The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 30 2026 (IPS) - The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is battling the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record, with United Nations officials warning that hunger is actively undermining efforts to contain the spread.
“Ebola feeds on delay, fear and hunger,” said Carl Skau, acting director of the World Food Programme (WFP) on Wednesday, July 29.
The current outbreak, declared on May 15th and caused by the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, is the third largest outbreak ever recorded, said Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme. The outbreak in the DRC is reaching unprecedented levels, Dr. Ihekweazu noted. “Over the last few days, we’ve seen some of the highest numbers of new infections in a single day.”
As of July 29th, the DRC outbreak has reached over 3,200 cases, with the virus spreading to 48 health zones across five provinces in eastern DRC. Unfortunately, WHO’s modeling has indicated that the true scale of the outbreak could be two to four times higher than the reported cases. Furthermore, 80 percent of new cases are coming from unknown chains of transmission, and many newly reported deaths are from people who never reached a health care facility or received care.
Julien Harneis, the UN’s Senior Ebola Coordinator, discussed how a critical driver for Ebola transmission is the fact that people are dying in their communities rather than in the care of a hospital or treatment center.
“Roughly 60 percent of deaths are occurring in the community, at the point when viral load — and risk to caregivers — is highest,” said Mr. Harneis.
WHO officials have mirrored this concern, calling deaths that occur outside of health facilities “the most alarming finding.” While there is no approved treatment for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, the chances of survival are significantly higher with early supportive care.
On top of the outbreak is a severe hunger crisis that is exacerbating the impact and spread of Ebola. Across eastern DRC, nearly 10 million people are facing crisis- or emergency-level hunger. Ituri, the epicenter of the outbreak, is also the DRC’s most severe hunger hotspot, with 1.9 million people at crisis levels of food insecurity or worse. Mr. Skau emphasized how “food assistance is frontline Ebola containment. It helps families stay home, supports safe isolation, builds trust with communities and keeps health teams moving.”
The WFP has already delivered more than 160,000 hot meals to patients and frontline workers across 17 treatment and isolation centers. Dry food rations have been provided to 23,000 people, including 14,000 under quarantine, and an additional 36,000 people in Ebola-affected zones have been provided general food assistance. While discussing WFP’s work, Mr. Skau stressed how food logistics support is central to containing the outbreak. “You cannot force people to choose between hunger and health,” he said.
However, funding to tackle the interconnected hunger and Ebola crisis remains critically underfunded. WFP needs USD 293.6 million over the next six months to sustain all operations in DRC, including $76 million for the regional Ebola responses and $50 million for food and nutrition assistance.
“$76 million is the ask and that’s frankly just peanuts, if you look at the bigger scheme of things,” said Mr. Skau. Furthermore, while WFP’s logistics have been somewhat funded, the food element has received no funding. Mr. Skau emphasized, “if you want to be effective, you need to have an all rounded response. It’s not only the health response that is needed to be able to contain that.” Mr. Harneis added that in addition to the food assistance needed, the broader $1 billion Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan is only 45 percent funded.
WHO and WFP officials are urging the international community not to lose focus, as Dr. Ihekweazu warned: “now is not the time to drop the ball.” Mr. Harneis and Mr. Skau called for further action and to “scale up the Ebola response, three, four, five times of what we are doing now.”
Mr. Skau linked the urgent funding need to a broader appeal for political attention, describing the DRC as “exhausted from years of conflict, from repeated displacement, from crisis after crisis after crisis.” He argued that ending the outbreak will require more than just medical and food assistance: “We need peace, we need security…for all of this, we need funding…the funding that is coming here is far from enough and we need political attention.” In the weeks ahead, a rapid increase in funding and political will is needed to change the outbreak’s trajectory.
IPS UN Bureau Report
OLOITOKTOK, Kenya, Jul 30 2026 (IPS) - Before sunrise each morning, 19-year-old Josephine Sembeyo joins dozens of teenage runners leaving Magnolia Athletics Camp for training beneath the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.
The quiet morning air is broken only by the rhythm of footsteps along the dusty roads that have shaped generations of Kenyan distance runners.
But for Sembeyo, every kilometre represents far more than preparation for the 2026 World Athletics Under-20 Championships, where she will represent Kenya in the 1,500 metres.
Running has given her a chance she once feared might never come: to complete her education, support her family and make choices about her own future.
