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Syrian women speak out about obstetric violence while giving birth. Credit: Sonia Al-Ali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
ALEPPO, Syria, Aug 11 2026 (IPS)

The abuse 30-year-old Nour Al-Badawi experienced in an Aleppo public hospital while giving birth resulted in her having two major follow-up operations and left her with depression and anxiety.

She is one Syrian woman who spoke out to IPS about “obstetric violence” – a term that refers to physical, verbal, or psychological abuse by healthcare providers; medical interventions performed without the pregnant woman’s informed consent; and violations of her dignity and privacy within healthcare facilities.

The experience of these women extends far beyond medical challenges and harsh humanitarian conditions.

Obstetric violence encompasses all forms of abuse, neglect, violations of dignity and privacy, or the performance of medical interventions without informed consent.

Al-Badawi describes her most recent childbirth experience as one of the harshest chapters of her life.

“Poverty forces us to give birth in public hospitals and endure the mistreatment that takes place there. Because of the violence and abuse I experienced during childbirth, I no longer consider becoming pregnant again.”

Nour explains that her suffering was not limited to verbal insults and violations of her dignity but extended to violent practices during the delivery process, including forceful pressure on her abdomen, as well as an improperly performed procedure to widen the birth canal. This resulted in serious uterine complications that required two surgical operations to treat an obstetric urinary fistula.

The experience completely transformed Nour’s life. She developed severe depression and a constant desire for isolation. Her family also faced significant financial burdens to cover the costs of her treatment, forcing her to sell some of her belongings and resort to borrowing money.

Despite what happened to Nour, her husband chose not to make any comment and said he would not file a complaint or take legal action against the healthcare centre where the delivery took place, fearing further disputes and additional difficulties. Instead, he assumed responsibility for caring for his wife and covering her treatment expenses.

Farida Al-Hassoun (26), from Hama, also remembers the day she gave birth to her first child at a public hospital as one of the most difficult days of her life — not only because of the pain of labour, but also because of the way she was treated by nurses and midwives inside the hospital.

“I was screaming from the pain, but a nurse told me to be quiet and said I was exaggerating. No one explained what they were going to do. I was shocked when they stitched the wound resulting from childbirth without anaesthesia. At that moment, I felt indescribable pain,” Al-Hassoun said.

She points out that her fear increased as her questions were ignored and she received no psychological support during childbirth. After leaving the hospital, she was unable to forget the experience and continued to suffer from anxiety for months whenever she remembered the delivery room.

Al-Hassoun asks: “Can a Syrian woman give birth with dignity, or will violence inside delivery rooms remain a silent experience that no one steps forward to stop?”

Dr Ola Al-Omar (36), an obstetrician and gynaecologist, discusses the risks of obstetric violence, saying:

“In Syria, years of war and economic collapse have placed increasing pressure on the healthcare system, which has affected the quality of maternal care services. Shortages of medical staff, overcrowded hospitals, and declining resources have all contributed to creating an environment in which women are exposed to mistreatment during pregnancy and childbirth.”

She said that obstetric violence took many forms, including performing medical interventions without explaining them to the patient or obtaining her informed consent; using humiliating expressions; blaming women for crying out during labour; failing to respect privacy inside delivery rooms; depriving women of sufficient information about their health condition; ignoring their pain; or delaying the provision of necessary care.

She emphasises that every woman has the right to receive respectful maternity care, including the preservation of her dignity and privacy, obtaining informed consent before any medical intervention, receiving the necessary information to make decisions regarding her health, and being protected from humiliation, discrimination, or neglect.

Social and Psychological Counsellor Sereen Al-Sheikh (33), from the city of Idlib in northern Syria, speaks about the suffering of pregnant women, saying: “I have met many women who were subjected to artificial induction of labour to accelerate the delivery process, even though the mother’s cervix was already dilated, as well as repeated vaginal examinations that caused severe distress and trauma. In addition, patients are not allowed to have companions present during childbirth, and their movement is sometimes restricted.”

Al-Sheikh explains that these practices leave long-term psychological effects, including fear of becoming pregnant again, postpartum psychological disorders, and a loss of trust in healthcare institutions.

