Africa

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A female merchant was crossing a bustling street in Hanoi, Vietnam. Despite economic development over five decades, development gaps in Asia and the Pacific remained. Credit: Unsplash/Jeremy Stewardson

By Sudip Ranjan Basu
BANGKOK Thailand, Oct 17 2025 (IPS)

The Asia-Pacific region has long served as a springboard for transforming socio-economic implementation gaps into development opportunities. With the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals fast approaching, policymakers are stepping up efforts to translate policy announcements into tangible impacts.

Looking back since 1970s, the region’s development trajectory has been shaped by a series of crises that triggered transformative policy responses. By engaging strategic partnerships, countries in the region are well-positioned to promote shared prosperity for both people and the planet.

Anchoring crisis-driven policy shifts
In the 1970s, technological advances—particularly in agriculture—ushered in a new era. The introduction of high-yield crop varieties, known as the Green Revolution, boosted food production and rural incomes, laying the foundation for the emergence of a middle class. However, the decade also exposed vulnerabilities, as volatility in global commodity and energy prices exposed the risks of external shocks.

The 1980s brought further challenges. Rising oil prices and global interest rates strained national budgets across developing countries. The cost of servicing external debt crowded out investments in productive sectors, highlighting the risks of over-reliance on foreign aid.

The 1997 Asian financial crisis marked a watershed moment. Currency collapses, triggered capital flight and trade disruptions, leaving deep scars and prompting shifts in political governance and economic policy across the region.

By the early 2000s, optimism returned. Trade and investment surged, regional value chains expanded, and ICT-driven growth integrated economies more deeply into the global economy. Globalization was widely seen as a pathway to long-term prosperity.

Yet the 2008 global financial crisis shattered this euphoria. Inflation soared, investor confidence plummeted, and trade contracted.

Fast forward to the COVID-19 pandemic, which once again exposed lingering vulnerabilities: socio-economic inequality was deepened, jobs prospects dimmed, overdependence on supply chain became more pronounced, technological monopolies were revealed, and environmental fragility was clearly manifested. The pandemic reinforced the urgent need for adaptive policy frameworks.

These crisis episodes underscored the importance of coordinated policy action in an interconnected landscape, reinforcing the lesson that growth without adequate and shared outcomes is unsustainable.

Adjusting to changing socio-economic realities
The development journey has been marked by complexity and diversity. A comparative analysis over recent decades reveals recurring patterns: energy and food price volatility and tightening financial conditions have consistently tested policymakers. Rising interest rates in advanced economies have reignited debt concerns in developing countries, threatening economic stability and undermining progress.

Simultaneously, intensifying geopolitical competition is reshaping trade relationships, investment flows and technology transfers. Policymakers must navigate these shifts while advancing national development priorities and adapting to evolving dynamics.

These pressures have prompted to diversify its sources of economic growth and strategic engagements. Despite impressive achievements in social development, long-term stability and impact-driven outcomes hinge on governments’ ability to manage external shocks, anticipate risks, and promote cross-border economic cooperation and accelerate climate action.

Recent policy shifts signal a move toward structural transformation. Governments are spearheading industrialization, accelerating green energy transitions and pioneering sustainable financing mechanisms. This marks a shift from short-term crisis management to building medium- and long-term socio-economic progress.

The pandemic years further emphasised the need for adaptive policies—ones that can absorb unexpected shocks while maintaining progress toward stability.

Adapting through policy lessons
The development experience, particularly the least developed countries, the landlocked developing countries and small island developing States, offers valuable insights into building institutional capabilities and preventing future crises. Four strategic policy insights emerge:

Price stability matters: Volatile prices have repeatedly undermined development gains. Strategic foresight and balanced economic policy planning are essential to safeguard progress.
Fiscal buoyancy is critical: Excessive external borrowing has triggered past crises.

Creating fiscal space, mobilizing domestic resources, scaling blended finance and implementing coordinated debt management frameworks are vital for development.

Crisis preparedness requires coordination: The 1997 and 2008 crises showed that no country can respond effectively in isolation. Strengthening institutions is crucial for early warning systems, policy dialogue and coordinated action.

Sustainability is key to people-centred development: Climate change, socio-economic disparities and institutional inefficiencies pose long-term risks. Integrating sustainability into strategies and promoting technological transformation are no longer optional; they are imperative.

Turning points
The Asia-Pacific region’s development story is one of transition, and transformation. Connecting these turning points reveals a region that has consistently learned from its challenges and leveraged them to advance policy solutions.

The path ahead is promising, but policies must adapt to address shifting socio-economic dynamics, structural and climate change vulnerabilities, and emerging geopolitical realignments. These efforts must be anchored in regional cooperation, inclusive dialogue, and coordinated action, particularly through platforms such as ESCAP.

While governments play a central role, long-term progress will depend on the collective engagement of the private sector, academia, civil society and regional institutions. With strategic convergence, the Asia-Pacific region is well-positioned to overcome today’s uncertainty and shape a better future for all.

