The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 3 2026 (IPS) - A new report from UNICEF finds that approximately 1 in 5 of all children surveyed reported facing tech-facilitated sexual abuse or exploitation in a single year.
In the past two decades, digital technologies and spaces have become intertwined with all aspects of daily life, introducing new risks to children’s safety, particularly for children in protracted crises.
Largely driven by persistent structural barriers among tech platforms and governments, rampant underreporting, and a critical lack of protection frameworks and support services for victims, tech-facilitated sexual exploitation continues to have long-term adverse impacts on millions of children while fostering an environment of impunity for perpetrators.
These factors were examined in detail in a new report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), titled Through Children’s Eyes: How Digital Technologies Enable Child Sexual Abuse, which draws upon findings collected across 21 countries.
“More than 20 million children across the countries studied were subjected to unwanted explicit sexual content or exploitation online, often in the digital spaces where they learn, play, and connect with friends,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “These experiences cause profound emotional and mental distress. Many children suffer in silence, unsure where to turn for help. We cannot look away.”
Children subjected to tech-facilitated abuse and exploitation face heightened risks of adverse mental health conditions, many of which are long-term and can significantly affect their social development. The report notes that victims were roughly four times more likely to report self-harm, suicidal thoughts and behaviours, and elevated levels of anxiety. In Mexico and North Macedonia, UNICEF stated that the risk of suicidal ideation among children was around eight times higher when compared to the global average, while in Pakistan, the risk of self-harm was about seven times higher.
Additionally, social workers and psychologists interviewed by UNICEF reported numerous cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among victims, which is associated with difficulty trusting others or forming new relationships, worsened school performance, developing substance abuse conditions, or engaging in harmful or risky behaviours.
It is estimated that roughly 60 percent of all cases recorded by UNICEF occurred on social media and 14 percent occurred in online gaming. Approximately half of all social media-facilitated abuse took place on Facebook, with considerable percentages also found on WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. 57 percent of these cases involved a perpetrator who was already known to the victim, while in 9 of the 21 surveyed countries, the perpetrator was another child.
UNICEF experts warn that the true scale of tech-facilitated sexual exploitation far exceeds reported figures due to widespread underreporting. Fewer than 1 percent of cases were reported to law enforcement or support service personnel, while roughly 4 in 10 cases were never disclosed to anyone.
The primary reasons victims avoid disclosing abuse include fear of harassment or not being taken seriously, persisting social stigmas surrounding survivors of sex-based crimes, and children simply not knowing about or not having access to adequate psychosocial support and justice programs. This often results in a culture of impunity for perpetrators while facilitating future exploitation.
For example, girls who are victims of tech-facilitated sexual abuse are often blamed or shamed by their communities, particularly in contexts with rigid patriarchal structures.
“There were many [challenges]. Mainly in my social environment, something that worried me a lot was how to relate to society after what happened,” said a young woman from Mexico who was a victim of tech-facilitated sexual abuse. “I did not know how they would react if I told them what happened to me; I was afraid of facing that. Well, the school environment too…Mainly it affects my emotional health; it made me feel depression and anxiety.”
On the other hand, when boys share that they have experienced tech-facilitated sexual abuse, their accounts are often minimized, and they are expected to cope quietly. Oftentimes, perpetrators also use threats of revealing or falsely implying a boy’s sexual orientation as a means of extortion.
Although tech-facilitated sexual abuse and exploitation affect children everywhere regardless of geography or income level, perpetrators often weaponize economic vulnerability. Children living in conflict or crisis-entrenched settings are at a heightened risk, as protection, support, and justice systems are severely strained. Daniel Kardefelt-Winther, the head of UNICEF’s research programme on Children and Digital Technologies, told Inter Press Service that risk is shaped by a range of factors, including economic circumstances, children’s relationships, and access to support services.
“Perpetrators may exploit the economic hardship some children face by offering money or gifts in exchange for sexual images or videos,” says Kardefelt-Winther, who is also the leader author of the report. “Economic need can make it difficult for children to refuse these offers, while some may not initially recognise the experience as abuse precisely because money or other benefits are being provided in return.”
