News headlines in January 2026

BERLIN, Germany, January 20 (IPS) - As democracy faces pressure around the world and confidence in international law drops, a new global survey reveals that citizens in a vast majority of countries support the idea of creating a citizen-elected world parliament to deal with global issues.

Once a lifeline of northern Bengal, Bangladesh’s Karatoya River now drifts through Bogura as a fragmented, polluted channel, where climate change and human neglect quietly reshape livelihoods, memory, and everyday life.

The Trump administration’s recent announcement of its withdrawal from 66 international organisations has been met with a mixture of alarm and applause. While the headline number suggests a dramatic retreat from the world stage, a closer look reveals a more nuanced, and perhaps more insidious, strategy. The move is less a wholesale abandonment of the United Nations system and more a targeted pruning of the multilateral vine, aimed at withering specific branches of global cooperation that the administration deems contrary to its interests. While the immediate financial impact may be less than feared, the long-term consequences for the UN and the rules-based international order are profound.

SYLHET, Bangladesh, January 19 (IPS) - While other children her age prepared for school, eight-year-old Tania once began her workday. Each morning, she picked up a jharu—the household broom—and cleaned floors inside a private home. At the same time, another child of her age in that household lifted a schoolbag and left for class. One carried a broom. The other carried books.

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, January 19 (IPS) - On a rainy Wednesday morning, in Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania, the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) terminal bustled with a steady flow of passengers. Women ushered toddlers along. Snack bags dangling on their hands. Tourists dragged wheeled suitcases across the floor. Students scrolled through smartphones as they returned to campus. Each had been attracted by the speed, reliability and comfort of the electric train.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, January 19 (IPS) - After condemning pragmatic responses to the 1997-98 Asian financial crises, the West pursued similar policies in response to the 2008 global financial crisis without acknowledging its own mistakes.

TOKYO, Japan, January 19 (IPS) - Thirty years ago, the groundbreaking report by Graça Machel, renowned and widely respected global advocate for women’s and children’s rights, to the United Nations General Assembly laid bare the devastating impact of armed conflict on children and shook the conscience of the world. It led to the historic decision of the General Assembly to create the mandate of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (SRSG-CAAC).

As global leaders gather at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, UN agencies are warning that rising hunger and displacement are not only humanitarian emergencies but growing threats to global economic stability.

Atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region are spreading from town to town in an organized campaign of violence that includes mass executions, rape and ethnic targeting, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court told the UN Security Council on Monday.

Despite a downward trend in the use of the death penalty globally, 2025 saw an ‘alarming’ increase in the number of executions in a small number of retentionist countries, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) warned on Monday.