“Most women choose silence out of fear of social stigma, as well as because it is difficult to prove that violations or abuses have occurred. These incidents often take place without evidence or witnesses and, therefore, pass without accountability,” she says.

A childbirth experience may end with the arrival of a newborn into the world, but for some Syrian women, what follows is a long journey of fear and trauma.

At a moment that is supposed to be among the safest and most reassuring experiences in a woman’s life, some Syrian women find themselves facing an entirely different reality: cries that no one listens to, medical procedures carried out without explanation or consent, and harsh words that remain engraved in their memories for years after childbirth.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Repeated climate shocks, mounting debt and low employment prospects put greater pressures on families in Afghanistan that were “struggling to get by”. Credit: UN Photo/Luke Powell

By Shuli Wong
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 11 2026 (IPS)

“Mainly, people tell me they’re exhausted. They’re exhausted from being poor, from being hungry, from repeated climate shocks, mounting debt, and the daily struggle to provide for their families,” Olga Cherevko, Spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Afghanistan, told UN reporters on August 4.

Traveling across Afghanistan, from Bamyan and Herat, Paktia, Khost, and most recently Nuristan after the devastating flash floods, Ms. Cherevko describes a country hit by multiple overlapping crises. These crises have created a humanitarian crisis in which food insecurity, disasters, displacement, and dwindling aid have converged.

Last week, Nuristan was hit by devastating flash floods where families lost loved ones, livelihoods, everything they owned, along with homes and infrastructure. Humanitarians moved quickly to deliver food, water, shelter, healthcare, protection, and psychosocial support; however, “when these floods hit, many people were already struggling to get by,” Ms. Cherevko said. Afghanistan is extremely vulnerable to climate shocks. “Communities barely have time to recover from one disaster when another one strikes…each shock pushes already vulnerable families deeper into poverty.

To help combat the compounding humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the 2026 humanitarian needs and response plan requested USD 1.71 billion to provide assistance to 17.5 million people in districts and communities facing the most acute and life-threatening conditions. However, the appeal has received only 26 percent of the required funding, creating a “very alarming” situation, “given the fact that we are seeing a lot of these indicators worsening, particularly malnutrition,” Ms. Cherevko warned. Afghanistan is encountering alarming rates of malnutrition, with OCHA’s nutrition partners noting that childhood wasting has worsened this year across three-quarters of the country.

These figures echo an alert from the World Food Programme (WFP) released last Tuesday. Nearly 14 million Afghans are facing acute hunger. However, funding cuts have resulted in only one in nine receiving WFP food assistance. Furthermore, 3.7 million children and 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are projected to be malnourished this year. In order to address the acute food needs across Afghanistan, WFP requires USD 900 million for emergency food assistance and nutrition programmes in 2026.

“We have not met needs in the first six months because we didn’t have money,” said John Aylieff, WFP Country Director for Afghanistan. “WFP still needs $500 million to address the acute food needs in the country.”

On top of the hunger crisis, restrictions on girls and women have compounded the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. These restrictions shape “almost every aspect of daily life” and “with every new restriction, women are pushed even further out of public life…when people become invisible, they risk becoming dispensable,” said Ms. Cherevko. When humanitarian workers cannot reach girls and women and when women cannot work, or girls cannot go to school, “the consequences extend far beyond individuals,” Cherevko added, and that these consequences ultimately affect “the country’s ability to recover.”

The restrictions placed on women and girls also add a layer of complications for humanitarian workers to even reach those in need. Credit: UNHCR/Oxygen Empire Media

Violence and displacement further add to the crises. Since 2023, approximately 6 million Afghans have been forcibly expelled from neighboring countries like Pakistan and Iran. The returnees have increased the strain on Afghanistan’s fragile economy, and for the returnees, there are “simply not enough jobs to sustain them”, Mr. Aylieff said.

Ms. Cherevko emphasized how many of the returnees are “coming into a country that is completely new for them”, where there are also limited prospects for work. UNHCR estimates that almost 3.1 million Afghan refugees require international protection across the sub-region. For 2026, UNHCR has requested just over USD 450 million for its Afghanistan situation funding; however, similar to OCHA’s and the WFP’s appeals, funding is far from being met.