Kardefelt-Winther adds that the consequences of tech-facilitated abuse can oftentimes leave digital spaces entirely, translating to real-world security risks for millions of children. For example, some children described being contacted online by strangers who coerced or deceived children into meeting in person, where they were subsequently sexually abused. In other cases, perpetrators obtained sexual images of a child and used them to blackmail children into meeting in person.
In an effort to combat tech-based harm affecting children, several countries have enacted or proposed limitations on social media access for minors, including Australia in December 2025, as well as Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates throughout 2026. Further legislation is pending in France, the United Kingdom, Greece, Canada, Denmark, and Turkey.
These efforts have proven to be quite controversial. Tech platforms warn that these measures risk user privacy, whereas youth groups argue that the restrictions infringe on free speech and isolate young people from their communities. Furthermore, human rights groups state that restricting social media for minors is not the solution, arguing that substantial protection only results from changes to platform algorithms and safety frameworks.
Kardefelt-Winther remarked that governments have good reason to be concerned with the risks that children face online, including bullying and exploitation. “Children are growing up in a digital world that was not designed with their rights, safety and wellbeing in mind…Age restrictions may play a role in keeping children safe, but on their own they do not address the underlying drivers of harm. They may even push children into less regulated spaces.”
He added: “UNICEF is calling for stronger protections for children, including safer platforms, better reporting systems, and more support for mental health services. We also want children to be part of shaping the solutions. Protecting children online is a shared responsibility, and governments, companies, families, and communities all have a role to play.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
KIGALI, Rwanda, Sep 3 2026 (IPS) - As leaders gather in Kigali for the Africa Food Systems Forum, they face an urgent question: why do so many proven agricultural innovations still fail to reach the farmers and communities that need them most?
For the first time, Africa is home to the largest number of people facing hunger. This is despite decades of agricultural innovation developed to address the continent’s food and agriculture challenges. Between 2022 and 2024, CGIAR – the world’s largest partnership dedicated to transforming food, land and water systems in a climate crisis – developed more than 470 innovations, reaching at least six million farmers across the continent.
Africa’s food systems challenges are not the result of a lack of innovation. Rather, a set of overlapping, complex and increasingly severe pressures is undermining progress at a critical point in the continent’s transformation.
Climate-driven weather impacts are becoming more frequent and severe. A predicted “super” El Niño in the coming months is forecast to create drier than usual conditions across parts of West and Central Africa. In East Africa, it is forecast to reduce normal rainfall in some regions and to lead to severe rainfall and flooding in others. According to the World Meteorological Organization, Africa is warming faster than the global average.
Escalating conflicts across several African countries are disrupting food supply chains and increasing the risk of severe food emergencies. At the same time, geopolitical instability has driven up the cost of agricultural inputs and transport, creating further barriers to sustainable farming. All this is taking place against a backdrop of reduced funding for agricultural development and an unprecedented decline in international aid to sub-Saharan Africa.
African countries are confronting this confluence of challenges as they begin implementing the new 10-year Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme Strategy and Action Plan (2026–2035), the African Union-led roadmap for transforming the continent’s agrifood systems into more resilient drivers of economic growth, food security and healthy diets.
The roadmap sets the ambition. What is missing is the architecture to make that happen: the “missing middle” between proven agricultural innovation and the large-scale public investment, partnerships and delivery capacity needed to take it to scale.
Bridging this missing middle requires development funders to rethink how they support agricultural innovation. Governments, international financial institutions, multilateral development banks and African development finance institutions must move beyond portfolios of disparate projects and invest instead in coherent innovation pathways. Science and evidence must be integrated from the outset, before investment decisions are made.
Innovation pathways provide a route for moving tried-and-tested solutions to scale. They allow governments, funders, scientific organizations and partners to work together to identify, validate, scale and measure the impact of the most promising innovations.
Bundling complementary innovations into investable packages can also help accelerate deployment and impact, opening opportunities for ambitious young Africans to build firms, provide services and create jobs within their own food systems.
African governments must remain in the driver’s seat throughout this process. That is essential to ensure investments respond to national priorities and align with country agrifood systems investment plans under CAADP.
