The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
SRINAGAR, India, Sep 14 2026 (IPS) - An international survey released by Earth4All has found a growing crisis of trust in governments, widespread anger over inequality, and strong public support for major economic reforms, suggesting that many people across the world believe current political and economic systems are failing to serve ordinary citizens.
The report, Rebuild Trust: Rigged Economies, Fractured Societies and the Case for Change, surveyed people in 17 countries representing 58 percent of global GDP, 38 percent of the world’s population, and 37 percent of global carbon emissions. Its findings paint a picture of societies that feel increasingly divided, economically insecure, and disconnected from political institutions.
As per the report, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believe their country’s economic system is “rigged” to benefit the rich and powerful. Seven in ten said there is too much economic inequality in their country, while 69 percent called for major changes to economic systems to improve life for most people.
“The survey results show a mismatch between public support for economic change and what mainstream political parties are willing to offer,” the report’s authors, Owen Gaffney and Kate Pickett, write. They argue that the findings reveal an opportunity for governments to build new social contracts based on fairness, economic security, and long-term wellbeing.
The survey comes at a time when many countries are grappling with rising living costs, political polarisation, climate pressures, and growing public frustration with institutions.
One of the report’s most striking conclusions is that many people feel their societies are becoming more fractured.
Across the 17 countries surveyed, 67 percent said their country is more divided today than it was a decade ago. More than seven in ten respondents reported serious tensions between supporters of different political parties. Nearly two-thirds saw conflict between rich and poor, while similar numbers perceived tensions between immigrant and native-born populations.
The authors argue that these divisions are linked not only to economic conditions but also to a broader erosion of trust.
“Societies feel themselves coming apart. There is a trust deficit at the heart of societies,” reads the report.
Only 31 percent of respondents said they trust their governments to make decisions that will benefit the majority of people 20 or 30 years into the future. This was one of the lowest-rated measures in the survey.
The report also highlights a less visible issue. Many people feel they are not treated with respect and dignity.
Across all surveyed countries, only 41 percent agreed that people like them are treated with respect and dignity. The authors note that feelings of disrespect and humiliation can fuel political alienation and social resentment.
“A society in which one in four people feel they do not receive respect contains significant combustible material,” the report states. “Many people feel unseen, believe the system is rigged and do not experience their society as a collective enterprise.”
Asian countries included in the survey showed significant differences in public attitudes.
Indonesia emerged as one of the strongest supporters of economic reform. Nearly three-quarters of Indonesians said there is too much inequality in their country, while 74 percent believed the system benefits the wealthy. A remarkable 78 percent supported major economic changes, the highest level among all countries surveyed.
Indonesians also showed strong backing for climate action. Sixty-eight per cent said governments should take strong action against climate change even if it results in higher prices.
Yet Indonesia appeared less polarised than many Western countries. Only 53 percent believed the country is more divided than it was ten years ago, significantly below the global average.
Japan presented a different picture.
Trust in government was among the lowest recorded in the survey. Only 19 percent of Japanese respondents said they trusted their government to make long-term decisions benefiting the majority of citizens. Just one fifth felt they were treated with respect and dignity.
The findings also revealed unexpectedly strong support for authoritarian leadership in Japan. Nearly half of respondents agreed that the country would be better off with a strong leader unconstrained by parliament and elections. Meanwhile, only half said democracy was the best system of government.
India also featured prominently in the survey. According to comparative data in the report, 66 percent of Indian respondents agreed that there is too much economic inequality in the country, close to the international average. India ranked among countries where a majority still felt they were treated with respect and dignity, recording one of the highest scores in the survey on that measure.
Despite widespread frustration with governments and economic systems, the survey found continued support for democracy.
Overall, 68 percent of respondents said democracy remains the best way to govern their country. However, support was not universal. Forty percent also agreed that their country would be better off with a strong leader who does not have to worry about parliament or elections.
The authors describe this as a warning sign rather than a rejection of democracy itself.
In countries such as Brazil and Japan, support for strong leaders reached especially high levels. In Brazil, 51 percent backed the idea of a leader unconstrained by elections, while 63 percent still supported democracy. In Japan, support for strong leadership stood at 46 percent.
The United States presented a contrasting picture. Only 26 percent favoured a strong leader outside democratic constraints, while 68 percent supported democracy as the preferred form of government.
The report warns that declining trust in institutions can create openings for anti-democratic movements if governments fail to address public concerns about fairness and economic opportunity.