Despite the emphasis on the need for continued and increased funding, Ms. Cherevko stressed that “humanitarian assistance alone cannot resolve these challenges”. She called for investment in medium- and long-term solutions centering on jobs, education and poverty reduction, in addition to emergency humanitarian assistance. Having worked in Afghanistan for years, Ms. Cherevko has seen the Afghan people show “extraordinary resilience through endless hardship”. Yet, she noted that“resilience should never become a substitute for opportunity or an excuse for the world just to watch and expect people to endure indefinitely without the support they need”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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ÄNDERUNGSANTRÄGE 1 - 99 - Entwurf einer Stellungnahme Gesamthaushaltsplan der Europäischen Union für das Haushaltsjahr 2027 – alle Einzelpläne
Ausschuss für auswärtige Angelegenheiten
Matjaž Nemec

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2026 - EP

Kenya submits a bid to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships as it seeks to become the first African nation to stage the flagship event.

Nigeria must go "back to the drawing board" after missing out on automatic qualification for the 2027 Women's World Cup, says keeper Chiamaka Nnadozie.

Ab heute blicken Leichtathletikfans nach England, wo die europäische Elite während einer Woche um EM-Gold kämpft. Möglichst schnell, möglichst hoch und möglichst weit: In 23 Disziplinen werden neue Kontinentalchampions gesucht. Hier gehts zum Programm.

UN Indonesia Solar power is widely used on the islands of Java, Madura, and Bali. Credit: UN News

By Delia Paul
MELBOURNE, Australia, Aug 10 2026 (IPS)

In much of the Asia-Pacific region, energy is a success story. Electricity access has greatly increased and the use of clean cooking fuels is now widespread. The region has kept pace with the rest of the world in adopting renewable energy. Many countries have made energy efficiency gains; the Republic of Korea is one of those in the lead worldwide. Progress has continued even in the face of recent energy crises sparked by the war in Ukraine and conflict over the Strait of Hormuz.

Yet, this year’s High Level Political Forum on sustainable development (IHLPF) in New York— a yearly event to review progress on the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) —sounded some warning bells.

With SDG 7 on energy, the international community agreed to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services. Clean cooking fuels are part of that transition. SDG 7 also set targets to increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix, and double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency. On all these measures, Asia-Pacific countries have done well. This year’s HLPF, however, raised some important questions.

Firstly, success is a matter of definition. In 2010, Central and South Asian countries accounted for 36 per cent of the world’s electricity-access deficit; by 2024, that proportion had shrunk to just 3 per cent, a turnaround that the UN’s latest report of progress on SDG 7 attributes to rapid grid expansion, regional power market integration, and rising incomes. That achievement is nuanced, however, when we consider the livelihood dimension, where many countries still face challenges especially in rural areas.

Vijay Modi, a professor at Columbia University and director of its Laboratory for Sustainable Energy Solutions, addressing HLPF delegates on the first day of the talks, noted that access is not the same as affordability. Affordable energy is needed, for example, to run the water pumps for farm irrigation, and to light shops that may want to extend their opening hours — aspects of electricity access that are missed, if focusing only on household-level energy services.

Secondly, generalised statistics can mask the true scale of the challenge that still remains. The share of people using clean fuels and technologies for cooking has nearly doubled across most of Asia since 2010. Central, South, East and Southeast Asian countries have done especially well: India alone is responsible for about 40 percent of the worldwide reduction in the clean-cooking access deficit, China for roughly 30 percent, and Indonesia for about 10 percent.

In terms of percentage points, this all looks great. In terms of absolute numbers, though, India still has the largest numbers of people without access to electricity services and clean cooking fuels; China ranks third in the world; Indonesia ranks 16th. These are countries with large populations, where a percentage point gained in access represents many more people than a percentage point gained in a smaller country. While their progress should be applauded, the challenge is far from over.

Third is the question of financing. From 2023 to 2024, international financial flows for clean energy fell in Central, South, East and Southeast Asia. That is a troubling trend, given that much remains to be done. The role of public utilities remains crucial.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Cambodia’s state utility, Electricité du Cambodge, transformed the fragmented, war-torn nation’s power grid into a unified network, partnering with independent power producers, using foreign investment to build transmission lines and power stations, and prioritising electricity connections and financing for low-income households. Such success is not a given.