CGIAR is working to build precisely these connections between country demand, science, finance and delivery. One example is the partnership between CGIAR Scaling for Impact with the African Development Bank to support the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) and its Clearinghouse. It demonstrates how large-scale development finance and scientific expertise can be brought together to meet national agricultural priorities and deliver proven, science-backed technologies at scale.
The TAAT Clearinghouse connects country demand and AfDB financing with proven innovations, CGIAR expertise and the technical support needed for effective delivery. It is currently linking approximately US$1.5 billion in AfDB-backed investments in Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with science-backed technologies and expertise.
In 2026 alone, CGIAR innovations funded and scaled through the TAAT Clearinghouse are expected to reach 3.4 million farmers across the continent.
The Africa Food Systems Forum must therefore be more than a place to showcase promising ideas. It should be a critical inflection point for moving from commitment to credible investment, action and delivery. African policymakers, investors, development finance institutions and researchers should use the Forum to build a more systematic science-to-finance compact—one that places proven innovation at the heart of national investment and delivery.
In an era of less aid and greater instability, Africa cannot afford for proven science to remain stranded in pilot projects—or for billions in development finance to be invested without the best available evidence. Connecting the two is one of the fastest ways to turn Africa’s food systems ambitions into results at scale.
Dr. Ismahane Elouafi is Executive Managing Director, CGIAR
IPS UN Bureau
Excerpt:
As leaders gather in Kigali for the Africa Food Systems Forum, CGIAR’s Ismahane Elouafi argues that Africa must connect proven agricultural innovation with the finance, partnerships and delivery systems needed to achieve impact at scale.
PORTLAND, USA, Sep 1 2026 (IPS) - The age structures of populations vary considerably across countries. Some countries have relatively young populations, with large proportions consisting of children and adolescents. Other countries have much older age structures, with a substantial proportion of people aged 65 years or older.
The world’s current population of approximately 8.3 billion has a median age of about 31 years. This is substantially higher than during much of the 20th century, when the global median age was generally below 25 years. The world’s median age was 22 years in 1950, declined to 20 years in 1970, and then increased to nearly 25 years by 1999.
Population ageing is expected to continue worldwide in the coming decades, The median age of the world’s population, currently about 31 years, is projected to increase to approximately 36 years by 2050.
Despite the overall trend toward older populations, substantial differences in age structures exist among countries.
In 2026, approximately 50 countries and territories have populations with median ages of 21 years or younger, reflecting highly youthful age structures. At the other end of the age spectrum, a similar number of countries and territories have median ages of 42 years or older, indicating comparatively old populations.
These wide differences in median age illustrate the striking demographic diversity among countries and the contrasting social and economic challenges associated with youthful and older populations.
Most countries with highly youthful populations are located in Africa. For example, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, and Somalia have median ages of 16 years or younger.
In contrast, countries with comparatively older populations are concentrated primarily in Europe and East Asia. France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Spain, and Switzerland, for example, have median ages of 42 years or older. The highest median ages – about 50 years – are found in Italy and Japan (Table 1).
Source: United Nations.
In addition, the median age is expected to rise in virtually all countries, in both more developed and less developed regions. By 2050, for example, the median ages of several countries – including China, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Spain – are projected to reach 50 years or more.
The substantial variations in age structures of national populations are also evident in the proportions of people under age 18 and those aged 65 and older.
Once again, countries in which approximately half or more of their population is below age 18, while only a few percent are aged 65 years and older, are concentrated primarily in Africa.
In 2026, for example, 56% of the population in the Central African Republic is under age 18, while the corresponding proportions are approximately 53% in Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, and Somalia. In each of these countries, only about 3% of the population is age 65 years and older.
In contrast, many developed countries – including Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, and the Republic of Korea – have much older population age structures. In some of these countries, such as Italy and Japan, approximately 14% of the population is under age 18, while nearly twice that proportion – between 25% and 30% – is aged 65 years and older (Figure 1).
Source: United Nations.
The ongoing changes in countries’ population age structures will have far-reaching implications, particularly for population growth, labor markets, employment, education, healthcare systems, retirement programs, and long-term care.
