Africa

Protesters demand justice for more than 80 people killed during the 2024 demonstrations and last year's anniversary protests.

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Das Wechsel-Fieber steht bevor. In der Sommerpause nimmt der Transfermarkt so richtig Fahrt auf. Hier im Ticker bleibst du immer auf dem Laufenden.

Cécile Koffi and her colleagues collect salt from concrete pans on the beach in rural Benin. Credit: Neha Banka/IPS

By Neha Banka
OUIDAH, Benin, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

It is barely noon, and a group of women sit near the beach on the outskirts of Djégbadji village, in West Africa’s Benin, sifting through mounds of salt harvested from the Gulf of Guinea’s ocean.

Large concrete vats covered with black tarpaulin show traces of white salt sediment as the seawater slowly evaporates under Benin’s midday sun – except that instead of using fire, the group uses solar energy.

The women have been working as part of a grassroots project called ProSEL Benin, a collaborative effort of the governments of Benin along with India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that focuses on strengthening local salt-producing communities to access sustainable energy sources and create medium-sized enterprises for the production and marketing of local iodised salt.

Salt production is one of the main income-generating activities for the populations living in and around southern Benin.

Generations-Old Traditions

“In Benin’s coastal areas, women skim the salt from the coastal marshes… they put up their little huts and boil salt water in massive vats over an open fire inside the hut. They then sell the ‘cooked’ salt at the markets and on the roadsides. It’s an unhealthy practice for various reasons,” says Robina Marks, who served as South Africa’s ambassador to Benin and Togo from 2021 to 2024 and was closely involved in the implementation of the IBSA-backed project.

The traditional method of collecting and cooking the salt has been practised in Benin since at least the 15th century, primarily by women, and involves collecting saline soil, evaporating the water and filtering brine by burning chopped mangrove wood to produce salt.

The practice harms women’s health due to how they collect the salt and the conditions in which it is prepared.

“It takes a very long time and is very labour-intensive,” Marks says.

The ProSEL Benin project attempts to change this traditional practice and make the process of collecting salt healthier and cleaner.

Salt-making is an important source of income for communities here, relying heavily on the cutting down of mangroves.

ProSEL Benin’s research estimates that approximately 20,000 cubic metres of mangrove wood are cut down annually in coastal Benin for use as firewood in Indigenous salt-making.

The UNDP and the Benin government discussed the new method about five years ago.

“But the idea came from the people on the ground, who had the needs. The Benin government came up with the project and wanted to work with UNDP,” says Aoualé Mohamed Abchir, who served as the UNDP Resident Representative in Benin from 2020 to 2024 and was instrumental in its development.

ProSEL Benin, Abchir says, is an attempt to advance three out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: gender equality; decent work and economic growth; and responsible consumption and production. This project aims to help rural women in Benin make and sell clean salt and become self-reliant.

In 2021, the Board of Directors of the India, Brazil and South Africa Facility for Poverty and Hunger Alleviation Fund awarded USD 1 million to the UNDP to implement the salt project.

IBSA is an example of collaborative efforts between the three developing countries, as well as a South-South cooperation initiative within the United Nations that focuses on development cooperation among developing countries in the Global South.

When 60-year-old Cécile Koffi was first introduced to the salt project, it took some time to convince her to switch from the traditional method of making salt.

“There are a lot of things the salt does. Salt is intrinsic to the community’s women,” Koffi says, examining the day’s salt collection.

Salt is culturally important to Benin, and its uses go beyond culinary applications.

“It is not only used as food, but it also has a cultural aspect to it. It is regarded as sacred and is used in many of the vodoun practices,” says Marks.

“When we go to the market to sell our produce, we sprinkle salt on the ground and sweep it up before setting up our spot. It is believed that every bad spirit will go away if we do that. Salt is very important. We use it in a lot of rituals,” says Koffi.

Julienne Dekon collects saline water using the traditional method to make salt in rural Benin. Credit: Neha Banka/IPS

These deep-rooted cultural beliefs were one reason why it was difficult to get the women to change and adapt to the ProSEL Benin project, even though it was backed by the Benin government, explains Abchir.

Traditionally salt production is a cultural activity carried out by the Xwla populations of the coastal zone in Benin. The traditional production of salt by the salt farmers in the villages is subject to many prohibitions related to working days, village deities, and so on.

“The name Xwlajè is also intimately linked to the Xwla ethnic group,” says Luc Obale, national project director of ProSEL Benin. The Benin government has been working to certify the salt so that it can be sold with the label ‘Xwlajè’ to identify its cultural origin.

