The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Oct 20 2026 (IPS) - Nearly three decades have passed, but Japhet Gimbi still remembers the rain.
He was a Form 2 student in Tabora, western Tanzania, when the 1997 El Niño flooded the town. As the rain kept falling, fewer students made it to school. That was a super El Niño, one of the strongest on record. Since then there have been five other events including the 2014-2016 “super El Niño”.
“It just kept raining. Day after day, the rain wouldn’t stop,” Gimbi, who now lives in Dar es Salaam, recalled.
But his strongest memory is of food running short at home.
“We would only eat Ugali without vegetables,” he said.
At Kwihara village, Hatibu Halfan remembers the same season differently. He was a 27-year-old farmer when the rains initially seemed a blessing. His rice crop flourished.
Then the ground became waterlogged. Cassava and sweet potatoes rotted. Homes in low-lying areas flooded.
Twenty-nine years later, East Africa is again preparing for “super” El Niño. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) expects it to intensify toward the end of 2026, with forecasts showing a nearly 100 percent chance of persisting through February 2027. But WMO cautions that a strong El Niño does not necessarily mean severe impacts in every country.
For East Africa, the concern is heavy rain. The October-to-December season is crucial across much of the region, with forecasts pointing to wetter-than-normal conditions that could bring floods, landslides, infrastructure damage, and disease outbreaks. In parts of Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, the season delivers up to 40 percent of annual rainfall.
The East African Community (EAC) Partner States are calling for more predictable, accessible and grant-based climate finance as they prepare to take a common regional position to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Antalya, Türkiye, next month.
They plan to call on developed countries to meet their public climate finance obligations, triple adaptation finance by 2035, improve direct access to climate finance, and provide greater support for adaptation and loss and damage, all without increasing the debt burden on vulnerable countries.
“The common COP31 messages further call for the full capitalisation of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, direct access to its resources by national institutions and support for both economic and non-economic losses. The EAC is also calling for full funding of the Santiago Network, which provides technical assistance to countries vulnerable to loss and damage, as well as stronger cooperation on disaster risk reduction and early warning systems.
The common position calls on developed countries to meet their public climate finance obligations, triple adaptation finance by 2035, improve direct access to climate finance and provide greater support for adaptation and loss and damage without increasing the debt burden of vulnerable countries.
In Dar es Salaam and other fast-growing cities, however, the danger is not simply how much rain falls. It is where it falls—and who lives in its path.
In Southern Africa, the concern is drought, with its impacts on food security, the potential for wild fires, and water shortages. The country will use its participation at the COP31 to ask for increased adaptation finance.
Cities at Risk
“The main impacts we should expect from floods range from possible loss of lives and the number of people displaced, damaged houses, waterborne diseases, loss of employment, and disruption of livelihoods,” Romanus Opiyo, Policy and Engagement Lead for Sustainable Urbanisation at the Stockholm Environment Institute, told IPS.
In Dar es Salaam, neighbourhoods have expanded along rivers, valleys and low-lying land where housing is relatively affordable but drainage and other basic services often lag behind population growth.
Among the places Opiyo identifies as particularly exposed are Tandale, along the Sinza river system, and Jangwani, in the Msimbazi valley.
“The most vulnerable are the urban poor, especially those living near riparian areas such as those settlements in low elevations and near riparian areas,” he said.
Flooding does not affect all city residents equally. Low-income households living on daily earnings often have few savings, little or no insurance and limited options for moving somewhere safer.
A Dar es Salaam resident clears vegetation and debris from a drainage channel as communities prepare for heavy rains associated with El Niño. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS
When Drains Become Sewers
In crowded settlements, blocked drains sit alongside pit latrines, rubbish and open sewers. Floodwater can carry all three through homes and streets.
WMO’s regional outlook warns that excessive rainfall could increase water- and vector-borne disease while damaging roads and disrupting access to health and nutrition services.
Lessons From 1997
The 1997 El Niño brought torrential rain and widespread flooding across East Africa.
By February 1998, about 10 million people across the region needed emergency assistance, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Tanzania suffered extensive damage to roads and railways. Communities were cut off, crops and food stocks were lost and relief efforts were hampered by damaged infrastructure.
The effects, however, varied from place to place. Rain replenished water supplies and improved pasture in some areas, and national food production rebounded in 1998. But hundreds of villages were isolated, and thousands of people were left homeless. FAO and the World Food Programme estimated that about 300,000 Tanzanians would still need targeted food aid.
Since 1997, East African cities have expanded rapidly into wetlands, river valleys and other flood-prone land. Riverbanks have been settled and open ground replaced by roads, buildings and concrete.
Opiyo says weak development control is worsening the risk.
“The major gap remains the allocation of adequate resources (finance, human, and infrastructure resources) to deal with the problem,” he said.
Tanzania Prepares
Tanzania has begun preparations for the October-to-December rains, with forecasters warning that a very strong El Niño could bring heavier rainfall to much of the northern coast, northeastern highlands, Lake Victoria basin and northern Kigoma.