Climate Action Retains Public Backing
Despite growing economic anxieties, the survey found continued support for climate action.
More than half of respondents said governments should take strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even if it leads to higher prices. Support was strongest in middle-income countries and weaker among lower-income households and politically conservative respondents.
The authors argue that climate policies are more likely to succeed when paired with measures that address economic inequality and social insecurity.
Public resistance to climate action often grows when people believe they are being asked to bear unfair costs while wealthier groups benefit from the existing system, the report suggests.
Kate Pickett, one of the report’s authors and a well-known researcher on inequality and social wellbeing, has long argued that unequal societies tend to experience weaker social cohesion and lower levels of trust. The findings of the new survey appear to reinforce that argument.
Economic Anxiety Remains Widespread
Beyond questions of trust and politics, the survey highlights persistent worries about basic economic security.
Across the countries surveyed, 41 percent of respondents said they were concerned about having enough money to cover their basic needs during the coming year. Economic anxiety was particularly high in countries facing inflation and financial instability.
Argentina recorded the highest levels of economic insecurity. More than two-thirds of respondents worried about covering basic needs, and 78 percent supported major economic reforms.
Even in wealthier countries, concerns about inequality remained widespread.
In the United States, 62 percent said there was too much inequality. In Sweden, often regarded as one of the world’s more equal societies, 71 percent shared the same view. Australia recorded 64 percent.
The authors argue that economic growth alone is no longer enough to reassure citizens.
Instead, people increasingly judge systems based on fairness, opportunity, and whether prosperity is shared.
The Earth4All initiative was launched by organisations including the Club of Rome, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the Norwegian Business School. It seeks to identify pathways toward sustainable prosperity and social wellbeing.
The report’s authors say the findings should serve as a wake-up call for political leaders.
Rather than viewing public frustration as a temporary reaction to economic shocks, they argue that governments should recognize it as evidence of deeper structural problems.
The survey reveals what the authors call a “near-universal diagnosis”. Across different political systems, cultures, and income levels, large majorities share the belief that current economic arrangements favour elites while leaving ordinary citizens behind.
IPS UN Bureau Report
KIGALI, Sep 14 2026 (IPS) - When the African continent experiences erratic rains, crops fail, leaving millions of people facing hunger.
Approximately 95% of Africa’s arable land depends heavily on rainfall, which is vulnerable to climate shocks such as drought.
El Niño-induced drought expected to hit some parts of Africa, particularly southern Africa, is going to worsen the situation.
At the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, governments and development partners are calling for more investment in irrigation systems to reduce dependence on rain-fed agriculture by farmers, including small holders who make up 80% of all farmers in sub-saharan Africa.
Building More Irrigation Systems
Only 5% of Africa’s arable land is under irrigation. Asia irrigates about 7 times more than Africa, as it holds about three-quarters of the entire world’s irrigated land.
“Some irrigation systems have been developed. The task now is to take it to scale,” said Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, Senator Abubakar Kyari, at a side event organised by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). “The technology is there and the workforce is there. What we need is collective action.”
IWMI is a global research organisation addressing water challenges in developing countries, working with governments, civil society, and businesses.
When El Niño hit the southern Africa region in the 2023/2024 agriculture season, it triggered one of the driest mid-seasons in over 40 years. It devastated rain-fed maize production, leaving over 26 million people facing hunger in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia and Zambia.
These countries declared national drought disasters to mobilise resources from the public purse, private sector and humanitarian agencies.
In preparing for the next El Nino, Abubakar said agriculture cannot remain at the mercy of the seasons. He said Africa should sustainably manage and deploy its vast water schemes. “This is not a continent of scarcity but of strategic abundance,” he said. “Our task now is not to apportion blame but to break that cycle.”
Africa holds about 9% of the world’s renewable freshwater systems.
Abubakar proposed the adoption and operationalisation of the African Union Framework on Irrigation Development and Agricultural Water Management to enhance water control and increase farmer-led irrigation. This framework is a continental blueprint published in 2020 to boost food security, adapt to climate change, and modernise agriculture across member states.
Abubakar said there is a need to innovate financing to close the investment gap and to strengthen transboundary water appropriation. “We must move from sharing drops to sharing benefits. Establishment of enforceable cooperative frameworks. To scale up climate-smart irrigation and put farmers at the centre of irrigation development. Also to open opportunities for young people in irrigated value chains,” he said
“We must turn continental commitments into actionable delivery. We have articulated the future we want. We must translate that.”
