The country faces a challenging transition, but it can progress if the people work together.
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 22 2026 (IPS) – Nepal has a unique opportunity for transformation. The recent youth-led protests underscored aspirations for greater transparency, governance and a more equal distribution of economic opportunities and resources. This yearning resonated in Nepal and beyond.
Now, Nepal must find a balance in setting prudent political, economic and financial policies to steer a difficult transition in an orderly manner. Adding to the complex domestic situation is the lingering uncertainty in the global economy. The transition process in this challenging environment should ensure an inclusive future for Nepal’s people.
Economic challenges
History shows that more equal societies tend to be associated with greater economic stability and more sustained growth. This will be a helpful guiding strategy as Nepal charts its own path to change. Indeed, a solid strategy needs to be founded on two key pillars: economic stability and inclusive growth.
In 2022, stability was among the top priorities when the country’s leaders approached the IMF for support. The collapse of tourism in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic took a heavy toll on Nepal’s economy, including on its job market.
The IMF’s financing package assisted the authorities’ Covid-19 response in mitigating the pandemic’s impact on economic activity, protecting vulnerable groups and laying the groundwork for sustained growth. The program also supported reforms to foster durable growth and reduce poverty over the medium term, including by implementing cross-cutting institutional reforms to improve governance and reduce corruption vulnerability.
In October, Nepal completed the sixth of seven program reviews, showing tangible improvement in the economy. Indeed, Nepal has been seeing the green shoots of recovery with real GDP growth rising from a mere 2 percent in FY 2023, to 3.7 percent in FY 2024, to an estimated 4.3 percent in FY 2025—more than double the pace in just a few years.
In FY 2026, we still expect the country’s economic recovery to continue, though at a more moderate pace amid a complex domestic environment and global uncertainty.
Nepal has also been very successful in rebuilding policy buffers. Foreign exchange reserves have risen to nearly $20 billion, enough to cover almost a full year of imports. Fiscal discipline has helped stabilise public debt. Inflation remains well below the Nepal Rastra Bank’s target.
This hard-won economic stability should be safeguarded. At the same time, the economy hasn’t fully recovered. Domestic demand remains subdued, investor confidence is waning, and more efforts are needed to protect vulnerable people.
Nepal has achieved significant milestones on structural reforms, in part with support from the IMF capacity development. On the fiscal front, frameworks for increasing government revenue and fiscal transparency have improved with the publication of the domestic revenue mobilization strategy, fiscal risk statement and the tax expenditure report. The National Planning Commission has issued revised guidelines for the National Project Bank, which will strengthen capital project selection and execution.
Likewise, in the financial sector, bank supervision has improved through the Supervisory Information System. The Nepal Rastra Bank has also recently launched a loan portfolio review of 10 large commercial banks, which is expected to provide deep insights into the health of the banking sector.
Measures have been taken to improve governance and transparency, including by improving the anti-money laundering framework, though further efforts are needed to enhance implementation.
As part of the program, four priority nonfinancial public enterprises had their financial statements audited. Work is underway to amend the Nepal Rastra Bank Act to strengthen its autonomy and governance.
Yet, unresolved structural issues and emerging headwinds are testing these gains. Policymakers must ensure that the fruits of macroeconomic stability and growth are broadly shared. Continued reforms will help. In the near term, this implies accelerating budget execution and improving project readiness—particularly in areas such as hydropower and trade-related infrastructure—and reducing logistics frictions, which will crowd-in private investment.
This will also lay the foundation for a more diversified, higher value-added growth model that creates more domestic jobs.
Unlocking private sector growth to deliver more jobs and better livelihoods is critical. This can only be accomplished when the basic building blocks of private enterprise are in place: Strong institutions, free and fair markets and a stable macroeconomic environment.
Over the medium term, strengthening governance and anti-corruption institutions, improving the investment climate, enhancing financial oversight, trade integration and expanding targeted social protection will be key to unlocking inclusive and sustainable growth.
Reason for hope
Let us conclude by expressing our deep sympathy for the profound loss during the recent social unrest. We are deeply saddened by the loss, but also heartened by the resilience of the Nepali people striving for a better future.
While global economic prospects remain dim amid uncertainty, Nepal gives reason for hope—a nation reimagined with greater equality and good governance. The country faces a challenging transition, but it can make the most progress if the people work together. For policymakers, this implies steering the economy on the course of continued reforms that safeguard macroeconomic and financial stability while laying strong foundations for durable and inclusive growth, coupled with good governance.