“Life hasn’t been easy for us. My father married a second wife and left my mother to raise us on her own. Seeing everything my mother has gone through motivates me every day. I want to succeed in athletics and education so that one day I can support her and my siblings and give them a better life,” Sembeyo says.
Girls from Magnolia Athletics Camp during a daily road training session in Oloitokitok, Kenya. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS
A Camp Creating New Possibilities
Sembeyo is among 45 girls from pastoralist communities living and training at Magnolia Athletics Camp in Oloitokitok, near Kenya’s border with Tanzania.
The camp provides full scholarships covering education, accommodation, meals, athletics training and safeguarding support.
For many of the girls, athletics is not only about competition. It has become a pathway to education, confidence and opportunities that might otherwise remain out of reach.
The girls’ journey comes as they mark the International Day for Women and Girls of African Descent on July 25, a day that recognises the contributions, resilience and experiences of women and girls of African descent while highlighting the need to address discrimination and inequality.
For girls growing up in marginalised communities, access to education, safe spaces and opportunities can be a powerful tool for breaking cycles of poverty and exclusion.
Coach Andrew Lesuuda says Magnolia was created not only to identify talented runners but also to give girls a safe environment where they can develop academically and personally.
“When we started Magnolia Athletics Camp, our vision was not only to identify talented runners. We wanted to create an environment where girls could discover their potential, stay in school and believe that they can achieve more in life,” Lesuuda says.
“Athletics gives them an opportunity to dream, but education gives them the foundation to build a future beyond sport.”
Sports Against Early Marriage and FGM
Many of the girls joining Magnolia come from communities where opportunities for girls remain limited and where some continue to face risks linked to female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage.
According to UNICEF, more than 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM. The United Nations says progress towards ending the practice remains too slow to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target of eliminating FGM and child marriage by 2030.
Kenya outlawed FGM in 2011 and has made progress through legislation and awareness campaigns, but the practice continues in some communities, particularly among sections of pastoralist populations.
The struggles facing girls in vulnerable communities are part of a wider global challenge.
Sarah Hendriks, a UN Women spokesperson, in a recent press conference said no country in the world has achieved full legal equality between women and men, leaving millions of girls exposed to harmful practices and unequal opportunities.
“No country in the world has achieved full legal equality between women and men. More than half of the world’s countries do not actually define rape by law on the basis of consent. Nearly three-quarters — 74% of the world’s countries — still allow child marriage by law, allowing girls to be married as children,” Hendriks said.
At Magnolia, athletics has become a tool for changing that reality by keeping girls in school and giving them opportunities beyond traditional expectations.
A Second Chance Through Running
Before joining Magnolia, Sembeyo feared her education could end early and that she might face an early marriage.
Today, she believes the camp has transformed her future.
“Had it not been for Magnolia Athletics Camp, I believe my life would have been very different. I was at risk of an early and forced marriage, but coming here gave me the chance to stay in school, train and dream about a better future. Today, I’m happy because I know my life has a direction,” she says.
Her daily routine starts before sunrise with training, followed by school and another athletics session in the afternoon before homework in the evening.
“Every morning when I train, I remind myself why I’m doing it. I know every session brings me closer to my dream and gives me another opportunity to change my family’s life,” she says.
When Climate Change Threatens Dreams
Sembeyo is joined at Magnolia by Jeska Lenawatop, a 1,500-metre runner from Lkuroto village in Samburu County, a pastoralist region in northern Kenya.
Before joining the camp, Jeska’s life revolved around helping her family care for goats and sheep, the main source of livelihood for many pastoral households.
But recurring droughts have devastated livestock and deepened economic hardship for communities that depend on animals for survival.
“Before Magnolia, my life was mainly about grazing goats and sheep. With droughts destroying livestock, our family’s main source of income, I had little hope for the future. This camp gave me a chance to stay in school and pursue my dreams,” Jeska says.
Through athletics and education, Jeska now sees a future beyond the challenges facing her community.
Building Confidence Through Education
Another athlete benefiting from Magnolia is Felister Naimutie, a 400 m and 800 m runner from Lolgorian village in Kilgoris.
She says drought and limited opportunities affected many girls growing up in her community.
“Growing up, I saw how drought affected our families and made life difficult. Many girls had few choices beyond pastoral duties and early marriage. Magnolia gave me hope through education and athletics,” Felister says.