“The old method is their ancestral way of producing salt, so it has significance. Sometimes when you change the way you produce something, some people believe it may have negative implications. The women could have got the salt directly from the sea, but there is a reason why they weren’t doing that before the project,” says Abchir.

The ProSEL Benin project targeted five areas in coastal Benin where people have traditionally harvested salt: Sèmè Kpodji, Grand Popo, Ouidah, Kpomasse, Comè and Lokossa.

“In those other areas, people have been more open to using sea water to make salt, but Ouidah is Ouidah. It is very special. They believe that the best salt can only be cooked, not dried. They believe that they have to cook it,” explains Abchir.

Ground-Level Interventions

The ProSEL Benin project is not the first intervention programme that has attempted to make local salt cleaner and more environmentally sustainable, but it has been successful because caseworkers managed to get it off the ground, says Cessi Marlene Capo-Chichi, who works with UNDP as a project coordinator.

“Organisations have struggled to convince the local community to change their ways,” she says.

Some 500 metres from where the ProSEL project is ongoing by the beach, within the limits of Djégbadji village, is a coastal lagoon where women work inside a network of thatched huts, making salt in the traditional way.

“The traditional way of making salt is more laborious,” says 45-year-old Julienne Dekon, lifting a cane basket heavy with saline soil collected from the marshy land that surrounds her.

These days, the Benin government prevents the chopping down of mangroves for wood, and women are encouraged to use dried palm leaves and coconut shells for fuel instead.

Dekon says that she wants to continue working using the traditional method, although many of her friends have now switched to the modern method of salt making using seawater after joining the ProSEL project.

As she begins boiling the saline water inside her hut, smoke fills the small space.

“When I have to work a lot, I do get tired. But I don’t know much about how this affects my health,” says Dekon.

Dekon doesn’t remember when she started making salt, but it has been a very long time, and she is now accustomed to preparing using the traditional methods.

“The method on the beach (ProSEL project) is easy to do. But when it is raining, it is not possible to do it outside. But I can continue to make salt even in the rain, because I collect the soil and start cooking indoors. The two systems are too different,” says Dekon, referring to the open-air concrete salt vats by the sea that are susceptible to the vagaries of the weather.

However, the wet weather also affects the women using traditional methods.

From April to August, Benin experiences its rainy season, with short spells of rain between September and November, and the low-lying marshes near the lagoons are prone to flooding.

“We are pushing them to switch to the ProSEL system because during the rainy season the area where the salt is produced traditionally is inaccessible. It is completely flooded, and so for more than half the year, there is no production of salt. We needed to give them alternatives,” says Abchir.

While it is easier for the women to avoid the rains by tracking the weather, it is harder to bypass the persistent floods, he says.

Abchir says the project focused on giving the women access to seawater to make sure they could make salt and have steady income through the year.

“Using the seawater to make salt is less painful. You just get the water and let the sun evaporate it. You don’t have to cook it, and it is safer. You can also make more money,” says Abchir.

Just down the unpaved road from where Dekon works, a woman stands by the highway selling salt.

The difference between the salt produced by women like Dekon, who have been working using traditional methods and those engaged with ProSEL Benin is clear: the traditional salt is visibly yellow-brown with streaks of grey, colours that come due to the lack of a filtration process. The ProSEL Benin salt is clean and white, fortified with iodine that the women mix into the salt just before filling it into bags.

A one-kilogram bag of salt produced by women using the traditional method, sold in local marketplaces and by the road, would cost approximately 800 West African CFA franc (approx. USD 2), while the same amount produced by ProSEL Benin would sell for 1,000 CFA.

For Public Consumption

ProSEL research indicates there are about 4,000 women harvesting salt in Benin. The country imports most of its salt from countries like Ghana, Senegal and India because its Indigenous salt farming covers only a small fraction of the country’s actual needs.

Stakeholders realised that it was not enough to teach the women how to make cleaner salt; they also had to be given access to markets to sell it. One market that the project aims to tap into is the World Food Programme (WFP) under the UN’s Benin office, which helps feed over 1 million children annually with daily school meals. The WFP has been undertaking research to understand the feasibility of purchasing and using salt through these cooperatives led by women under ProSEL.

The Benin government has ambitious plans for the harvested salt.

In December 2025, Benin’s food safety agency, ABSSA, the Agence Béninoise de Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments, certified the salt for public consumption, after which the salt was prepared to be sold under the label Xwlajè.

Presently, the Xwlajè salt is sold in seven different supermarket chains across Cotonou, as well as in standalone shops located in the municipalities of Porto-Novo, Cotonou and Comè.

