The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
VATICAN CITY, Jul 13 2026 (IPS) - More than eight decades after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered humanity into the nuclear age, the world is confronting another technological revolution whose consequences extend far beyond science and industry.
Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on AI and Nuclear War
Against this backdrop, more than 200 participants — including around 30 Nobel laureates and representatives of Nobel Prize-winning organizations, former heads of state and government, leading artificial intelligence researchers, scientists, Catholic figures and civil society representatives — are set to gather from July 14 to 16 at Borgo Laudato Si’ in the Pontifical Gardens of Castel Gandolfo.
The Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War will bring together some of the world’s most prominent voices in science, technology, peacebuilding and ethics to consider one of the defining questions of the twenty-first century:
Can artificial intelligence become a force for peace, or will it deepen the dangers of war in an already unstable nuclear age?
The three-day gathering will conclude in Rome on July 16 with the presentation of the Rome Declaration for an Unarmed and Disarming Peace, intended to set out principles and recommendations for addressing artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons, autonomous weapons, digital governance and emerging models of technological development.
Source: Progressive Hub
The timing of the Assembly is no coincidence.
The international security environment has become increasingly fragile. Russia’s war in Ukraine has shaken Europe’s post-Cold War security order. Conflicts in the Middle East have heightened fears of wider regional escalation. Relations among the major powers have deteriorated, while nuclear rhetoric has returned to international politics with an intensity not seen for decades.
At the same time, all nine nuclear-armed states are modernizing or expanding their arsenals. Many of the arms-control arrangements that once helped manage strategic rivalry have weakened, expired or become politically paralyzed. Channels of communication among adversaries have narrowed, increasing the danger of misunderstanding and miscalculation.
Artificial intelligence is entering this volatile environment at extraordinary speed.
AI systems can already process vast quantities of intelligence, identify patterns, assist military planning, strengthen cyber capabilities and accelerate decisions that once required hours or days of human deliberation. They may eventually provide new tools for crisis prevention, verification and early warning.
But those same capabilities could also make crises more dangerous.
Artificial intelligence may shorten the time available to political and military leaders during emergencies. It may generate unreliable or misleading assessments, magnify disinformation, increase the vulnerability of command systems to cyberattacks and encourage states to delegate more authority to automated technologies.
A conceptual illustration of world leaders confronting the growing influence of artificial intelligence on military power and nuclear decision-making, as technological advances threaten to outpace political judgment and international governance. Credit: INPS Japan
The central concern is not necessarily that a machine will independently decide to launch a nuclear weapon. The more immediate danger is that AI-generated information, predictions or recommendations could influence human decision-makers during moments of extreme pressure, when information is incomplete and the consequences of error are irreversible.
Humanity is therefore confronting a challenge unlike any it has faced before.
The question is no longer simply how nuclear weapons should be controlled. It is also how the relationship between artificial intelligence, military power and nuclear decision-making should be governed before technological developments outpace political judgment.
Pope Leo XIV, photographed in October 2025 during an audience with President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the Vatican Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The choice of the Vatican as host is deeply symbolic.
The Holy See commands no nuclear arsenal and exercises little conventional military power. Yet it maintains diplomatic relations with most of the world’s states and has long sought to place human dignity, moral responsibility and the protection of civilians at the center of debates about war and peace.
The Assembly is being held at Borgo Laudato Si’, an educational and ecological center established in the gardens of the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. According to the organizers, the meeting is inspired by Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica humanitas, devoted to the protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.
Its guiding vision — an “Unarmed and Disarming Peace” — suggests a concept of peace that goes beyond the absence of war.
An unarmed peace rejects the assumption that security can be permanently sustained through ever-greater military force. A disarming peace seeks not only the reduction of weapons but also the transformation of the political fears, rivalries and economic structures that perpetuate militarization.
This approach broadens the discussion beyond questions of technological safety.
It asks what kind of society humanity wishes to build as increasingly powerful systems reshape politics, economics, communication and warfare. It also raises a deeper ethical question: whether innovation will remain subordinate to human dignity, or whether human beings will gradually be subordinated to the technologies they create.
Beyond Governments
Perhaps the Assembly’s most significant feature is its recognition that governments alone can no longer govern all the technologies shaping the future.
During the Cold War, nuclear diplomacy belonged primarily to states. Agreements such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty were negotiated among governments because states controlled nuclear arsenals, delivery systems and the materials needed to build them.
Artificial intelligence presents a fundamentally different reality.
Many of the world’s most advanced AI systems are being developed by private companies, universities and research laboratories. Technology firms possess computing resources, data and specialized expertise that rival or exceed the capacities of many governments. Decisions made inside corporate research divisions can have global political, social and security consequences.
Effective governance will therefore require more than traditional diplomacy.
It will require sustained cooperation among states, technology companies, scientists, universities, international institutions, religious communities and civil society.
That is precisely why the Assembly will bring together Nobel laureates, AI companies, leading universities and research institutions, nuclear disarmament organizations, Catholic figures centered around the Vatican, and civil society organizations, including Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist-based movement engaged in peacebuilding, dialogue and nuclear abolition.
Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War
Participants and supporting institutions include representatives associated with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic and AARU, as well as the Nobel Women’s Initiative, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, the Yunus Center and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Universities and research institutions from Europe, Asia, North America and Australia are also expected to take part.
The significance of this gathering lies not simply in the prominence of those attending, but in the diversity of the communities represented.
Instead of relying exclusively on governments, the Assembly reflects an emerging model of global governance in which science, technology, ethics, religion and civil society seek common ground in addressing shared existential risks.
From Warheads to Algorithms
For much of the nuclear age, arms-control negotiations focused on physical objects: warheads, missiles, bombers, submarines, nuclear materials and testing facilities.
The AI age introduces a different set of challenges.
Algorithms are less visible than missiles. Software can be modified rapidly. Data can cross national borders almost instantaneously. Commercial systems developed for peaceful purposes can also have military applications. Verification, accountability and transparency become far more difficult when the relevant technologies are embedded in code, networks and privately controlled computing infrastructure.