For her, the camp represents more than a training facility. It is a place where she can continue learning while pursuing her sporting ambitions.
Beyond the Finish Line
Barnaba Korir, Athletics Kenya’s Youth Development Director, says community-based programmes, such as Magnolia, complement national efforts to identify young talent while ensuring athletes remain in school.
He says sport can build confidence, leadership and opportunities for young people.
At Magnolia, parents, teachers, community leaders and anti-FGM advocates also engage with families to promote girls’ education and challenge harmful practices.
As another training session ends beneath Mount Kilimanjaro, the girls jog back to camp laughing and encouraging one another.
For Sembeyo, the finish line is no longer defined only by medals.
Her selection to represent Kenya at the World Athletics Under-20 Championships has strengthened her belief that athletics can transform not only her life but also those of her family.
“Being selected to represent Kenya at the World Under-20 Championships means everything to me. It’s proof that hard work pays off, and I believe it is opening opportunities that can change my life. I want to make my family proud and show other girls that they should never give up on their dreams,” she says.
One day, she hopes to stand on an international podium wearing Kenya’s colours.
But her greatest ambition goes beyond medals.
“I want girls from communities like mine to know that education and sport can change their lives. If someone believes in you and gives you an opportunity, you can achieve your dreams. My dream is not only to win medals for Kenya but also to make sure my mother and my siblings have a better life,” Sembeyo says.
Perhaps Magnolia’s greatest achievement will not be measured by medals but by the number of girls who leave the camp with education, confidence and the freedom to choose the futures they want.
IPS UN Bureau Report
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Jul 30 2026 (IPS) - Africa’s digital revolution is gathering pace, but the financing needed to sustain it remains uneven, fragmented, and often out of reach.
To bridge this gap, African multilateral financial institutions, policymakers, development partners, and private sector leaders are calling for a more coordinated, innovative, and better-structured financing approach to support Africa’s digital and technological transformation.
That was the central message from policymakers, financiers and development partners who convened on the sidelines of the 58th session of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, held in Morocco in April 2026.
Their conclusion was clear: Africa does not lack capital—it lacks the right kind of capital, deployed in the right way.
From artificial intelligence to digital infrastructure, the continent’s innovation sectors are expanding rapidly. Yet, access to affordable, long-term financing remains a major bottleneck, constraining growth and limiting impact.
Hanan Morsy, UN ECA’s Deputy Executive Secretary and Chief Economist
That gap, experts say, is holding back productivity gains, job creation and broader economic transformation.
Capital vs opportunity
Africa’s financial landscape is not devoid of resources. In fact, speakers at the event repeatedly emphasized a paradox: capital exists, but it is not flowing into innovation-driven sectors at the required scale.
According to Haytham Elmaayergi of the African Export-Import Bank, one of the continent’s leading multilateral lenders, the issue lies in the pipeline of viable investments.
“One of Africa’s key challenges is not a lack of capital, but a shortage of bankable projects and stronger institutional collaboration to scale investment,” he said, pointing to weak project preparation and limited institutional coordination as key constraints.
This disconnect is further compounded by high borrowing costs, currency volatility, and insufficient mechanisms to share risk—factors that deter both public and private investment.
For early-stage innovators, the challenge is even more acute. Venture financing remains thin, and traditional lenders are often reluctant to support projects perceived as high-risk.
“In the technology space, risk is harder to structure,” said Adeniran Aderogba, head of the Regional Maritime Development Bank, “we need more creative financing models and dedicated funds to support early-stage innovation.”
Africa’s innovation challenge is not a shortage of ideas. It is a shortage of long-term, affordable, and well-structured financing.
Rethinking how Africa finances innovation
Participants agreed that solving these challenges will require a shift away from traditional financing approaches toward more flexible, blended models.
Blended finance—combining public and private capital, guarantees and technical support—was highlighted as a critical tool to reduce risk and attract investment into emerging sectors. Co-financing arrangements and tailored instruments that reflect the unique risk-return profile of digital investments are also gaining traction.
But financing alone is not enough.
“Technology and innovation go beyond digital,” noted Robert Lisinge of UNECA. “We are talking about a broader ecosystem—including infrastructure, energy, and emerging technologies.”