This is a unique moment in the country’s long history, and a time to set a new standard for the future. The IMF is ready to support Nepal in its journey.
Krishna Srinivasan is the head of the Asia and Pacific Department at the IMF. Sarwat Jahan is the mission chief for Nepal and a deputy division chief in the Asia and Pacific Department.
Flagship report calls for fundamental reset of global water agenda as irreversible damage pushes many basins beyond recovery.
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 21 2026 (IPS) – The world is already in the state of “water bankruptcy”. In many basins and aquifers, long-term overuse and degradation mean that past hydrological and ecological baselines cannot realistically be restored.
While not every basin or country is water-bankrupt, enough critical systems around the world have crossed these thresholds, and are interconnected through trade, migration, climate feedbacks, and geopolitical dependencies, that the global risk landscape is now fundamentally altered.
The familiar language of “water stress” and “water crisis” is no longer adequate. Stress describes high pressure that is still reversible. Crisis describes acute, time-bound shocks. Water bankruptcy must be recognized as a distinct post-crisis state, where accumulated damage and overshoot have undermined the system’s capacity to recover.
A group of women fetching water from a dam in Taha, Northern Region of Ghana. Credit: Evans Ahorsu. Source: UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health
Water bankruptcy management must address insolvency and irreversibility. Unlike financial bankruptcy management, which deals only with insolvency, managing water bankruptcy is concerned with rebalancing demand and supply under conditions where returning to baseline conditions is no longer possible.
Anthropogenic drought is central to the world’s new water reality. Drought and water shortage are increasingly driven by human activities, over-allocation, groundwater depletion, land and soil degradation, deforestation, pollution, and climate change, rather than natural variability alone. Water bankruptcy is the outcome of long-term anthropogenic drought, not just bad luck with hydrological anomalies.
Water bankruptcy is about both quantity and quality. Declining stocks, polluted rivers, and degrading aquifers, and salinized soils mean that the truly usable fraction of available water is shrinking, even where total volumes may appear stable.
Managing water bankruptcy requires a shift from crisis management to bankruptcy management. The priority is no longer to “get back to normal”, but to prevent further irreversible damage, rebalance rights and claims within degraded carrying capacities, transform water-intensive sectors and development models, and support just transitions for those most affected.
Governance institutions must protect both water and its underlying natural capital. The existing institutions focus on protecting water as a good or service disregarding the natural capital that makes water available in the first place. Efforts to protect a product are ineffective when the processes that produce it are disrupted.
Recognizing water bankruptcy calls for developing legal and governance institutions that can effectively protect not only water but also the hydrological cycle and natural capital that make its production possible.
Water bankruptcy is a justice and security issue. The costs of overshoot and irreversibility fall disproportionately on smallholder farmers, rural and Indigenous communities, informal urban residents, women, youth, and downstream users, while benefits have often accrued to more powerful actors. How societies manage water bankruptcy will shape social cohesion, political stability, and peace.
Water bankruptcy management combines mitigation with adaptation. While water crisis management paradigms seek to return the system to normal conditions through mitigation efforts only, water bankruptcy management focuses on restoring what is possible and preventing further damages through mitigation combined with adaptation to new normals and constraints.
Water can serve as a bridge in a fragmented world. Water can align national priorities with international priorities and improve cooperation between and within nations. Roughly 70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture, much of it by farmers in the Global South. Elevating water in global policy debates can help rebuild trust between South and North but also within nations, between rural and urban, left and right constituencies.
Water must be recognized as an upstream sector. Most national and international policy agendas treat water as a downstream impact sector where investments are focused on mitigating the imposed problems and externalities. The world must recognize water as an upstream opportunity sector where investments have long-term benefits for peace, stability, security, equity, economy, health, and the environment.
Water is an effective medium to fulfill the global environmental agenda. Investments in addressing water bankruptcy deliver major co-benefits for the global efforts to address its environmental problems while addressing the national security concerns of the UN member states.
Elevating water in the global policy agenda can renew international cooperation, increase the efficiency of environmental investments, and reaccelerate the halted progress of the three Rio Conventions to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification.
A new global water agenda is urgently needed. Existing agendas and conventional water policies, focused mainly on WASH, incremental efficiency gains and generic IWRM guidelines, are not sufficient for the world’s current water reality. A fresh water agenda must be developed that takes Global Water Bankruptcy as a starting point and uses the 2026 and 2028 UN Water Conferences, the conclusion of the Water Action Decade in 2028, and the 2030 SDG 6 timeline as milestones for resetting how the world understands and governs water.
Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era | UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) (20 January) (press release)
Support Paper Madani K. (2026) Water Bankruptcy: The Formal Definition, Water Resources Management, 40 (78) doi: 10.1007/s11269-025-04484-0)
Collecting water in Ethiopia. A new report, ‘Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post Crisis Era’ warns that many of the earth’s water resources have been pushed to a point of permanent failure. Credit: EU/ECHO/Anouk Delafortrie/IPS
UNITED NATIONS & SRINAGAR, India, Jan 20 2026 (IPS) – The world has entered what United Nations researchers now describe as an era of Global Water Bankruptcy, a condition where humanity has irreversibly overspent the planet’s water resources, leaving ecosystems, economies, and communities unable to recover to previous levels.
The new report, released by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, titled Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era. The report argues that decades of overextraction, pollution, land degradation, and climate stress have pushed large parts of the global water system into a permanent state of failure.
“The world has entered the era of Global Water Bankruptcy,” the report reads, adding that “in many regions, human water systems are already in a post-crisis state of failure.”
According to the report, the language of “water crisis” is no longer sufficient to explain what is happening. A crisis implies a shock followed by recovery. Water bankruptcy, by contrast, describes a condition where recovery is no longer realistically possible because natural water capital has been permanently damaged.
In an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service, former Deputy Head of Iran’s Department of EnvironmentProf. Kaveh Madani, who currently is the Director at United Nations University, Institute for Water, Environment and Health, said that declaring that the planet has entered the era of water bankruptcy must not be interpreted as universal water bankruptcy, as not all basins, aquifers, and systems are water bankrupt.
Prof. Kaveh Madani, Director at the United Nations University, Institute for Water, Environment and Health, addresses the UN midday press briefing. Credit: IPS
“But we now have enough critical basins and aquifers in chronic decline and showing clear signs of irreversibility that the global risk landscape is already being reshaped. Scientifically, we know recovery is no longer realistic in many systems when we see persistent overshoot (using more than renewable supply) combined with clear markers of irreversibility—for example aquifer compaction and land subsidence that permanently reduce storage, wetland and lake loss, salinization and pollution that shrink usable water, and glacier retreat that removes a long-term seasonal buffer. When these signals persist over time, the old “bounce back” assumption stops being credible,” Madani said.
“Over decades, societies have withdrawn more water than climate and hydrology can reliably provide, drawing down not only the annual income of renewable flows but also the savings stored in aquifers, glaciers, soils, wetlands, and river ecosystems,” the report says.
The scale of the problem, as per the report, is global. Nearly three-quarters of the world’s population now lives in countries classified as water insecure or critically water insecure.
Madani said, adding that water bankruptcy is best assessed basin by basin and aquifer by aquifer, not by country.
“Please note that, based on the water security definition used by the UN system, water insecurity and water bankruptcy are not equivalent. Water bankruptcy can drive water insecurity, but water insecurity can also stem from limited financial and institutional capacity to build and operate infrastructure for safe water supply and sanitation, even where physical water is available,” he explained.
Madani added that the regions most consistently closest to irreversible decline cluster in the Middle East and North Africa, Central and South Asia, parts of northern China, the Mediterranean and southern Europe, the southwestern United States and northern Mexico (including the Colorado River system), parts of southern Africa, and parts of Australia.
The Aral Sea, which lies between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, shows dramatic water loss between 1989 and 2025. Credit: UNU-INWEH
Surface Water Systems Are Shrinking Rapidly
The report shows how more than half of the world’s large lakes have lost water since the early 1990s, affecting nearly one quarter of the global population that depends directly on them. Many major rivers now fail to reach the sea for parts of the year or fall below environmental flow needs.
Massive losses have occurred in wetlands, which serve as natural buffers against floods and droughts. Over the past five decades, the report claims that the world has lost roughly 410 million hectares of natural wetlands, almost the size of the European Union. The economic value of lost ecosystem services from these wetlands exceeds 5.1 trillion US dollars.
Groundwater depletion is one of the clearest signs of water bankruptcy. Groundwater, says the report, now supplies about 50 percent of global domestic water use and over 40 percent of irrigation water. Yet around 70 percent of the world’s major aquifers show long-term declining trends.
“Excessive groundwater extraction has already contributed to significant land subsidence over more than 6 million square kilometers,” the report says, warning that in some locations land is sinking by up to 25 centimeters per year, permanently reducing storage capacity and increasing flood risk.