This means that future arms-control and security frameworks may need to govern not only weapons but also the digital systems that inform, guide or accelerate their use.
Questions that once appeared theoretical are becoming increasingly urgent.
Should artificial intelligence ever be integrated into nuclear command-and-control systems? What level of human oversight must be maintained over autonomous weapons? How should states respond when AI systems produce conflicting warnings during a crisis? Can private technology companies be held accountable when their products are adapted for military purposes? And what international institutions are capable of establishing credible safeguards?
The Assembly cannot resolve all these questions in three days.
But by placing nuclear experts, Nobel laureates, AI developers, scholars, religious figures and peace advocates in the same forum, it may help establish a common vocabulary for debates that have until now often taken place in isolation from one another.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, signed 20 September 2017 by 50 United Nations member states. Credit: UN Photo / Paulo Filgueiras
History suggests that humanity has repeatedly responded to existential threats by creating new ideas, institutions and norms.
The Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955 warned that nuclear weapons had placed the survival of the human species in jeopardy. The first Pugwash Conference in 1957 opened channels of communication among scientists divided by the Cold War. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty later became the central framework of the international nuclear order.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted in 2017, further strengthened the humanitarian and moral challenge to nuclear deterrence by declaring nuclear weapons incompatible with international humanitarian principles.
Whether the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly will eventually be regarded as part of that historical lineage remains uncertain.
Declarations issued at international conferences rarely transform policy overnight. They may lack legal force, enforcement mechanisms or immediate political support. Their language can be aspirational, and their influence may not become visible for years.
Yet declarations can also change the terms of international debate.
The Russell-Einstein Manifesto did not eliminate nuclear weapons, but it helped inspire a movement. The first Pugwash meeting did not end the Cold War, but it established relationships that later contributed to arms-control diplomacy. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not initially binding, yet it became a foundational reference for international law and political legitimacy.
The importance of the Rome Declaration may therefore depend less on whether it produces immediate agreements than on whether it begins a sustained process involving governments, technology companies, universities, international organizations and civil society.
The larger question is whether it can help create norms before dangerous practices become entrenched.
Looking Toward the Rome Declaration
Palazzo Senatorio Credit: Di Tournasol7 – Opera propria, CC BY-SA 4.0
The document is intended to address the age of artificial intelligence, nuclear and autonomous weapons, new digital protocols and emerging models of digital development. According to the organizers, it will seek to promote international security based on cooperation, human dignity, integral development and peace among peoples.
The critical test will be whether the Declaration moves beyond broad ethical appeals.
Will it call for meaningful human control over nuclear and autonomous weapons systems? Will it propose restrictions on the role of AI in nuclear decision-making? Will it outline responsibilities for private AI companies? Will it recommend new international monitoring, dialogue or verification mechanisms? And will it establish a continuing process capable of translating principles into policy?
The answers will determine whether the meeting remains primarily symbolic or becomes the starting point of a broader “Rome Process” on artificial intelligence, nuclear risk and human security.
More than eight decades after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humanity once again faces technologies capable of reshaping the future of civilization.
Nuclear weapons remain the most immediate means by which human beings could destroy their own societies. Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, is beginning to influence the speed, complexity and character of the decisions that could determine whether those weapons are ever used.
The defining challenge is therefore no longer simply whether humanity can control nuclear arms.
It is whether humanity can build institutions capable of ensuring that artificial intelligence strengthens human judgment rather than displacing it, reduces the danger of catastrophic error rather than magnifying it, and serves peace rather than war.
The answer will not emerge from three days of deliberation at Castel Gandolfo.
But the conversation beginning there may help shape international debates over technology, security and human responsibility for years to come.
Credit: UN photo
INPS Japan will report from Castel Gandolfo and Rome during the Assembly and will publish follow-up analysis after the Rome Declaration is presented on July 16. This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13 2026 (IPS) - Throughout 2026, the humanitarian crisis in Sudan has deteriorated significantly, prompting the United Nations (UN) to raise alarm over the escalation of human rights violations. Persistent clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continue to cause mass civilian casualties, drive widespread displacement, and obstruct the delivery of life-saving aid. As a result, war-torn communities are being pushed further into catastrophe, struggling with severe shortages of essential basic services and the rapid spread of infectious disease.
According to the latest UN findings, since the outbreak of hostilities in 2024, at least 59,000 civilians have been killed due to ongoing insecurity, while an additional 14 million people have been forcibly displaced. Characterized by the UN as the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world”, approximately 33.7 million people are in urgent need of aid. Millions are currently residing in highly restricted areas that remain out of reach for humanitarian organizations.
The past six months alone have been particularly turbulent for war-torn communities, with daily drone strikes being reported across Sudan, with the Kordofan and Darfur localities reporting the highest numbers of child casualties. Figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) show that since May, there have been more than 35 child casualties recorded across North Kordofan, including at least 18 children killed and over 17 others injured. Some of these children are as young as two months old.
Repeated bombardment and artillery shelling have caused widespread destruction to civilian infrastructure, damaging or rendering non-functional homes, health facilities, schools, water systems, markets, and critical supply routes, which has severely restricted access to essential services. The UN estimates that roughly 500,000 civilians are at risk in and around the Al Obeid and wider North Kordofan regions, where even minor surges in violence could expose more children to grave protection risks, including death, injury, and displacement.
“Children are being caught in a relentless cycle of violence, displacement and deprivation,” said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Representative for Sudan. “For many children, there is no safe place left. They are being killed and injured in their homes, on the roads, in markets, and while attempting to access essential services such as education and healthcare. Children must never be a target. Their lives, rights and futures must be protected.”
The disruption of water infrastructure and the collapse of the national health system have ravaged war-torn displaced communities, particularly in North Kordofan, which has been described as the epicenter of the conflict. This has resulted in a deadly new outbreak of cholera, which has already claimed more than 100 lives.
