Diplomacy & Crisis News

Le 23 mai dernier, Jacques Munier, journaliste sur France Culture, a consacré sa chronique « Le Journal des idées », à la Syrie.
Il cite à cette occasion l’article de Fawaz A. Gerges, publié en mars dans le numéro de Politique étrangère spécial 40 ans de l’Ifri (n° 1/2019) : « Le Moyen-Orient en 2029 ».

[…] « Les guerres qui ravagent aujourd’hui le Moyen-Orient n’ont pas vocation à se poursuivre éternellement et la région n’est pas vouée à être dirigée par des autocrates », estime Fawaz A. Gerges dans la dernière livraison de la revue Politique étrangère, qui se projette dans les dix années à venir. Le professeur de relations internationales à la London School of Economics évoque « une guerre froide régionale opposant trois acteurs clés – Iran, Arabie Saoudite et Turquie » au cœur des conflits actuels. Sur le terrain « la division criante du monde arabe entre une identité nationale et des identités tribales, religieuses et sectaires se manifeste par de violents affrontements ». […]

Lire la chronique de Jacques Munier en entier sur France Culture.

> > S’abonner à Politique étrangère < <

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday that much greater protection for educational facilities was needed across Afghanistan where attacks against schools have increased three-fold in just one year. The call coincides with the third International Conference on Safe Schools, taking place this week in Mallorca, Spain.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is at the forefront of fighting hunger, mitigating the climate crisis and facilitating “the transition to smart sustainable cities", said the chief of the UN agency which specializes in information and communication technologies, Houlin Zhao, kicking off the third AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva.

Tuesday’s main stories include: thousands fleeing into Niger as violence surges in Nigeria; UN rights office condemns rise in anti-Semitic incidents; UN chief says tax pollution, not people for climate’s sake; North Koreans trapped in vicious cycle of corruption and bribery; Ebola latest from DR Congo.

Although the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to make headway thanks to the determination of health workers on the ground, insecurity is still hampering the response, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. This has led the UN to establish a new coordination structure in the hopes that access to at-risk areas can be improved.

After eight years of deadly air strikes and terrorist attacks that have left hundreds of thousands of Syrians dead and millions of others injured, United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Ursula Mueller asked the Security Council on Tuesday, the hard-hitting question: “Can’t this Council take any concrete action when attacks on schools and hospitals have become a war tactic that no longer sparks outrage”?

Des centaines de femmes allemandes manifestant au cœur de Berlin, en 1943, après Stalingrad, pour obtenir la libération de leurs maris juifs raflés et menacés de déportation. Impossible ? Le plus incroyable, c'est qu'elles obtinrent satisfaction... Le 27 février 1943, à l'aube, les SS de la (...) / Allemagne, Femmes, Génocide, Histoire, Judaïsme, Nazisme, Racisme, Seconde guerre mondiale 1939-1945 - 2005/05 Silence, mensonges et vidéo

Bribery is the main way people in North Korea get food, healthcare, shelter and work, a new UN human rights office report said on Tuesday.

“We need to tax pollution, not people”, and “end subsidies for fossil fuels,” Secretary-General António Guterres told the World Summit of the R20 Coalition on Tuesday, a UN-supported environmental organization, founded by former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Le meurtre d'un tiers des malades mentaux allemands, entre janvier 1940 et août 1941, a représenté pour les nazis le banc d'essai – technique et politique – du génocide des juifs. / Allemagne, Génocide, Histoire, Nazisme, Santé, Seconde guerre mondiale 1939-1945 - 2005/05 Silence, mensonges et (...) / Allemagne, Génocide, Histoire, Nazisme, Santé, Seconde guerre mondiale 1939-1945 - 2005/05 Silence, mensonges et vidéo

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Army published two volumes that amount to the most comprehensive official history of the Iraq war. They cover the conflict’s most important episodes: the U.S. invasion in 2003, the death spiral into civil war that took shape in the aftermath, the more hopeful period that began with the surge of U.S. forces in 2007, and the withdrawal that saw the last U.S. forces leave Iraq at the end of 2011.

Blandly titled The U.S. Army in the Iraq War and based on 30,000 pages of newly declassified documents, the study recounts a litany of familiar but still infuriating blunders on Washington’s part: failing to prepare for the invasion’s aftermath, misunderstanding Iraqi culture and politics and sidelining or ignoring genuine experts, disbanding the Iraqi army and evicting Baath Party members from the government, ignoring and even denying the rise of sectarian violence, and sapping momentum by rotating troops too frequently.

Read More

Like a well-tuned orchestra, successful modern societies have a balance of diversity and culture, that is a source of “enormous richness, not a threat” said the UN chief on Monday, speaking alongside UN Messenger of Peace, acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma in the Austrian capital, Vienna. 

S'inscrivant dans une tendance à la scénarisation des aliments lancée par les géants nord-américains de l'industrie agroalimentaire, les fast-foods proposent une viande parodique et désincarnée. Cette stratégie est destinée à atteindre leur cœur de cible : les enfants, (futurs) consommateurs à fidéliser à (...) / Agriculture, Alimentation, Idées, Mondialisation, Multinationales - 2003/11 Décoloniser les esprits

Amid what global Vaccine Alliance Gavi is calling an “unprecedented combination” of epidemics, the UN and partners are supporting  the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s major new immunization campaign against cholera which began on Monday, targeting more than 800,000.

Nowhere is safe in Yemen, the head of the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF said, after an attack in the city of Taiz claimed the lives of 12 civilians, including seven youngsters – the latest victims of the country’s more than four-year war. 

Une journée de grève générale est organisée par l'ensemble des syndicats français le 13 mai pour riposter au programme de régression sociale décidé par le gouvernement. Avec la hausse de la durée de cotisation de 37 ans et demi à 40 ans pour avoir droit à une retraite complète, la baisse du niveau des (...) / France, Économie, Finance, Mouvement de contestation, Protection sociale, Travail, Retraites - 2003/05 Animalité

The eight-year-long cultural phenomenon of HBO’s Game of Thrones culminated on May 18 with the fiery destruction of the Iron Throne and the death of the formerly beloved Queen Daenerys. The show’s final season has produced an explosion of commentary on what it all means. What is the appropriate basis for political authority? Can Daenerys be both a feminist hero and a war criminal? Does might make right? Should it, in a time of war?

Among the foreign-policy intelligentsia, and society broadly, interpreting Game of Thrones (and the book series by George R. R. Martin that the show is based on) has become a cottage industry. Every political analyst, historian, or theorist has his or her take on what lessons can be drawn from the story for real-world foreign policy. This enthusiasm tells us something about the show’s political implications: fans and writers argue over Game of Thrones precisely because there is power in interpreting a story to support one’s own arguments about what is right and who gets to choose.

Read More

The town of Kitchanga, in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), hosts the highest concentration of internally displaced people in the country, and has been one of the regions most affected by clashes between local communities, made up of Tutsis and Hutus, especially in terms of accessing land. Today, however, thanks to a UN initiative, many disputes over land in Kitchanga are resolved through dialogue instead of violence, and families can cultivate, rent and make a profit from their land.

Le débat sur les retraites doit trancher cette question préalable : peut-on les payer ? D'énormes efforts de communication visent à convaincre qu'il faudrait choisir entre la manière la plus équitable et la moins douloureuse de répartir une baisse inéluctable. Rien n'est plus faux. Certes, on pourrait (...) / Finance, Protection sociale, Travail, Retraites - 2003/05 Animalité