Many developing countries have relatively young populations and, because of their age structures and population momentum, generally experience relatively high rates of population growth. In contrast, countries with comparatively older populations tend to have slower rates of population growth, with many developed countries already experiencing population decline.
As many developed countries with ageing and declining populations face growing labor shortages, countries with youthful populations continue to have large numbers of young people entering the labor market, often in excess of available employment opportunities
By midcentury, several African countries with particularly young age structures are expected to experience particularly rapid population growth. For example, the populations of Chad, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, and Somalia are projected to increase by more than 80%.
Such rapid population growth can pose major challenges to social and economic development, particularly in providing adequate education, employment, housing, healthcare, and other essential services. Governments will need to expand infrastructure and public services rapidly simply to keep pace with the growing number of people.
Countries with young and rapidly growing populations may also face greater difficulties in reducing hunger and inequality, advancing women’s rights, expanding access to healthcare, creating decent employment opportunities, preventing social unrest, and addressing internal conflicts.
These demographic pressures underscore the importance of government policies that strengthen human capital, create productive employment, expand social services, and improve infrastructure. Such measures will be essential for ensuring that rapidly growing populations can achieve sustainable improvements in their living standards.
The slow pace of socio-economic development, high rates of unemployment, and limited educational and employment opportunities for many young people are contributing to social unrest, discontent, and political upheaval.
As a result, increasing numbers of young men and women seek to emigrate to developed countries in search of employment, greater security, and better prospects for themselves and their families. While many use regular migration channels, others increasingly resort to irregular migration, including unauthorized entry, overstaying visas, or seeking asylum and refugee protection.
In several African countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone and Liberia, half or more of the population reportedly would like to emigrate to another country, typically in Europe and North America. These migration aspirations reflect not only economic motivations but also broader concerns about employment opportunities, personal security, governance, and prospects for the future.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, provides a particularly striking example. Approximately half of its population reportedly would like to leave the country and resettle abroad, preferably in an English-speaking country. Economic hardship, unemployment, limited opportunities, and insecurity have contributed to this strong desire to emigrate. Many Nigerians have already moved abroad through regular migration channels, while others have undertaken irregular journeys or sought asylum and refugee protection.
The persistence of such strong migration aspirations in many less developed countries highlights the close relationship between demographic pressures, socioeconomic conditions, and international migration. Where large youthful populations confront limited employment, educational, and economic opportunities, migration can become an increasingly attractive option for seeking a better future.
Unauthorized migration has consequently become a major political issue in many destination countries. Governments in numerous migrant-receiving countries have introduced or strengthened measures to deter unauthorized migration, including increased border enforcement, arrest and detention of unauthorized migrants, deportation, and the return of people who have entered without authorization or overstayed their visas.
At the same time, the demographic circumstances of migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries differ considerably. Many less developed countries have relatively young populations and high rates of demographic growth, whereas many developed countries have substantially older age structures and are expected to experience population decline over the coming decades. By 2050, for example, the populations of countries such as Italy, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, are projected to decline by approximately 13% (Figure 2).
Source: United Nations.
These contrasting demographic trends are likely to increase the economic and political importance of international migration. As many developed countries with ageing and declining populations face growing labor shortages, countries with youthful populations continue to have large numbers of young people entering the labor market, often in excess of available employment opportunities.
The consequences of population ageing are becoming increasingly significant for a growing number more developed countries and are also emerging as an important concern for some less developed countries as well. These demographic changes are prompting governments to reconsider existing economic and social policies, programs, and benefits in order to adapt to population realities.
Population ageing, combined with increasing longevity, is reducing the number of workers available to support each retiree while increasing the fiscal burden on the working-age populations that finances pensions, healthcare, and other age-related government programs.
Longer lifespans also mean that many older men and women may outlive their personal savings or retirement benefits. As longevity continues to increase, pension systems are paying benefits for substantially longer periods than anticipated when many of these systems were established during the 20thcentury.
Consequently, governments are facing growing pressure to reform retirement systems, healthcare services, and long-term care programs to ensure their financial sustainability while maintaining adequate support for ageing populations.
