MICHOACÁN, Mexico , December 18 (IPS) - My niece Roxana Valentín Cárdenas was 21 years old when she was killed. She was a Purépecha Indigenous woman from San Andrés Tziróndaro, a community on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacán.

Efforts to combat climate change too often sideline the very communities hit hardest by the crisis and who have contributed the least to it. This injustice was the core idea of the Voices for Just Climate Action (VCA) program. Now that VCA has concluded after five years, Job Muriithi and Winny Nyanwira from Hivos reflect on its achievements and share recommendations for governments and donors to ensure fair and equitable climate action.

BELÉM, Brazil, December 17 (IPS) - On the Pacific Islands, where the ocean horizon is both a lifeline and a warning, communities have long interpreted environmental change through traditional knowledge, lived experiences, stories, and practice. Their observations echo those across the Pacific region, where traditional knowledge remains central to understanding shifting environments and responsible stewardship.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, December 17 (IPS) - Machines with no conscience are making split-second decisions about who lives and who dies. This isn’t dystopian fiction; it’s today’s reality. In Gaza, algorithms have generated kill lists of up to 37,000 targets.

BANGKOK, Thailand, December 17 (IPS) - Cyclones Ditwah and Senyar are indications of a shifting disaster riskscape, not anomalies. Both storms broke historical patterns: Ditwah tracked unusually south along Sri Lanka’s coast before looping into the Bay of Bengal, dumping over 375 mm of rain in 24 hours and triggering landslides.

Through her ceramics, Crimean Tatar artist Elvira Demerdzhi finds moments of calm and a sense of home amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.

UN Member States on Wednesday pledged to narrow widening digital divides and put stronger safeguards around artificial intelligence (AI), as the General Assembly concluded a major review of how the world manages the Internet and fast-evolving digital technologies.

Humanitarian agencies working in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) have warned that life-saving aid operations risk collapse unless Israel immediately lifts new barriers that are blocking access and forcing international charities to shut down.

Fifty days have passed since Hurricane Melissa ravaged Jamaica, leaving behind an unprecedented trail of destruction.

While the Asia and Pacific region has made notable progress in reducing hunger, persistent challenges remain in addressing malnutrition, food insecurity and unequal access to healthy diets, a new UN report published on Wednesday concludes.