Policy is key to enabling a working, favourable environment for increasing investment in the agriculture sector.
Speaking at the same event, Vincent Kabuti, Irrigation Secretary in the Ministry of Water, said governments should be able to put in place mechanisms for farmers to hold the government accountable.
He said large commercial irrigation systems are essential in complementing farmer-led irrigation systems.
“We have a lot of water, but it is the investment that we do not have,”
Preparing for the next El Niño
Southern Africa expects the next El Niño in the 2026/2027 agricultural season, according to scientists.
The weather phenomenon was officially declared on 11 June by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA confirmed that ocean temperatures in equatorial areas of the Pacific Ocean had remained more than 0.5 °C above average for several months.
El Niño occurs when trade winds in the Pacific reverse direction, causing warmer water to flow into central and eastern areas of the world’s largest ocean.
In Africa, it normally brings El contrasting weather extremes, causing severe droughts in southern Africa and heavy, flood-triggering rains across East Africa.
Drier conditions, which scientists are anticipating, are expected to threaten staple crop yields like maize in southern Africa. Reduced food security risks compounding pressure on food price inflation and acute malnutrition among children.
Abubakar said irrigation systems cushion farmers from droughts and boost food security, create jobs and boost the livelihoods of approximately 439 million Africans living in extreme poverty.
Tilahun Amede, a director of Climate Sustainable Productivity and Resilience at Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an institution focused on scaling agricultural innovations that help smallholder farmers towards increased incomes, better livelihoods, and improved food security, said countries must integrate water in every aspect of agriculture. “African governments must invest in water and irrigation systems,” he said.
“We also need to create a market for farmers to increase their incomes so that they can adopt irrigation systems.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 14 2026 (IPS) - Most free trade advocates falsely claim that comparative advantage ensures developmental gains from trade liberalisation. Mainstream trade theory does not promise that partial trade liberalisation guarantees optimal international specialisation.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Developing countries are supposedly better off after specialising in relatively simple activities contributing to global supply chains, such as primary commodity production and low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing.
Why should developing countries specialise in producing and exporting mineral or agricultural primary commodities? After all, most economists recognise the greater gains in growth, employment, and income from dynamic modern activities, especially manufacturing.
Comparative advantage supposedly gained by trade liberalisation supposedly ensures gains from international specialisation. However, tropical agriculture has instead experienced falling relative prices rather than higher-value-added secondary and tertiary activities in the North.
As Hans Singer and Raul Prebisch showed in 1950, export prices for primary commodities have fallen much more over the long term relative to the prices of manufactures. Bilge Erten has shown these trends continuing into the early 21st century.
Evidence since the late 20th century suggests that the prices of manufactured goods produced by developing countries have fallen relative to those of more sophisticated, high-tech goods from more developed economies.
Intellectual property rents
Due to intense competition among developing countries producing ‘generic’ manufactures, developed-country firms secure higher rents from intellectual property rights (IPRs) – namely, ‘surplus’ from monopoly power so conferred – on their manufactured exports.
The latter are priced higher due to the ‘exclusive’ monopoly power protected by IPRs and ‘branding’ strengthened by transnational law with the establishment of the multilateral World Trade Organization and related law on trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS).
In fact, the prices of generic primary commodities and ‘unbranded’ manufactures have fallen due to more intense competition. In contrast, the prices of ‘exclusive’ products, due to monopoly IPRs and transnational corporate branding, remain higher.
However, such rents do not accrue to mass-produced generic products, whether primary commodities or manufactures made with easily accessible materials and production techniques, subject to intense market competition.
The last decade-long commodity ‘super-cycle’ price boom, which ended around 2004, generated windfall earnings and investible capital. While it undoubtedly lifted many boats for growth, if not development, it did not contradict longer-term trends.
Biased theory
The economic literature on development, trade, and monopolistic competition recognises the possibility of increasing – not just diminishing – returns to scale in manufacturing, enabling average costs to fall.
Such gains from trade are not from one-time ‘static’ improvements in resource allocation. Instead, these benefits stem from dynamic changes driven by production expansion, specialisation, and differentiation for larger markets.
Potential gains from greater external market access can be significant, but only if building on an existing industrial base, capacity and capabilities. Proactive support through appropriate industrial, investment, and technology policies can be crucial.
This pragmatic developmental approach to trade policy contradicts the neoclassical Heckscher-Ohlin ‘pure’ trade theory, the received conventional wisdom invoked by contemporary advocates of trade liberalisation.