This broader lens underscores the need for complementary investments in enabling systems: reliable electricity, robust connectivity, and supportive regulatory frameworks. Without these, even well-financed projects struggle to scale.
The role of African institutions
At the center of the conversation was the growing importance of African-led financial institutions in shaping the continent’s development trajectory.
The Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions—also known as the Africa Club—has emerged as a key platform for coordination. Established in 2024, the alliance brings together major African financial institutions with a combined balance sheet exceeding $70 billion.
Its members—including Afreximbank, the Africa Finance Corporation, and the Trade and Development Bank—are increasingly seen as critical players in mobilizing capital for large-scale development projects.
By strengthening collaboration among these institutions, participants said, Africa can better align financing with its strategic priorities and reduce reliance on external funding models that may not fully reflect local realities.
From dialogue to delivery
The Tangier discussions ended with a strong call for action: move beyond diagnosis and toward implementation.
Key priorities include reducing the cost of capital, expanding risk-sharing mechanisms, improving project preparation, and mobilizing long-term funding at scale. Equally important is strengthening collaboration among governments, financial institutions and development partners.
For Africa’s digital transformation to deliver on its promise, participants agreed, financing must become more coordinated, more innovative—and more responsive to the continent’s realities.
The stakes are high. With one of the world’s youngest populations and a rapidly expanding digital economy, Africa has a unique opportunity to leapfrog traditional development pathways.
But as the Tangier meeting made clear, realizing that potential will depend not just on how much money is available—but on how effectively it is used.
IPS UN Bureau
URBANA, Illinois, US, Jul 29 2026 (IPS) - Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations put out an alert, warning countries around the world about an impending new El Niño phase that is expected to significantly increase the likelihood of drought, heat waves, storms, and flooding and pose major risks to agriculture across multiple regions.
But this is not surprising, as in recent years, including 2026, droughts, storms, tornadoes, heat waves, and flooding have become increasingly frequent and severe.
These erratic and extreme weather events have resulted in the loss of lives, caused billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure, while inflicting devastating consequenses to crop production, food security, and agriculture, a sector that supports millions of livelihoods, provides employment, and contributes significantly to national economies in both the United States and globally.
Countries need to invest in developing anticipatory action plans, strengthen early warning and forecasting systems, and equip citizens and at-risk communities with practical solutions and mitigation strategies they can implement before these catastrophic weather events happen
The question then becomes, how can countries including the United States best prepare for these devastating extreme weather events that have such negative impacts on agriculture and food security?
First and foremost, countries need to invest in developing anticipatory action plans, strengthen early warning and forecasting systems, and equip citizens and at-risk communities with practical solutions and mitigation strategies they can implement before these catastrophic weather events happen.
Doing so is a win–win for everyone. Time and again, evidence has shown that proactive investments in anticipatory action plans, preparedness and mitigation reduce extreme weather events negative impacts while minimizing economic losses.
Complementing these forecasting systems would be the need for countries to develop national preparedness plans with the goal to protect food and agricultural supply chains from production through to consumption, before, during, and after extreme weather events.
Countries should also promote a culture of preparedness by encouraging its citizens, farmers, and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector to take anticipatory action before weather events happen. For example, in 2025, the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged producers to prepare for the hurricane season.
Taking anticipatory actions by farmers and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector can vary depending on resources and expected weather events. For example, if heatwaves and droughts are forecast, farmers can take anticipatory measures including planting drought tolerant crop varieties and using other innovative drought solutions. When flooding is expected, farmers can plant flooding tolerant varieties.
In parallel and beyond preparedness, countries must encourage farmers to adopt regenerative agriculture practices including cover cropping, reduced till and no till farming, crop rotations, pest management conservation system, mixed cropping and other soil health building strategies.
Collectively, these practices enhance soil health, improve water retention and ultimately strengthen agricultural crops’ ability to withstand heatwaves, drought, flooding and other extreme weather events.
Notably, agricultural research continues to reveal other effective approaches including harnessing beneficial soil microbes to improve crop production while strengthening plant resillience to droughts and other biotic and abiotic stressors.
Importantly, there is a continued need to invest in research and development. To stay ahead of the increasing weather events and their devastating impacts on agriculture, countries must continue to invest in science by funding research. Sadly, many countries continue to cut the federal budgets allocated for research and development beginning with the United States. This needs to change.