On July 10, Dr. Shible Sahbani, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Representative to Sudan, told reporters in Geneva that there have been over 1,330 confirmed cholera cases, including 114 deaths. The true number of fatalities related to this outbreak is estimated to be much higher, with humanitarian organizations expressing fears that the outbreak could spread among hundreds of thousands of civilians who have fled North Kordofan and reside in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. WHO also noted that civilians struggle with persistent outbreaks of dengue, malaria, meningitis, hepatitis E, and measles.
“We are particularly concerned about the spread [of cholera] to El-Obeid in North Kordofan, where the access is very limited and where the fragile health system is under increasing strain,” said Sahbani. “Health facilities are overwhelmed there and access to care is very, very limited.”
“We call for our partners and donors to help us to be able first to access and second to be able to send enough supplies and enough facilities in El-Obeid. But we know that the situation there is very, very bad and it’s worsening with higher risk of disease outbreaks, malnutrition, violence, including violence against women and children.”
On July 3, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that El Obeid has faced “siege-like” conditions for the past 18 months, with the area currently being under SAF control. UN Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk, told reporters that OHCHR has documented 15 drone strikes in El Obeid and surrounding areas between June 6 and 28, leaving at least 45 civilians killed and 41 others injured. The true number of casualties is projected to be much higher.
“These attacks, and fuel shortages, have a compound impact, making it difficult for civilians to access clean water, food, transport and healthcare, and to communicate with each other and the outside world,” said Türk. “Some people are selling their belongings to finance their escape from the city. For many, the exorbitant cost of transport, and constant attacks on vehicles along exit routes, make leaving impossible.”
Furthermore, OHCHR has documented a sharp rise in human rights violations over the course of the year. According to Türk, OHCHR has recorded numerous instances of summary executions, abductions, torture, and sexual violence, particularly along routes regularly used by displaced civilians travelling across Kordofan. In El Obeid, there is a substantial risk of arbitrary arrest and detention, with the agency recording numerous cases where civilians fleeing RSF-controlled areas have been accused of collaborating with the SAF.
On June 18, Türk highlighted this surge in abuses, issuing a stark warning that an imminent offensive “risked fresh commission” of serious international crimes. He specifically noted an alarming rise in ethnically motivated attacks and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. On June 20, the UN Security Council adopted a statement in which members called for an immediate cessation of the RSF’s assault on El Obeid, as well as for all human rights violations to be thoroughly investigated and for perpetrators to be held accountable.
IPS UN Bureau Report
BENGALURU, India, Jul 13 2026 (IPS) - For most individuals, the process of peace starts with the signing of a ceasefire or an agreement among politicians. However, those who live in regions experiencing violence understand that peace is made long before politicians meet at the negotiating table. Peace is created among communities by people who work everyday to ensure that no violence takes place, and that disputes are sorted out.
Muna Luqman, Yemeni peacebuilding advisor and humanitarian leader.
Speaking to IPS Inter Press Service, Yemeni peacebuilding advisor and humanitarian leader Muna Luqman challenged conventional thinking about who builds peace and where peacebuilding truly begins, “Communities never wait until peace happens,” Luqman said. “They’re working to protect peace on a daily basis.”
Based on her extensive experience working in Yemen for more than 15 years, Luqman explained how local communities, especially women, resolve disputes, provide crucial services, negotiate humanitarian assistance and create dialogical spaces way ahead of any intervention of international organizations.
Luqman is the founder and chairperson of Food for Humanity, has seen first-hand the changes conflict brings about in society. While living through the Yemeni civil war, she faced airstrikes and negotiated the evacuation of civilians caught up in the war zone. These experiences led her to realize that humanitarian response alone is inadequate.
“If we only respond to the consequences of conflict without addressing its causes, we will always be a step behind,” she reflected. Her experience also exposed one of the greatest challenges facing local peacebuilders and that is of recognition.
“We thought we would be the first to be supported,” she said, referring to local organisations that led humanitarian responses before international actors arrived. “But we found out that it was a long process.”
According to a report by UN Women, around 676 million lived within 50 kilometers of deadly conflict in 2024 – the highest figure since the 1990s. Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, said, “Women and girls are being killed in record numbers, shut out of peace tables, and left unprotected as wars multiply. Women do not need more promises, they need power, protection, and equal participation.”
Data collected by the United Nations from 2020-2024 found that, “Women’s representation as negotiators, mediators and signatories in peace processes is far below the target set by the UN. In 2024, women made up only seven percent of negotiators on average worldwide, and nearly nine out of ten negotiation tracks included no women negotiators”. The report stated, women were slightly more represented in mediation roles, averaging 14 percent but still, two-thirds of mediation efforts did not include women.
The discrepancy for Luqman pointed to an underlying problem in international peacebuilding. While local groups responded immediately to communities in need, other institutions were bound by mandates, funding, and procedures. It becomes evident, she says, why true inclusion in peacebuilding should be more than merely symbolic in nature.
True inclusion requires recognizing women not as mere recipients of help or observers of processes, but as active participants in negotiating, mediating, and taking crucial decisions. It is proven that peace treaties are much more sustainable in those cases where women are actively involved in the negotiation process. Women broaden the agenda from purely political aspects like political power-sharing to such crucial areas as justice, education, health care, livelihoods, displacement, and community reconciliation.
Luqman believes that local women possess a unique understanding of these realities because they remain deeply embedded within their communities. “Women mediators are willing to prevent disagreements before they become violence,” she explained. She has witnessed women in Yemen securing the release of prisoners, organizing their communities to rebuild schools and water supplies, and preventing children from joining armed groups. This is often done discreetly, outside the limelight of the international community.
“The strength of women peacebuilders is their ability to mobilize their communities,” she said. However, it is precisely these women who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. They are threatened, intimidated, forced to flee, and often lack funds despite helping others. Protecting women peacebuilders must be a priority on the global agenda, Luqman asserts.