The government has activated a National Emergency Plan and issued 13 directives, ordering authorities to identify high-risk areas, designate emergency shelters, clear drains, prepare rescue equipment and strengthen measures against disease and damage to infrastructure.
The government estimates that 730 billion Tanzanian shillings could be required to implement activities before, during and after a major El Niño emergency. The figure is an estimate of potential requirements, not money already set aside. The 2026/27 budget provides 10 billion shillings for activities under the plan across sectors.
Community flood mapping, identifying households that may need help evacuating, clearing drains and establishing safe routes can also reduce risks.
Beyond El Niño
Seasonal forecasts describe probabilities, not individual storms, and WMO stresses that even a very strong El Niño does not guarantee catastrophic impacts everywhere.
But the problem will outlast El Niño: each rainy season exposes many of the same neighbourhoods.
Rivers overflow and drains clog. Households move possessions onto beds, raise furniture on bricks and wait for the water to recede.
Opiyo says recurring flooding in informal settlements is also an urban-planning problem.
“The informal urban community’s vulnerability requires a collaborative approach in terms of data, creative and inclusive methodology and honest dialogue to address the recurring problem.”
Nature-based measures include protecting wetlands and river corridors, restoring vegetation and preserving areas where floodwater can spread without reaching homes.
But in cities where safe land is expensive, telling people not to live beside rivers does little for families who cannot afford to live anywhere else. Clearing a drain may reduce flooding this season; it does not resolve insecure housing, weak sanitation or the absence of affordable serviced land.
In 1997, Gimbi watched his classmates disappear from school as the rains continued and food ran short at home. Halfan watched his rice flourish before waterlogged fields began destroying other crops.
Twenty-nine years later, governments have better forecasts, satellite observations, flood maps and early-warning systems.
They can see the rain coming.
The question is whether the people living closest to the water will be safer when it arrives.
IPS UN Bureau Report
BELÉM, Brazil, Oct 19 2026 (IPS) - In 2024, as floodwaters approached Lutalo Canti’s home in Porto Alegre, Brazil, he lifted some furniture off the floor and left in a hurry. Extreme rainfall in the country’s southern region had caused local rivers to overflow. The flooding would eventually reach more than 400 municipalities and impact over 2 million people.
When waters finally receded, Canti, 61, was shocked to see the damage to his house, which also served as a terreiro—a sacred space for the practice of Afro-Brazilian religions.
These beliefs, which date back to enslaved Africans and their descendants, have around 1.85 million followers in Brazil, per the latest national census. Terreiros are at the heart of these traditions, serving as spaces where religious leaders honor deities and spiritual entities.
Between water damage, sewage contamination, and mold, he estimates losses to the house around US$15,000 (R$80,000). About half the damage was to his home, and the rest to religious objects, including ceremonial clothing and sacred figures.
Lutalo Canti estimates flood losses of around US$15,000 to his home and terreiro, which is pictured here before the flood. Credit: Lutalo Canti
Two years later, Canti still hasn’t recovered everything lost and feels largely left out of donations and other recovery efforts. “We have received no help. Nothing,” he told IPS. He blames religious racism.
A new study shows that Canti is not alone. Since the floods, researchers from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and the region’s Council of Terreiro People have been surveying the regional terreiros. The findings, which are just now being published, document widespread reports of discrimination during and after the disaster.
“Terreiros experienced severe religious racism,” said Cláudia Pires, one of the researchers involved in the study. “That includes difficulties accessing food and water, lack of access to their own spaces, as well as delays or a complete lack of response from public authorities to their needs.”
Immediately after the disaster, out of 711 terreiros surveyed, almost all (94.1%) reported structural damage—with more than half of those completely destroyed.
In the months that followed, more in-depth interviews with 241 terreiro leaders indicated an ongoing crisis. Follow-up data shows that more than 80% of those leaders reported emotional harm and forced displacement.
As they struggled to recover, many of them suspended religious gatherings for months, while 3.5% closed permanently. “That was the saddest finding for us,” said Tanara Furtado, a co-author of the study. “It may seem like a small number, but it represents the disappearance of history, ancestry, and traditions. For Afro-Brazilian religions, that is profound.”
Lutalo Canti lost religious objects, including ceremonial clothing and sacred figures, in a severe flood. Credit: Lutalo Canti
Barriers to Receiving Aid
The study shows discrimination reports beginning in the early days of the disaster.
While many flood victims were evacuated to shelters, Afro-Brazilian religious practitioners often did not feel welcome in these spaces. “When people saw their guias (sacred necklaces), they were treated badly,” Furtado said. “Many ended up staying in friends’ and relatives’ homes, sometimes 25 people sharing a house with a single bathroom and no running water.”
And even as donations poured in from across Brazil, several reported much of that aid failed to reach them.