Some Keynesian economists promoted balance-of-payments-constrained growth. Cross-border flows of goods and services are determined by the level and growth rate of economic activity, with the exchange rate determining relative prices.
This approach, implying fewer gains from trade, is rejected by trade liberalisation advocates. Developing countries’ gains from specialisation are reduced by falling relative prices, with consumers benefiting from productivity gains at the expense of producers.
If developing-country firms do not manufacture products at productivity levels comparable to those in developed countries, claims of trade gains from consumers’ ‘love of variety’ become quite irrelevant.
Agricultural trade liberalisation
The Western push for agricultural trade liberalisation sought to eliminate tariffs to ensure food security while ignoring subsidies that developed countries could afford.
Although agricultural export subsidies have been largely eliminated, OECD food producers continue to benefit from production subsidies, thereby enabling productivity and trade gains.
As many developing countries became net importers of subsidised agribusiness exports from OECD exporters, price increases due to subsidy withdrawal hurt consumers, especially in developing countries.
Comparable gains in developing-country agriculture have often been modest due to the decline in infrastructure and support services, especially after the imposition of the ‘neoliberal’ Washington Consensus by the West in the 1980s.
The increasing private foreign corporate domination of agricultural research, development, and extension has also significantly reduced net gains to developing-country smallholder farmers.
Neoliberal reforms, including structural adjustment programmes, have reduced, contracted out or privatised government and public-sector alternatives. This raised the costs of credit, marketing, and inputs, including seeds, fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, machinery and fuel.
While trade liberalisation of manufactured imports eroded the policy space needed for investment and technology policies for development, agricultural trade liberalisation has undermined ‘food security’ in most developing countries.
Thus, many African net food-exporting nations became net food importers in the 1980s, following the neoliberal reforms imposed by structural adjustment programmes on indebted nations.
IPS UN Bureau
TOKYO, Japan, Sep 11 2026 (IPS) - Twenty years after five Central Asian states signed a landmark treaty banning nuclear weapons across their region, their foreign ministers have used the anniversary to warn that faltering arms-control agreements, nuclear modernization and deepening international mistrust are placing global security under growing strain.
Central Asia Nuclear Free Zones
The ministers described the treaty as a symbol of Central Asia’s transformation from a region where nuclear weapons were once tested and deployed into one of the leaders of global disarmament efforts.
That history gives the anniversary weight. Semipalatinsk — now Semey — was the Soviet Union’s principal nuclear testing ground, where 456 tests were conducted between 1949 and 1989 across a site roughly the size of Belgium. An estimated 1.5 million people were affected by the fallout, and the health consequences have passed through three generations. Kazakhstan closed the site on August 29, 1991.
Semipalatinsk Former Nuclear Weapon Test site. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri
Warning After Another Failed NPT Review
The anniversary arrives at a difficult moment for the global nuclear order. The ministers reaffirmed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the cornerstone of efforts to prevent proliferation and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons, but expressed regret that its Eleventh Review Conference, held in New York from April 27 to May 22 this year, ended without a substantive outcome — the third consecutive review conference to close without consensus, following those of 2015 and 2022.
They voiced particular concern over insufficient progress toward disarmament under Article VI of the NPT, the cessation of key arms-control arrangements and an alarming trend toward the modernization of nuclear arsenals, placing special responsibility on nuclear-weapon states and calling for new, verifiable mechanisms to prevent a renewed arms race.
Even as the review process stalled, the zones drew attention as one of the regime’s more durable achievements. At a Kazakh-hosted event on the margins of the conference, Robin Geiß, Director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, credited the Central Asian zone with a distinctive contribution in linking security to development, environmental protection and public health, while Mark Melamed of the Nuclear Threat Initiative cautioned that the zones’ achievements cannot be assumed to endure.
CTBT at 30 — Still Not in Force
On September 24, the CTBT will mark 30 years since it opened for signature. Yet it has still not entered into force. The Central Asian states called for its earliest possible entry into force and urged all states to refrain from any action that could undermine the norm against nuclear explosive testing.
The appeal follows a joint statement issued on August 29 — the anniversary of the test site’s closure, observed by the United Nations as the International Day against Nuclear Tests — in which Kazakh Foreign Minister Yermek Kosherbayev and Robert Floyd, Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, urged renewed action to end testing permanently. Much of the treaty’s machinery already functions despite its legal limbo: 308 facilities have been certified, bringing the International Monitoring System to more than 90 percent completion.