“They do this work while they are facing either lack of funding or no funding at all. They remain resilient, they remain vulnerable at the same time, and they remain under threats.”
She believes that the international community needs to go beyond recognizing the contribution of women and work to provide financial support to women-led organizations that are trusted and credible within the local communities.
While serving as the United Nations National Coordinator on Inclusion in the Peace Process of Yemen, Luqman developed an approach that would allow local people to speak up. The initiative did not consider participation just as a formal aspect but actually aimed to bring in the community perspective. “It wasn’t symbolic participation,” she told me. “We really took that analysis and used it in our system.” This is because peace processes cannot be made by the political elite only; they need to be inclusive of communities that have been experiencing conflict.
In Luqman’s opinion, local governance, climate challenges, livelihoods, transitional justice, and building trust are not marginal questions but rather central factors in avoiding further outbreaks of violence.
Luqman insists on the need for peacebuilding to involve listening: “Sometimes listening to the people themselves and giving them a space is in itself a peace process.”
In the context of rising complexity of conflicts, the importance of inclusion into peace processes has never been so urgent. Women’s involvement in the processes cannot be considered as some kind of equality issue or simply as an obligation under international mechanisms.
On the contrary, it is strategically necessary based on experience and community trust. The message from Luqman to policymakers is obvious: local women peacebuilders are not marginal figures in peacebuilding but its cornerstone. “The local women peacebuilders are the structure and the backbone of these societies,” Luqman said. “They are valuable. They should be treated as valuable assets. They should be supported and protected.” Constructing sustainable peace is not possible only through negotiations of the parties involved in armed conflict but also through investing in people who have done so many years of keeping communities together despite the situation being unrecognizable.
Sania Farooqui is an independent journalist and host of The Peace Brief, a platform dedicated to amplifying the voices of women in peacebuilding and human rights.
IPS UN Bureau Report
NEW DELHI, Jul 13 2026 (IPS) - To say that the men scored over women yet again would be an understatement. To say that the women lost and men have won would be an oversimplification and to say that political manoeuvring, intrigue and deceit outdid half of India’s population would be stating the obvious.
So, what is the story? Or the plot with its twists and turns? Or the game that women lost even before they started playing?
Rewind to three decades when the women of India woke up to what today is branded as political empowerment.
In this context the one name that stands out is that of Parliamentarian Geeta Mukherjee, who chaired the Joint Parliamentary Committee to examine a Bill seeking reservation of seats for women in Parliament and state legislatures: 33 percent to be precise.
It was in 1996 that a legislation for this was tabled in the Lower House of the Indian Parliament
We are into 2026, and the women of India are still fighting for legitimacy in political power, relentlessly demanding what is their due.
The Women’s Reservation Bill has been tabled in Parliament several times – five times, to be precise.
Its history and the twists and turns that come with it are telling. Add to the mix the interesting questions that its tumultuous journey has thrown up. But more importantly, what has this unfulfilled dream done to the dignity of women of the world’s largest democracy? Simply put, it has left them hanging, staring in the dark with a ‘will it? will it not?’ question. As things have panned out, the future holds little hope.
Rewind to the Constituent Assembly that adopted the Constitution of India in 1949. Of its 389 members, only 15 were women. There were questions even then, but they were different.
If a woman member feared that reservation would mean restriction and, hence, exclusion of women from general seats, another member asked quite pointedly: “Were women not led by the heart, and was politics not a matter of the mind? Even as the heart versus the head debate dogged minds, the issue remained unresolved.
Some fifty years later, in 1996 to be exact, it was Sushma Swaraj, then a Parliament Member and later India’s foreign minister, who resurrected the issue. She told Parliament that only 6.5 of the 543 members in the Lower House of Parliament were women. Without saying it in so many words, she indicated that the situation was dismal and the future bleak.
Swaraj’s words were prophetic. The future was indeed bleak because three decades on, the women continue to fight for what should rightfully be theirs.
When the Bill was introduced in Parliament in 1996 and later in 1998 and 1999, the men kind of ganged up to ensure that a smooth passage was thwarted. On all three occasions, the Bill lapsed upon the dissolution of the Lower House in Parliament.
However, in 2008 another route was adopted and this time around it was introduced in the Upper House of Parliament.
This obviated the possibility of a lapse given that the Indian Parliament is structured in such a way that the Lower House has a fixed five-year term while the Upper House is a permanent chamber which is not subject to dissolution. Unlike the Lower House of Parliament, Bills tabled in the Upper House do not lapse.
That notwithstanding, the smooth passage of the Bill in the Lower House still remains a question mark, and that too a big one, staring at women in the face.
All through this rigmarole what stood out and continues to is the contempt and disregard men have for women in this part of the world. And these are no ordinary men but those who have been elected to work for the welfare of the people, men and women alike. Therefore, when they speak of women in disparaging terms, one stops to ask: have we actually progressed or do we continue to be a regressive and male-dominated society – one where men outside and fathers, brothers and husbands at home continue to call the shots?
Even as the answer is obvious, one’s soul may cringe at the manner in which lawmakers inside Parliament have targeted women during the several debates on reserving 33 percent of seats in Parliament and state legislatures.
Sample this: During a 1997 parliamentary debate, two leaders, both from the backward castes, opposed reservation even as they demanded what was termed a “quota within quota” for women. Decode this and it means that within the 33 percent reservation ensure a certain representation for the other backward castes, Dalits and Muslim women.
In the Indian context, the untouchables are called Dalits, while the Other Backward Castes, or OBCs as they are popularly known, represent the marginalised. The Muslims comprise the minorities in India.
But back to the debate in Parliament when these two leaders spearheaded the anti-reservation campaign under the garb of protection for women from the marginalised and backward castes.
They use “choicest phrases”, if one can use the term, to denigrate women segregating the elite and educated from the rural and the unversed.