When scientists are funded and investments are made, researchers can continue to research not only the impacts of these weather events but also potential innovative solutions to address these challenges.
Alongside investing in research there is the need to invest in extension. Extension is the arm that allows for the last mile of research to be effective, since extension people work with communities to transfer research and to share the research discoveries.
Agricultural extension work with farmers to provide advice throughout the growing season suggesting changes and strategies farmers should take to ensure that crops survive the weather brought about challenges.
Finally, continued collaboration across sectors and countries is necessary to confront weather associated challenges impacting agriculture.
This includes forging creative partnerships that engage governments, federal and state funding agencies, research institutions and researchers in both public and private institutions, universities, growers, extension experts and agents, NGO’s and philanthropists.
Coordinated collaborations will go a long way to ensure that extreme weather events have minimal impacts on agriculture and food security.
At a time when unpredictable extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe, investing in developing anticipatory plans, early warning and forecasting systems, as well as developing preparedness plans and creative and innovative ways to disseminate available information, solutions and strategies to growers will go a long way in improving agricultural productivity while strengthening our ability to sustainably grow crops and meet our food security needs both today and in the years to come.
Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 29 2026 (IPS) - Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (Republican of Kansas) rose to public attention in the 1950s with his allegations that hundreds of “Communists” had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies.
Fast forward to 1971.
Addressing a class of post-graduate students at the Columbia University’s School of Journalism in 1971, one of the Professors was explaining the red-baiting that took place during the late 1950’s when Senator McCarthy, in his crusade against Communism, led a series of investigations and Congressional hearings to reveal—imaginary or real—of Communist infiltration into the US government.
There was hysterical paranoia about “reds” and “Communists” in the deep state. The slogan was “Reds under the Beds”.
The extent of McCarthyism was evident, he said recounting an anecdote, when there were two groups of demonstrators – the pro Communists and anti- Communists—staging protests and counter protests in Times Square in the heart of New York city
The word “Communism” was dreaded—but perhaps only anti-Communists were tolerated during the witch hunt under McCarthyism.
When the demonstrations got unruly, the cops dragged some of the protestors from the streets and bodily threw them into Police vans (called paddy wagons) when one of them pleaded: “I am anti-Communist. I am anti-Communist”.
And the cop shouted back: “I don’t care what goddam brand of Communist you are”.
Meanwhile, when Zohran Mamdani was elected the 112th mayor of New York City last November, he was the city’s first Muslim and South Asian American mayor, and at 34, its youngest leader in over a century.
But Mamdani, who describes himself as a “democratic socialist” has been repeatedly accused of being a “communist” by political opponents, most notably President Donald Trump and conservative media commentators.
The mayor has been dismissed by Trump and various Republicans as a “100% Communist lunatic” during and after the mayoral race, to criticize his left-wing platform.
But with more democratic socialists being elected at two House primaries and a fistful of legislative races, the communist label has been viciously used against all “socialists”—and may be used by Republicans against Democrats ahead of the mid-term elections.
Which triggers the question: is this the beginning of a new McCarthyism era, which was rooted in the 1950s?
James E. Jennings, President of Conscience International, told Inter Press Service (IPS): Donald Trump has taken advantage of the ignorance of his MAGA followers to gain and hold power for a corrupt class of Billionaires.
He has succeeded by altering the meaning of words to suit his purposes and using them as weapons, a political skill as old as time. Now, he is throwing the word “Communist” at his Social Democrat and Democratic Socialist opponents who are not at all Communists. All these niceties are lost on his supporters.
“Communism insists on state ownership of property. Social Democrats advocate government regulation of the marketplace and property rights for the benefit of all, while Democratic Socialism takes this a step further, urging the abolition of capitalism.”
Trump and his cadre of Republican sycophants must stop confusing people with hateful epithets that are no way accurate. Everybody should read Orwell’s 1984 and reject Trumpism, because semantics do in fact rule political discourse. Confucius was right: The rectification of things is the naming of things, said Jennings
Trump’s obfuscation, he pointed out, is about concentrating power and wealth. But as early as 1776 Virginia established itself as a Commonwealth, the idea of shared prosperity for the benefit of all. Property was not to be concentrated in the hands of rulers.