More than 300 International Monitoring System (IMS) facilities certified out of the 337 the CTBTO has planned are already in operation. Credit: CTBTO
The ministers also welcomed the 2014 signing by the five NPT-recognized nuclear-weapon states of the protocol providing negative security assurances to the zone. Four have ratified it; the ministers expressed hope that the United States would complete its ratification.
A Regional Model in a Fragmenting Nuclear Order
The declaration went beyond treaties to emphasize disarmament education, backing continued observance of the International Day for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Awareness — a Kyrgyz initiative marked annually on March 5, the date the NPT entered into force — and stressing the importance of involving young people.
Nuclear-weapon-free zones cannot substitute for the disarmament obligations of states that possess nuclear arsenals. But the Semipalatinsk Treaty demonstrates that non-nuclear states are not merely spectators in the global nuclear order: by acting collectively they can create binding regional norms and press nuclear-weapon states for security assurances.
Central Asia has also shown that such zones can become more than geographic prohibitions. The five states have signed memoranda of understanding with the African Commission on Nuclear Energy and with the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, which administers the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco, and Kazakhstan hosted in Astana in August 2024 the second meeting of representatives of all existing zones. The limits are equally clear: three decades of advocacy have not produced a zone in the Middle East, which the ministers again called for.
Equally important is the link between diplomacy and human experience. The Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement, which helped drive the test site’s closure, showed that public pressure could move nuclear policy — and for Kazakhstan, cooperation with civil society has since been less a supplement to disarmament diplomacy than part of its foundation.
September 8 carries another anniversary. On that date in 1957, before 50,000 young people gathered at a stadium in Yokohama, Josei Toda, second president of the Soka Gakkai, issued a declaration calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, condemning them as an absolute evil that threatened the right of people everywhere to exist and entrusting their abolition to the next generation. The peace activity of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a lay Buddhist organization, traces its origin to that declaration.
A Group photo of participants of the regional conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear-free-zone in Central Asia held on August 29, 2023. Credit: Jibek Joly TV Channel
Official portrait of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Credit: President of the Republic of Kazakhstan
For Japanese readers the connection is direct. Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced the use of nuclear weapons in war; Semipalatinsk experienced the consequences of testing them. During his visit to Japan in December 2025, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev warned at United Nations University in Tokyo that nuclear risks were rising again, invoking all three names in a call for concrete steps to reduce nuclear danger.
Twenty years after the treaty was signed, its significance may lie not only in what Central Asia chose to reject, but in what it has continued to build — a regional security architecture that seeks to make nuclear weapons less central, less legitimate and, ultimately, unnecessary.
Note: This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.
IPS UN Bureau
Sep 11 2026 (IPS) -
Late in August I stood at Dag Hammarskjöld’s grave in Uppsala. It is a quiet place, a long way from New York and from the wars the United Nations exists to prevent.
He died sixty-five years ago this month, on 18 September 1961, in an aircraft crash near Ndola, in what is now Zambia. He was fifty-six, on his way to seek a ceasefire in the Congo, where the secession of the mineral-rich province of Katanga had drawn a newly independent country into conflict and great-power rivalry.
Leaving the cemetery, I found myself thinking about the office he held and about a practice he helped build that the organisation has praised ever since but never fully sustained.
Hammarskjöld treated preventive diplomacy as a working method. He travelled repeatedly into crises, used the Secretary-General’s office when local conflicts threatened to become arenas of great-power rivalry, and kept an independent United Nations presence where member states could not or would not go. He negotiated before positions hardened and violence became harder to stop.
Suez, Lebanon and the Congo were very different crises, but he approached them as exercises of the same craft. He did not always succeed. The point was not that prevention always worked. It was that he regarded it as part of the job.
Preventive diplomacy has been restated as a priority many times since. Boutros Boutros-Ghali gave it a doctrine in An Agenda for Peace. Kofi Annan strengthened early-warning and mediation capacity. Ban Ki-moon issued the first Secretary-General’s report devoted to preventive diplomacy in 2011. António Guterres made the case again in A New Agenda for Peace. Member states restated it in the Pact for the Future, and the UN80 Initiative is reviewing how mandates are designed, implemented and assessed.
Doctrine is not what is missing.
Prevention remains politically difficult because success is hard to prove. A crisis that does not happen leaves no ruins, no displaced population and no peacekeeping budget against which the cost of prevention can be measured. Governments that will pay heavily once violence has escalated are often reluctant to fund the diplomacy that might have kept it from escalating.