“In addition, steps are underway to market Xwlajè salt in the duty-free shops at Cotonou International Airport,” says Obale.

Abchir adds that a process that would take the women six hours now takes them two. Bringing about change has been difficult, he says, because it involved convincing people who were accustomed to working in a specific way for generations.

He admits that they wouldn’t have been able to do much without winning the trust of the women, their husbands who still oversee their lives, the mayor and the local community leaders.

“The local team went down to the women and understood their needs so that sensibilities could be understood and it would be accepted. It is very difficult in Benin when outsiders come in and tell them what to do.”

Abchir says that there is a high risk of undoing all that work if there is mistrust in the community towards the project.

“They are accepting the changes. Now we are trying to build construction for storage, keeping machines, etc. It is a sensitive phase, but we are hopeful that it will work.”

Benin’s government has prioritised tourism over the last few years, and its Indigenous salt farming practices are a key part of its plans to introduce tourists to Beninese culture.

The ProSEL project does not aim to fully remove the traditional method of salt farming, says Obale.

“The modern salt production unit is located not far from the traditional production site to allow tourists to see the difference between the two production methods,” he says.

Mireille Adjovi, a new mother in her 20s, has come to work at the ProSEL site with her infant sleeping on her back.

“With the money I get, I am able to take care of my children. I will be able to send them to school. I think about myself last: my husband and children come first. Maybe the men give money for the household, but women still suffer a lot. If women need something, husbands give the amount of money they want to give you, not what you need. The men don’t think about the women. So the project helps me earn my own money,” says Adjovi.

For women like Adjovi, making salt is not just about following the jobs women before her have done for generations.

She doesn’t know what the UN’s SDGs are or even what IBSA means, but the work at ProSEL Benin allows her to prioritise her own health and well-being while working collectively in a women-led cooperative.

When she talks to other women working at the site, she also thinks about the hard-earned independence and self-reliance she now has.

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Mariya Salim
DELHI, India, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

Three years ago, during a mission to the Central African Republic from United Nations Headquarters, I met a woman whose story has remained with me ever since. She had survived rape during the conflict. Yet what stayed with her most was not only the violence she had suffered, but the stigma that followed it. When she returned home, her family refused to take her back. In a society where survivors of sexual violence are too often burdened with shame that rightfully belongs to perpetrators, she found herself isolated and struggling to rebuild her life. In that moment, it became painfully clear that for survivors, the violence does not end when the assault ends, it continues through stigma, exclusion, and the resulting silence for most.

Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) does not end when the act itself ends. Its consequences ripple through families, communities, and generations and that is precisely why more needs to be done to not just address it but prevent it from happening in the first place.

As the world marked the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict on 19 June, (The day marks the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008), which condemned sexual violence in conflict and recognized its impact on peace and security), I found myself reflecting on the many survivors whose stories I have encountered throughout my career. I witnessed firsthand the devastating and enduring impact of these crimes, sometimes documenting and analysing the many cases sent to us by colleagues on the field and sometimes while interacting with the survivors first hand. At a moment when wars dominate global headlines, from Gaza and Ukraine to Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo, ignoring CRSV means ignoring one of war’s most enduring and devastating consequences.

Today, the issue is more urgent than ever. Civilians continue to bear the heaviest burden of conflict, and among the most devastating consequences of conflict is sexual violence. According to the United Nations Secretary-General’s 2026 Report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, nearly 9,800 cases were verified globally in 2025, more than double the number documented the previous year. Yet even these alarming figures represent only a fraction of the actual scale of violations, given the barriers to reporting, including stigma, insecurity, fear of retaliation, and limited access to services. “The figures contained in this report should be understood not as the full picture, but as an indication of a much broader pattern of violations that remain largely unseen and underreported.” said Special Representative to the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten.

From Sudan and South Sudan to Haiti, Ukraine, and Myanmar, recent UN reporting shows that conflict-related sexual violence continues to affect communities across the globe, reminding us that it remains one of the most enduring and devastating consequences of armed conflict.

CRSV is not an inevitable consequence of war; it is often a deliberate act used to terrorize communities, assert power, and deepen divisions. Its impact extends well beyond the immediate violation. For many survivors, the trauma is compounded by stigma, rejection from family members, exclusion from community life, loss of livelihoods, interrupted education, and limited access to justice and support services. The consequences can endure long after the conflict itself has faded from public attention.

