The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
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
RIO de JANEIRO, Brazil, Jul 28 2026 (IPS) - The Region of the Americas has more tools than ever before to prevent, diagnose, and treat HIV, yet many of them are still not reaching everyone who needs them, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Director Jarbas Barbosa said during the opening session of the International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2026).
Dr. Barbosa emphasized that expanding access to innovations such as oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), long-acting injectable PrEP, rapid testing, and HIV self-testing, together with strengthening early diagnosis and ensuring timely treatment initiation, will be essential to accelerate the elimination of HIV as a public health problem in the Region.
In his remarks, Dr. Barbosa highlighted that the Americas have repeatedly demonstrated that ambitious public health goals can be achieved through cooperation, scientific evidence, and strong health systems. He noted that the Region has eliminated polio and rubella and that several countries have eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV, achievements that provide a strong foundation for accelerating progress toward HIV elimination.
Credit: PAHO
He further stressed that achieving this goal will require combining innovations in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment with political leadership, equity, and close collaboration with communities.
Dr. Barbosa also noted that countries in Latin America and the Caribbean now finance 92% of HIV investments through domestic resources, representing one of the highest levels of domestic funding for HIV programs globally and demonstrating the Region’s sustained commitment to HIV response.
“The question before us is no longer whether we have the tools to end HIV as a public health threat. We do. The question is whether we can ensure that those tools reach everyone who needs them, regardless of where they live, who they are, or the circumstances they face,” said Barbosa. “Innovation only changes lives when people can access it.”
According to the latest available data, AIDS-related deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean declined by 46% between 2010 and 2025. In 2024 alone, access to antiretroviral treatment prevented an estimated 117,000 AIDS-related deaths. Access to PrEP also increased substantially, from 35,000 people in 2020 to more than 326,000 in 2025.
Despite this progress, significant gaps in access and coverage remain. Approximately one in three new HIV diagnoses is still made at a late stage of infection, and nearly 900,000 people living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean are not receiving treatment.
Reducing HIV-related mortality and addressing advanced HIV disease will be among PAHO’s key priorities at AIDS 2026. Although tools to prevent and treat HIV have improved substantially, late diagnosis, delays in treatment initiation, and challenges in retaining people in care continue to contribute to preventable deaths and to the burden of co-infections such as tuberculosis, which remains the leading cause of death among people with advanced HIV disease.
Against this backdrop, PAHO unveiled new initiatives aimed at accelerating HIV elimination across the Region.
As part of its agenda at AIDS 2026, PAHO launched the Alliance for HIV Elimination in the Americas, a new regional platform designed to advance progress toward HIV elimination by 2030 through stronger collaboration among governments, communities, international organizations, academia, development partners, and the private sector.
The Alliance is part of PAHO’s Disease Elimination Initiative and seeks to strengthen political leadership, expand equitable access to innovation, and promote sustainable investments to accelerate HIV elimination across the Americas.
PAHO is also advancing the Path to HIV Elimination in the Americas, an evidence-based framework that will help countries measure progress, identify remaining gaps, and demonstrate achievements on the path toward HIV elimination.
“If we maintain political commitment, protect the investments already made, and place equity at the center of every decision, ending HIV as a public health threat will be within our reach,” Barbosa said. “No country will achieve this goal alone.”
The PAHO Director warned that financial pressures, shifting political priorities, and persistent inequalities could jeopardize hard-won gains.
He reiterated that achieving HIV elimination will require strengthening people-centered health systems, expanding access to PrEP and other innovations, integrating HIV services with tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infection services, working alongside communities to reduce stigma and discrimination, and sustaining the domestic investments that have enabled steady progress across the Region.
Throughout AIDS 2026, PAHO will advance these priorities through a series of high-level events focused on HIV elimination, advanced HIV disease, and equitable access to innovations for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.
IPS UN Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 2026 (IPS) - In the three years since the outbreak of the Sudanese Civil War, the humanitarian crisis has deteriorated significantly, with the United Nations underscoring a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law among warring parties. This includes the deliberate targeting of civilians in residential areas, widespread sexual violence, and attacks on critical infrastructure that have hindered aid efforts and pushed communities to the brink of collapse. To manage rising military expenses, the warring parties have increasingly relied on the exploitation of trade routes and territories, prompting humanitarian experts to express concern about a persistent, self-sustaining “war economy.”