In a telephone interview, Pai Valdir de Oxalá, 55, recalled the challenges of accessing basic supplies. The babalorixá, or Afro-Brazilian religious leader, is the president of the Council of Terreiro Peoples of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (CPTERGS).
After his own terreiro was flooded in the municipality of Guaíba, he arranged for an out-of-state organization to send food, water, and other supplies to around 400 followers of nearby terreiros.
“When the truck arrived, they noticed our religion and refused to leave the donations unless I said a Christian prayer,” he recalled. “This goes against my beliefs and is an aggressive form of religious racism. But I had no choice. People didn’t have what to eat, drink, or wear. So I prayed.”
Iyá Paty de Xangô, also known as Mãe Patrícia, says she continued to face discrimination long after the disaster. The floods triggered a landslide that buried her religious site in the municipality of Feliz. The property includes several residences, ritual spaces, and a library.
“We submitted more than 40 official requests to city hall asking for help,” she said. “Even though we are a public-utility institution, it took them two months to come over with machinery, while other private properties were being cleared.”
In 2024, a technical report by Brazil’s Federal Public Defender’s Office (DPU) concluded that the local government showed “resistance to providing emergency assistance and repairing the damage” at her site. The document also found that public authorities had been “selective in providing assistance to religious entities.”
At the time, the municipality of Feliz attributed the delay in assistance to the scale of the disaster. In a letter, officials stated that they did “not have sufficient personnel and machinery to respond to all requests immediately.”
Patrícia eventually turned to the courts. In July 2025, she sued the municipality, the state government, and the owners of a neighboring property, seeking measures to protect her site from future landslides.
Religious Racism in a Changing Climate
Baba Hexa, a theologian and babalorixá spiritual leader, argues that the climate crisis is amplifying vulnerabilities that have long existed in these communities. “This is simply the continuation of a historical process,” he said. “Since at least the 19th century, Afro-Brazilian religious traditions have faced persecution.”
He believes the root of this racism lies in Brazilian society’s extreme “Christian-centrism,” which he says has led to intolerance toward other religions. He also points to longstanding anti-Black racism. “When Christian-centrism and racism converge, they produce this religious racism that we are seeing.”
Hexa says this discrimination now spans across many parts of society. “We have faced persecution from the police to the medical establishment,” he said. “Laws against quackery and charlatanism were even created specifically to persecute Afro-Brazilian religious traditions.”
The UFRGS study suggests these experiences remain widespread. Of the 241 religious leaders interviewed, 70.8% said they had suffered religious racism from neighbors, public authorities, police, Evangelicals, Catholics, and others. Of those, 47% said they experienced it frequently.
Researchers argue that this discrimination has in turn made these communities more vulnerable to climate disasters. Pires said many terreiros have been pushed to peripheral areas that are overlooked in city planning. “When it rains, these peripheral areas end up being sacrificed,” she said. “I think sacrifice is a very important word here.”
Super El Niño
As a powerful El Niño brings more extreme weather to southern Brazil, the researchers continue monitoring terreiros across the region. Since August, almost 100 have reported damage related to extreme weather.
“This is our new normal,” said Furtado. “We have terreiros that were affected by the 2024 floods and are already being affected again by winds, rains, and floods.”
In the municipality of Canoas, babalorixá Júlio César Santos, 47, has been watching the weather closely. In 2024, his terreiro, where he practices Umbanda among other Afro-Brazilian traditions, was completely submerged. Nearly two years later, the space remains unfinished, despite more than US$15,000 (R$80,000) spent on repairs.
“When it rains, I get very nervous,” he said. “It’s a fear that stays with us.”
Santos has thought about leaving his house due to the risk of future flooding but says he does not have the funds to buy a new home. He was found ineligible for a housing assistance program for flood victims. “It’s not as simple as finding another house,” he said. “I need land and access to nature to practice my religion.”
He also needs the approval of orixás—spiritual deities—to move his terreiro to another location. “It is the orixá who will choose,” he said. “It is not me, Júlio, who decides.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
Oct 19 2026 (IPS) -
CIVICUS discusses the persecution of Uyghurs and activism in exile with Rushan Abbas, an Uyghur American activist, founder and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs and chair of the Executive Committee of the World Uyghur Congress.
Rushan Abbas
Why did you leave Xinjiang?
I was born in Ürümchi, Xinjiang’s regional capital, during the Cultural Revolution. I started my activism as a student at Xinjiang University, where I co-organised pro-democracy protests in 1985 and 1988. In 1985, we mobilised over 20,000 students from seven universities, institutes and technical schools across the city. We demanded equality and an end to the forced sterilisation of Uyghur women and to nuclear testing in the region.
Those years brought a brief period of openness, but retaliation against the organisers came quickly. I was interrogated and, although I graduated with the highest academic honours, my job offer was withdrawn. All my prospects were denied. So in 1989, I left for the USA to pursue higher education and look for freedom and democracy.
Has danger followed you into exile?