Damilola Ogunbiyi, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-Chair of UN-Energy, reminded the HLPF that in Africa, some utilities have not achieved viability and are facing bankruptcy. “It’s about finance, at the end of the day,” she said, while highlighting that renewable energy is the least-cost pathway to meeting energy needs worldwide.

The current geopolitical situation only strengthens the case for increasing uptake of renewables and decreasing reliance on traditional fossil fuels, said Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). This process, he noted, could be accelerated through mini-grids, peak time management (strategies to reduce and shift electricity consumption away from peak demand times), and removal of trade barriers to renewable energy technologies. Some of this is already happening in Asia, but with just four years to go until the 2030 deadline for achieving the SDGs, UN monitoring shows that progress is insufficient.

Globally, four structural trends are holding back progress. They are explained in the 2026 UN report, “Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report.” Progress on reducing energy intensity has mainly been achieved in industry, and is now slowing. Energy efficiency standards don’t necessarily match the technology available in the marketplace. Demand for air conditioning has increased, pushing up electricity demand. Growth in electricity demand now outstrips the supply of renewable energy that is actually available. Tackling just one of these barriers — let’s say energy intensity, for example — would require tripling the rate of progress in the next four years.

For now, the UN has launched a new work programme to accelerate action leading up to the 2030 deadline for the SDGs. On the current rate of progress, the world will probably not meet all the SDG 7 targets. But, given the energy gains already made in this region, Asia-Pacific countries may do better than others.

Dr Delia Paul is an associate of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and is affiliated with Monash University’s Global Peace and Security research hub in Australia.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Joe Zinnbauer hat einen neuen Klub: Der ehemalige Trainer des FC St. Gallen unterschreibt bei Al-Hilal im Sudan. Zuletzt musste der Verein aus der Hauptstadtregion um Khartum wegen des Bürgerkrieges aber auf andere Ligen ausweichen.

Peter George attaching the solar lights and panels on the plastic design bags. Credit: Madina Kula Sheriff/IPS

By Madina Kula Sheriff
FREETOWN, Aug 10 2026 (IPS)

Growing up, Peter George, a young innovator in Bo District in Southern Region, Sierra Leone, watched people dump electronic waste near the farmland where his grandmother cultivated crops.

He told IPS that people would dump electronic waste, such as discarded batteries and other damaged electronic components, near the area where she grew crops, and the chemicals from the waste affected the crops and reduced yields.

But that experience triggered his curiosity and fascination with how electronic devices worked and led him to use e-waste to create solar lamps for students.

“We started using some of the electronic waste to develop solar lamps. These lamps helped students study at night, and we also donated some to other children,” George said.

However, George’s innovation shifted from solar lamps to recycling plastics to make backpacks as plastic pollution worsened in Bo.

“Many people often think plastic pollution is only a problem in Freetown, but the issue is also very serious in provincial cities like Bo. During the rainy season, the roads become flooded because water cannot flow properly in drains due to blockage by plastic waste. This disrupted our school and displaced people,” George said.

George later founded Ideal Technologies in 2018, a youth-led enterprise operating in Bo District that transforms plastic and electronic waste into solar-powered backpacks and lighting systems for school children.

Through his initiative, George believes he is tackling the problem of e-waste and plastic pollution in Sierra Leone, which has become a serious challenge.

The World Bank estimates that Sierra Leone generates about 130,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year, much of it from single-use plastic bottles, water sachets and plastic bags that pollute the country’s coastline and harm marine life. Globally, electronic waste is also rising rapidly.

The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 says the world generated 62 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022, but less than 22.3 percent was formally collected and recycled.

Authorities say plastic pollution has become a growing threat to Sierra Leone’s coastal ecosystems and tourism industry.

Yet, despite the scale of the challenge, Sierra Leone’s plastic waste management policy is still under development.

“I looked at everything happening around me and started thinking about how to solve the challenge of poor access to electricity, e-waste pollution and plastic pollution. I started developing solar-powered backpacks made from recycled plastic and e-waste.

“During the day, the backpacks are carried like ordinary school bags. At night the attached solar-powered lighting allows children in communities with limited electricity to continue studying after sunset,” George told IPS.

