for policy reform, the authors argue that recent geopolitics not only threatens crises but also offers new opportunities to reform food systems for greater equity, solidarity and sustainability.
For instance, the Hormuz crisis may spur developing economies to accelerate transitions to more renewable energy, thereby reducing their vulnerability to fossil fuel and other energy imports.
IPS UN Bureau
Jun 8 2026 (IPS) -
CIVICUS discusses the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla on its mission to bring humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza with Musa Roshdy, a humanitarian activist who took part in the flotilla.
Musa Roshdy
What’s the Global Sumud Flotilla and why is it important?
The Global Sumud Flotilla was the second civilian maritime mission launched by a coalition of Palestinian solidarity organisations advocating for aid delivery to Palestinians in Gaza and the end of Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza. While it was the Global Sumud Flotilla’s second mission, this was the 39th sea-based attempt to break Israel’s illegal blockade. The Spring 2026 flotilla was organised in direct response to a call for aid put out by civil society organisations on the ground in Palestine.
On 15 April, we sailed from Barcelona with several hundred activists from dozens of countries including Brazil and Spain, determined to deliver aid to Palestinians facing severe deprivation. Our mission highlighted a crucial reality: if everyday civilians from all over the world can mobilise and get this close to establishing a humanitarian corridor, then governments can certainly do it. What’s missing is not ability or infrastructure, but political will. The flotilla represents civilian solidarity with Palestinians and a direct challenge to the illegal blockade. We were prepared for interception after Israel arrested the previous flotilla last year, but not for the scale of violence that followed.
How were you kidnapped?
I was kidnapped by the Israeli navy in the interception that occurred on 29 April, when we were sailing in international waters over 600 miles from occupied Palestine, off the coast of Crete. They attacked us in the middle of the night. We had little warning before military motorboats approached us at high speed. They pointed rifles at us and announced on a megaphone that they were the Israeli navy, they were boarding our vessel and we needed to go inside immediately or they would shoot us.
That night, the Israeli military stopped 22 of the 54 boats in the flotilla en route to Gaza. There’s no legal precedent for military action so far from Israel’s sea borders. We were in the European Union’s search-and-rescue zone, under Greek jurisdiction. But instead of protecting us, Greek coastguard ships observed Israel’s raid and then received us after we were tortured for two days.
Israel’s legal claims were absurd. They accused us of illegal entry into Israel when we were sailing to Gaza and were kidnapped en route. Most of the 180 activists were released in Greece, but two of us were abducted and brought before Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court in Israel on charges with no legal basis.
This violated fundamental principles of international law. You cannot take military action in international waters so far from your territory. You cannot abduct foreign nationals without due process. You cannot torture detainees. Yet all this happened.
Israel acts with impunity because the international community has failed to hold it accountable.
What did you endure in detention?
It was clear from the start they were trying to denigrate us for standing with Palestinians. I was forced onto my hands and knees and held in uncomfortable positions for hours. Soldiers stole my shoes, then stomped on my feet with their combat boots. I was left in just leggings and a tank top. We were held in makeshift prisons built from shipping containers. The soldiers deliberately manipulated the temperature, wetting the floor to freeze us at night, then forcing us outside under intense heat during the day. I experienced hypothermia both nights, as confirmed by a doctor who was imprisoned with me. When comrades tried to give me sweaters, soldiers took them away. At one point, a soldier pointed a rifle at my comrade and threatened to kill him for offering me a jacket in the cold.
Soldiers banged on containers and shone huge lights while we slept to keep us awake. They threw flashbangs and used force to drag people into solitary confinement. On the last day, they shot activists at point-blank range with rubber bullets. They took photographs and videos that showed us collecting our medications when they kidnapped us, but then denied us access to our medications once we were on the prison boat. Sixty-one people went on hunger strike. The food they provided, mostly bread, was insufficient to feed the rest of us, even with a third of us not eating. This cruelty is consistent with what Palestinians experience in Israeli detention, though what we experienced pales in comparison with the cruelty they face.
The Israeli military intended to deter the humanitarians sailing to deliver aid to the people of Gaza, but they were unsuccessful. People around the world recognise that Palestinians in Gaza still have an overwhelming need for aid, legal protection and solidarity. Many activists who were detained with me on 29 April set sail again a few weeks later on 14 May and were intercepted off Cyprus just days later on 18 and 19 May.
What must change internationally?
What governments must do is clear but consistently absent. They must condemn the kidnapping of their citizens. They must impose targeted sanctions against Israeli officials, not humanitarian activists. They must denormalise diplomatic relations with Israel. For instance, Croatia’s leader just refused to approve Israel’s new ambassador to Croatia due to Israel’s current policies.
The most fundamental step is an arms embargo. If we stop supplying weapons to Israel, it cannot do what it is doing. Last year, civil society in Belgium won a court case preventing the transit of military equipment to Israel. France recognises Palestine but still supplies weapons. Governments know these mechanisms exist but lack the political will to prioritise Palestinian lives over strategic interests.
Western states are also complicit in other ways. Some of our torturers had US accents. Another had a German accent. Western governments allow their citizens to join the Israeli military, which commits war crimes and kidnaps and tortures their nationals, then lets them return home without consequence.
Instead of holding Israel accountable, many western states are restricting the space for pro-Palestinian activism. In the UK, Palestine Action faced an absurd terrorism designation for blocking weapons manufacturing. In Germany, authorities banned the watermelon symbol as antisemitic.
On 19 May, as the Israeli military was kidnapping humanitarians in international waters, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned four leaders of the Global Sumud Flotilla, calling humanitarian aid delivery ‘pro-terror’, and blocking all access to financial institutions in the USA. The mechanism used by the USA to sanction humanitarian activists was recently deemed illegal by a federal judge when applied to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It criminalises support for Palestine and conflates it with support for terrorism.
What lies ahead for activism for Palestinian rights?
Our detention and torture were intended as a deterrent, but they failed. In practice, they had the opposite effect. Frontline work exacts a real human cost and people need time to recharge. But activism will continue because Palestinians in Gaza are still facing genocide.
What this moment teaches is that rights exist because we enact them. When everyday people learn from Palestinian courage how to stand up, call atrocities atrocities, and demand basic decency and access to life itself, movements spread across borders. People will continue to pursue humanitarian work, join future flotillas and resist authoritarian restrictions on civic space. Tactics will adapt, new symbols will emerge – as when the watermelon was adopted because Palestinians couldn’t display their flag – but the work won’t stop.
Credit: D.V. Bakke
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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Global Sumud Flotilla/Instagram
Humans of the Global Sumud Flotilla/Instagram
Musa Roshdy/Instagram
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