Calling them par-kati mahilayen, roughly translated as ‘short-haired and elite’, a former Union Minister, Sharad Yadav, from the state of Bihar, threatened to consume poison if a Bill was passed without proper caste representation. His take: women who are privileged, urban and elite do not understand the struggle of their counterparts living in far-flung rural areas.
To quote him: “Like Socrates, who died consuming poison fighting for principles, I am also willing to die fighting for principles.” Given the male mind-set, such a statement may well be interpreted as if it is women’s reservation, and it will be “over my dead body”.
A former Chief Minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav, from the state of Uttar Pradesh, had another fear. Way back in 2010 he had told his constituents: “The kind of women who will enter Parliament… The wives and daughters of officers and businessmen, who invite whistles from boys…” He also said that rural women would be left out because they are “not that attractive”.
Another leader, a former Union Minister and Chief Minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav from the state of Bihar, said that India being a “male-dominated society”, to use his exact words, women vote according to the political diktat of the family. In other words, they are incapable of thinking and choosing independently and are a rubber stamp of their husbands: “My own wife votes according to my diktat,” the former Chief Minister had then said.
In later years, Yadav anointed his wife to succeed him when he was jailed in a fodder scam.
For the record, Lalu Prasad Yadav, who has served as Chief Minister of India’s populous state of Bihar and also as Union Minister, was convicted in a fodder scam and charged with syphoning off huge amounts from the animal husbandry department. This followed his resignation. Not the one to cede political space to anyone outside the family, Yadav named his wife, Rabri Devi, as his successor. That Devi was uneducated and could not even sign her name did not matter considering she was her husband’s proxy.
The first woman to head the state of Bihar, Devi ruled the state not once but three times over.
That notwithstanding, it is true that in India men dictate where and how their wives, mothers and sisters, or rather all the women in the family, should vote. This is one of the reasons why En bloc voting is a rule rather than an exception among women in rural areas.
However, by 2023 the power of the women’s vote dawned on political parties, particularly under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has launched several welfare schemes for women while heading the Government in India.
Unwilling to lose the momentum of emerging as a votary for women’s rights, the Modi Government brought in the Reservation Bill, which was passed in the Lower House of the Indian Parliament, both grudgingly and willingly.
With this, history took a half-turn: a half-turn because even while the Bill mandated a 33 per cent reservation, it was tied to a distant future, namely the upcoming census and subsequent redrawing of electoral constituencies or delimitation as it is better known and understood.
Ostensibly, it was a step forward, but in reality, it was an idea stuck in time. Linking reservation to the Census and delimitation that would follow was talking of a distant future because there is neither clarity on when the Census will take place nor a clear date, rather year, when the delimitation will take effect. Hence, the passing of the Bill remains a cosmetic measure and one on paper.
The truth of the matter is that men are reluctant to cede political space to women. Yet for any political party to oppose a reform like political empowerment for women is clearly counter-productive. No party can be seen as being a roadblock to women’s progress and risk being perceived as anti-women.
Therefore, while each party professes support for the issue and the cause, the real story is that they do not want to see reservation being a reality. The answer is simple: if 33 percent reservation for women becomes a law, then it is the men who will have to give up their seats to make way for women. In a patriarchal society like India, this seems like a pipe dream.
Having said that, it is ironic that every political party has committed to providing reservation in their political manifestos but no party has budged an inch to work towards this welfare measure. If anything, they have consistently worked against the Bill becoming a reality.
Fast forward to 2026 when the Government brought in the Women Reservation Bill in Parliament yet again through a special session of Parliament. But, this time around, the motive was suspect. The move was sudden and came at a time when the state elections were underway. Therefore, there was more politics than good intent that was attributed to what the Government wanted to showcase as women’s welfare.
What made it worse was that the Government tagged another bill with the women’s reservation bill: delimitation.
For the uninitiated, delimitation is the process of redrawing the boundaries of electoral constituencies. By this principle, seats for Parliament and states would be reallocated on the basis of the latest census, which is yet incomplete.
The Government’s bid to club delimitation with the reservation bill was decried. Opposition parties slammed the Government for making women a scapegoat and “using women” for a political end.
To quote an Opposition MP, Mahua Moitra, the Government’s move was “delimitation wrapped in a saree”. What she meant was that the Government is firing from the shoulders of women to push through legislation which otherwise would be opposed tooth and nail.
It is pertinent to mention that the opposition-ruled states are against delimitation, as it erodes the political power of those states that have fewer numbers in terms of population. With the voting numbers stacked against the Government, the Delimitation Bill would have hit a roadblock in Parliament. Hence, the Government linked the two Bills. The logic: delimitation would ride piggyback on the Women’s Reservation Bill. The women’s vote being very important in elections, no party would like to be seen as opposing women’s reservation.
However, the Government’s calculations went haywire and the Opposition unitedly voted against the Bill. The result: What seemed achievable fell through.
As an opposition member of Parliament, Sushmita Dev explained, “We are not against women’s reservation. But what is a betrayal is the Government riding on the shoulders of women to push delimitation. Why link delimitation with women’s reservation? Why bring in politics? Why push an agenda? Why not given women the dignity they deserve?” is what she asks.
Politics apart, women who have been fighting for women’s empowerment for decades see this slugfest between the Government and the Opposition as “a lost opportunity”. To quote activist Ranjana Kumari, Founder of the Centre for Social Research: “The defeat of the Women Bill in Parliament compels deeper reflection on the state of India’s democracy. There is a gap between intent and action. The political parties must take responsibility and move beyond tokenism. Globally, gender quotas have demonstrated that change is possible when backed by political commitment and clear design. India stands at a similar crossroads.”
Kumari has been in the forefront of the women’s reservation movement in India.
It is at this juncture that one needs to stop and ask: For how long will the women of India keep knocking doors? For how long will political parties and politicians continue making them scapegoats to achieve their political goals? Why is their due being denied to them time and again? Why do they continue to be victims at the hands of men who are politically powerful?