In coastal areas, overpumping has allowed seawater to intrude into aquifers, rendering groundwater unusable for generations. In inland agricultural regions, falling water tables have triggered sinkholes, soil collapse, and the loss of fertile land.
These satellite images show a dramatic impact of the Aru glacier collapses in western Tibet. First image was taken in 2017 and the second in 2025. Credit: UNU-INWEH
The cryosphere, glaciers and snowpacks that act as natural water storage systems are also being rapidly liquidated. The world has already lost more than 30 percent of its glacier mass since 1970. Several low- and mid-latitude mountain ranges could lose functional glaciers within decades.
“The liquidation of this frozen savings account interacts with groundwater depletion and surface water over-allocation to lock many basins into a permanent worsening water deficit state,” says the report.
This loss, as per the report, threatens the long-term water security of hundreds of millions of people who depend on glacier- and snowmelt-fed rivers for drinking water, irrigation, and hydropower, particularly in Asia and the Andes.
Madani said the biggest failure was treating groundwater as an unlimited safety net instead of a strategic reserve.
He says that when surface water tightened, many systems defaulted to “drill deeper” without enforceable caps.
“Authorities often recognize the consequences when it is already late, and meaningful action then faces major political barriers. For example, reducing groundwater use in farming can trigger unemployment, food insecurity, and even instability unless farmers are supported through short-term compensation and a longer-term transition to alternative livelihoods,” he added.
According to Madani, that kind of transition cannot be implemented overnight.
“So, business as usual continues. The result is predictable: groundwater gets “liquidated” to postpone hard choices, and by the time the damage is obvious, recovery is no longer realistic,” he told IPS news.
Agriculture Lies at the Heart of the Crisis
According to the report, farming accounts for approximately 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals. About 3 billion people and more than half of the world’s food production are located in regions where total water storage is already declining or unstable.
The report states that more than 170 million hectares of irrigated cropland are under high or very high water stress. Land and soil degradation are making matters worse by reducing the ability of soils to retain moisture. The degradation of more than half of the global agricultural land is now moderate or severe.
Drought, once considered a natural hazard, is increasingly driven by human activity. Overallocation, groundwater depletion, deforestation, land degradation, and climate change have turned drought into a chronic condition in many regions.
“Drought-related damages, intensified by land degradation, groundwater depletion and climate change rather than rainfall deficits alone, already amount to about 307 billion US dollars per year worldwide,” the report states.
Water quality degradation further shrinks the usable resource base. Pollution from untreated wastewater, agricultural runoff, industrial effluents, and salinization means that even where water volumes appear stable, much of that water is unsafe or too costly to treat.
The report adds that the planetary freshwater boundary has already been crossed. Both blue water, surface and groundwater, and green water, soil moisture, have been pushed beyond a safe operating space.
Current governance systems, the authors argue, are not fit for this reality. Many legal water rights and development promises far exceed degraded hydrological capacity. Existing global agendas, focused largely on drinking water access, sanitation, and incremental efficiency gains, are inadequate for managing irreversible loss.
“Water bankruptcy must be recognized as a distinct post-crisis state, where accumulated damage and overshoot have undermined the system’s capacity to recover,” the report says.
Water bankruptcy could result in a further increase in conflicts. Credit: UNU-INWEH
It warns that the implications of water bankruptcy are dire.
UN Under-Secretary-General Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of UNU explains, “Waterbankruptcy is becoming a driver of fragility, displacement, and conflict. Managing it fairly—ensuring that vulnerable communities are protected and that unavoidable losses are shared equitably—is now central to maintaining peace, stability, and social cohesion.”
Policy Implications
Instead of crisis management aimed at restoring the past, the report actually pitches for bankruptcy management. That means acknowledging insolvency, accepting irreversibility, and restructuring water use, rights, and institutions to prevent further damage.
The authors lay stress on the fact that water bankruptcy is also a justice and security issue. The costs of overshoot fall disproportionately on small farmers, rural communities, women, Indigenous peoples, and downstream users, while benefits have often accrued to more powerful actors.
“How societies manage water bankruptcy will shape social cohesion, political stability, and peace,” the report warns.
Furthermore, it urges governments and international institutions to use upcoming UN Water Conferences in 2026 and 2028 as milestones to reset the global water agenda, calling for water to be treated as an upstream sector central to climate action, biodiversity protection, food security, and peace.
“This is about a crisis that might arrive in the future. The world is already living beyond its hydrological means,” reads the report.