In South Sudan, I documented stories of women and adolescent girls who had survived gang rape while collecting firewood, water or travelling to markets. I listened to survivors who feared reporting violations because they worried about being ostracized by their communities and feared retaliation by their attackers who ranged from soldiers to armed militia. I encountered families struggling to support children born out of rape while facing stigma and economic hardship.

Although women and girls bear the overwhelming burden of conflict-related sexual violence, my work also exposed me to the experiences of men and boys who had endured similar violations. Many carried their trauma in silence, reluctant to come forward because of stigma, fear, and societal expectations surrounding masculinity. As a result, their experiences are frequently overlooked, even as they grapple with profound physical and psychological consequences.

In conflict zones such as South Sudan, local civil society organisations continue to play a critical role in supporting survivors despite significant resource and safety constraints. These organisations often serve as the first and sometimes only point of contact for survivors seeking assistance. They provide psychosocial support, referrals to healthcare, legal aid, community awareness programmes, and safe spaces for healing. Yet the scale of need far exceeds available resources.

As Rev. John Ngbapia Bakiri, Executive Director of Rural Development Action Aid (RDAA), explains:

“The biggest challenge we face in dealing with Survivors of CRSV in South Sudan is the limited scope and resources of the intervention relative to the scale of need. Many CRSV Survivors remain unreached, several highly affected communities excluded, and the specific needs of children born out rape are not fully integrated into the response. These children continue to face stigma, protection risks, and limited access to essential services, compounding the vulnerability of survivor households.”

Addressing conflict-related sexual violence therefore requires moving beyond emergency response and looking at prevention with a survivor centred approach. It requires sustained investment in healthcare, psychosocial support, education, livelihoods, legal assistance, awareness building and social reintegration. It requires supporting local organisations that remain embedded within communities long after international attention has shifted elsewhere. It also involves very importantly engaging with the government including the implementation of national action plans, criminalization of conflict-related sexual violence in domestic legislation, and meaningful accountability for perpetrators regardless of rank or affiliation.

Despite decades of advocacy and normative progress, accountability remains elusive in many contexts. Survivors continue to face significant barriers in accessing justice and perpetrators often operating with impunity is common. With peace processes and political negotiations frequently overlooking the experiences and priorities of survivors, funding for survivor-centred services remains inadequate despite growing needs. At a time when violence and instability are rising across the world, we can no longer afford to relegate conflict-related sexual violence to the margins of policy and peacebuilding efforts. Its consequences are profound and enduring, leaving scars not only on survivors but also on the communities and societies struggling to rebuild in its aftermath.

The International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict offers an important moment for reflection. But remembrance alone is not enough. What survivors deserve is justice, protection, meaningful support, and genuine participation in shaping the policies and responses that affect them with a seat at the decision making table. Their stories are not simply testimonies of suffering, they are calls to action.

Mariya Salim is co-founder of Zariya. She is a Human Rights activist and an international SGBV expert currently based in Delhi India. She has served as a Women Protection Adviser with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), and was part of the United Nations team working on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence at UN Headquarters in New York.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anis Chowdhury
SYDNEY, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

June 27-28 is the 16th Social Business Day, observed in Savar (Dhaka) Bangladesh. In June 2024 at the Western Sydney University’s graduation ceremony where I was conferred Emeritus Professor status, I urged the new business graduates to:

• purge the world of the… obnoxious Friedmanite idea that is destroying our planet and tearing our communities apart;
• look instead to the “Social Business Model” of Bangladesh’s Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus; and
• work on the right side of history; stand up for justice and liberation; spread the “moral violence” for peace; and put people and the planet before profit.

Anis Chowdhury

The background

In his 1970 article for The New York Times, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman wrote, “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”. He further argued, “There are no ‘social’ values, no ‘social’ responsibilities in any sense other than the shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a collection of individuals and of the various groups they voluntarily form”.

This Friedmanite world view has been at the core of the neo-liberal counter revolution led by Ronald Reagan and Margarette Thatcher in the 1980s. In his inaugural speech, Reagan famously declared, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”, and ushered in an era driven by unrestrained individual pursuits of profit.

Promoting unrestrained individualism, Thatcher questioned, “who is society?” Then she dismissed, “There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families…”.

“Greed” became the all-consuming passion at the height of unrestrained individual pursuit of profit as captured famously in the 1987 movie, Wall Street. The lead character, Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) addressing the shareholders said:

“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed – for lack of a better word – is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind”.

Has it?

Has greed, in all forms, marked the upward surge of mankind?

Yes, global income and wealth increased manifold since the 1980s; but so did global inequality. The wealth and income gaps between the wealthiest and the poorest have widened. The richest 1.5% own almost 48% of the world’s wealth, according to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2025, while the poorest 40% own only 0.5%.