“No man,” they said, is entitled to “exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges.” Pennsylvania’s Constitution also forbids the “Advantage of any single man, family, or set of men.” Massachusetts and Kentucky followed suit. Those ideas are not Communist. They simply advocate equality and opportunity for all, declared Jennings.
Speaking at Mount Rushmore July 4, while commemorating the country’s 250th birthday, Trump described his political opponents as “godless”, “evil” Communists.
The New York Times said he used the word “communism” so many times, “you might have thought the Cold War was still on”. It was a bigger threat than Pearl Harbor and 9/11, Trump was quoted as saying.
According to a report in the Times July 27, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has added over 7,000 new members.
The political philosophy of DSA includes rising taxes on the rich, guaranteed free medical care for the poor, a freeze on rising rents on public housing, raising the minimum wage and shortening the work week. The mayor also plans to open 5 New York city-owned grocery stores with 30 percent discount on produce, meat, bread and milk. And on foreign policy, the DSA has taken a strong stand for Palestinian statehood.
Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy and national director, RootsAction told IPS the core of the repression being spearheaded by (Secretary of State Marco) Rubio is that the people now running the U.S. government hate democracy and want to stamp out as much of it as they can.
Freedom of speech is at the center of democracy – they need each other – and the witch-hunt being mounted by the Trump regime is methodical.
“ There are many differences between the current wave of repression and the McCarthy era at America’s mid-century, but the very real continuity involves the wielding of government and media power to intimidate and stoke the fires of fear. The goal is to engender passivity and subservience,’ he said.
Much of liberal-leaning America, notably the administrations of many colleges, quickly buckled under pressure to crack down on nonviolent campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza and U.S. support for it.
That dynamic, said Solomon, began in late 2023 and become powerful during 2024, in the last year of the Biden presidency. The common responses from college administrators were forms of authoritarian actions, aiming to cause self-censorship and preemptive obedience – in other words, suppression of First Amendment rights. This process became more extreme after Trump regained presidential power.
“Issuing lists of supposed subversives was a key tactic of the McCarthy Era. It sowed fear, and the result involved poisonous crops of stifled public discourse and fearful silences,” Solomon pointed out.
“Similar dynamics are now underway. But many people and organizations are refusing to accept the repression, and there are reasons to hope that nonviolent emphatic resistance can be effective in mitigating the damage to civic life”, declared Solomon, author of “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
DELHI, India, Jul 29 2026 (IPS) - On 15 September 1953, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India was elected the eighth president of the UN General Assembly — the first woman to hold the UN’s second-highest position. Since then, only four women have followed her, most recently the current president, Annalena Baerbock. Since its founding, the UN has had nine Secretaries-General. All men. Now, 81 years after the UN’s founding, we have a historic opportunity to correct that record. It is time to entrust the UN leadership to a woman of the Global South who shapes a more inclusive, effective and forward-looking UN.
The stakes extend far beyond symbolism. In the coming weeks, attention will turn to the Security Council, where the informal straw polls will effectively determine who emerges as the next Secretary-General, before it forwards its recommendations to the General Assembly for appointment.
Of the six candidates currently in the race, four are women, Michelle Bachelet, Rebeca Grynspan, María Fernanda Espinosa and Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett. Their credentials leave no doubt that the UN has highly qualified women ready to lead. The choice facing UN member states, and especially the Permanent Five is therefore not whether a woman can lead the organisation, but which candidate is best placed to pull multilateralism back from the brink, revers trends of conflict and inequality, uphold international law, and restoring confidence in cooperation as a force for justice and human dignity.
That is no small task. The next Secretary-General will need to provide principled leadership to advance the interests of people whose voices are excluded from global decision-making, while defending the UN’s independence from its most powerful members. Trygve Lie, the first Secretary-General, once called the job “the most impossible job in the world.” This quote has rarely been proven righter than today.
The organisation the next Secretary-General inherits is not in good shape. A recent poll found that just 4% of people in the Global South believe the UN has sufficient authority in global governance; 44% blamed the concentration of power among the Permanent Five in the Security Council. Yet the same poll affirmed the need of the UN in this context with its enduring value as the only universal forum where all member states can address shared challenges — and the need for a Secretary-General who listens to people.