It has, and it hit my family directly. In the early 1990s, as soon as I started working with US politicians, my father, a high-level academic in Ürümchi, lost his job at 59 in retaliation for my advocacy. In 2018, just days after I spoke publicly at the Hudson Institute, a Washington DC think tank, about the mass detentions, Chinese authorities abducted my sister Gulshan Abbas. She’s a retired physician, a mother of two and a grandmother of four, and she had never been political.
In December 2019, Chinese state media outlet CGTN denied my sister existed and accused me of making up cases and spreading rumours overseas. In December 2020, the authorities finally acknowledged Gulshan had been secretly sentenced to 20 years in prison, obviously on fabricated charges. Her case is one of the clearest examples of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses kin punishment and transnational repression to silence Uyghurs. My sister turned 64 this June. She’s still in a Chinese prison because I exercised my freedom of speech. We have no picture or video of her. No one has been able to visit her and we have received no independent report on her health or wellbeing.
I quit my job after Gulshan’s detention to campaign full time for her freedom and for the Uyghurs suffering what’s effectively an ongoing genocide. Transnational repression has followed me ever since, in the form of cyberattacks, defamation, fabricated court documents, harassment and intimidation. A video appeared on YouTube calling for my execution and that of my husband, Abdulhakim Idris. I have received emails asking what colour rifle I would prefer to be shot with. After I published my memoir, fake books claiming to tell my life story appeared on Amazon. My organisation, Campaign for Uyghurs, has experienced persistent cyberattacks. My case is not unique. Uyghurs in the diaspora and those who speak out continue to suffer transnational repression.
Why does the Chinese government target Uyghurs?
The Chinese government targets us because of our distinct ethnic identity and heritage and because we are the owners of the land we inherited from our ancestors. Our Muslim faith and our culture and language stand in the way of Beijing’s absolute control. Our faith in God, rather than the CCP, as the ultimate authority threatens the regime. This fear drives the regime to try to erase our culture and beliefs.
Economic interests are also at stake. The Uyghur region is rich in natural resources, including coal, natural gas, petroleum, rare earths and critical minerals such as uranium. It accounts for 20 per cent of the world’s cotton, 35 per cent of its solar-grade polysilicon, used in solar panels, 10 per cent of its aluminium and PVC production and 70 per cent of China’s tomato production.
Geography matters too. The region connects China with Central Asia and the Middle East and is a gateway to Africa and Europe, including the Balkans. Once the heart of the ancient Silk Road, it now hosts four of the six major Belt and Road Initiative land routes, part of China’s global infrastructure programme. This makes it key to China’s economic and geopolitical ambitions. The result has been ever-tighter control and securitisation, which has escalated into full-fledged genocide.
What does this persecution look like?
The CCP imposes forced labour, mass arbitrary detention and imprisonment, mass surveillance and restrictions on cultural and religious life. In 2025, there were 3.36 million forced labour transfers and over a million children were placed in state-run boarding schools, where they are raised cut off from their cultural heritage. The Uyghur language is banned in schools. Uyghur books and religious texts have been burned. Uyghur women are subjected to forced abortion, sterilisation and marriage to men from the dominant Han ethnic group.
China’s government claims these policies bring stability, but stability for who? This is a system where the government exercises unchecked power to detain, punish, silence and watch people for their beliefs, their identity and their demands for human dignity.
How is Campaign for Uyghurs pushing for accountability?
We document abuses, bring evidence to policymakers and international institutions and support Uyghur-led advocacy. Central to our work is equipping Uyghur women and young people in the diaspora with the knowledge and practical skills to lead advocacy efforts. We have run around 20 advocacy workshops worldwide, and we are proud to see a new generation of young Uyghur activists taking the lead.
We also work with civil society groups, interfaith organisations, think tanks and universities to turn evidence into tangible policy action. Our campaigns have contributed to US laws, including the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, and our coalition-building has helped put the Uyghur crisis on the political agenda.
With investigative partners, we exposed Volkswagen’s sham audit and its attempts to conceal links to state-imposed forced labour. We worked with The New York Times to reveal that cotton from the Uyghur region was used to make the viral Labubu dolls manufactured by Pop Mart. This work connects evidence from the ground with public scrutiny and action.
Why has there been so little international action since the UN’s landmark 2022 report?
China has enormous economic and political leverage. Many governments and companies are reluctant to jeopardise diplomatic, trade and investment ties, or have simply been pressured into silence. Such is China’s influence that the UN refused to debate human rights abuses in the Uyghur region.
There is also an often underestimated propaganda problem. China has spent years building a global media apparatus. It uses state broadcasters, partnerships with foreign media outlets, sponsored trips for journalists and influencers and coordinated messaging to drown out credible research and human rights reporting. China does not necessarily need the world to believe its propaganda. Creating doubt and making people hesitate to act can be enough.
Time is another obstacle. Every day without meaningful consequences normalises abuses, and a human rights crisis becomes the accepted status quo.