In addition to placing greater strains on government finances, the rising costs of medical treatment and care for growing numbers of older persons are placing increasing pressures on family budgets, capacities, and expectations.
Financing and providing long-term care for older persons is a major challenge for societies and families. In many countries, public provision for long-term care remains inadequate or largely unavailable to significant proportions of the population. At the same time, the growing number of older men and women is placing increasing stress on traditional safety nets, including families, friends, and local communities.
Powerful and largely irreversible demographic trends are driving population ageing, with growing numbers and proportions of people – especially women, who typically live longer than men – spending more years in old age. These trends will have profound implications for the organization and financing of societies.
The contrasting age structures of populations in developing and developed countries require significant social and economic adjustments. Countries with youthful populations need to expand education, employment, healthcare, and other services to meet the needs of growing numbers of young people. In contrast, countries with substantially older populations must prepare for rising demands on pension systems, healthcare, and long-term care.
In light of these demographic realities, governments need to revamp policies and programs affecting their populations. Unfortunately, many governments appear to be postponing these necessary adjustments. The longer governments delay adapting policies and programs to changing demographic conditions, the more difficult and costly the consequences are likely to become for their populations.
Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division, and author of many publications on population issues.
JOHANNESBURG, Sep 1 2026 (IPS) - In 2024, Kurdish social worker Pakhshan Azizi was sentenced to death. She remains incarcerated in Evin Prison, Tehran, Iran. This is her story …
Please read her letter from prison here.
For more on Civicus’s Stand as My Witness Campaign.
Additional reporting and research: Cecilia Russell
Picture credits: Kurdistan Human Rights, BBC Persian, Clare Quirk, Wikipedia, CY Boechat (VOA)/Wikimedia Commons, UNICEF, Civicus, Amnesty International, ANF News, Vida Rabbani, Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (WNCRI)
IPS UN Bureau Report
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 1 2026 (IPS) - On the morning of August 26, an unprecedented series of flash floods struck Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, causing immense destruction, killing hundreds of civilians and leaving thousands missing. Entire neighborhoods have been buried underwater and beneath mud as the Nepalese government and humanitarian organizations rush to provide emergency assistance.
“My family members were swept away by the flood in front of my eyes,” Kalpana Malla from Nepal’s Nuwakot district told reporters. “They could not escape the flood; there was no chance at all. This flood took everything, but my son and I climbed the rooftop of a house and survived, but couldn’t explain how.”
Although the direct cause of the floods is currently unknown, figures from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) indicate that the floods were caused by a significant glacial collapse, after previously reporting they were caused by a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. Marking a magnitude 5.2 seismic event, the subsequent debris flow and downstream collapse of seismic waves crashed over the Nepal-China border, destroying buildings and roads along the Trishuli River.
“Initial analysis of before-and-after satellite images now suggests that part of a glacier collapsed high in the mountains,” said Professor Liz Stephens, Professor in Climate Risks and Resilience at the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, noting that the stability of high-mountain environments is increasingly threatened by the global impacts of climate change. She adds that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has “high confidence” that similar “complex cascading events” could occur in the future if underlying climate factors are not addressed soon.
Entire regions in Nepal have been rendered inaccessible due to heavy flooding and mudslides, which destroyed at least 35 bridges, affected over 40 kilometers of roads, and disrupted telecommunications and electricity services in roughly 10 percent of the total affected areas. The hardest-hit regions are the Rasuwa district near Kathmandu in northern Nepal, the Nuwakot district in central-northern Nepal, and the towns of Timure, Rasuwagadhi, and Syabrubesi. According to figures from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), roughly 10,000 households are in dire need of emergency assistance, with many families stripped of basic services, such as shelter, food, water supply, and access to healthcare.
Last week on August 27, Lila Pieters Yahia, the United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator in Nepal, informed reporters during a press briefing at the UN Headquarters that at least 359 people had been killed, while 73 additional civilians had been hospitalized, though some have since been released. Yahia also stated that approximately 910 civilians remain missing, though various media outlets report the figure exceeds 1,300. Since then, Nepal officials have confirmed 900 deaths and over 4247 missing.