“Sudan’s vast wealth of natural resources should benefit its people. Distressingly, what we are seeing today is anything but that. In fact, this wealth is only serving to undermine human rights and drive conflict, bringing pain and suffering on an enormous scale,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. “This war economy must be disrupted, and the international community must pay much closer attention to the commodities and trade routes that help keep it alive.”
On July 15, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a report titled Business and Human Rights in Conflict: Gum Arabic from Sudan, underscoring how the illicit trade of gum arabic is being exploited to fund the violent activities of both the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Beyond gum arabic, the report shows that warring parties are generating massive revenues from gold, livestock, and other commodities by seizing control of local extraction, transport, and trade routes.
Historically, gum arabic has been a critical economic staple for Sudan, serving as a key ingredient in food, drinks, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals around the world. Sourced from the bark and branches of the acacia tree, gum arabic acts as a lifeline for over five million people in Sudan, remaining deeply embedded in local rural communities.
Before the eruption of hostilities in 2023, Sudan’s gum arabic trade accounted for roughly 70 to 80 percent of the global crude gum arabic exports, with annual exports reaching as high as USD $183 million. Today, the vast majority of acacia forests in Sudan—which form the country’s “gum arabic belt”—are located in regions that are largely under RSF and SAF control, such as Kordofan and Darfur.
The report found that rural communities relying on gum arabic for financial stability have faced numerous protection risks and severe human rights abuses—including looting, extortion, and arbitrary detention. This further compounds the struggles of their daily lives as they face shrinking access to basic services, such as food, clean water, education, and healthcare.
Traders working along corridors stretching through RSF-controlled sections of Darfur and Kordofan have experienced confiscation of goods, excessive taxation, and violence. Additionally, the report notes that considerable quantities of gum arabic have been redirected by the RSF from West Kordofan and Darfur to Souq al-Na‘am, South Sudan, Juba, Chad, Cameroon, and Kenya. Furthermore, the UN has reported that lootings of gum arabic conducted by the RSF are often used as a form of compensation rather than traditional salaries, with roughly 3,700 tonnes looted between January and June of 2024.
OHCHR noted that gold is also a primary driver of Sudan’s war economy, being considered “the most financially significant commodity in export terms”, as well as a major source of revenue for the RSF and SAF. Figures from the Central Bank of Sudan and the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company show that in 2024, roughly 65 tonnes of gold were produced in SAF-controlled areas, including 28 tonnes that were exported through Port Sudan. This generated approximately USD $1.6 billion in revenue, contributing to 48.5 percent of the nation’s annual exports.
Despite gold production climbing to 70 tonnes in 2025, considerable portions of the gross output have been smuggled outside of the country. According to the report, in 2024, only 52 percent of the annual gold exports were passed through formal export channels. Additionally, RSF-affiliated economic entities continue to extract and trade gold from Darfur and Kordofan, with the RSF seizing over 1.3 tonnes of unrefined gold early in the conflict.
“Gold is the most important and decisive financial driver, while gum arabic provides supporting liquidity and demonstrates how the war has extended into agricultural commodities and global trade routes,” said Dr Abdelmonem Mukhtar, Executive Director of the Centre for Evidence and Data-Based Policy. “If it is established that a supply chain contributes directly or indirectly to financing parties to the conflict, regulatory, civil or ethical responsibilities may arise, in addition to reputational and commercial risks.”
Emphasizing the need for more rigid oversight, Türk called on UN member states to strengthen accountability and monitoring measures to ensure that commodity trade in Sudan does not fund violations of international humanitarian law, but rather helps to alleviate the suffering of civilians. He also urged corporations to prioritize human rights.
“Companies cannot continue business as usual when sourcing from conflict-affected value chains,” Türk said. “They should undertake heightened, conflict-sensitive human rights due diligence, including stronger scrutiny of routes, intermediaries, documentation and possible re-labelling, and ensure that affected people have access to safe and effective grievance and response mechanisms.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
ROME, Jul 27 2026 (IPS) - Here is a fact that should interrupt the world’s drumbeat of bad news: Hunger fell again in 2025.