For him, innovation represents more than recycling. He says it is about changing the way people think about waste.

“Things that people saw as waste, I saw as solutions,” said Peter.

Turning Discarded Plastic into Livelihoods

Like George, Manty Sulman Beckley in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, refuses to see plastic as the end of a product’s life. Instead, she recycles waste into everyday items that she sells for a living.

For the past five years, Beckley has transformed single-use plastics into shopping bags, handbags, baskets, chairs, tables and bricks.

The climate activist and founder of the Beckma Empowerment Initiative said her passion for recycling began during childhood, watching her aunt repair and make household furniture. Inspired, she started fixing broken chairs at home.

“As a teenager, I started thinking about how to repair broken chairs around me. Gradually my passion for creating things grew, and as an adult, the passion developed into a plastic recycling initiative after I witnessed how plastic waste was destroying communities across Freetown,” she said.

To source materials, Beckley works with households and young waste collectors in her community.

Despite these efforts, she said securing enough recyclable material remains difficult.

“In my house and surrounding communities, I advocate against throwing plastic waste carelessly. I provide bags for households to collect their plastic waste, which I later gather for recycling.

“Even fifty full rice bags of single-use plastic are not enough to create items like bricks, baskets, and other products, meaning we constantly need to collect more,” she said.

Setbacks

These innovators believe recycling offers an opportunity to give waste a second life, but they say limited financial support and a lack of equipment continue to hinder progress.

For George, the lack of equipment for large-scale production is the key challenge.

“One of our greatest challenges is having the right tools and equipment. If there is greater investment in recycling, especially for young people, it could significantly change the story of single-use plastics, providing income for waste collectors and recyclers,” he told IPS.

But beyond this, Beckley said being a woman in the recycling and innovation space also comes with unique challenges.

“There are people who call asking for products or services, but once they realise a woman is behind the work, they begin to doubt my ability. Some openly say they would rather work with a man,” she said. “I usually tell them that everything posted on my page is work that I have personally done.”

Impact

Over the past two years, George said Ideal Technologies has expanded its work, particularly among schoolchildren in underserved communities. In 2024, his innovation was recognised through the Youth-Led Innovation Challenge, organised by the UNDP and the Environment Protection Agency Sierra Leone, where he was the winner.

The recognition brought financial support that allowed the initiative to reach more communities.

“Through grants from this and other initiatives, we have supported more than 400 school children in rural communities. This does not include people we have supplied products to through partnerships or buyers overseas,” George said.

For Beckley, she measures the rewards of recycling differently and urges greater government support for youth-led recycling initiatives.

“This is my main source of income, and I have also created job opportunities for people who have learnt from me. Some of them now continue making bags and other recycled products on their own,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By CIVICUS
Aug 10 2026 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses India’s Cockroach Janta Party movement with Harshit Singh, a young activist, poet and storyteller who took part in protests in Delhi.

Harshit Singh

In May, India’s Chief Justice, Surya Kant, compared unemployed young people to cockroaches. The Cockroach Janta Party was born when a Gen Z movement took the insult as its name. It rapidly gained millions of followers online and mobilised street protests to demand accountability for exam leaks that forced over two million students to resit their tests, calling for the education minister’s resignation. On 20 July, police met a protest in New Delhi with pellet guns, teargas, batons and arrests. Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on 25 July.

What’s the Cockroach Janta Party, and how did it start?

On 15 May, the Chief Justice of India said that young people who couldn’t find a job and turned to media, social media and activism to attack the system were like cockroaches. He corrected himself the following day, saying he had meant only those entering the legal profession with fake degrees, but it was too late. Everybody felt hurt and frustrated.

Abhijeet Dipke, a young Indian, posted a tweet asking what would happen if all the cockroaches came together. Within 24 hours he had set up an Instagram page, a website and a manifesto that said that if you were lazy, unemployed and had time on your hands, you qualified as a cockroach. The name, Cockroach Janta Party, was a parody of the ruling party. The response was enormous. Artists and creators began promoting the platform, and within weeks over 20 million people were following it.