That points to four non-negotiable commitments that should anchor the next Secretary-General’s agenda: representation, participation, accountability and the right to self-determination. Among these four commitments accountability matters most urgently to stop impunity. Committing to it means real reform of a Security Council where the Permanent Five too often act as judge and jury: prioritising prevention, curbing the veto, strengthen the equality of all Security Council members in decision-making so advancements to global peace cannot be blocked, limiting the “penholder” system that lets the P5 monopolise drafting, and putting civilian protection at the centre of every peacekeeping effort.
Ultimately, addressing these structural challenges will require a broader conversation about the future of the UN Charter itself, including serious consideration of Article 109 as a pathway for reviewing whether the Organization’s founding framework remains fit for purpose in today’s world.
Translating these commitments into people’s lives means concrete action in a few key areas: Inequality must finally move to the centre of the UN agenda: billionaire wealth has hit a historic $18.3 trillion and only 16% of the Sustainable Development Goals remain on track. Establishing an International Panel on Inequality, modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will be a vital next step in tackling the inequality emergency.
Civilian protection and defending international humanitarian law must be non-negotiable to dismantle systems of impunity, at a moment when dozens of people fall into humanitarian emergency every minute. And with the world badly off track on the Paris Agreement, the next Secretary-General must build on Antonio Guterres’ legacy and continue pushing to make a just transition away from fossil fuels — backed by real climate finance — a defining political priority.
The next Secretary-General must put a feminist vision at the heart of the UN. This means confronting a rigged, sexist, and racist economic order that prizes endless growth over the care of people and the planet, and backing the Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth. And none of this will happen if civil society is sidelined and fundamental rights -including digital ones – are not protected while Artificial Intelligence keeps expanding without control. The UN’s legitimacy depends on hearing from the people it was built to serve — the Charter’s founding principle of “We the Peoples” — especially as civic space shrinks worldwide including in the UN.
In her inaugural address as UNGA president, Pandit said the world “must learn to cooperate effectively in safeguarding peace and in raising standards of living.” Seventy-three years on, as multilateralism strains under the weight of its own contradictions, that sentence has lost none of its urgency.
Leading the UN of tomorrow might be the hardest job in the world. But as Lie also said, the harder the task, the greater the reward. It is time for structural change — and for a woman of the Global South to lead it. We cannot afford to miss this opportunity. The coming weeks, and the opening of the 81st session of the General Assembly, will show whether world leaders are ready to seize it
Amitabh Behar is Oxfam International’s Executive Director
IPS UN Bureau
SYDNEY, Australia, Jul 28 2026 (IPS) - As Western Europe endured its worst-ever June heatwave in recorded history, the imperative for climate adaptation is now urgent as the continent accelerates beyond others to become the fastest-warming region in the world.
In May temperatures began increasing to levels previously not experienced until mid-summer in July, and the impacts on human health and social inequalities are now evident. Experts emphasise that the warnings are clear about the future under worsening climate extremes.
“The heatwaves that affected western Europe in May and June were unusual because of their intensity and their early timing,” Julien Nicolas, senior scientist at Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, told IPS.
Yet “the weather patterns behind the recent heatwaves, characterised by persistent high pressure over the region and hot air drawn from North Africa into western Europe, have been observed in many previous European heatwaves. Studies have also shown that the number of summer heatwaves has risen particularly sharply in Europe compared with other continental regions.”
Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reports the average anomalies in air temperatures in Europe during this year’s heatwave from 18-30 June 2026 relative to the average temperature for the 1991-2020 reference period. Cedit: C3S/ECMWF
By late June, the record temperature of 41.7 degrees Celsius was reached in eastern Germany, 40 degrees in Vienna, Austria, and 43.8 degrees in western France, reports the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). While western Europe has borne the worst so far, heatwave conditions now extend across central and eastern Europe. In Romania, located south of Ukraine and west of Hungary, temperatures rose dramatically in early July to exceed 35 to 40 degrees Celsius, Daniel Modoacă, Head of Emergency and Disaster Response at the Romanian Red Cross in Bucharest, told IPS.
France and Spain are also at the centre of a wildfire crisis, fuelled by successive heatwaves that have forced the evacuation of more than 300,000 people. The current emergency has been described by French President Emmanuel Macron as the country’s worst fire-related crisis since World War II.
The record-breaking European summer is consistent with the region warming at twice the global average since the 1980s. The continent’s worst heatwaves have all occurred since 2020, and now one consequence is that ‘Europe faces a growing risk of megadroughts that span large regions and last for several years,’ reports the European Environment Agency (EEA).