For the third consecutive year, fewer people faced chronic hunger. The total declined to an estimated 645 million, 14 million fewer than in 2024 and 43 million fewer than at the 2022 peak. Moderate or severe food insecurity fell by 86 million, to 2.1 billion from 2024 to 2025.
The number remains a profound collective failure. But the decline challenges the fatalistic assumption that conflict, climate change and economic instability make rising hunger inevitable. When governments align social protection, agricultural investment and economic policy, they can bend the hunger curve.
Countries making the greatest gains offer no single formula, but they do offer a common lesson. Their histories differ, but their choices share key features: social protection that preserves purchasing power; investment that raises agricultural productivity; rural roads, irrigation and market infrastructure; and policies connecting small scale farmers to expanding food markets. Hunger falls when these policies reinforce one another
Asia’s hunger is now about one quarter below its 2015 level. Latin America and the Caribbean has also moved below the rate recorded a decade ago. In Africa, the rate declined for the first time in nearly a decade, from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20 percent in 2025.
Africa’s progress is fragile. Rapid population growth kept the number of hungry people at about 309 million. Yet even this small reversal is significant, especially because bilateral development assistance to sub Saharan Africa fell 26.3 percent in 2025 and is projected to fall again this year.
Countries making the greatest gains offer no single formula, but they do offer a common lesson. India cut hunger from 21.1 percent in the mid 2000s to 9.8 percent; Senegal from 15.8 percent to 5.3 percent; Rwanda from 31.8 percent to 22.6 percent; and Peru from 17.9 percent to 5.7 percent. Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Guyana now report rates below 2.5 percent.
Their histories differ, but their choices share key features: social protection that preserves purchasing power; investment that raises agricultural productivity; rural roads, irrigation and market infrastructure; and policies connecting small scale farmers to expanding food markets. Hunger falls when these policies reinforce one another.
The danger is that governments will read three years of improvement as permission to retreat.
The Middle East conflict and disruption of the Strait of Hormuz are already raising energy, fertilizer and transportation costs. The strait is critical not only for oil and liquefied natural gas but also for sulphur, fertilizers and other farm inputs. Decisions made now could determine whether this shock becomes a much larger food price crisis within six to 12 months.
Climate is the second threat. El Niño is strengthening, with an 81 percent probability of becoming a very strong event late this year. That does not guarantee crop losses, but it raises the odds of damaging heat and rainfall patterns across major producing regions.
The third threat is cutting even more humanitarian and development financing when vulnerable countries most need resilience. Aid cuts do not make costs disappear. They transfer them to food importing governments, humanitarian agencies and households already spending most of their income on food.
But preventing hunger is only the first test. The harder challenge is helping people eat well.
About 2.69 billion people, roughly one third of humanity, still cannot afford a healthy diet. In Africa, the share is 66.6 percent. Calories alone are not enough. A diet that prevents hunger does not necessarily prevent anaemia, child stunting, obesity or diabetes.
The economics explain why. Starchy staples provide about half the calories in a healthy diet but only 13 percent of its cost. Fruits and vegetables provide roughly 5 percent of calories but account for 16 percent of the cost. Animal source foods provide 13 percent of calories but consume 28 percent of the budget. Calories are relatively cheap. Nutrients are expensive.
Much of that expense accumulates after food leaves the farm. New analysis for the 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World indicates that 70 to 75 percent of the cost of a healthy diet arises in storage, processing, transportation, wholesale and retail. Poor roads, inadequate cold storage, unreliable electricity and post harvest losses turn nutritious perishables into luxuries.
That should change how governments spend. They already provide $540 billion to $635 billion a year in agricultural support, much of it concentrated on a few staples. Supporting staples alone can pull land and investment away from fruits, vegetables and other nutrient dense foods. Governments should redirect more support toward horticultural productivity, cold chains, irrigation, rural roads, storage, energy and competitive markets.
They must also get the sequence right. Expanding school meals, food vouchers and other demand programs without increasing supply can raise prices. Investment in farms and supply chains must precede, or accompany, policies that stimulate demand.
Three years of declining hunger have answered one question: Progress is possible. The question now is whether governments will scale what works before conflict, climate shocks and financial retreat erase it.
The next frontier is not just cheaper calories. It is making healthy diets affordable.
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Máximo Torero is the Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations