Feed aggregator

INTERIM REPORT on the proposal for a Council decision on the conclusion of a broad package of agreements to consolidate, deepen and expand the bilateral relations with the Swiss Confederation
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Christophe Grudler

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Former Afcon winner Segun Odegbami has slammed those running Nigerian football after the country missed out on the men's and women's World Cups.

Former Afcon winner Segun Odegbami has slammed those running Nigerian football after the country missed out on the men's and women's World Cups.

As the U.S.-China rivalry hollows out the WTO, Japan and ASEAN have a chance to build something new.

By CIVICUS
Sep 23 2026 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses public art, gender-based violence and censorship in Iraqi Kurdistan with Tara Abdullah, a multidisciplinary visual artist from Sulaymaniyah who is currently based in Oslo, Norway as part of the Safemuse – Safe Havens for Artists residency.

Tara Abdullah

In Iraqi Kurdistan, where conservative religious and social norms prevent open discussion of gender-based violence, femicide remains a persistent, under-reported crisis. Artists who take these issues into public space, instead of confining them to galleries or private institutions, risk backlash from religious authorities, legal action and the withdrawal of state permits and funding.

How did you become an artivist?

I’m from Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and I’ve been using art to express myself since I was a child. I fought hard to get into art school. After ninth grade, I joined the Institute of Art and studied there for five years, then studied for four more years at the College of Fine Arts at the University of Sulaymaniyah and graduated in 2020. All in all, I spent almost a decade studying art and learning new materials and methods I could bring into my work.

Since I graduated in 2020, I’ve used art in many different forms, and over the past six years I’ve tried to bring art and activism together, mainly around environmental conservation and women’s rights.

Doing art as a woman here isn’t easy. Dogmas around culture, religion and tradition mean most forms of art are considered haram, or forbidden. Even inside the art community, I’ve found a kind of disgust towards certain forms of art, with people saying some things are too provocative or politically wrong. But reading monthly data on femicide and violence against women has pushed me further to try to use elements of the culture and society I grew up in to try to break the red lines set for women.

What was the Feminine Project?

It was a project I started in 2020, in which I collected clothes from women who had faced violence. I went door to door across thousands of homes in the city and surrounding towns to interview the women and collect a piece of clothing along with their story. I stitched the pieces together and hung them along a five-kilometre stretch of the city’s main street, leading from the main court to the public park.

This was my idea of a peaceful protest. Women here can’t speak openly about the violence they face. If they did, they’d face immediate backlash. Their clothes themselves carry shame. When women hang their washing out, they cover their underwear so it isn’t seen by anyone. I wanted to show that not even women’s clothes have the freedom to be touched by the sun, let alone the women themselves.

I put up a public installation rather than a gallery, because I wanted the public exposed to it, not just the small art community that already agrees with these ideas. By the end of the first day, people started tearing the piece down and burning parts of it, and it triggered a huge backlash online and offline.

What project did you work on then?

After the Feminine Project, I had thousands of stories from the women I’d interviewed. So in late 2022 I started my Voice Project. I turned the stories into a two-minute speech carrying the weight of all of it: honour killing, suicide, violence. Women here are expected to keep a low voice and never give their opinion. Decisions are made for them by men. So I created a voice for them.

I played the message through 66 synchronised speakers across four cities and three surrounding towns in Sulaymaniyah province, all at the same time. I used megaphones deliberately. They’re symbolically loaded because they are used in mosques by mullahs for the call to prayer. In most countries, anyone can speak, but here it’s always a man’s voice, whether it’s calling people to prayer or selling groceries. I wanted to show women also had a voice.

This caused an even bigger backlash than the first project. People started shutting down the speakers, and the mullahs pushed to bring me to court, accusing me of an immoral act against our culture, religion and tradition. They accused me of promoting homosexuality, which genuinely surprised me, because the piece was straightforwardly about violence against women. When the judge called me in for a statement, he asked whether I was promoting ‘queer ideology’. I replied that my work promotes individual freedom. The case was eventually dismissed, but I had to get out of the country and stay away for a few weeks until things settled down.