Why does politics get the better of women? Why is their future being linked to complicated legislative processes? Why are they being subjected to political juggernauts?
Too many questions but one straight and simple answer: The men of India, as in many other parts of the world, want women to continue being subservient and remain second class in a world where half the sky is theirs.
IPS UN Bureau Report
Jul 13 2026 (IPS) -
CIVICUS speaks about efforts to use the 2026 FIFA World Cup to highlight Mexico’s enforced disappearance crisis with Ana Enamorado, a Honduran national who continues to search for her missing son in Mexico, and founder of the Regional Network of Migrant Families.
Ana Enamorado
How did your son Óscar go missing, and what’s known about his case?
My son Óscar was 19 when he went missing. He left Honduras in 2008, fleeing the violence, and was in the USA when some young men invited him to Mexico with the promise of a job, a good wage, an education and the chance to see me again. It was all a deception.
Those were the years of the war on drugs that President Felipe Calderón declared in 2006, when the cartels began forcibly recruiting young people to join their ranks. Óscar was taken to El Carrizo, in the municipality of San Sebastián del Oeste, Jalisco state. It’s an isolated place with no public transport and severe deprivation, which makes it very difficult to escape. I last spoke to him on 19 January 2010, and I haven’t heard his voice since.
Little is known about his case, and the little that’s known is marred by negligence. In December 2009, weeks before his last call, charred bodies were found in the same place, but the investigation led nowhere. In 2013, forensic authorities in Jalisco attempted to hand over some ashes to me without any DNA evidence to confirm they were my son’s. The forensic institute went so far as to cremate around 1,560 unidentified bodies in less than a decade, a practice that has left so many families with no way of knowing the truth.
The Mexican state only began searching for Óscar in 2020, 10 years after I reported him missing. To this day, I am still searching for him and demanding justice.
What obstacles do migrant families face when searching for missing loved ones?
A major obstacle is the indifference of the authorities in the country of origin, which in my case is Honduras. We families are left on our own, with no one to guide us. The consulate should be the first authority to assist us, and it should do so quickly, because the first few hours are crucial for finding a person alive. But it rarely does so. As a result, filing a missing person report and a formal complaint becomes almost impossible. And without that, it’s not possible to open an investigation file or access our rights.
Added to this is my immigration status. Although I have been living in Mexico for 14 years, I am still considered a ‘visitor on humanitarian grounds’ and, to retain this status, I have to prove every year that my son is still missing. Having to prove my tragedy time and time again just to be able to stay revictimises me. That’s why I initiated legal proceedings against the National Institute of Migration to change my status to that of a permanent resident. However, it continues to reject my application, leaving me in a precarious situation when it comes to accessing my basic rights.
Why did you decide to protest during the World Cup?
We took to the streets of the host cities to show the other side of Mexico: the corruption, violence, impunity and the state’s indifference towards the thousands of missing people. Although the Mexican state may wish to project an image of celebration and modernity through the World Cup, there can be no World Cup celebrations against the backdrop of the humanitarian crisis caused by disappearances.
In Mexico, there are over 135,000 missing people. To put this into perspective, that number is one and a half times the capacity of the Azteca Stadium, where several matches in this World Cup have been played, including the opening match. Added to this is a forensic crisis. There are over 75,000 unidentified bodies. That is 75,000 people who did not return home and whose families continue inquiring about their whereabouts.
And the number keeps rising. We estimate that, since the World Cup began on 11 June, over 1,200 further people have gone missing. On 30 June, three teenagers aged 14 and 15 disappeared in Guadalajara, one of the host cities, in broad daylight amid streets full of celebrating crowds. The authorities believe it may have been a case of recruitment by organised crime. This practice continues unabated, and the government shows no sign of wanting to stop it or of searching for the missing people, particularly when they are migrants.
How has the Mexican government responded to the protests?
The state is uncomfortable with us taking to the streets to protest because every time we do, we expose the harsh and painful reality it wants to hide. That’s why, instead of listening to us and searching for our loved ones, it has responded with criminalisation, mockery and repression.
At her morning press conference on the day of the World Cup opening ceremony, President Claudia Sheinbaum played down our demonstration, and the Secretary of the Interior insinuated that someone was paying us to take to the streets, announcing an investigation into how we are funded. It’s an accusation that’s as painful as it’s outrageous. We have always searched for our loved ones using our own resources.
Then came the repression. Riot police cordoned us off and encircled us to prevent us from reaching the stadiums. On 30 June, on Calzada de Tlalpan, one of Mexico City’s main avenues, they assaulted and detained members of the ‘Hasta Encontrarte’ (Until we find you) collective simply for carrying images bearing the faces of their loved ones. Physical violence adds to the emotional and psychological trauma we already bear. Meanwhile, federal and state forces were deployed to ensure the safety of tourists, an effort they have never made to search for our loved ones.
What are you demanding of the government and international bodies?
We demand, first and foremost, that the Mexican state make the search for missing people a real priority. We call on President Sheinbaum to meet with the families and collectives in person to reach genuine agreements on search, location and prevention. We want to know how many people have been found alive, to have proper investigations carried out and to have trained and empathetic staff who can provide us with real answers.
But this crisis extends beyond Mexico’s borders, and the response must do the same. The United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have offered their assistance. We call on the government to accept it. Such cooperation is urgent, because there are tens of thousands of people of other nationalities who have gone missing in Mexico, and searching for them requires the activation of international mechanisms. Many are women who have been trafficked, and most are taken out of the country, so finding them depends on governments working together.
Finally, we call on the international community to not turn a blind eye to what’s happening, and on the media to help us amplify our demands, so our voices reach the world just as World Cup goals do.
We won’t rest until we find them. They were taken alive, and we want them back alive.
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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NEW YORK, Jul 13 2026 (IPS) - As the United Nations (UN) Security Council prepares for its first round of closed-door straw polls this month to select the tenth Secretary-General, the organization stands at a critical crossroads. Multilateralism is fracturing under geopolitical gridlock, and the UN is battling a severe budgetary deficit driven by funding cuts.