These numbers are projected to fluctuate in the coming days as aid personnel increasingly access isolated areas. Of those unaccounted for, Yahia noted that roughly 517 are foreign nationals spanning over 30 countries—including hundreds from China and India, alongside approximately 90 from the United States.
“Everyone in a mountain valley faces the same hazards, but tourists are more vulnerable because they may not recognize the danger or understand local warnings,” said Dr. Fatima M. Pillosu, hydrometeorologist and flash floods researcher from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. “Visitors from regions where such events are rare may not appreciate how fast a mountain river can rise, nor that these valleys also face avalanches, landslides and floods from melting glaciers, even in dry weather. Knowing in advance what can happen, and what to do if it does, is one of the most useful protections.”
Children in Nepal are among the hardest-hit populations, with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimating that at least 17,000 children have been impacted. UNICEF has recorded the destruction of at least 18 schools and damage to 20. Roughly 10,000 school-age children are projected to require urgent support to continue their education, including new learning materials, access to temporary learning centers, and psychosocial support services for both children and teachers.
“Children across Rasuwa and Dhading saw their lives being literally washed away in front of their eyes in a very short span of time, with homes, classrooms, and medical facilities damaged,” said Alice Akunga, the UNICEF representative to Nepal. “Children who have survived the floods now face heightened risks of disease, malnutrition, violence and exploitation,” she said.
Yahia informed reporters that the UN and its partners are currently on the ground, providing direct support to vulnerable communities while simultaneously conducting assessments to determine the exact scale of needs. Currently, the World Food Programme (WFP) is positioned to provide equipment and emergency rations to communities on the frontlines of the crisis. Additionally, two staff members from the World Health Organization (WHO) are distributing tents, logistics support, and medical kits for about 10,000 people for roughly three months.
Although the UN has identified potential risk for additional flooding in areas of Nepal on August 27, it is working closely with the Nepalese government to scale up its life-saving operations across health, nutrition, water, sanitation, protection, and education.
In the wake of the disaster, both countries and UN entities have begun sending emergency supplies and funding for the relief efforts in Nepal. UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher announced that USD 2 million would be allocated from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).
The U.S. State Department has pledged to send a disaster response advisor along with USD 500,000 in aid. Yahia also confirmed that Switzerland has sent more than USD 600,000 for aid, and other countries such as Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom have pledged to send aid funding and supplies in the days to come. Regional neighbors, such as India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, have begun sending emergency supplies.
IPS UN Bureau Report
TEHRAN, Sep 1 2026 (IPS) - Writing from the women’s ward of Evin Prison on 10 June 2026, Kurdish political prisoner Pakhshan Azizi, who remains under a death sentence, reflects on her legal case, political principles, humanitarian work, and the broader historical and political dynamics shaping the Middle East.
Azizi opens by stating that “politics and ethics are at the height of their historical degradation”.
She explains that she remained silent for a long time because, for someone imprisoned and condemned to death, every word carries the risk of further punishment or even losing one’s life. Yet she says she can no longer remain silent while others define her identity and speak on her behalf.
Azizi accuses individuals both inside and outside prison of exploiting her case for personal or organisational interests. She argues that people claiming to defend her have instead attempted to marginalise or erase her, turning her case into an object of political competition rather than genuine solidarity.
She describes spending three years in prison and two years under what she calls an unjust and oppressive death sentence. According to her, she is the only female political prisoner under a death sentence whose conviction has been upheld four times. She stresses that neither she nor her lawyer has received any official notification that her execution has been suspended, despite public reports suggesting otherwise. Even if such a suspension existed, she emphasises, it would not mean that her death sentence had been overturned.
She recounts the immense suffering experienced by her family, noting that several relatives have also been imprisoned simply because they are Kurdish. She criticises what she sees as unequal public attention, suggesting that recognition often depends on conforming to political narratives rather than on the reality of one’s work or persecution.
Throughout the letter, Azizi argues that her prosecution has been shaped not only by legal irregularities but also by political manoeuvring behind the scenes, involving actors both inside and outside prison. She says that her experiences of interrogation, ideological pressure, and imprisonment echo the long history of discrimination and marginalisation faced by Kurdish people.