Sudip Ranjan Basu is Secretary of the Commission, ESCAP

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 17 2025 (IPS)

The US hostility towards the UN is threatening to escalate, as a cash-starved world body is struggling for economic survival.

Addressing the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee last week. Ambassador Jeff Bartos, U.S. Representative for U.N. Management and Reform said: “President Trump is absolutely right – the United Nations can be an important institution for solving international challenges, but it has strayed far from its original purpose”.

“Over 80 years, the UN has grown bloated, unfocused, too often ineffective, and sometimes even part of the problem. The UN’s failure to deliver on its core mandates is alarming and undeniable. “

The United States has been, by far, the largest funder of the UN since its founding. Based on the most recent scales of assessment, the United States provides more funding to the UN than 180 other nations combined, he pointed out.

“For the United States, the era of business as usual is over. During the Main Session, we will work with this Committee to achieve deeper cuts to wasteful spending and stronger accountability, with a relentless focus on results”.

The reductions already proposed in special political missions, the closure of unnecessary field offices, and the consolidation of executive offices, are the kind of decisions that must become the rule, not the exception.

Addressing the General Assembly last month, President Trump remarked: “What is the purpose of the United Nations? It’s not even coming close to living up to [its] potential.”

Dismissing the U.N. as an outdated, ineffective organization, he boasted: “I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal.”

But UN’s political ineffectiveness is due primarily to the role played by the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council—the US, UK, France, China and Russia–who are quick to protect their allies accused of human rights violations, war crimes or genocide.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has officially withdrawn or is in the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and has ceased funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Which triggers the question: what’s the fate and economic survival of the UN against an aggressive Trump administration?

Dr Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), told IPS there is no other way to describe how the Trump administration is treating the UN other than self-defeating and detrimental to the US’s national interests, while substantially eroding America’s influence worldwide.

“It is hard to fathom how on earth Trump, who wants to ‘Make America Great Again,’ demonstrates such blatant hostility towards the only global organization in which the United States has, over the years, played such a pivotal and leading role that surpassed any other country since the UN’s creation in 1945.”

The statement by US Ambassador Bartos, he argued, is at best inaccurate and at worst totally wrong. It has never been a secret that the UN is overdue for significant reforms, beginning with the United Nations Security Council and many other UN agencies.

Dismissing the UN’s vital work on many fronts in one brush, however, and cutting humanitarian assistance on which millions in poor countries depend, or withdrawing from vital UN agencies, is unconscionable and highly damaging to the US’ leadership and national interests, he said.

“By what logic does the Trump administration justify its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), whose primary function is coordinating global health responses to crises such as pandemics, and setting international health standards?”

“One would think that the Trump administration would strongly support such an organization that serves US interests from a global health perspective and would only bolster the US influence by playing a significant role in improving its functions”.

How can the Trump administration explain its withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which promotes and protects human rights worldwide through international cooperation?

By withdrawing from this organization, Trump forsakes any role that the US could play in preventing human rights abuses, which leads to fewer global checks on human rights abuses and weaker international standards.

Trump may care less about human rights violations, but how does withdrawing from such an organization serve the US’ overall national and global interests? he asked.

James E. Jennings, PhD, President, Conscience International, told IPS support for the United Nations organization is vital to global health and stability.,

“Those who have worked on the front lines of UN agencies’ responses to wars, natural disasters, and famines throughout the world cannot imagine the degree of inhumanity involved in taking food out of the mouths of babies, refusing to educate children, and letting disease and epidemics rage. This is not politics, it is bullying, and the world should see it for what it is”.

He said there is a pattern in Mr. Trump’s behavior that is easily exposed, Every one of his perceived enemies, as for example in the majority Democratic states of California and Illinois, he describes in the most terrible terms as crime-ridden and out of control.

“Within three days after he sends in ICE storm troopers to places like Washington DC who do nothing except display their muscle, suddenly that city or state is peaceable and under control.“

Trump brags that things are fine now in Portland, Chicago, and other such places, when no real change can be detected except that some normal citizens have been roughed up. Theatrics may win voters but does not in any way solve problems, said Dr Jennings.

The same technique can be observed on the international scene. After deprecating and sidelining UN peacemaking efforts, which go deeply into the issues, he makes phone calls to leaders of countries on the verge of hostilities and claims that he has ended seven wars, which is nonsense.

“By sidelining the UN, he simply wants to dominate it. With the US the biggest donor supporting the organization, there is a fair chance that he can succeed in bending it to his will unless national leaders, US citizens, and people everywhere are resolute in opposing his plans”, declared Dr Jennings.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Analysts say the unit has become so influential that it rivals the power of the regular army.

Analysts say the unit has become so influential that it rivals the power of the regular army.

Analysts say the unit has become so influential that it rivals the power of the regular army.

Das Geschäft um Fälschungen ist lukrativ. Die Schweizer Firma Alpvision kämpft dagegen an: Sie sichert Medikamente, Kosmetika und Goldbarren mit digitalen Wasserzeichen. Auch der Bund will beim Pharma-Betrug bald handeln.

Dominik Paris sorgt eine Woche vor dem Weltcup-Auftakt mit einigen kernigen Aussagen für Furore.