Yet the gravest threat to the institution is not financial; it is cultural. To regain the trust of the global public, the UN urgently needs a radical transformation of its organizational culture, beginning with the selection of candidates for its highest office—the post of UN Secretary-General. This requires dismantling entrenched nepotism, cronyism, patronage, and quid pro quo practices in recruitment, promotion and appointment, and replacing them with a culture grounded in merit, integrity, transparency, and gender equity.
Patronage Becomes Institutional Norm
The history of the Secretary-Generalship and senior leadership is marked by allegations and documented cases of favouritism that have undermined the UN’s professed values of merit and equity. During the tenure of former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, concerns were raised about the employment of his son-in-law within the UN system, prompting debate over perceived favouritism, though the appointment was defended on merit grounds. Under Kofi Annan, the Oil-for-Food Programme scandal exposed widespread corruption, bribery, and serious administrative failures.
Such controversies are not confined to the highest levels of leadership. Allegations of politicized staffing and patronage have periodically surfaced across the UN system, highlighting a persistent gap between the organization’s principles and internal realities.
What begins as an exception at the executive level can become embedded practice throughout UN agencies and departments. Mid-level managers often replicate these patterns by shaping job descriptions, tailoring interview panels, sharing interview materials, and influencing or “fixing” vacancies for preferred candidates. In such an environment, backdoor recruitment risks becoming normalized rather than exceptional.
The result is a damaging paradox: while the UN publicly champions fairness, equal opportunity, and transparency, its internal systems often operate through favoritism, personal connections, and exclusion. Talented staff without access to influential networks face limited advancement, while better-connected but less qualified individuals may benefit from patronage, eroding institutional credibility, staff morale, and public trust.
The 2026 Secretary-General Race Under Scrutiny
Even in the current selection process for the next Secretary-General, concerns about institutional fairness persist. Accountability investigations by independent watchdog groups have raised questions about the presence of family members of candidate Rafael Grossi, Director General of the IAEA, across Vienna- and Rome-based UN agencies. By contrast, candidates such as Michelle Bachelet, Rebeca Grynspan, and María Fernanda Espinosa bring extensive records in multilateral governance and international leadership, with no publicly substantiated findings of comparable family-based appointments during their UN service.
Concerns have also emerged regarding unequal institutional advantages during the selection process. Rebeca Grynspan stepped aside from her role as Secretary-General of UNCTAD in line with General Assembly Resolution 79/327, which encourages candidates holding UN positions to suspend their duties during campaigns to avoid conflicts of interest and undue advantage. Rafael Grossi has remained in office as Director General of the IAEA while pursuing his candidacy.
Critics argue that continued access to institutional visibility and resources may create an incumbency advantage. Whether or not this violates formal rules, it raises broader concerns about fairness and structural imbalance in leadership selection.
The UN’s Persistent Gender Gap
Beyond nepotism and back-door recruitment, the most glaring failure of this selection cycle is the UN’s inability to break its own highest glass ceiling. In over 80 years and nine Secretary-Generals, the organization has never been led by a woman. This persists despite years of relentless, highly coordinated global campaigns by civil society groups, advocates, and the 1 for 8 Billion coalition calling for gender-balanced leadership.
Despite decades of calls for historical justice and General Assembly Resolution 79/327—which notes with regret that no woman has ever held the position of Secretary-General and urges Member States to strongly consider nominating women, two men—Rafael Grossi and Macky Sall—were still nominated to such a narrow and exclusive candidate pool. At a time when women are leading nations and global institutions through major crises, this outcome highlights a gap between the commitments of Member States and their practice. It risks reinforcing the very inequalities the United Nations has pledged to address.
Reform in the UN Cannot Wait
The next Secretary-General must treat institutional integrity as a priority long before taking office—indeed, even before announcing a candidacy. Member States must translate long-standing reform commitments into enforceable mandates. These reforms can no longer remain aspirational; they must become immediate requirements shaping how the UN governs, recruits, and leads.
• Prioritizing a Female Leader to Break the Status Quo: Member States—and especially the five permanent Security Council members with veto power—must recognize that meaningful reform requires breaking entrenched networks of power and patronage. Electing the first female Secretary General in 2026 would signal a decisive shift toward aligning leadership with the principles of equality the UN promotes globally.• Mandatory Campaign Step-Aside Rules: Any active UN official seeking the post of Secretary General should be required to suspend all institutional duties upon declaring candidacy. This would eliminate even the perception of using institutional platforms, influence, or resources for campaigning.
• Ban on Family Appointments: The UN system should adopt a strict policy prohibiting the hiring, consulting, or internship of immediate family members of any Assistant Secretary-General, Under-Secretary-General, agency chief, and Secretary-General candidate. The international civil service must never be treated as a family business.
• Preventing Post-Fixing and Backdoor Recruitment: The Secretary-General’s Office should be empowered to independently review recruitment and selection decisions across the UN system and investigate credible evidence of favoritism, cronyism, or reciprocal patronage. All appointments must follow transparent, merit-based procedures that withstand internal and public scrutiny.
Restoring Institutional Credibility
The world does not need a Secretary-General who merely manages bureaucracy; it needs one who restores moral authority to a fractured international order.
If the next Secretary-General is selected through informal bargaining, backroom deals, entrenched patronage, or continued exclusion of women, the UN risks deepening its legitimacy crisis and accelerating its decline in global relevance.
The UN must first reform itself: break the highest glass ceiling in its history, dismantle entrenched systems of patronage, open its selection process to genuine transparency and scrutiny, and ensure that its leadership reflects the principles and values enshrined in the UN Charter.
The transformation must begin now, starting with this month’s straw polls in the UN Security Council for the Secretary-General selection.