What should governments and the UN do?
Lawmakers should pass legislation to address transnational repression, ban products made with state-imposed forced labour and provide stronger protection for Uyghurs seeking refuge.
Governments should use existing sanctions tools, including the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows sanctions on individual human rights abusers, to hold officials responsible for the genocide accountable.
Governments should also refuse to extradite Uyghurs to China. No one should be sent back to a country where they may face genocide.
Governments and international institutions must keep individual cases and the broader human rights crisis on the agenda. They should keep existing official genocide determinations in place and secure the release of political prisoners such as my sister. Human rights should never be treated as secondary to broader relations with Beijing.
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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SEE ALSO
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BANGKOK, Thailand, Oct 19 2026 (IPS) - Bangkok hosted two summits last week. Inside the Queen Sirikit Convention Center, more than 15,000 finance ministers, central bank governors and CEOs of the world’s largest banks and corporations attended the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. They flew in business class and slept in five-star hotels to talk about growth, inflation and public spending, and thus to decide the destiny of billions of people they will never meet. Outside, hundreds of social movements and civil society organizations held the People’s Assembly, for the 99% whose voice would not be heard. They flew economy and often shared modest rooms. The first was the summit of money and power. The second, the summit of the rest of us.
Isabel Ortiz
The IMF report World Economic Outlook lifts global growth to 3.1% for 2026 on the back of investment in artificial intelligence (AI), a boom confined to only a handful of countries and a technology the IMF itself says will affect 40% of jobs worldwide, and that a third of jobs in high-income countries are at risk to be replaced by IA.
Both institutions presented private finance as the engine of development: the World Bank’s Development Committee agenda in Bangkok was centered on mobilizing private capital with public guarantees. In plain language, subsidizing large corporations with public money while prescribing cuts to the public services ordinary people depend on.
No communiqué was agreed in any ministerial committee. The corridor talk was how far both institutions have bent to the will of Washington: directors replaced (at the World Bank by private sector executives, most with no development experience); work on climate and gender shelved; and, above all, the chainsaw of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency applied worldwide, with the myth that tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity cuts that impoverish the working and middle classes are necessary.
Outside the convention center, the story was completely different. The People’s Assembly worked through the alternatives in over 50 sessions to formulate a new system accountable to people and planet, not to the 1%. Behind them stand nearly 400 million people: 200 million small farmers of La Via Campesina, 191 million workers of global unions, and tens of thousands of civil society organizations. There were protests in Bangkok, and in more than 150 cities across 38 countries, including Argentina, Congo, Germany, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Uganda and the United Kingdom, with people marching peacefully under banners such as “We are the 99%” or “Tax elites and corporations” reflecting the aims:
• Tax the 1% not ordinary people: Progressive taxes on wealth, large corporations and big tech, and an end to tax havens, with an equitable UN tax convention, instead of consumption taxes and other taxes squeezing the working and middle classes.• End austerity cuts: Public services and social protection for all; fund the right to health, education, social security, housing, water, instead of privatization and public private partnerships that shift costs to people.
• Debt justice: No country should cut health or education to pay creditors as happens in 51 countries today; audit and cancel illegitimate debts, end IMF surcharges and loan conditions, and a UN framework convention on sovereign debt instead of restructurings run by creditors.
• Climate justice: Make polluters pay, phase out fossil fuels, and a just transition.
• Democratize global economic governance: The IMF and World Bank are not the solution but part of the problem, as a few rich countries (and their corporations) hold most of the voting power (and only the US has a veto); move decisions on debt, tax and finance to the UN, where every country has one vote.
• Gender justice: Women are half of the world population but just an afterthought for policy makers, gender-responsive policies and budgets, public services, redistribution of care work.
• Decent jobs: Employment respecting international labor standards and living wages, union rights and protection for migrant workers.
• Food sovereignty, fair crop prices for farmers, agroecology instead of agrobusiness, land rights for indigenous peoples and small farmers, and rights guaranteed by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants.
• Industrialization of developing countries, oriented to domestic and regional markets, instead of exporting raw materials and importing everything else.
• No more corporate impunity, promotion of private finance and privatization: public services can be funded by taxing the 1%, a binding UN treaty on business and human rights, and fair trade rules instead of investor-state arbitration that lets corporations sue governments.
• AI: Slow down and put AI under public control, binding public regulation of AI covering data harvesting, manipulation of public opinion, job destruction, civil liberties and environmental damage.
• Stop authoritarianism and the far-right: Defend civic space, Human Rights and democratic institutions against the authoritarian turn of governments.
• Peace and an end to the militarization that diverts budgets from social spending to rearmament, and an end to occupation and genocide in Palestine.
Another world is possible, and last week it was formulated a short distance from the IMF/World Bank convention center. Finance ministers must now choose whom they serve: the millions of citizens who elected them, or the 1%, by bending to pressure from the IMF and the World Bank that deepens inequality.
