News headlines in February 2026

UNITED NATIONS, February 26 (IPS) - International Women’s Day 2026 comes at a defining moment: Women and girls have never been closer to equality, and never closer to losing it. Legal protection against domestic violence has expanded in many countries. Yet, the rights of women and girls are being rolled back in plain sight, and across the world, women still do not enjoy the same legal rights as men.

UNITED NATIONS, February 26 (IPS) - The 193-member General Assembly, the highest-ranking policy-making body at the United Nations, is most likely to elect Palestine as its next President in an unprecedented move voting for a “non-member observer state”—a state deprived of a country to represent.

ROME, February 25 (IPS) - Farmland has long been one of the most important sources of security across generations. Writing about China nearly a century ago, Pearl S. Buck noted in The Good Earth, “If you will hold your land, you can live.” That holds true today. When farmers own land, they invest in it. When they don’t, they extract what they can today without thinking of tomorrow.

SYDNEY, Australia, February 25 (IPS) - Two Pacific Island nations have been applauded for their successes in the global health campaign to eliminate the infectious eye disease, Trachoma.

UNITED NATIONS, February 25 (IPS) - As generative artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly expands across nearly every sector of society, those that work in cultural and creative industries are expected to bear some of the greatest losses. With AI-generated content projected to dominate global markets in the coming years, combined with a lack of strong regulatory frameworks to protect intellectual property and AI’s ability to produce content quickly at a low cost, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) warns that generative AI may become a major driver of inequality, threatening the livelihoods of millions of cultural workers around the world.

GENEVA, February 25 (IPS) - After surviving the harshest winter in a decade, millions of displaced Ukrainians are confronting a growing crisis marked by hardship and ongoing attacks as peace prospects remain distant.

Funding shortfalls are putting the lives of more than 1.9 million displaced people in South Sudan at risk amid rising humanitarian needs, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Wednesday.

Despite global progress in strengthening land tenure and governance, more than a billion people worldwide – nearly one in four adults – fear they could lose the rights to some or all of their land and housing within the next five years.

Fresh from holding the most extensive elections in its history, the Central African Republic (CAR) is entering what the UN’s top envoy in the country describes as a “decisive period” in consolidating fragile peace gains, even as security challenges persist and disarmament efforts continue.

A new UN report forecasts that the Arab region is seeing a gradual economic recovery despite continuing geopolitical uncertainties.