It grew that fast because the frustration was already there. Two weeks before Surya Kant spoke, the question paper for the national medical entrance exam leaked in advance, and the exam was cancelled for over two million students who had spent years preparing. At least 21 students died by suicide; every morning we woke up to news of another death. And this was not an isolated case. Every other day we hear about another exam paper leaking somewhere.

The Cockroach Janta Party gave young people somewhere to channel their frustration with the education system and unemployment. It gave us hope and a chance to demand a better education system, one that isn’t privatised and doesn’t cost so much that only privileged people get a good education.

But education is just the baseline. Beyond it, this is a movement that brings together everyone who has been neglected and not listened to for years, so they can express their frustration and ask for change. What started as satire became a national movement that nobody, not even the person who started it, expected.

Would you call this a Gen Z movement?

It was organised by Gen Z, and most of us in it are, but it’s not only that. I have seen every generation at the protest. People of different castes, gender identities and religions have come together under one umbrella to ask for their rights. At the end of the day, we are all Indians, and every issue this country is going through is our issue.

There is no criterion for joining and no enrolment process. If you think something is wrong, or that your basic rights are not being respected, that is the moment you support the movement, however you can. Come to the protest, talk about it online or in print, and be a voice where you are.

What struck me most is how many people came who didn’t support Abhijeet or disagreed with something a spokesperson had said. Some didn’t even like that we call ourselves cockroaches. They came anyway, because the movement is bigger than any person in it and because after a long time we have a platform where we can speak out loud, with other people standing next to us. That’s why it grew so fast.

What role has social media played?

Social media has played a central role. The movement started online and the vast majority of what it has achieved rests on that. Nobody expected it to come onto the ground and organise protests at this scale.

The reason it mattered this much is that the media here is compromised. If you say anything against the government, mainstream television and print media will not carry it. There was a protest in the heart of the capital for weeks and you wouldn’t find a single headline about it in the newspapers or magazines.

But when you are on the ground with your phone, taking photos and videos, you become your own media. And everyone was using their platforms. It didn’t matter whether someone had 10 followers or 5,000, each person was reaching the audience they had. In the end, mainstream media just reaches a limited number of people, but social media reaches everyone.

The turning point was when artists and creators started speaking. I hesitated at first. My livelihood is social media and ticket revenue, so I doubted what would happen to my future if I spoke against the government. I feared my accounts would be taken down. But I couldn’t deny what was happening, so I spoke out, and many other artists did too.

How has the government responded?

The government has responded very negatively. People who question the government, protest against it or ask for their rights get labelled as anti-national or terrorists. There’s no second thought about it. When I was a child, those were heavy words. Watching this government make them ordinary and using them against us was frightening.

For seven weeks we were at Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in central Delhi. The Prime Minister’s Office, the President’s house and every ministry are within a five-kilometre radius. Still, not official came to meet us. What they did instead was try to dilute the protest by dividing us with anything they could find. They mocked queer people and spread hatred between Hindus and Muslims, but the unity held and we stood together.

On 20 July, we marched from Jantar Mantar to parliament. Delhi hadn’t seen a peaceful protest this massive in about 15 years. Thousands of people, including children, teenagers and grandparents, were on the streets asking for their basic rights. We were carrying flowers, banners and posters, and chanting slogans.

But the security forces met us with repression and violence. They used pellet guns, teargas and batons against anyone, even if they were just standing nearby. There’s a girl who’s still in intensive care on a ventilator.

The way the police handled the protests was illegal and unconstitutional. At that moment a lot of people in India realised something was badly wrong, and support for our movement grew massively across the country. Cities, districts and small towns started protests in solidarity. That is when the government understood it had to listen.

What has the movement achieved?

Our non-negotiable demand was the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan and action against everyone involved in the scam. Pradhan stepped down, and we are glad he did, but it shouldn’t have taken this long or this much violence. He even framed it as a way to stop the protests and prevent terrorist activity, not as an admission that anything had gone wrong. Accountability is still missing.

Our other two demands are still unmet. We asked for compensation of 10 million rupees (approx. US$115,000) for every family that lost a child to suicide. Those families haven’t received anything, not even an apology.

We also asked that nobody who took part in the protests face legal action. Instead, the police have spent the past days tracing protesters and opening cases against them. There’s a lot of rage about it, and Abhijeet and others have said we may have to protest again.