Shihana Mohamed, a Sri Lankan national, is the President of Asia Global Network (www.AsiaGlobalForum.org) and a US Public Voices Fellow on advancing the rights of women and girls. She is the founder of the UN Asia Network for Diversity & Inclusion (www.UN-ANDI.org) and is a strong advocate for gender equality and the advancement of women. She served at the UN for over 25 years.
IPS UN Bureau
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Jul 10 2026 (IPS) - Landslides and flooding triggered by heavy monsoon rains swept through the world’s most densely populated concentration of refugee camps this week, killing at least 14 Rohingya refugees, most of them women and girls.
Three girls and their teacher were killed in an Islamic learning center hit by a landslide on July 8. At least 10 more refugees were killed in separate landslides in six camps.
Thousands of families in the camps in Cox’s Bazar, southeast Bangladesh, have been relocated to safer places, mostly at learning centers. Hundreds of ‘homes’ – tarpaulin and bamboo shelters – have been destroyed and flooded.
Tragically such disasters are commonplace, especially in the cyclone and monsoon season. The deaths have also prompted the predictable response by aid agencies to call for more funding.
But beyond the immediate effort of rescuing survivors, what is now really needed is an urgent focus on how the money available is actually spent – as revealed in the alarming findings of an audit by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).
OIOS Report 2025/084 raises serious concerns over UNHCR’s Rohingya response in Bangladesh in project planning, procurement, monitoring and effective use of humanitarian resources.
Mohammed Ahsom, 22, points to the site of a landslide where he rescued a child and helped to recover bodies in a Cox’s Bazar camp for Rohingya refugees on July 6. Credit: Mohammed Zonaid
As reported recently by the Bangladeshi newspaper New Age, millions of dollars were spent on infrastructure that remained unused; projects overlapped; procurement processes lacked sufficient oversight, and several programs failed to achieve intended objectives.
All this at a time when humanitarian aid is shrinking even while thousands more stateless Moslem Rohingya displaced by ongoing conflict in neighbouring Myanmar continue to arrive, joining a mass exodus of some 700,000 Rohingya who fled a brutal crackdown by the Myanmar military in Rakhine State in 2017.
Among the findings of the audit, a specialized hospital in Ukhiya costing US$1.5 million was built but remained unused. A 20-bed inpatient facility in Bhasan Char, with $140,000 of solar equipment and a $74,301 X-ray machine was also unused. In addition $18,000 was spent on honour boards, $23,000 on staff uniforms, and $27,000 on producing a documentary. The audit highlighted these expenditures as unnecessary while humanitarian needs remained urgent.
Perhaps most shocking, UNHCR spent $182,028 on cutlery (spoons, forks, knives etc) that refugees largely do not use because we traditionally eat with our hands. I have lived in one of the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps since 2017 and never found such things distributed to us.
In contrast, food assistance for most Rohingya refugees has been reduced from $12 to $7 per person per month— the cost of a couple of cups of coffee in many countries where those humanitarian staff are based and making decisions on cuts in food rations.
Informal learning centers that once provided at least a bit of education have in many cases become empty playgrounds. Hospitals built with millions of dollars often provide only basic, low-cost medicines such as paracetamol and omeprazole. A personal example — last year I had to buy Antozal nasal medication for my daughter from a local pharmacy after we waited hours in line to see two highly paid doctors. Later when we went with the prescription, we were told the drugs were not available because of funding cuts.
The audit also found that UN partners spent $4.2 million on shelter materials that UNHCR had already procured. Solar and energy projects costing $194,000, and medicines and medical equipment amounting to $800,000, were also duplicated because of faulty procurement.
The audit noted that eight years into the Rohingya crisis, 67 percent of funding had been spent on immediate humanitarian relief, while only 17 percent was allocated to empowerment and long-term solutions.
As yet UNHCR has not responded to questions by the media over the audit – not for the first time. UNHCR has often been criticized for responding only during major emergencies, such as large fires in the camps that attract international attention and are seen as moments to justify appeals for more funding spent on sustaining UN staff, their salaries and organizational costs.
Major international human rights organizations and international news outlets also show little interest.
Since the Myanmar military and allied Buddhist militia launched the killings and mass displacement of the mostly stateless Rohingya minority in August 2017, the international community has provided more than $5 billion in aid funding. The latest appeal by the Joint Response Plan (JPR) for 2026 is for $710 million.
Yet if you visit the refugee camps today you will find that there is still no formal education system, medical services remain inadequate, and durable shelters have not been built.
Refugees exist in shelters in hilly areas mostly denuded of trees and prone to catastrophic floods and landslides. Around 200,000 newly arrived refugees since 2024 have not been provided with shelter and live in extremely vulnerable conditions.
So my question is simple: Where did the billions of dollars go?
This is not just about the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar. The JRP for the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis is led by the government of Bangladesh, the UNHCR and IOM and includes scores of UN agencies and international and national NGOs.
Each year the JRP is supposed to allocate some 20 to 30 percent of its funding to benefit Bangladeshi host communities.
However, many local residents living even within the camp perimeter have never received a bag of rice or an LPG cylinder. Their children have not benefited from livelihood or skills training programs. Many are not even aware that funding has been allocated for host communities.
The time has come to establish independent Quality Assurance and Financial Audit Committees for Rohingya camp operations. These committees should include representatives from relevant UN bodies, the government of Bangladesh, donor countries, independent human rights organizations, and the Rohingya diaspora. Their role would be to ensure that every project is genuinely needed by Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi host communities, and that they are properly implemented.
Humanitarian assistance should go to the people it is meant to serve—not become a system that primarily sustains thousands of jobs and does not provide for proper independent oversight.
Aid organizations should not be able to evade responsibility, as in these recent disasters, by blaming deaths on lack of funding.
Transparency, accountability, independent oversight and measurable impact must become the foundation of the Rohingya humanitarian response for as long as we Rohingya are not able to return to Myanmar with our rights, safety and dignity.
Mohammed Zonaid is an award-winning Rohingya journalist and photographer, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
mohammedzonaid7@gmail.com
IPS UN Bureau