She writes that, over time, she has come to rely only on herself, believing that history will ultimately demonstrate the sincerity of her principles and the consistency of her commitment.
Her political positions
Azizi then sets out her views in nine numbered points.
The Middle East conflict has deep historical rootsShe argues that today’s conflicts cannot be understood solely through the actions of contemporary governments. Instead, she traces the region’s instability back to the post–First World War division of the Middle East by colonial powers.
She describes the current wars as a continuation of that historical process, arguing that the region’s resources—including oil and minerals—have long been exploited by global powers while ordinary people bear the consequences through poverty, sanctions, displacement, and violence.
According to her, civilians are repeatedly sacrificed in conflicts they neither initiated nor control, while political elites continue pursuing geopolitical interests.
Opposition to warAzizi unequivocally condemns the war involving the United States and Israel and rejects military attacks on Iranian territory and the wider Middle East.
She specifically condemns attacks against schools, hospitals, emergency services, universities, and other civilian infrastructure, describing such attacks as war crimes under international law.
She emphasises that children deserve life, not death.
Rejection of allegations of organisational membershipAzizi firmly rejects accusations that she belongs to any political or armed organisation.
She explains that she worked as a social worker and acknowledges that, because of the environment in which she worked in northeastern Syria (Rojava), she inevitably cooperated with various local actors. However, she insists that cooperation in humanitarian work should not be interpreted as organisational membership.
Humanitarian work in SyriaShe describes spending years working in refugee camps in Syria under extremely difficult humanitarian conditions, particularly assisting people displaced by the war and affected by ISIS attacks.
She argues that using isolated photographs or superficial evidence to portray this humanitarian work as proof of political or military affiliation is fundamentally misleading.
Her position on Kurdish rightsAzizi explicitly rejects separatism.
She argues that demands for Kurdish rights should be understood within Iran, advocating federal arrangements and greater recognition of Kurdish communities while preserving the country’s territorial integrity.
Looking beyond Iran, she expresses a longer-term vision of a democratic confederation across the Middle East based on cooperation rather than division.
As a Kurdish woman, she says preserving Kurdish culture and history is both a historical and a human responsibility but insists that separatism has never been the solution.
Peace through dialogueShe argues that genuine peace can only be achieved through dialogue with ordinary people, especially those who have been marginalised and denied opportunities.
Skepticism toward international powersAzizi questions why global powers would suddenly claim to defend her or Kurdish history when those same powers have historically contributed to denying and suppressing Kurdish identity.
She suggests that powerful states often instrumentalise minority communities for their own geopolitical purposes.
Independence from governmentsShe emphasises that social work is independent of governments and political authorities.
Her work, she writes, has always been with people rather than with states.
Commitment to independent civil societyAzizi concludes by reaffirming that she has never belonged to any organisation.
She describes herself as an independent social worker committed to addressing the deep social wounds created by decades of war.
She argues that rebuilding society requires independent civic institutions capable of fostering dignity, culture, and life rather than perpetuating violence.
Azizi ends with a sentence in Kurdish followed by Persian:
“I am one who dies for life, not one who lives for death.”
She closes by expressing gratitude to everyone who has defended her despite political differences, including her family, her lawyer Mohammad Hossein Raisian, and her friends, thanking them for their sincere support.
Source: HRANA News Agency, the news outlet of the Human Rights Activists in Iran.
Translation: Courtesy of Civicus
IPS UN Bureau Report
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 1 2026 (IPS) - Open a can of something fizzy and the reason the sugar doesn’t separate immediately is gum arabic, tapped by hand from acacia trees across the Sahel. Spray on perfume and the reason the scent is still there at dinner is frankincense, a resin cut from Boswellia trees on the dry escarpments of the Horn of Africa. The fat that gives a chocolate bar its snap may well be shea, gathered and pressed by women in the parkland belt of West Africa. The cashmere jumper came from goats that can only be raised on cold, dry rangelands.