The problem is also institutional. The United Nations is often better at identifying risk than at acting on it early. Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sahel, Myanmar and Gaza all illustrate, in different ways, how warning signs can accumulate while political space for preventive action narrows. Information moves through the system, but knowledge does not create an obligation to respond.
That is the problem the next Secretary-General will inherit.
Member states choosing António Guterres’s successor have asked useful questions about gender, regional representation, management and reform. They have also asked about prevention. Candidates have described it as a central responsibility of the office, proposed stronger mediation capacity and invoked Article 99 of the Charter, which allows the Secretary-General to bring to the Security Council’s attention any matter that may threaten international peace and security.
The harder question is what the office will do when warning signs are mounting, information is moving through the United Nations system, and the Security Council is unable or unwilling to act.
Hammarskjöld confronted that problem in a different era. In 1960, during the Congo crisis, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev demanded his resignation and proposed replacing the Secretary-General with a three-person ‘troika’ representing competing political blocs.
Hammarskjöld refused.
“It is very easy to resign; it is not so easy to stay on,” he told the General Assembly on 3 October 1960. “It is very easy to bow to the wish of a big Power. It is another matter to resist.”
Earlier in the same statement he had explained whom the United Nations was for.
“It is not the Soviet Union or indeed any other big Powers who need the United Nations for their protection,” he said. “It is all the others.”
That remains the strongest argument for an independent Secretary-General.
The major powers possess other instruments. Smaller and middle powers have fewer. When the Security Council works, the Secretary-General is one actor among several. When it does not, the office may still provide a channel for mediation, bring neglected crises into international view and give political weight to countries that cannot command attention through military or economic power.
That is why Hammarskjöld’s example matters now. He answered Khrushchev in public, and he could do so because of what he had already done in Suez, in Lebanon and in the Congo. His authority came from judgement, discretion and a willingness to keep working when powerful governments wanted him to stop.
Nor should prevention depend on finding another exceptional individual.
Sixty-five years after Ndola, the better tribute is to finish some of the work Hammarskjöld left behind: choose a Secretary-General prepared to exercise the office’s independence while prevention still has a chance to work, and give that office the political and institutional support to do so.
The great powers can still look after themselves.
The United Nations still matters most to “all the others.”
The author at Dag Hammarskjöld’s grave in Uppsala.
Related articles:
A Hundred Dollars for War, One for Peace
Governing the Ungovernable
When Destruction Becomes Policy: What the Munich Security Report Reveals About the Future of Global Governance
Jordan Ryan is a Senior Consultant to the Folke Bernadotte Academy and Senior Counsel (Social Impact) for Hamilton Advisors. He is also a former Vice President for Peace Programs at The Carter Center, where he led strategic planning and implementation of peacebuilding initiatives worldwide from 2015-2018.
This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished from the original with their permission.
IPS UN Bureau
Sep 11 2026 (IPS) -
CIVICUS discusses the implications of the Philippines’ proposed anti-disinformation bill with Josalee Deinla, Secretary-General of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, a civil society organisation that defends civil liberties in the Philippines.
Josalee Deinla
What’s the Digital Media Anti-False Information Act about, and why is it contested?
The proposed Digital Media Anti-False Information Act combines two regulatory approaches. The first targets the infrastructure of disinformation, including political advertising, recommender systems and the commercial systems that amplify and monetise content. Regulation of this infrastructure makes sense. Platforms decide what gets ranked and amplified, and their revenue depends on the engagement that attention-generating content produces.
The second approach is punitive, targeting individual speakers and operators. The law would make it unlawful to knowingly and wilfully publish, disseminate, finance, direct or materially assist in spreading false information with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for the truth and with intent to cause verifiable public harm or a serious threat to national security. The penalty is set at six to 12 years in prison and a fine of up to PHP 2 million (approx. US$32,500).
The main problem is that the bill places its harshest burden at the end of the disinformation chain and its lightest at the point where disinformation is amplified and made profitable. Platforms face only administrative penalties and written warnings, while individual speakers face imprisonment and heavy fines.
If platform regulation, disclosure, correction, labelling and de-amplification can protect the public interest, the state must explain why individual speakers should face up to 12 years in prison. The law’s criminal provisions are hard to justify as necessary. Criminal law should be the last resort against expression, not the first.
