LONDON, Sep 26 2025 (IPS)** ––As the high-level opening week of the UN General Assembly unfolds, with heads of states delivering often self-serving speeches from the UN’s podium, the organisation is undergoing one of its worst set of crises since its founding 80 years ago.
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A view of the podium and the United Nations emblem in the General Assembly Hall. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe
This year’s General Assembly – ostensibly focused on development, human rights and peace – comes as wars are raging across multiple continents, climate targets are dangerously being missed and the institution designed to address these global challenges is being hollowed out by funding cuts and political withdrawals.
(UN News)* —The UN Secretary General on Friday []warned a high-level meeting in New York focused on ridding the world of nuclear weapons that the threat is only “accelerating and evolving”.
26 Septembermarks the International Day which highlights the ongoing scourge of the nuclear arms race – an opportunity for the international community to reaffirm its commitment to nuclear disarmament.
Pledges to disarm, however, have yet to be honoured.
Nuclear weapons continue to menace our world,” said the UN’s Chef de Cabinet Courtenay Rattray, delivering a statement on behalf of UN chief António Guterres: “And despite decades of promises, the threat is accelerating and evolving.”
The UK government will not meet its pledge to halve violence against women and girls unless it tackles tech companies
One in three women in the UK has experienced online abuse or harassment | Getty
24 September 2025 (openDemocracy)** — From hiding spycams in children’s toys to coercing partners into online sex work on platforms such as OnlyFans, abusers are increasingly weaponising technology to perpetrate new and insidious forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG).
24 September 2025 — Climate experts have found that countries are planning twice as much fossil fuel production as is compatible with global climate commitments.
The 2025 Production Gap Report, co-authored by the Stockholm Environment Institute, Climate Analytics, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development, found that these plans put at risk the goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The experts analyzed 20 major fossil fuel-producing countries that together account for over 80 percent of global fossil fuel production.
PORTLAND, USA, Sep 23 2025 (IPS)** ––Despite anxieties, concerns, and warnings, androids or humanoid robots that rely on generative artificial intelligence (GAI) and advanced robotics are increasingly being integrated into the modern lives of human populations.
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As androids edge closer to reshaping how we work, interact, and manage conflict and resources, the absence of clear regulations leaves human rights, jobs, and social bonds unprotected. Credit: Shutterstock
This integration raises serious challenges regarding humanity’s future in an era where androids are emerging rapidly.
Some have expressed concerns that GAI and robots are embedding and intensifying existing societal biases, stereotypes, misogyny, and discrimination in the development of these new technologies.
Soon, androids are expected to change the nature of work, social interactions, conflict resolution, and resource management.
(UN News)* —Artificial intelligence holds vast potential but poses grave risks if left unregulated, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Wednesday [24 September 2025].
Unsplash/Chris Yang | AI can help prevent crises and drive progress – but without guardrails, it risks fueling conflict, disinformation and instability.
“AI is no longer a distant horizon – it is here, , transforming daily life, the information space, and the global economy at breathtaking speed,” Mr. Guterres said at the Council’s high-level debate on the technology’s security implications for transforming warfare
“The question is not whether AI will influence international peace and security, but how we will shape that influence.”
(UN News)* — The explosive growth of AI tools around the world has yet to be matched by effective, internationally agreed rules on how this powerful technology is governed.
AUDIO AND SUBSCRIPTION
UN News/Anton Uspensky | AI for Good Summit 2024, Geneva
A high-profile event at UN Headquarters on Thursday [] is designed to bring effective global AI governance a step closer to reality.
Investment, optimism and anxiety: these are three of the big drivers of interest in artificial intelligence and its implications.
Because the challenges and opportunities are global, the responses also need to be far more comprehensive than the fragmented and siloed solutions that have been enacted thus far:
“If anyone hears my voice, I say: enough. We have seen death a million times. We have been displaced, killed, lost everything, lost our loved ones. No human can take this. Your child tells you they are hungry, and you cannot give them anything.”
Photo: NRC
These words belong to Eman Muqbel, site management coordinator for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Gaza. She and her family are among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living under bombardment in Gaza City and being forced to flee their homes.
70% of minerals for renewables lies in Global South but the majority of profits are captured by the world’s richest
The vital transition from fossil fuels into renewable energy is being captured by super-rich polluters – individuals, companies and countries – reproducing colonial patterns that are entrenching inequalities and fueling human rights violations, says Oxfam’s new report “Unjust Transition: Reclaiming the Energy Future from Climate Colonialism”, published on 24 September 2025..Image from OXFAM International.
For example, Tesla, the firm owned by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, made $5.63bn from Electric Vehicles (EVs) sales in 2024.
For each EV, the company earned profits of $3,145 – 321 times more than the entire Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) got for supplying the 3Kg of cobalt in each car.
(UN News)* — Humanitarian aid in Gaza must be protected, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday [], following the theft of therapeutic food critical for saving thousands of young lives from malnutrition as famine spreads.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 