When asked why the report frames water bankruptcy as a justice and security issue and how governments can implement painful demand reductions without triggering social unrest or conflict, Madani said the demand reduction becomes dangerous when it is treated as a technical exercise instead of a political economy reform. In many water-bankrupt regions, according to him, water is effectively a jobs policy: it keeps low-productivity farming and local economies afloat.
“If you cut water without an economic transition, you create unemployment, food insecurity, and unrest. So the practical pathway is to decouple livelihoods and growth from water consumption. In many economies, water and other natural resources are used to keep low-efficiency systems alive. In most places, it is possible to produce more strategic food with less water and less land, and with fewer farmers—provided that farmers are supported through a transition and offered alternative livelihoods.”
According to Madani, governments should protect basic needs but target the big reductions where most water is used, especially agriculture and besides that, pair caps with a just transition package for farmers—compensation, insurance, buy-down or retirement of water entitlements where relevant, and real income alternatives.
He further suggests that the governments should invest in diversification, including services, industry, value-added agri-processing, and urban jobs, so communities can earn a living without expanding water withdrawals.
“In short, you avoid conflict by making demand reduction part of a broader economic transition, not a standalone water policy.”
Agnès Callamard is Amnesty International’s Secretary General
Credit: World Economic Forum/Gabriel Lado. Source: Amnesty International
LONDON, Jan 16 2026 (IPS) – “The ‘spirit of dialogue’, the theme for this year’s meeting in Davos, which begins January 19, has been painfully and increasingly absent from international affairs of late. President Trump’s first year back in office has seen the United States withdraw from multilateral bodies, bully other states and relentlessly attack the principles and institutions that underpin the international justice system.
At the same time, the likes of Russia and Israel have continued to make a mockery of the Geneva and Genocide Conventions without facing meaningful accountability.
“A few powerful states are unashamedly working to demolish the rules-based order and reshape the world along self-serving lines. Unilateral interventions and corporate interests are taking precedence over long-term strategic partnerships grounded in universal values and collective solutions.
This was evident in the Trump administration’s military action in Venezuela and its stated intent to ‘run’ the country, which the president himself admitted was at least partially driven by the interests of US oil corporations. Make no mistake: the only certain consequence of vandalizing international law and multilateral institutions will be extensive suffering and destruction the world over.
“When faced with diplomatic, economic and military bullying and attacks, many states and corporations have opted for appeasement instead of taking a principled and united stand. Humanity needs world leaders, business executives and civil society to collectively resist or even disrupt these destructive trends. It requires denouncing the bullying and the attacks, and strong legal, economic, and diplomatic responses.
What should not happen is silence, complicity and inaction. It also demands engaging in a transformative quest for common solutions to the many shared and existential problems we face.
“We need UN Security Council reform to address abuse of veto powers, robust regulation to protect us against harmful new technologies; more inclusive and transparent decision-making on climate solutions; and international treaties on tax and debt to deliver a more equitable, rights-based global economy. But this will only be achievable through cooperation and steadfast will to resist those who seek to strongarm and divide us.”
-Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza
-The USA’s military action in Venezuela, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and the conflicts in Sudan, DRC and Myanmar
-The importance of revindicating and revitalizing multilateralism
-The need for global tax and debt reform and universal social protection
-The urgent need for a full, fast, fair and funded fossil fuel phase-out
-The need to massively scale up climate finance, including to address loss and damage
-Big Tech, corporate accountability and the risks of deregulation
-How to limit the harmful impact of artificial intelligence on human rights, including the right to a healthy environment
Cardiologist Dr. Marwan Sultan, then Director of the Indonesian Hospital in north Gaza, in February 2025 showing damage to hospital equipment following an Israeli attack on the facility a few months prior. In July 2025, Dr. Sultan was killed in an Israeli strike on the apartment where he was sheltering with his family. Credit: PHR/GHRC
BRATISLAVA, Jan 14 2026 (IPS) – Israel must lift all restrictions on medicine, food and aid coming into Gaza, rights groups have demanded, as two reports released today (Jan 14) document how maternal and reproductive healthcare have been all but destroyed in the country.
The reports from the two groups, which are independent organizations, provide both detailed clinical analysis of the collapse of Gaza’s health system and its medical consequences as well as firsthand testimonies from clinicians and pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza forced to live and care for their newborns in extreme conditions.
And the organizations say that with conditions improving only marginally for many women despite the current ceasefire, Israel must roll back restrictions placed on aid and immediately help ensure people in Gaza get access to the healthcare they need.
“Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure, combined with untreated malnutrition resulting from restrictions on food and medical supplies, including baby formula, has created an environment in which the fundamental biological processes of reproduction and survival have been systematically destroyed, resulting in known and foreseeable harm, pain, suffering, and death,” Sam Zarifi, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) Executive Director, said.
“Israel must immediately allow food and essential medical material to enter Gaza with a proper medical plan for helping the besieged population,” he added.
Israeli military operations following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, have left massive destruction across Gaza, including to healthcare facilities. According to UNICEF, 94 percent of hospitals have been damaged or destroyed.
Destroyed incubators and equipment at the Kamal Adwan Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in north Gaza, following the targeting and raid of the facility by the Israeli forces in December 2024. Credit: PHR/GHRC
Maternal and reproductive healthcare has suffered. Before the war, Gaza had eight neonatal intensive care units with 178 incubators. Today, the number of incubators has dropped by 70 percent. In the north, there were 105 incubators across three NICUs, now there are barely any functional units remaining, UNICEF told IPS.
It says that the numbers of low birth weight babies have nearly tripled compared to pre-war levels and the number of first-day deaths of babies increased by 75 percent.
The PHR and PHR-I reports paint a similar picture.
The PHR report, which focuses on the period between January 2025 and October 2025 when a ceasefire was agreed, details how between May and June last year, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported a 41 percent decrease in the birth rate in Gaza compared to the same time period in 2022; there was a significant increase in miscarriages that affected more than 2,600 women, and 220 pregnancy-related deaths that occurred before delivery.
The ministry also reported a sharp increase in premature births and low birth weight cases; over 1,460 babies were reported to be born prematurely, while more than 2,500 were admitted to neonatal intensive care. Newborn deaths also increased, with at least 21 babies reported to have died on their first day of life.
Meanwhile, the PHR-I report includes personal testimonies illustrating the severe problems pregnant women and women with newborns have faced in Gaza during the war, from lacking safe routes to care and being forced to give birth in unsanitary, dangerous conditions to battling hunger and severe food shortages as they try to breastfeed their children.
One woman, Samah Muhammad Abu Mustafa, a 30-year-old mother of two from Khuza’a, Khan Youni, described how when her contractions began in the middle of the night, because there were no vehicles and very few ambulances, which are reserved for shelling or other critical emergencies, she had to walk a long distance through rain. When she eventually reached the hospital, she said it was “horrifying.”
“I swear, one woman gave birth in the corridor, and her baby died. It was very crowded, and the doctors worked nonstop. I felt as though I could give birth at any moment. After giving birth to my eldest daughter, I was told I should not deliver naturally again because my pelvis was too narrow. Despite this, the doctors said I would have to deliver naturally because a cesarean section required anesthesia, and there was not enough available. I stood for three hours until it was finally my turn, without sitting even for a moment,” she said.
But despite the October 2025 ceasefire, massive problems remain with women’s access to and the provision of, maternal and reproductive healthcare in Gaza.
“Maternal health units in Gaza are largely non-functional and face critical shortages of essential medicines, consumables, and equipment,” Lama Bakri, project coordinator in the Occupied Territories Department at PHR-I, told IPS.
“Neonatal and diagnostic equipment remains scarce or blocked, including portable incubators for premature and low-birth-weight newborns. Although some aid has entered since the ceasefire, these gaps are not being addressed at the scale required, and meaningful improvement in the immediate future remains unlikely.”
Malnutrition also remains a serious problem.
“The ceasefire has allowed us to significantly scale up our nutrition response, but we are still treating pregnant and breastfeeding women for acute malnutrition in alarmingly high numbers,” Ricardo Pires, Communication Manager, Division of Global Communications & Advocacy at UNICEF, told IPS.
He said that between July and September 2025 about 38 percent of pregnant women screened were diagnosed with acute malnutrition.
“In October alone, we admitted 8,300 pregnant and breastfeeding women for treatment, about 270 a day, in a place where there was no discernible malnutrition among this group before October 2023,” he added.
UNICEF has documented almost 6,800 children admitted for acute malnutrition treatment in November 2025 compared to 4,700 cases in November 2024. So far, the number of admitted cases more than doubled in 2025 compared to 2024: almost 89,000 admissions of children to date in 2025, compared to 40,000 cases in 2024, and almost none before 2023.
“What we’re seeing is that no child meets minimum dietary diversity standards, and two-thirds of children are surviving on just two food groups or less. Around 90 percent of caregivers reported their children had been sick in the previous two weeks, which compounds the malnutrition crisis,” Pires said.