These are drylands. They cover 44 per cent of the planet’s land, hold 44 per cent of the world’s cropland and half its livestock, and two billion people live in them. We have spent decades describing them as empty or unproductive. For a long list of things most of us use without thinking, they are the only places on earth that produce them at all.
It is no secret that our world is becoming hotter and drier. Three quarters of the planet’s land experienced drier conditions in the last 30 years than the previous 30. This year’s El Niño is intensifying fast, compelling the world to look back at what dryland systems already know. Nearly every model now points to a record-strength event: the US Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of a “very strong” El Niño at over 90 per cent for this fall and winter, and a 69 per cent chance it exceeds anything on record since 1950.
Drylands have been living through exactly this kind of shock-and-recovery cycle for generations, and their playbook offers real lessons. Farmers in places that have always been able to count on rain are beginning to face a question that dryland farmers answered generations ago: what do you grow, and how, when the water is not guaranteed?
Dryland systems are the longest-running operating record anywhere of producing value under conditions of scarcity, volatility and shock. These landscapes are home to generations of knowledge on how to thrive with limited water and high variability. This includes practices such as spreading risk across several crops and animals rather than betting the season on one, understanding land closely enough to move livestock before the pressure is too much, and building income that arrives at different times of the year so a bad month is not a ruined one. These are powerful lessons needed now.
Now is the time to listen and learn from dryland communities, practices, and regenerative production models. When this wisdom, data, and experience serve as our foundation, we can transition to sustainable business models and unlock investments to power our future world using knowledge that already exists in the places we have been calling marginal.
Mongolia, the host of the recently concluded UN’s COP17 talks under the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), is a case in point. Three quarters of Mongolia’s land is already classified as degraded or at risk. However, Mongolian herders supply 40 per cent of the world’s raw cashmere, increasingly innovating to shift away from an extractive model to practices that generate diverse value, from wool to grass-fed meat, examples of what a healthy landscape can offer.
In northern Ghana, the Ojoba Women’s Shea Cooperative processes shea butter by hand in the arid Upper East Region, using a skill passed down through generations. They now supply international buyers including L’Occitane and Lush.
In both instances, the land already had value, and the skills already existed within the communities. What was missing was a route to the market willing to pay for them. These initiatives demonstrate what is possible when investment is designed around the realities and value in drylands.
Investment can take many forms: from financing cooperatives through the shift to new practices; insurance that pays out on rainfall; water and energy infrastructure that keeps a harvest sellable in extreme heat. There is growth potential beyond raw commodities too; processing into oils, powders, waxes compounds the returns. And payments for ecosystem services, from stored carbon, biodiversity and watershed protection, sit alongside that.
Donors like the European Union have already recognised the value of drylands with the €20 million Thrivelands initiative, led by Landscape Alliance, to build the coalitions and action this work needs; including innovations needed to protect and restore land. These innovations range from the tools to monitor and restore soil health accurately to the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework and the Regreening Africa app, which brings this data into the hands of farmers.
But public funding alone cannot unlock the drylands opportunities. Adapting to a drier world means restoring a broken nature finance system and closing the $700 billion finance gap to apply proven expertise across a growing area.
Many companies already depend on drylands through what they source, without having assessed how much of their supply comes from them. For those in the agrifood, textiles, and cosmetics sectors, investing in restoring and protecting these landscapes is a way to stabilise their supply chains, manage growing levels of risk and meet climate goals.
There is also the question of what inaction costs. Investing in drylands agriculture could avert a 12 per cent reduction in global food production over the next 25 years and prevent the release of about 60 per cent of stored carbon.
COP17 is a reminder of how little time is left. The UNCCD finance framework closes in 2030, with 82 per cent of the cumulative need for finance unmet. Time is running out to leverage the lessons from drylands to protect future food security. The gap between what is needed and what is being invested remains enormous.
The landscapes on which our future depends may be getting drier, but they are not devoid of opportunity. With science and innovation that enhances traditional knowledge, they are saturated with opportunities to bolster food security and climate resilience.
Dr Éliane Ubalijoro, chief executive officer of Landscape Alliance
Salina Abraham, Head of Thrivelands, Landscape Alliance
IPS UN Bureau