Isabel Ortiz, Director, Global Social Justice, was Director at the International Labor Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, and a senior official at the UN and the Asian Development Bank.
IPS UN Bureau
BULAWAYO, Oct 16 2026 (IPS) - An Ebola death last week in Kenya is highlighting the urgency of Africa’s public health emergency preparedness and how the continent’s governments are committing their national budgets to the health sector.
The Kenya case is serving as a call to arms in the fight against Africa’s public health emergencies and how locally coordinated efforts are adequately equipped to contain the spread of communicable diseases.
“Health emergency preparedness gives us a head start, and Kenya has put important outbreak control measures in place,” Janabi said in a 6 October media brief, which was in stark contrast to concerns raised in the DRC that life-saving medical supplies only arrived ten days later from neighbouring countries, effectively allowing Ebola to leave a trail of death.
As the disease surges at its north Kivu epicentre in the Democratic Republic of Congo, questions have returned about how the shuttering of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has devastated public health emergency responses across Africa.
Last week, Doctors Without Borders warned that the current Ebola strain was spreading so fast for emergency health workers “it was like fighting a megafire,” further raising concerns over how the DRC and neighbouring countries will tackle the crisis amid increasingly limited resources.
Despite being often cited as having vast mineral wealth, the DRC’s Ebola response has been plagued by an under-funded health sector where international humanitarian agencies are struggling to provide basic medical care.
As the new Ebola strain took root in the DRC’s east, Amadou Bocoum, CARE International’s DRC Country Director, lamented that “with proper funding, we would have had prepositioned stock and begun distributing critical supplies like PPE from day one, but instead, we started with nothing and lost 10 days.”
These funding concerns would be raised weeks later by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) at the 76th Session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa in Addis Ababa in August.
UNECA noted that “Africa’s health financing model remains structurally fragile,” with governments failing to allocate adequate budgets for the health sector.
African governments and other health sector players have already raised alarm over the Trump Administration’s decision to ice the USAID, which triggered a continent-wide shortage of anything from condoms to malaria and HIV/AIDS drugs.
At the WHO Regional Committee conference, UNECA raised concerns that “external health assistance was down almost 30 per cent,” and as Ebola spreads, the effects of that deficit are being felt with catastrophic consequences.
The impact of the reliance on overseas development assistance was made clear by Aboubakri Diaw, who leads UNECA’s Sustainable Financing Initiative, who told the gathering that “Africa does not have a reform deficit. It has a sustainable financed-reform deficit.”
“Health financing strategies sit on shelves. Insurance schemes are legislated but struggling to be capitalised. Benefit packages are defined but not costed into medium-term expenditure frameworks. A reform without a budget line does not constitute a policy,” Diaw said.
Yet it is a commitment African governments made in 2001 at the Abuja Declaration to allocate 15 percent of national budgets to health, but countries have fallen short, with some allocations ranging between as little as 2 percent and 12 percent, according to the World Health Organisation.
To address the public health funding crisis, UNECA says what remains crucial is “a fundamental reset in how African governments and their finance ministries fund health systems” in a continent where millions lack access to and cannot afford basic medical care.
“External aid covered more than 30 per cent of health expenditure, and in some 13 countries the ECA has looked at, households pay more for health than their own governments do,” Diaw said, adding that “many countries on the continent now spend more on servicing debt than on public health.”
Amid these challenges and competing public spending priorities, it is not yet clear how governments will navigate these new public health funding realities, as pressure from international lending institutions for African countries to repay billions of loans still remains.
Analysts however see the funding crisis as part of Africa’s broader political architecture where short-term planning by sitting governments prioritises projects closely linked to the election cycle.
“Governments have to balance health against infrastructure, security, education, social protection and other priorities,” said Pakhani Mhazo, a public health researcher based in South Africa.
“However, health preparedness often produces benefits that are not immediately visible to voters. For example, if you invest in disease surveillance, laboratories and emergency systems and successfully prevent an outbreak from becoming a crisis, there is no obvious event that voters can see as the result of that investment,” Mhazo told IPS.
Meanwhile, without any clear or immediate sources to fill the funding gaps left by international aid, African governments have their work cut out, and as Claver Gatete, UNECA Executive Secretary, reminded African ministers during the High-Level Forum on Sustainable Health Financing in April this year, “Health is not expenditure; it is investment – in people, in productivity and in prosperity.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 16 2026 (IPS) - With the city enveloped in a cloak of haze, the urgency of tackling the climate crisis could hardly have been clearer as the four-day Global Tipping Points Conference 2026 drew to a close at Malaysia’s Sunway University on Thursday.
At the conference, speakers stressed the need for humanity to remain within planetary boundaries, or the “safe operating space”.
Crossing these boundaries could have catastrophic consequences, warned Professor Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the conference organisers.
He highlighted the dangers of triggering irreversible changes in major Earth systems. Some of the bulwarks have already been breached, manifesting themselves in the form of collapsed ice sheets, bleached corals, shrinking wildlife habitats and the slow death of rainforests.