I think the backlash comes from the visibility. The art community is tiny, and art typically stays inside galleries where very few people see it. But when you bring it out into the public space, it exposes feelings the public didn’t know were there.

How do you manage the risks that this work brings?

For the Feminine Project, building trust with the women was very difficult. I had to reassure them I wasn’t taking photos or recording their voices, and let them check this was true. Even then, some rejected the idea outright, saying things like, ‘So what are you going to do, are you superwoman? Things won’t change’, or accusing me of trying to destroy their families.

None of the clothes in the final installation were tied to a name, so the women’s safety was protected. That meant all the pressure landed on me. I come from a very traditional, religious family who never approved of me going into art. When I was preparing the Feminine Project, I told them I was doing charity work. When the truth came out, there was a huge conflict at home, including violence. But this didn’t make me back down. Instead, it made me more determined.

I know that by undertaking these projects I risk being taken to court, being denied permission to work or receiving online smears and threats. But if I don’t do this, who will? I’m proud of what I’ve done and I’ll keep doing it.

What support have you received?

There are always going to be people for and against, but honestly, most public reaction leans against this kind of work. But I’ve also received some encouragement. Following the Feminine and Voice projects, many women contacted me anonymously to tell me how much relief the work gave them, as someone was finally saying what they’d wanted to say themselves.

However, most of the support I receive comes from outside Iraq. After the Voice Project, I was blacklisted and I couldn’t get any funding or permission for public installations, so I started applying for international prizes instead.

In 2023 I was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize in Ukraine, out of 12,000 applications, for an installation building a bridge between Kurdish women’s experience of violence and war and Ukrainian women living through the current conflict, and I won the special prize in 2024. I also received the Alpine Fellowship Visual Art Prize in 2023 and the Prince Claus Seed Award in 2025. Researchers have written papers about my work, and in 2025, I showed a rough-cut documentary about the Voice Project in Warsaw and an indoor installation about Kurdish women’s experience in Kraków, Poland. That international attention keeps me going, and I use the exposure and funding to keep building pressure back home.

How do you collaborate with others?

I work as an individual artist. I bring in craftspeople and freelancers to help make each piece, but most of them ask me not to use their names. They want the money, not the association. I always explain the risk honestly to people, and many back out.

When I can, I bring in local women to do the work and pay them. For the Feminine Project I had dozens of women doing the sewing. For my environmental work, I try to involve as many women and young people as possible. For a water festival in 2025, I made giant puppets out of reed and recycled biodegradable material alongside 20 people, running workshops over 10 days so they could learn to use art to deliver their own messages.

Collaboration carries risk. When I ran a seminar on art and peace, security forces raided it on the second day and took me in for questioning. But my message to anyone facing suppression or violence is not to be afraid. Talk about it; bring it out into the open. You don’t have to be accepted by a corrupted environment around you to accept yourself.

For me, art is a whole universe you can fit everything into: your ideas, your beautiful things and the problems around you. You can use art to try to fix things. It’s the only weapon that doesn’t hurt or kill.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

GET IN TOUCH
Website
Instagram

SEE ALSO
Iraq: ‘The proposed amendments to the Personal Status Law are an attack on women’s rights’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Mohammed Juma 07.Dec.2024
Iraq: ‘Tolerance for abuses against LGBTQI+ people has now been made explicit through legislation’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Sarah Sanbar 26.Jun.2024
Iraq: ‘We’ve submitted many bills, but parliament refuses to adopt a law against GBV’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Alyaa Al Ansari 07.Mar.2022

 

 

 

 

AMENDMENTS 1 - 290 - Draft report Strategic political relations with Australia – potential for deeper ties in the face of a volatile international order
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Željana Zovko

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 290 - Draft report Strategic political relations with Australia – potential for deeper ties in the face of a volatile international order
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Željana Zovko

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Contrôlé mardi 22 septembre 2026 au niveau du pont de Malanville, un piroguier a tenté d'échapper à la police en plongeant dans le fleuve. Il a finalement été repêché avec deux boules de chanvre indien dissimulées dans son paquetage.

Le contrôle d'une pirogue suspecte dans l'après-midi du mardi 22 septembre 2026 à Malanville a permis de découvrir deux boules de chanvre indien soigneusement dissimulées dans du paquetage.