What support does the movement need now?

What we most need is for people to stop being afraid. Protesting here is almost a taboo, because people expect repercussions and stay away, which makes organising anything at all difficult.

That fear is not irrational. This government controls the security forces, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate, and it can do whatever it wants with them, as we saw on the streets. The courts will not stop it either, because the judiciary is compromised in the same way the media is.

But if something is wrong, it is fine to ask the government why. They are here to serve us. All we are asking for is to be able to protest peacefully in what is supposed to be the world’s largest democracy.

We need young people in this country to keep showing up and artists to stop being silent, because if the mainstream media will not speak out, art must become the mode of resistance. Support from abroad matters too. When people elsewhere talk about our movement, it creates pressure on the government. And we must hold on to what we know – our rights and our intentions – because diluting the agenda is what the government will try next.

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.

India has recently been added to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries where a severe deterioration in the quality of civic space is taking place.

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India added to human rights watchlist as repression intensifies in Modi’s third term CIVICUS Monitor 29.Jul.2026
Gen Z protests: new resistance rises CIVICUS | 2026 State of Civil Society Report
India: ‘When civil society is constrained, it cannot challenge power or amplify excluded voices’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Devanshi Vaid and Smarinita Shetty 11.Dec.2025

 

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Bei einem massiven Drohnenangriff auf die russische Stadt Nischnekamsk wurden am Montagmorgen mehrere Menschen getötet. Eine Ölraffinerie, weit hinter der ukrainischen Front, wurde offenbar schwer beschädigt.

Auch im dritten Spiel patzt Luzerns neuer Goalie Simon Simoni. Nach dem Spiel übermannen ihn die Emotionen. Immerhin gibts Rückendeckung vom Trainer und seinen Mitspielern. Und sogar Gegenspieler Görtler hat Mitleid.

By Jan Lundius
ROME, Aug 10 2026 (IPS)

World News are more or less currently fully occupied with the U.S. – Iran debacle and to a lesser degree the Gaza genocide, the on-going war in Ukraine, and to an even lesser degree the one in Sudan.

When Trump and Netanyahu recently met it is likely that the situation on the West Bank was not even on the agenda. This is the reality of international high-level politics and press reporting. Too much cannot remain in focus and certain essentials are simply forgotten, or remain under-reported. Nevertheless, this fact doesn’t hinder unrest and glaring injustice from smouldering in some places, being on the verge of exploding at any time, with devastating results. The West Bank is such a place and strangely enough do the majority of Israelis and U.S. decision makers not appear to realize the presence of an enormous powder keg of suppressed frustration that could detonate at any moment. An astonishing reality particularly considering Israel’s bloody war on Gaza, which still has not come to an end after the death of approximately 72,600 Palestinians (of which 21,280 have been children) and 2,040 Israelis.

Since 1967, the West Bank has been under Israeli occupation, a circumstance rendered illegal under international law. This unresolved situation has made 2,748,000 Palestinians prisoners in their own land, while a rising number of 670,000 Israeli settlers have illegally occupied their territory, claiming their right to drive away or marginalize the Palestinians while adhering to a belief that a land that “belonged to them” two thousand years ago now can be used as defence for ethnic cleansing.

Settler actions against resident Palestinians are generally unchallenged by the occupying Israeli administration and are creating what has been called a “coercive environment”, which compels Palestinians to leave, often followed by the establishment of new settler outposts.

A 2026 Le Monde investigation noted that since 2020 Israeli courts have not given jail sentences to any Israeli settler found responsible for killing Palestinian civilians and in 2026 The Times of Israel documented that in recent years 99 percent of complaints made against Israeli soldiers by Palestinian civilians were closed without indictment. As of 20 July, this year, 18 Palestinians have died on the West Bank during attacks involving settlers. In the last three years, from 2023 to 2025, 1,244 Palestinians – including 268 children – have been killed on the West Bank.