The bill also relies on broad, overlapping definitions. ‘Disinformation’ requires knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth, plus intent to cause serious public harm. ‘False information’ is broader still, encompassing any demonstrably false statement presented as fact, regardless of materiality or context. Because prohibited acts draw on both definitions, the accused is left guessing which applies to which charge.
The consequences could be worse still. Three other Senate bills are pending before the Committee on Public Information and Mass Media, including one that would authorise the Department of Justice’s Office of Cybercrime to issue access-blocking, rectification, takedown and preventive takedown orders. It targets content causing harm to individuals, public order or national interests, a far broader test than the requirement that harm be material and concrete.
Why is the bill being pushed now?
There’s a genuine disinformation problem in the Philippines. Elections now depend heavily on digital campaigning, particularly on social media, and coordinated influence operations, historical revisionism, paid influencers and troll networks have all become part of routine political competition. Concerns over foreign interference have added a national-security dimension to the debate.
But the political context is inseparable from the legislation. The bill’s authorship is revealing. It was promoted by Representative Ferdinand Alexander ‘Sandro’ Marcos III, a son of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Ironically, the same political dynasty now demanding tighter legal controls on disinformation used social media’s commercial architecture to return to power in 2022.
The state is not a neutral outsider arriving to repair a corrupted information environment. Political elites participate in that environment, using the same advertising systems, amplification mechanisms, consultants, influencers and platforms they now propose to regulate. A government that actively competes in the information marketplace should not also acquire broad and insufficiently constrained authority to referee the truth of that marketplace.
The imbalance is visible even within the bill. Section 16 requires government agencies to maintain open-data portals and correct erroneous or misleading public statements within a reasonable timeframe after discovery, but it creates no enforcement mechanism and no penalty for non-compliance. Section 9, by contrast, exposes individual speakers who violate the law to six to 12 years’ imprisonment. The bill treats disinformation by the state as a matter of administrative housekeeping, while disinformation by individual speakers can become a serious felony.
The timing therefore reflects two developments: a real deterioration of the information environment and a political effort to acquire greater control over the consequences of that deterioration.
What risks do its provisions pose for civil society?
Alongside prosecution and what comes with it – arrest, detention, legal costs, disrupted work and stigma – the law, if enacted, will change behaviour long before any court decides guilt. For civil society organisations, human rights defenders, journalists and researchers, the cost lies in the interval between accusation and acquittal. No conviction is needed for the law to produce silence.
The bill’s safeguards don’t answer the central problem. Most operate only as defences or rules of construction after investigation has already begun. They may ultimately prevail, but the chilling effect operates in the process that precedes that determination.
Section 4(d) also raises a serious problem. It applies to a person who acts ‘on behalf of, in coordination with, or under the substantial direction or control of’ a foreign state, foreign intelligence service, foreign military force or foreign-funded covert influence operation. This is dangerously broad. Philippine civil society groups, human rights defenders, independent media, lawyers and universities routinely communicate with foreign embassies, foreign universities, international donors, international organisations and United Nations (UN) treaty bodies and special procedures mandate holders. All these relationships are part of everyday international advocacy.
The problem becomes more acute if this bill is read alongside separate foreign interference and malign foreign influence legislation now pending in Congress, which would create a Counter Foreign Interference Council and penalise foreign interference. The impacts could be cumulative. An organisation may first be accused of disseminating false information, then characterised as coordinating with foreign interests, then subjected to scrutiny of its funding and institutional relationships. Together, these measures could allow the state to scrutinise what civil society says, who it works with, who supports it and how its information reaches the public.
This is why any law allowing the government to determine whether political information is false, harmful to public order, malicious or threatening to national security demands exceptional caution. Responding to disinformation can’t mean giving the government a mandate to police truth.
How is civil society responding, and what support does it need?
Civil society opposition has been substantial, but it must be sustained. On 25 July, around 50 academics, civil society representatives, journalists and technologists gathered at the University of the Philippines College of Media and Communication, while at least a dozen organisations issued a joint call urging Congress to reject the bill. Opposition to the bill can easily be caricatured as opposition to regulating disinformation, but this is a false choice.
Civil society acknowledges the harm of disinformation but contests where the law places responsibility for it. Disinformation in the Philippines rarely stems from individual users making bad choices online. Much of it is organised, financed and professionally produced. Political operatives retain consultants who assemble networks of paid influencers and account operators. Coordinated pages manufacture the appearance of organic public sentiment, while platforms supply the distribution systems through which these narratives gain scale. The individual user is often the last link in a much longer chain, and the law should follow that chain upward.