The World Inequality Report 2026 reveals an even starker wealth gap. The wealthiest 0.001%, comprising around 56,000 multi-millionaires, now hold three times more wealth than the bottom half of the world population. Their share has grown steadily from 3.7% in 1995 to 6.1% in 2025. According to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2025, as of 2023, the world’s 26 richest billionaires owned a shocking US$2.872 trillion in wealth, which is greater than many nations’ total goods and services (GDP).

Cheerleaders of unrestrained greed may dismiss these facts and say “so what? Global abject poverty has also declined”. In fact, economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey, the author of Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economists Can’t Explain the Modern World, floated the idea of “Great Enrichment” asserting that real per capita incomes in the developed world have surged by a factor of 10 to 30 (or roughly 2,900%) since 1800. She argues this historic explosion of wealth fundamentally benefited the poor and working classes. For her, the concerns about inequality are a result of insatiable envy.

Some others have described the phenomenon of rising inequality amidst the wealth boom as “inclusive” because the process has lifted millions from abject poverty. According to them, rapid globalization has given rise to a new global wealth middle class. They see this as progress!

They also decry “the perception that billionaires make money for themselves at the expense of the wider population”, and attribute billionaires’ fortunes to successful investments, while highlight philanthropy and patronage of the arts, culture and sports by billionaires.

But the cheerleaders ignore billionaires’ tax evasion and tax avoidance, and the fact that societies should not rely on the generosity of the rich.

The cheerleaders are also climate deniers. They ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence linking rising inequality and the climate crisis. The world’s wealthiest 10% has caused two thirds of global warming since 1990, according to a new study published in Nature. It also reports that the top 1% of the wealthiest individuals globally contributed 26 times the global average to increases in monthly 1-in-100-year heat extremes globally and 17 times more to Amazon droughts.

It’s time for change

It is time for a paradigm shift from profit to people and the planet. Social business, a concept first introduced by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, offers a path forward. In his 2009 book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, Professor Yunus defines a social business as “A business:

• Created and designed to address social problems
• A non-loss, non-dividend company, i.e.
1. It is financially self-sustainable and
2. Profits realised by the business are reinvested in the business itself (or used to start other social businesses), with the aim of increasing social impact, for example expanding the company’s reach, improving the products or services or subsidising the social mission.”

In short, a social business is oriented to social value creation. It is designed to address specific social or environmental problems such as hunger, poverty, unemployment, pollution, and climate adaptation and mitigation. In many ways, it is a hybrid between a traditional business and a non-profit organisation. Like a traditional business, a social business generates revenue and is financially self-sufficient rather than relying on philanthropy. However, like a non-profit organisation, the primary goal of a social business is NOT profit, but social or environmental impacts.

But, not a magic bullet

Social business is not a panacea for all evils or social-environmental problems. More fundamentally, systemic or structural social and environmental issues should not be treated as market opportunities. The framing of social problems as technical or managerial issues that can be solved with “business” solutions can obscure underlying structural causes like systemic discrimination and power imbalances which must be addressed through deep reforms, backed by political will.

There also is a risk of “impact-washing”, much like “greenwashing”. That is, weak regulatory standards can allow companies to cherry-pick metrics, exaggerate their societal benefits, or use their social status as “moral licensing” to justify otherwise dubious business practices.

Therefore, the “euphoria” of celebration must not distract us from the urgent need to develop proper monitoring and accountability frameworks for social business so that “greed” does not infest it.

Anis Chowdhury, Emeritus Professor, Western Sydney University (Australia). He held senior UN positions in Bangkok and New York and served as Special Assistant to the Chief Advisor for Finance (with the status and rank of State Minister) in the Professor Yunus-led Interim Government. Anis has written extensively on macroeconomic issues, sustainable development, international financial architecture and political economy. E-mail: anis.z.chowdhury@gmail.com; a.chowdhury@westernsydney.edu.au

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Haftungsausschluss : Die Verdolmetschung der Debatten soll die Kommunikation erleichtern, sie stellt jedoch keine authentische Aufzeichnung der Debatten dar. Authentisch sind nur die Originalfassungen der Reden bzw. ihre überprüften schriftlichen Übersetzungen.
Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2026 - EP

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Haftungsausschluss : Die Verdolmetschung der Debatten soll die Kommunikation erleichtern, sie stellt jedoch keine authentische Aufzeichnung der Debatten dar. Authentisch sind nur die Originalfassungen der Reden bzw. ihre überprüften schriftlichen Übersetzungen.
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