Many disputes between settlers and permanent Palestinian residents concern water inequality. On the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers consume on average about seven times more water than Palestinians, whose levels generally fall below the minimum of WHO recommendations for clean water access. This leads us to Omar Mwannes Yaghi, who together with two other scientists in 2025 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His life story reveals two aspects of Israeli treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. First, the prejudiced attacks on an entire ethnic group during which individuals are mistreated and killed irrespective if they belong to a hostile, fighting force or not. As member of a Palestinian refugee family, a person like Yaghi could easily have been killed if he had been born in Gaza, instead of in a refugee camp in Jordania. Secondly, Yaghi proves the worth of an individual irrespective of his/her ethnic origin. In the future, the achievements of Omar Mwannes Yaghi might prove to be inconceivably much more important for the survival of humankind than those of a Netanyahu, or a Trump.

Omar Mwannes Yaghi was in 1965 born in a refugee camp outside of Amman, within an impoverished crowded household with many children, all living in a single room that also housed the family’s cows and goats. What in particular tormented them was their limited access to clean water.

As a young boy, who recently had learned to read and write, Omar happened to visit a library where he became fascinated by the coloured plates illustrating chemical bonds, an experience that made him decide to become a chemist. He did very well in school and already as a fifteen-year-old he received a royal grant making it possible for him to travel to the U.S. and study at Hudson Valley Community College, from which he graduated in 1983 with an Associate of Science in Mathematics and Science. Eventually, he ended up in Berkeley as a professor at the University of California.

Omar Yaghi is best known for his work in the field of molecular “weaving”, part of what has become known as reticular chemistry, which assembles molecular building blocks to create crystalline, large, strong bonded, and porous, metal-organic frameworks called MOFs. Such MOFs can be used to create clean energy technologies, including hydrogen and methane storage, carbon dioxide capture (that might contribute to the mitigation of climate change), and the harvesting of water from desert air, thus reducing the world’s ever-increasing thirst for clean water.

In July 2026, Omar Yaghi left the U.S. to lead an artificial intelligence and material science research institute at Tsinghua University in Beijing. One important reason for this was the increasingly insecure federal funding to research in the U.S., combined with expanding international recruitment initiatives by China.

Omar Mwannes Yaghis’ life story proves the fact that every human life matters and that a poor refugee child can grow up to become a person whose research might contribute to save the entire world from disaster and improve the wellbeing of us all. Furthermore, it highlights the extreme importance of funding and providing unbiased, international, basic and advanced research. It also proves that Palestinians, particularly children, ought to be treated with dignity and respect, deserving a place to live in peace and prosperity, with access to education, which great value has been proven by the Nobel Laureate Omar Mwannes Yaghis.

Main sources: Mandraud, Isabelle (2026) “En Cisjordanie, l’impunité absolue des colons israéliens ayant commis des crimes,” Le Monde, 17 avril. Sharon, Jeremy (2026) “Less than 1% of complaints against soldiers in West Bank lead to charges, data shows,” Time of Israel, 27 January. Yaghi, Omar (2019) Harvesting Water from Desert Air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOOVBKWRLxk, and (2018) Reticular Chemistry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS_VI-8sMF0

This is part 1 of an analysis of the connection between youth movements and political change; part 2 will analyze how youth-led revolutions have changed political scenarios globally.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Vor dem Kerenzerbergtunnel im Kanton Glarus herrscht Chaos: Ein Rettungshelikopter und mehrere Polizeiautos sind im Einsatz. Der Tunnel ist seit 7.05 Uhr gesperrt. Eine Person kam bei einem Verkehrsunfall ums Leben.

Chryssanthi Kavazi und Tom Beck werden erneut Eltern. Verkündet haben es die beiden aus dem Griechenland-Urlaub heraus mit süssen Bildern aus dem Meer.

Richter Christian Prinz verurteilte Drogenhändler und den notorischen Schläger Brian – jetzt muss er über den früheren Raiffeisen-Oberbanker Pierin Vincenz richten.

Am 10. August beginnt vor dem Zürcher Obergericht der Berufungsprozess im Fall Pierin Vincenz. Kommt der früher so beliebte Raiffeisen-Banker mit einem blauen Auge davon? Blick beantwortet die wichtigsten Fragen zum grössten Wirtschaftsprozess des Jahrzehnts.

Belinda Bencic steht am WTA-1000-Turnier von Toronto im Viertelfinal. Die Hürde Alexandra Eala überspringt sie dabei locker.