And there are fears for the longer-term demographic future of Gaza given the damage to maternal and reproductive healthcare.
“For Gaza’s demographic future, the implications are serious. Even with reconstruction, we will be dealing with a generation of children who were scarred before they took their first breath, children who may face lifelong health complications, developmental challenges, and the effects of stunting. The rebuilding must start now, but we should be clear-eyed: the damage to maternal and newborn health will echo for years, potentially decades,” said Pires.
But others say that with cooperation between international actors and the right political will, the situation need not remain so dire.
“To rehabilitate the population after everything that has happened is going to be a real issue, [but] now there is a Board of Peace, the needs of pregnant women and maternal and reproductive healthcare can be prioritized,” Zarifi told IPS.
“The capacity and the will exist among Gazans and Gazan healthcare workers to rebuild the healthcare system, including maternal and reproductive health services,” added Bakri. “The primary obstacle is not technical or professional but political: Israel’s control over Gaza’s borders and the restrictions on the entry of essential equipment, medical supplies, and reconstruction materials. With unrestricted access to what is needed to rehabilitate hospitals, rebuild destroyed units, and restock essential medicines, recovery is entirely feasible. Whether maternal and reproductive healthcare can return to pre-war levels depends on sustained international pressure to allow that access.”
Although some aid has entered since the ceasefire, these gaps are not being addressed at the scale required, and meaningful improvement in the immediate future remains unlikely.
However, while both NGOs like PHR and PHR-I and others, alongside international bodies like the UN, stress that any recovery and reconstruction in Gaza requires the ceasefire to hold and consolidate, repeated violations underline its fragility, and the effect that has on women.
Meanwhile, PHR and PHR-I point out that extreme weather and ongoing Israeli restrictions on medicine and food getting to Gaza to this day continue to severely affect pregnant women, new mothers, and babies. On top of this, Israel has also announced it will bar 37 international aid groups from working in Gaza, potentially compounding the problems.
Bakri said such measures were jeopardizing what small gains had been made since the ceasefire and “raise serious concerns about whether the situation can improve.”
“Even after the ceasefire, while bombardment has decreased, the reality these women face remains catastrophic – not only for their bodies and well-being but for the survival of the entire society,” said Bakri.
Zarifi added, “We are worried that the restrictions placed by Israel on some of the major actors in the humanitarian response will hamper access to assistance for those that need it. We have raised questions with the Israeli government as to why specific medicines are not allowed to be brought into Gaza and they say that they are not stopping them from being brought in but they can be brought in by commercial means. That is hard for people who can barely put any money together. These medicines should definitely be coming in through humanitarian channels.”
He also highlighted how important the issue of accountability is in ensuring any progress is made in rebuilding healthcare in Gaza and also limiting the probability of similar devastation in the future.
Both reports concluded that the harms caused by Israeli attacks are not isolated incidents but part of an ongoing pattern of systematic damage to the health of women and their children in Gaza, amounting to reproductive violence.
Israel has denied this and said that attacks on hospitals in Gaza have been because the medical facilities are being used by Hamas, and it has maintained that its forces adhere to international law.
While under international law healthcare facilities have special protection even in war, and attacks on them are prohibited, that protection is lost if they are deemed to fulfill criteria to be considered military objectives, such as housing militaries and arms.
However, any attack on them must still comply with the fundamental principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack and failure to respect any of these principles constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law, according to the UN.
“These attacks are part of a deliberate policy designed to create a domino effect of suffering. From starvation and militarized aid distribution by the GHF, to lack of access to clean water, repeated displacement orders, living in shelters under continuous bombardment, and exposure to infections, disease, and harsh weather, the attacks on maternal and reproductive healthcare are another piece of this puzzle. Together, these conditions were created to systematically destroy the fabric of life in Gaza and reduce the population’s ability to survive,” said Bakri.
“The Israeli government has justified attacks on healthcare facilities by saying this was a problem caused by Hamas. We haven’t had an indication of this but it might be true. But in any case there has to be an investigation of these incidents and we hope the Israeli government will carry out such an investigation,” said Zarifi.
“But what is really alarming to us is that the norms prohibiting attacks on healthcare have been repeatedly violated, and there are also laws governing the protection of women and children that appear to have been violated. The only thing that makes these norms work is accountability. There has to be accountability for what happened, as it is the only way we can ensure that what has happened won’t happen in other conflicts. Impunity is watched by other actors around the world,” he added.
A mother and a son with mask were riding on a motorcycle in a street of Bangkok. The capital of Thailand experienced high level of PM2.5 particle pollution. Credit: Pexels/Maksim Romashkin
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan 14 2026 (IPS) – Take a deep breath.