Civil society proposes that allocation of responsibility should begin with the political principal who commissions the operation, the financier who pays for it, the strategist who designs it, the network that carries it out and the platform that amplifies and profits from it. Users should not become the preferred target of enforcement simply because they are the easiest to find.
Civil society needs support at several levels. It needs lawyers who can intervene while the Senate text is still being shaped and, if necessary, mount constitutional challenges later. It also needs technical expertise capable of interrogating platform claims about advertising tools, algorithms, content moderation and recommendation systems, and resources to protect human rights defenders, journalists and researchers, who may face complaints, digital attacks, investigations, surveillance and red-tagging – being vilified as a communist – once the law is in force.
International support matters too. Philippine organisations that receive foreign grants, work with international media and research institutions or engage UN mechanisms should not have to defend those relationships as though they were inherently suspect. Cross-border cooperation and funding are routine features of academic research, election monitoring, human rights work and journalism, and should not be collapsed into the language of foreign interference.
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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UNITED NATIONS, Sep 11 2026 (IPS) - Two weeks after devastating floods struck Nepal, communities across the country are still struggling to meet basic needs as humanitarian efforts continue. The disaster, triggered by a glacial collapse, has become one of Nepal’s deadliest in recent years, leaving widespread destruction in its wake.
As of Wednesday, 1,367 people had been confirmed dead, while 5,132 remained missing, including 587 foreign nationals. 13,646 people have been rescued, but many families are still waiting for news about their loved ones. Search operations remain ongoing, including efforts to reach people who may still be trapped in tunnels and other difficult-to-access areas.
The scale of the destruction has made delivering aid particularly challenging. Floodwaters have damaged homes, roads, bridges, and other essential infrastructure, leaving some communities isolated. The Nepalese government has been using military helicopters to drop aid into areas that remain difficult to reach, while temporary bridges are also being constructed to reconnect communities that have received insufficient assistance.
Families urgently need food, clean drinking water, shelter and access to healthcare. Health services are particularly important for vulnerable groups, including an estimated 1,600 pregnant women who are expected to give birth soon. Ensuring that these women can reach medical facilities and receive appropriate prenatal and emergency care is a major concern.
Mental health support is another pressing need that could become increasingly important as the immediate emergency begins to subside. Survivors have lost homes, livelihoods and, in many cases, family members.
On Wednesday September 9, UN Resident Coordinator for Nepal Lila Pieters Yahia, briefed reporters at UN Headquarters on the ongoing humanitarian efforts by the UN and the Nepalese government.
“People were just so depressed,” Yahia reflected after her visit to the affected communities.
Many people are also coping with the uncertainty of not knowing whether missing relatives are alive. Reuniting separated families and children has therefore become another important part of the humanitarian response.
The United Nations and its humanitarian partners launched a USD 49.6 million flash appeal last Friday to provide life-saving assistance to people affected by the disaster. The appeal is intended to support critical needs including food, clean water, logistics and other immediate relief. So far, approximately USD 22 million has been pledged, leaving a significant funding gap.
The Nepal Red Cross Society is leading much of the humanitarian response, with support from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations. Aid is being distributed through a combination of government agencies, community organizations and non-governmental organizations. However, humanitarian officials continue to warn that access remains one of the greatest obstacles to reaching people in need.
Yahia described the destruction as an example of the increasingly severe losses faced by countries vulnerable to climate change. “The devastation Nepal has experienced is an extraordinary, stark illustration of the losses and damages that climate-vulnerable countries are increasingly facing,” she said.
Nepal’s experience has also renewed calls for greater international action on climate change and climate justice. As a mountainous country particularly vulnerable to changing weather patterns and the effects of a warming climate, Nepal faces a disproportionate burden.
Despite the enormous challenges, Yahia says aid is reaching many affected communities, and survivors continue to demonstrate hope. “People are still searching for family members they know they may never find,” she said, highlighting the resilience keeping people strong. Yet thousands of people remain in need, and the destruction of transportation networks means that reaching the most isolated communities will take time.
“My plea tonight to the international community: we need to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Nepal,” Yahia emphasized.
For Nepal, the emergency is far from over. The immediate priority remains saving lives and providing food, water, shelter and access to healthcare. As communities begin the long process of rebuilding, the country will also need sustained international support to recover from one of its most destructive disasters.
IPS UN Bureau Report