Following a red alert issued for extreme temperatures, Romanian Red Cross volunteers in Bucharest’s Sector 4 distributed drinking water and supported the health and safety of local communities. Bucharest, Romania. Credit: Romanian Red Cross-Bucharest Sector 4
Yet it is not just heatwaves. Europe has also endured excessive rainfall in recent years. Life-threatening floods following major storms occurred in Valencia, Spain, in late 2024. They caused more than 200 deaths, and the devastation ranged from landslides to damage to housing, power, transportation and road infrastructure. In the same year, severe floods also affected Austria, Poland, Czechia and Romania.
But as Europe approaches midsummer, people are facing immediate shocks to their health and wellbeing.
“In Bucharest, the combination of extreme temperatures, dense urban infrastructure and limited nighttime cooling has intensified the impact on vulnerable groups, particularly the elderly, people with chronic illnesses and households facing financial hardship,” Modoacă said, with the interior cooling of homes a major challenge for 17.7 percent of Romanian households already struggling to pay electricity bills.
But the Romanian Red Cross is striving to meet people’s needs by providing drinking water, basic health monitoring, including blood pressure checks, and assistance for those living with medical conditions likely to be worsened by extreme heat. As well as “support for the homeless, who are among the most exposed during prolonged heatwaves, and assistance for rural households, where access to cooling systems and medical services are limited”, Modoacă added.
When high air temperatures are relentless for long periods, and higher than average night temperatures don’t offer relief, the human body is subjected to stress that can diminish its ability to function, leading to heightened risks of heat exhaustion, heat stroke, the worsening of existing illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease, and, in the worst scenario, loss of life.
This year more than 150 million people in European countries have suffered from the heatwave, with 10,000 extra related deaths in late June, according to health authorities. Meanwhile, the WHO reports that heat-related mortality in Europe has risen by 30 percent during the past 20 years, with an estimated 175,000 related fatalities per year. While the same mortality rate for people over the age of 65 years increased by 85 percent from 2000 to 2004 to 2017 to 2021.
In cities, where the built environment has retained the heat to intense levels, health and humanitarian services have been stretched and overwhelmed. In Paris, hospital and ambulance services have been under severe strain, while the French Red Cross has extended its humanitarian outreach to the public with emergency round-the-clock cooling shelters where people can access food, drinking water, sleeping facilities and social support.
However, the longer-term repercussions of climate warming were revealed in new research published in the Global Environmental Change journal. Scientists in Germany claim that severe heatwaves in Europe have widened the inequality gap, significantly impacting lower-income households the greatest and pushing an extra 5.6 million people into risk of poverty on average from 2004 to 2022.
Last month, Mary Friel, the Climate Policy Senior Officer at the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), declared that ‘extreme heat is now one of the defining humanitarian challenges of our time, a major public health risk that demands action from people, institutions and governments alike.’
It was a message reinforced In July by WHO Regional Director for Europe, Hans Kluge, who told the media that most European countries were not prepared for the health repercussions of future heatwaves, including the heatproofing of health infrastructure. ‘Heatwaves can overwhelm hospitals that may not be designed to cope with higher temperatures, especially as admissions rise. Hospital buildings can overheat, causing power supplies and cooling systems, as well as computers and tech services, to fail,’ warns the WHO. Some of the challenges to implementing climate adaptation in the region include limited resources, insufficient dedicated finance and lack of private sector and citizen engagement, claims the IPCC.
Yet the European Union (EU) has demonstrated a commitment to climate action with an ambitious goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Meanwhile, the European Green Deal, which was launched in 2019, sets out a plan to accelerate the region’s transition to clean infrastructure, energy, transport and industries. And last year Copernicus reported that 46.4 percent of all electricity produced in Europe derived from renewables.
At the same time, the current crisis in Europe has worldwide implications, as the global temperature rise is now estimated to be 1.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. And, with current trends, the safety threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius could be reached by the end of the decade. Nicolas told IPS that every additional fraction of a degree above 1.5 degrees Celsius would increase climate threats to ecosystems, water and food security, infrastructure and the economy and “the possibility of parts of the climate system reaching tipping points”.
IPS UN Bureau Report