News headlines in 2026

  CIVICUS discusses the recent protests in Iran with Sohrab Razaghi, executive director of Volunteer Activists, a Netherlands-based diaspora organisation empowering Iranian civil society.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, February 16 (IPS) - 2026 has begun on a deeply troubling note. International law, long regarded as the backbone of global peace and security, is being challenged in ever more brazen ways. Core principles of sovereignty and restraint are being flagrantly breached.

BANGKOK, Thailand, February 16 (IPS) - Trade in the Asia-Pacific region has moved into a new strategic reality. The latest Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Trends (APTIT) highlights that rapid technological change and a strategic reconfiguration of supply chains are reshaping how economies in the region trade and compete.

GARISSA, Kenya , February 16 (IPS) - By 9 a.m. on a Wednesday, Hawa Hussein Farah is already watching the temperature climb. Awake since 6 a.m., she has prepared her three children for school before walking them to class and heading to Suuq Mugdi, an open-air market in Garissa town, to buy the fruit she will sell.

Rising food prices and declining farm incomes are putting increasing pressure on the global food system, with up to 720 million people facing hunger last year, and billions more struggling to afford healthy diets.

Back-to-back cyclones in Madagascar have left more than 400,000 people in need of food assistance, according to estimates by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), while roads, power lines and homes have been severely damaged.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned Israel’s decision to resume land registration procedures in a large part of the occupied West Bank, his Spokesman said on Monday.

As Ukraine prepares to enter the fifth year of the full-scale Russian invasion on 24 February, UN monitors say harm to civilians has “demonstrably worsened”, while energy attacks and freezing temperatures are making it harder for displaced families to return.

More than 60 years after the UN launched its formal decolonization drive, Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday urged renewed commitment to completing the unfinished business of ending colonial rule.

The Tawila camp for internally displaced in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region is home to more than half a million people who live in makeshift huts of sticks, hay and plastic sheeting.