Did you know that in many countries in Asia and the Pacific, the air we breathe falls short of the safety standards for air quality set by the World Health Organization? While the start of a new year signals new beginnings, it also marks the continuation of the recurring air quality crisis across many countries in the region.
Oftentimes, when we think of air pollution, we associate it with car exhaust and factory chimneys belching black smoke. But air pollution is not just the cost of urban development – it is a multi-hazard crisis caused by wildfires, sand and dust storms, and volcanic eruptions that respect no borders. Access to clean air is a human right and countries who contribute the least to air pollution are often the most vulnerable.
Rising temperatures create a vicious cycle: rising heat leads to intensifying wildfires, releasing toxic smoke composed of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and PM2.5 into the air we breathe. Furthermore, heat accelerates the breakdown of waste, generating even more pollutants.
Volcanic eruptions add sulfur dioxide and volcanic ash to the mix, and these pollutants can linger in the atmosphere for months. The result? Climate change exacerbates air pollution, which in turn aggravates the climate crisis — a feedback loop that puts both human health and ecosystems at risk and transforms local hazards into regional challenges.
Can a heavily polluted environment be restored? In principle, yes, but doing so requires transformative change and collective action in our economy and society. Improving urban mobility requires prioritizing efficient public transport, including low-emission vehicles, cleaner, greener alternatives such as walking, cycling, and ride-sharing.
Nature-based solutions, including green cooling corridors, can further improve air quality by lowering surface temperatures and providing buffers against desertification, land degradation, drought, and sand and dust storms.
However, not all sources of air pollution can be addressed through emission reductions alone. There are inherent limits to prevention at the source, particularly for air pollution caused by natural hazards. This requires a shift in focus from mitigation toward adaptation and preparedness.
Earth observation plays a critical role in monitoring, early warning, and informed decision-making. Advanced sensors aboard platforms such as Sentinel-5 Precursor and Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) detect key atmospheric pollutants including nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), tropospheric ozone, and carbon monoxide at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales.
The collaboration of ESCAP with regional partners for the Pan-Asia Partnership for Geospatial Air Pollution Information exemplifies how satellite data can be integrated with surface observations to create robust monitoring systems. These datasets enable tracking transboundary pollution events, from agricultural fire smoke to volcanic sulfur emissions to urban photochemical smog.
Satellites bridge the existing gaps from ground-based observations, providing authorities with the spatial coverage needed to understand and monitor air pollution and formulate effective policies.
The Clean Air for Sustainable ASEAN project recognizes that addressing the transboundary air pollution crisis requires strengthened monitoring and decision-making capacities enabled by technology-driven solutions. The application, Check Phoon (Thai: Phoon, meaning dust), or the PM2.5 Monitoring System, developed by the Geo-informatics Information and Space Technology Development Agency of Thailand, is an innovative platform that leverages space technology to support air quality monitoring and public health protection by providing real-time, high-resolution PM2.5 concentration data across Thailand.
The application is available in both web-based and mobile applications, and the system integrates satellite data, such as from Himawari, meteorological information, PM2.5 sources including hotspots (active fire detections), and ground-based validation from PM2.5 monitoring stations.
Building on the framework of SatGPT for flood hotspot mapping, an iteration of SatGPT for volcanic hazards has been proposed with potential to support the understanding and management of air pollution linked to volcanic activity. has been proposed with potential to support the understanding and management of air pollution linked to volcanic activity.
The Regional Action Programme on Air Pollution advances air quality management through science-based cooperation, sharing of best practices, and strengthened technical and financial support across ESCAP member States.
Complementing this effort, the Regional Space Applications Programme facilitates the sharing of Earth observation data and expertise that are critical for monitoring air pollution and assessing the impacts.
These initiatives contribute to accessible and actionable geospatial information that strengthens early warning systems, enabling authorities to forecast and quantify air quality with greater precision.
The transboundary nature of air pollution demands a stronger and more urgent call to action. While the Asia-Pacific region has demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of cascading disasters, regional cooperation must accelerate to match the scale and pace of this evolving crisis.
Keran Wang is Chief of Space Applications Section, ESCAP; Sheryl Rose Reyes is Consultant, Space Applications Section, ESCAP; Taisei Ukita is former Intern, Space Applications Section, ESCAP.
The authors would like to thank Sangmin Nam, Director of the Environment and Development Division of ESCAP, for his contributions to this article.