Face à cette découverte, le mis en cause a tenté de prendre la fuite en se jetant dans le fleuve.

La patrouille, avec l'appui de riverains, est parvenue à le repêcher rapidement.

Interrogé sur la provenance du produit, le suspect a affirmé que le colis appartenait à un revendeur de maïs établi à Gaya, au Niger.

Ramené au commissariat, il a été placé en garde à vue.

Une enquête en flagrance a été ouverte sous l'autorité du procureur de la République afin de déterminer l'origine du produit et d'identifier d'éventuels autres acteurs impliqués dans ce trafic.

DIGITAL 08H : Avez-vous tenté votre chance ?

Le tirage DIGITAL 08H N°202 a livré son verdict !

Mercredi 23 Septembre 2026

Avez-vous joué ?

Avez-vous misé sur vos numéros porte-bonheur ?

RÉSULTAT : 67 • 58 • 52 • 69 • 37

Félicitations aux heureux gagnants !

Pas encore cette fois ? Gardez le sourire.

Rendez-vous à 11H pour le prochain tirage.

Jouez dans les points de vente ou : Tapez *590# ou rendez-vous sur lnbloto.bj

Jouez avec modération et responsabilité. Le jeu doit rester un plaisir.

Mali Actu - maliactu.net - Mali Actualités, Les Actus et Informations sur le Mali
Mali Actu
Alerte Sanitaire à Bamako : Près de 2 Tonnes de Viande Frauduleuse Saisies par les Douanes !

La vigilance des douanes maliennes ne faiblit pas. Suite à une opération menée le 19 septembre 2026 à 19h à Daresalam, la Brigade Mobile d’Intervention…

Alerte Sanitaire à Bamako : Près de 2 Tonnes de Viande Frauduleuse Saisies par les Douanes !
Mali Actu :
Alerte Sanitaire à Bamako : Près de 2 Tonnes de Viande Frauduleuse Saisies par les Douanes !

Les éléments de la Police républicaine ont intercepté, lundi 21 septembre 2026, au village Kétonou, arrondissement d'Aholouyémé, commune de Sèmè-Kpodji, 80 kg de produits pharmaceutiques contrefaits en provenance d'un pays voisin.

La police met la main sur une importante cargaison de produits pharmaceutiques contrefaits. Il s'agit de 80 kilogrammes de médicaments illicites.
Selon la Police républicaine, la marchandise devait transiter par le village de Kétonou avant de rejoindre Cotonou par la berge lagunaire. Le dispositif mis en place par les éléments de police républicaine a permis d'immobiliser une motocyclette qui transportait la cargaison. Les produits pharmaceutiques contrefaits ont été soigneusement emballés dans deux sacs.

Le conducteur a réussi à prendre la fuite.La Police poursuit ses investigations afin d'identifier et d'interpeller le propriétaire de ces produits ainsi que les complices.

DIGITAL 00H : Avez-vous tenté votre chance ?

Le tirage DIGITAL 00H N°201 a livré son verdict !

Mercredi 23 Septembre 2026

Avez-vous joué ?

Avez-vous misé sur vos numéros porte-bonheur ?

RÉSULTAT : 23 • 11 • 63 • 60 • 82

Félicitations aux heureux gagnants !

Pas encore cette fois ? Gardez le sourire.

Rendez-vous à 08H pour le prochain tirage.

Jouez dans les points de vente ou : Tapez *590# ou rendez-vous sur lnbloto.bj

Jouez avec modération et responsabilité. Le jeu doit rester un plaisir.

Obtenir un titre de séjour en Espagne grâce à un proche de nationalité espagnole n’a jamais été aussi encadré. Un dispositif récemment entré en vigueur […]

L’article Vivre et travailler en Espagne grâce à un titre de séjour de 5 ans : qui peut en bénéficier ? est apparu en premier sur .

No description

No description

A street market in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city. Residents are anxious about high inflation and also fear recent floods will drive food prices higher. Credit: Ant/IPS

By Guy Dinmore, and a reporter in Yangon
YANGON, Myanmar, Sep 23 2026 (IPS)

Isolated and at constant war with itself, Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis is deepening as global challenges far exceed the capacity to respond of a military regime increasingly focused on its own survival.

The climate crisis, soaring commodity prices triggered by wars in Europe and the Middle East, plus worldwide cuts in donor aid are all hitting Myanmar hard. The regime’s inability to govern a fragmented and restive country with nearly four million internally displaced people has been exposed to the full since it seized power over five years ago.

Widespread floods caused by heavy monsoon rains since July have affected over 470,000 people, according to an assessment by the World Health Organization. Cases of malaria and dengue have been increasing, as well as outbreaks of cholera.

“Everyone is starving and cut off. Yes, everyone is facing food shortages,” said an activist calling himself Bruce, describing the situation in Shwebo township in the north-central Sagaing region, one of the main conflict zones and rice transshipment centres hit by floods.

Local and international aid organisations struggle to get help through conflict zones where the military is fighting a shifting array of ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and local resistance groups while syphoning off what it can.

“Armed hostilities, movement restrictions and administrative requirements continue to block access, underscoring the need for safe, sustained and unhindered humanitarian reach to vulnerable communities,” the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a July bulletin.

“Myanmar remains one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, with more than 16 million people in need as conflict, displacement, protection risks and access constraints intensify urgent needs nationwide,” OCHA said, noting that by end-March “humanitarian partners” had managed to reach 1.6 million people.

Floods have driven up food prices, already exacerbated by rising costs of fuel and fertilisers caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine and Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz following attacks by the US and Israel.

All sides exact a price in Myanmar, Bruce said, with cargo trucks moving north from the regime-controlled city of Mandalay to Shwebo having to pay fees at multiple military checkpoints and those run by other armed groups. Farmers in neighbouring Shan state growing rice and tomatoes are also facing “devastating losses” and being driven into deep poverty, he said.

Shwebo has experienced power blackouts of up to 20 consecutive days. As darkness falls, residents do not dare venture outside for fear of forced conscription by the regime, especially in rural areas. Households pay levies to avoid conscription, even those with only single women.

Some people are being forced into a second round of conscription as the military struggles to replenish its ranks, stretched across the country. Over 100,000 people have been conscripted, according to some estimates.

At night authorities inspect mobile phones. If they find online games, evidence of Starlink use or unauthorised communication devices then the individuals are immediately taken for military service.

Inflation and extortion reach deep into prisons too, said Bruce, a former political prisoner. Skin diseases like scabies are common, and the cost of a particular drug bought by relatives has soared more than eight times, while even traditional medicines like neem leaves have gone up fivefold.

Prison staff and those manning checkpoints even take their cuts of peanut snacks, driving up prices paid by prisoners.

The numbers displaced by conflict continue to rise. Fighting in the central Magway region in recent months has added over 200,000 more since May, according to some UN estimates. People fleeing conflict are moving to safer areas, but host communities have limited capacity to accommodate them.

U Than is a farmer in the Ayeyarwady delta and was struggling to make ends meet even before recent floods hit the major rice-growing region, destroying crops and jeopardising the next planting season. Fortunately his land has been spared destruction, but everyone is keeping a close eye on nearby levees.

“Farming has become a cycle of borrowing just to survive,” he said, complaining that the cost of fertiliser has risen five-fold and that fuel is increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain.

“We are working harder, borrowing more, and spending more, but the income from our harvest is no longer enough to cover the cost of farming or even our basic living expenses.” Families are forced to cut back their spending on health and education.

Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, feels somewhat insulated from the recent natural disasters and ongoing civil war. But inflation is hitting the pockets of its six million people, including city officials and their families, who squeeze more money from residents on trumped-up charges or bribes to avoid conscription.

“The junta stooges are resorting to all sorts of methods, legal or illegal, to recruit people while at the same time making money in the process,” one long-time resident told IPS.

“Life in Yangon is morphing into a new normal, with people feeling less safe about their lives as crimes are widespread. So many cases of theft and robberies go unreported or under-reported.”

A cholera outbreak in central Yangon in August, the second in two years, was blamed on poor hygiene among street vendors whose cheap food is even more attractive as inflation bites. The regime responded by shutting down their businesses in six city townships. Outbreaks have also been reported in Sittwe, one of the last regime strongholds in Rakhine State, as well as flood-affected areas.