Dong Wang’s park in Bangkok. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim
‘Tipping points’ conference brings together climate scientists, activists, and finance gurus; highlights success stories from around the world
All of this threatens food security, causes displacement, damages human health and destabilises economies.
With plenty of reasons to be pessimistic – social and political polarisation, rising inequality and poverty, and wars among them – the message was nevertheless one of urgency rather than despair. “The science has matured, evidence is there… it is time for action… that’s the natural step,” said Sultan Nazrin Shah of Perak.
But there is another side to the tipping-point story.
Professor Timothy Lenton, chair of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter and one of the organisers, spoke about “positive tipping points.” Lenton, who has studied tipping points since the 1990s, argued these could help societies move towards more sustainable futures. Citing Pakistan’s solar boom and Norway’s rapid adoption of electric vehicles, he pointed to transformative shifts that can happen within a relatively short period.
But protecting ecosystems is as important as technologies, said Acehnese forest conservator Farwiza Farhan, while making a compelling case for the protection of the Leuser Ecosystem – a tropical rainforest reserve in Sumatra and one of the last places on Earth where tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutans coexist in the wild.
Others turned to imagining the future. Anab Jain, co-founder of London-based Superflux, described Mitigation of Shock, an immersive installation set in a fictional 2050. Visitors enter an imagined apartment shaped by a future in which some of the most severe impacts of climate change have already occurred. More than 100,000 people have visited it since 2017, she said.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, broadened the discussion to social, economic and political tipping points. If these systems tipped in the wrong direction, he warned, they could trigger a “cascade of devastating consequences.”
Planetary changes and social, economic and political conditions are deeply interconnected, said Sachs, making cooperation essential to averting disaster. He repeatedly pointed to poverty and inequality as forces that could deepen instability but argued that all was not lost. The tools for change – economic wellbeing, social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and peace and cooperation among nations – already exist, he said.
Discussions also covered deforestation, land-use change, governance failures and the rise of artificial intelligence. Turning tools into action, however, requires money, policy and political will.
“But where’s the money?” many asked, urging encouragement for supportive policies and a pipeline of “bankable projects” that protect nature, so that economic incentives favour regeneration over extraction. One such approach came from Dr Ralph Chami, founder of Blue Green Future, who outlined his concept of “regenerative GDP”, i.e. recognising the value of “living nature” and accounting for it on the balance sheet.
Timothy Lenton explaining the positive tipping points. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim
“Why kill the goose that lays the [golden] egg?” he asked, contrasting a living coral reef in the Maldives – which provides a habitat for fish and plays a role in the marine carbon cycle – with a bleached one that can threaten both tourism and fisheries.
But money and markets are only part of the equation. Dr Jemilah Mahmood, executive director of the Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University, insisted on channelling youth energy. “Give them space at policy [discussions], send them to COPs not as tokenism, but let them negotiate. It’s their future,” she said.
As an example of what young people can achieve, Mahmood pointed to Pacific Island law students whose campaign helped bring climate change and human rights before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Their efforts contributed to a landmark advisory opinion in July 2025, clarifying states’ legal obligations on climate change. Climate litigation and the role of legal action in holding governments accountable also featured in the wider conversation.
The highlight of the conference was definitely the success stories from around the world that offered the most tangible hope.
For example, Chinese urban planner Dong Wang, who specialises in sponge cities and ecological planning, shared a low-cost, low-maintenance and replicable project in the heart of Bangkok – the transformation of a former tobacco factory into the 102-acre Benjakitti Forest Park, to which more than 200 bird species have since returned.
Eva Gladek of Metabolic, who spoke about NetZeroCities, showed how 17 old houseboats in Amsterdam were retrofitted with clean technologies and transformed into energy-efficient offices and workspaces.
Mumbai-based Sheela Patel, director of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres, drew on five decades of work with people living in informal settlements to highlight another kind of urban resilience. Through the ‘Roof Over Our Heads’ campaign, women supported by young professionals are helping make homes more resilient to rain, strong winds and extreme heat.
And these efforts are not simply one-off experiments. Patel said the work has been documented and shared, with more than 100 labs established across 20 countries to help communities test and replicate solutions. Gladek, meanwhile, is helping 100 European cities work towards climate neutrality.
The thought-provoking conference had opened on a note of faith, with Sultan Nazrin Shah speaking of humanity’s responsibility to care for the planet, which he said “comes with privilege and obligation” but is “not a burden to be feared”.
It ended on a rather philosophical and spiritual note, with British singer-writer Yusuf ‘Cat Stevens’ Islam urging people to become the change rather than expecting the world to change. “Never stop being a child, as there is light in their eyes and they see hope,” he said, also stressing the need to bring spirituality into education. “Look how the curriculum has been colonised.”
For positive tipping points to hold, science alone will not be enough, concluded Mahmood. It will also need the voices of those whose futures are at stake.