Thousands of mourners fill the streets of Nairobi from the airport to the Kasarani Stadium to pay their respects.

Thousands of mourners fill the streets of Nairobi from the airport to the Kasarani Stadium to pay their respects.

Näher dran dank Blick. Folge jetzt deinem Klub und verpasse nichts mehr. In den Klub-News halten wir dich zum neusten Geschehen auf dem Laufenden.

Patrick Herminie says he will stop further development of the Qatar-backed Assumption Island resort.

By Dr Himanshu Pathak
HYDERABAD, India, Oct 16 2025 (IPS)

When crops fail, people move not by choice, but by necessity. As families are displaced by droughts and failed harvests, the pressures do not always stop at national boundaries. In short, hunger has become one of the most powerful forces shaping our century.

From the Sahel, the vast semi-arid belt stretching across Africa from Senegal to Sudan and the Horn of Africa to South Asia’s dry zones and Southeast Asia’s coastal farmlands, climate shocks are undermining food production and disrupting communities across the Global South.

In the Sahel, prolonged drought and poor harvests, among other factors, are driving migration north through Niger and Mali toward North Africa and, for some, across the Mediterranean.

Across South Asia, recurrent floods and heat stress have displaced millions in India and Bangladesh, while in Southeast Asia, rising seas are forcing coastal farmers and fishers inland.

These pressures are magnified by rapid population growth, especially in the Sahel, where the population is projected to more than double by 2050, placing immense strain on already limited arable land.

The same story is unfolding across the globe. In Central America’s drought-stricken Dry Corridor, years of crop failure are pushing families to leave their farms and migrate north in search of food and safety.

Safeguarding the right of people to remain where their families have lived for generations, now depends on enabling communities to produce more food from every hectare, even as conditions grow harsher.

This World Food Day (October 16), we must view food security not only as a humanitarian concern, but through the prism of peace and stability.

History shows that when people cannot feed their families, societies fracture and conflicts occur. The world’s most strategic investment today is in the hands that grow our food and not in walls or weapons.

By investing in climate resilient crops such as the drought and heat tolerant varieties developed by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and expanding access to scientific innovation and improved seeds, we enable communities to withstand climate shocks, secure their livelihoods, and remain in their traditional lands instead of being forced to migrate by a crisis not of their making.

These positive impacts are already visible, but they must now be scaled up dramatically to match the magnitude of the challenge.

The World Bank estimates that up to 216 million people could be forced to migrate within their own countries by 2050 as climate impacts intensify most of them in Africa and South Asia.
Investing in resilient food systems in the Global South is one of the most effective and humane strategies for ensuring regional and ultimately global stability.

The UNDP estimates that every dollar invested in sustainable agriculture today saves seven to ten dollars in humanitarian aid and migration management later.

At ICRISAT we witness this every day. Across Africa and Asia, we work with governments and communities to turn drylands, some of the harshest farming environments on Earth, into zones of opportunity.

In India’s Bundelkhand region, stretching across southern Uttar Pradesh and northern Madhya Pradesh our science-led watershed interventions have turned what were once parched and deserted wastelands into thriving, water-abundant croplands.

In Niger, climate-resilient seed systems are now transforming uncertainty into productivity. From drought-tolerant sorghum and pearl millet to digital tools that guide farmers on planting and water management, science is helping people stay and thrive where they are.

These few examples show that solutions exist. What is missing is scale and that requires more sustained investment.

Developed nations have both the capacity and the self-interest to act. Supporting food systems in the Global South should also be seen as insurance against instability.

A world where millions are forced to move in search of food and water will be a world without stability anywhere.

FAO’s 2025 World Food Day theme, “Hand in Hand for Better Food and a Better Future”, captures what this moment demands, a deeper investment in science that make a real difference, and genuine partnership.

Across the Global South, collaboration is already strengthening through the ICRISAT Center of Excellence for South-South Cooperation in Agriculture as nations share knowledge, seeds, and strategies to build resilience together.

Yet the North, too, has a vital role to play in recognition that hunger and instability anywhere can threaten prosperity everywhere.

The future of food security, peace, and climate resilience must be built together.
As the climate crisis tightens its hold, the world must choose, act now to strengthen the foundations of food and farming, or face the growing cost of displacement and unrest.

This World Food Day let us remember that peace, like harvests, depends on what we sow today.

Dr Himanshu Pathak Director General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Dr Himanshu Pathak is Director General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)

Spokespersons for Parliament and for the political groups will hold a briefing on the 20 - 23 October plenary session, on Friday at 11.00 in Parliament’s Anna Politkovskaya press room.

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

The crowds were so big that the public viewing was moved from the parliament building to a stadium.

Newsletter - 20-23 October 2025 - Strasbourg plenary session

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Draft legislation adopted on Thursday seeks to protect the Union’s interests from the weaponisation of energy supplies by the Russian Federation.
Committee on International Trade
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

The award ceremony will take place at 18.00, on Tuesday 21 October 2025, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg (Daphne Caruana Galizia Press Room).

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

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