Reports that CCTV artificial intelligence and facial scanning technology were deployed at a checkpoint in Mandalay city have raised fears that the regime is adopting widespread surveillance controls pioneered by China, its closest ally.

Min Aung Hlaing, leader of the 2021 coup, has proved resilient and uncompromising in directing a brutal retaliation against the popular resistance and was confident enough to swap his general’s uniform for a civilian suit as president after tightly orchestrated elections this year.

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, set up by the UN Human Rights Council, stated in its annual report that its findings “show a pattern of deliberate aerial attacks on civilians, arbitrary detentions, torture and sexual violence committed by the Myanmar military.”

The military escalated its aerial attacks and other crimes against civilians in the lead-up to the elections, and these have continued unabated, the IIMM said, listing the targeting of homes, schools, medical facilities, religious buildings and camps for internally displaced persons.

“This underscores the urgent need to hold those responsible to account,” it said. The IIMM is also investigating alleged atrocities involving armed groups opposed to the military.

For the moment, accountability seems a distant prospect, at best.

Since Min Aung Hlaing’s assumption of the presidency in April, the former general has been accepted on official visits to Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, China, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. The Trump administration has not rolled out the red carpet but has eased sanctions against some of the regime elite and is engaging on matters of particular concern to the US, such as scam centres.

The regime’s growing de facto recognition abroad poses a further threat to the struggling efforts to exert its authority in liberated areas by the parallel National Unity Government (NUG). Established by lawmakers ousted in 2021 when Aung San Suu Kyi and other prominent leaders were jailed, the NUG managed to conclude agreements in March with several major ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) in an attempt to forge a unified political and military resistance.

Calling themselves the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF), the alliance has stated its commitment to a negotiated political solution that would end military rule and exclude the generals from politics.

“To get there we’re pursuing all available avenues, including military means,” a senior resistance official told IPS.

However, there is scepticism that Min Aung Hlaing will deal with the new collective entity and will continue to insist on bilateral ceasefire talks with individual EAOs while refusing to recognise the NUG as an interlocutor. Several major armed groups dependant to varying degrees on neighbouring China have also kept the SCEF at arm’s length.

“Substantive negotiations between the Tatmadaw [the Myanmar military] and SCEF members are likely to prove challenging,” Morgan Michaels, a southeast Asia defence expert, wrote in a recent analysis for the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

“Meaningful progress in Myanmar – whether political, economic or humanitarian – would need to start with a broad conflict de-escalation, which at a minimum would require ceasefires between the Tatmadaw and the EAOs. Unfortunately, the path to de-escalation is likely to be long and fraught with dilemmas.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

 

 

 

Related Articles

• Myanmar Looks Back in Fear and Anger after Military Coup
• Life-Changing Humanitarians Empower Women Against Violence in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands
• https://www.ipsnews.net/2026/09/life-changing-humanitarians-empower-women-against-violence-in-papua-new-guineas-highlands/

The U.S. president offers a guide on how to be a very bad prince.

Les correspondants de la BBC qui ont couvert le discours du président mardi ont analysé cinq moments clés.

Le flou demeure autour de la présence ou non du public au Stade des Martyrs à l’occasion du match entre les Léopards de la RDC et les Nzalang Nacional de la Guinée équatoriale, prévu ce jeudi 24 septembre 2026 à Kinshasa, dans le cadre de la première journée des éliminatoires de la CAN Pamoja 2027.

Mali Actu - maliactu.net - Mali Actualités, Les Actus et Informations sur le Mali
Mali Actu
Loulo-Gounkoto : plusieurs préavis de grève annoncés à partir du 28 septembre

Le complexe aurifère de Loulo-Gounkoto pourrait connaître plusieurs mouvements de grève à partir du 28 septembre 2026. Des syndicats de travailleurs ont déposé des préavis…

Loulo-Gounkoto : plusieurs préavis de grève annoncés à partir du 28 septembre
Mali Actu :
Loulo-Gounkoto : plusieurs préavis de grève annoncés à partir du 28 septembre