Note: Published with the permission of Dawn.
IPS UN Bureau Report
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 2026 (IPS) - The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) new report, which addresses the rapid global transformations driven by artificial intelligence (AI), demographic shifts, climate change, and conflict, highlights the widening disparities in employment, social inclusion, and access to services.
The report titled The New Economics of Social Inclusion: Making Transformations Work for All was released on October 5.
Despite decades of progress in income, health, and education that drove development worldwide, the report warns that millions of people risk falling behind. Drawing on data collected over 25 years and across 168 countries, this year’s edition introduces a new Socially Inclusive Transformation (SIT) dashboard, which examines how a nation’s economic, digital, and energy transformations align with social and economic inclusion.
“On one hand, rapid transformations are reshaping our world: digital technologies, artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and the demographic and economic transition,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres during a press briefing at the UN Headquarters coinciding with the report’s release. “On the other hand, these transformations are not working for all. Poverty and deprivation are widespread. Billions are locked out of opportunities because of income, gender, age, disability, ethnicity, or many other fault lines that undermine equality.”
In 2025, UN DESA found that roughly 58 percent of workers were informally employed, while approximately 27 percent of young women aged 15 to 24 were neither employed nor in education or training programs. The same year, UN DESA estimated that around 26 percent of the world’s population, or 2.2 billion, still lacked internet access. Roughly 730 million people lacked access to electricity. The report underscores that even among digitally connected communities, affordability and service quality continue to hinder meaningful participation.
Between 2000 and 2024, the agency reported that more than 50 countries experienced rising income inequality, including in 23 high-income countries. These gaps continue to stifle productivity and weaken community resilience to economic shocks from technological shifts, climate disasters, and geopolitical tensions.
Marginalized groups—including women and girls, youths, disabled persons, migrants, and Indigenous peoples—disproportionately experience limited access to essential resources, economic opportunities, and decision-making processes.
Rashmi Banga, Chief, Development Research Branch, Economic Analysis and Policy Division at UN DESA, stressed that transformations do not automatically translate into inclusion. She noted that none of the top five best-performing countries in transformation, specifically Malta, Ireland, the U.S., Singapore, and China, rank among the top five in inclusiveness, which mainly consist of European countries. The report reveals that numerous African countries continue to fall behind, especially with the proliferation of new digital technologies and the energy transition.
The report highlights the compounding climate crisis as a major driver of social exclusion, noting that approximately 887 million of the 1.1 billion people living in multidimensional poverty are also exposed to at least one major climate hazard. These impacts are most pronounced in regions entrenched in humanitarian crises, where communities have the fewest resources to adapt, significantly threatening long-term economic resilience.
Guterres warned that cascading global shocks, such as the Middle East crisis, are compounding existing threats through rising food, fertilizer, and fuel prices, resulting in more than 100 countries lowering their gross-domestic product forecasts this year alone.
UN DESA also identifies the growing digital divide driven by artificial intelligence as a major threat to social inclusion. While the report shows AI’s potential in enhancing agricultural productivity and generating meaningful gains for rural communities, it warns that significant threats remain. Entire communities with limited affordable, digital connectivity, coupled with insufficient digital skills, risk falling further behind.
Bjørg Sandkjær, UN DESA’s Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination, told reporters that AI often reproduces “biases that exist in the world today” during hiring processes. She warned that this has severe implications for employment, particularly for women.
Banga added that equitable and effective AI governance is critical in preventing these biases and fostering economic and social inclusion. She highlighted India and China as examples of countries implementing AI education into school curriculum, while France has established access to digital infrastructure as a legal right.
Additional data from the report reveals that delaying social inclusion carries a “measurable economic cost.” UN DESA estimates show that if investments in social protection mechanisms are delayed by another decade, countries could face a potential decline in economic output by roughly 12 percent compared to countries that invested early. Conversely, efforts to include young people in employment could raise national GDP by 9.6 percent over the next decade.
“Inclusive societies are more productive, resilient, and prosperous,” said Guterres. “The report urges investments in education, job creation, and skill training, so all people can benefit from technological advancements and the growth of new industries. It calls for inclusive institutions and policymaking to ensure all voices are represented, and it advocates equity-focused approaches to labor markets and taxation to open opportunities for all people, no matter who they are or where they live.”
Banga emphasized that national investments alone cannot achieve adequate social inclusion without strong international cooperation. Multilateral support is pivotal in expanding fiscal space, providing long-term development financing, and widening access to digital infrastructure. Sandkjær called on governments to reframe social inclusion not only as an economic imperative, but as a strategic investment in long-term stability, resilience, and productivity. She also urged for greater integration of social commitments into macroeconomic planning.
“As transformations gather pace, there is no time to be lost by bringing social commitments into the heart of economic policymaking; we can unleash a virtuous cycle of greater inclusion and stronger growth,” said Sandkjær.
IPS UN Bureau Report