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Left: Rocky Dawuni, Singer and UNEP Goodwill Ambassador, promotes the SDGs. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten.
 
Right: Tendayi Achiume, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, briefs journalists. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe.
When empowered, people of African descent can make a difference!

By Sonya Beard
NEW YORK, Feb 8 2024 (IPS)

In 1977, a record-breaking mini-series carved its place in the milestone of US history. Based on Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, the small-screen adaptation exposed the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade and its impact on generations thereafter.

Suddenly overnight — eight nights, to be exact — the Emmy Award-winning Roots transformed the racial slur “Go back to Africa” into a call to action, an opportunity for African Americans to reclaim their stolen heritage.

Back to Africa

Nearly 40 years after the release of Roots, Diallo Sumbry went to Ghana to seek spiritual discipline. “Initially, I came to study manifestation and traditional African science,” the Washington, DC-based entrepreneur said.

Credit: Diallo Sumbry
The UN designated the International Decade for People of African Descent, from 2015 to 2024, to promote the recognition, justice, and development of African descendants worldwide. Through various programs, events, and awareness campaigns, the Decade seeks to create a platform for dialogue, understanding, and positive change in the lives of people in the diaspora. Africa Renewal, a UN publication, is publishing ‘In Search of Long-Lost Identities’ – a four-part series highlighting the journeys African Americans are taking to reconnect with Africa – the continent their ancestors called home.

Everywhere you go, people are talking about the diaspora.On a trip in 2016, Mr. Sumbry received a prophecy, that “if I moved to Ghana and decided to do business here, things would go well for me. I would fulfil my life’s mission, and Ghana would be my spiritual home.”

A dozen trips later, he found himself fulfilling that prophecy by reconnecting people in the African diaspora to the African continent.

As co-architect of Ghana’s “Year of Return,” Mr. Sumbry helped to facilitate an international campaign for the 400-year commemoration of the first documented arrival of enslaved Africans in America in 1619.

[The 2019 Year of Return was an initiative of the government of Ghana and the Adinkra Group, which sought to encourage African diasporans to settle and invest in the continent].

Visiting Africa can offer African Americans a high level of freedom. … You can be who you are.With more than 1.1 million international visitors, according to the Ghana Tourism Authority, the return may go down as the largest transatlantic African-American homecoming in history.

“The ‘Year of Return’ changed African tourism,” Mr. Sumbry said.

In 2020, the “Year of Return” campaign evolved into “Beyond the Return,” the tourism authority’s 10-year initiative. “Everywhere you go, people are talking about the diaspora,” Mr. Sumbry observed. “It sparked something, and we probably won’t see the full breadth of its impact for years to come.”

Respite from racism

Every person of African descent should visit the continent at least once in their life, according to Mr. Sumbry, who arranges trips through his firm, the Adinkra Group, where he serves as president and chief executive officer.

“The experience can offer African Americans a high level of freedom,” he said. “There is no racism here as we see it in America. You are more rooted here. You can feel your spirit and your ancestors. You can be who you are.”

His efforts may place the Sumbry name on the list of historical figures who championed ‘Back-to-Africa’ movements. He would be in excellent company.

In 1815, Massachusetts shipping magnate Paul Cuffe doubted whether he would achieve racial equality in his lifetime. The philanthropist convinced 38 other African Americans to settle in Sierra Leone, and he financed their resettlement there.

According to the White House Historical Association, Mr. Cuffe is believed to have led the first successful Back-to-Africa movement in the United States; his efforts served as inspiration for the American Colonization Society, founded in 1816 to establish Liberia and resettle African Americans there.

A century later, Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey moved to New York City and encouraged African Americans to board ships of his Black Star Line for the voyage back across the Atlantic.

Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah took inspiration from the Harvard-educated Pan-African scholar W.E.B. Dubois, who co-founded in 1909 what would become America’s longest-running civil rights organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

According to the Constitutional Rights Foundation, Mr. Dubois renounced his US citizenship and became a citizen of Ghana, where he spent his final days. He rests in peace at a museum named in his honour in Accra.

In the early 1960s, poet Maya Angelou and her son also lived in Ghana among nearly 200 African Americans expatriates whom she referred to as the “Revolutionist Returnees.”

“We were Black Americans living in West Africa, where — for the first time in our lives — the colour of our skin was accepted as correct and normal,” Ms. Angelou wrote in her autobiography, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes.

To this day, Ms. Angelou’s sentiments resonate with African-American mothers who have decided to repatriate to the motherland.

Peace of home

In corporate America, Ashley Cleveland was working her dream tech job with an executive title and a lucrative salary while management treated her as if she were in an administrative assistant role.

“Black women get brought into corporations, and they are celebrated at first,” the Boston native said. “Then they go through all these micro-aggressions, and finally they are let go.”

After three layoffs in five years, she checked into a psychotherapy treatment centre, only to find it filled with other senior-level Black women with similar stories. She took a year to reset her life: she traded visiting psychiatrists and using prescription medication for taking hikes and walking on the beaches of Tanzania in East Africa.

Initially, she doubted whether she should move abroad when her first child was born. Recently, the mother of two relocated to Johannesburg.

“We were Black Americans living in West Africa, where … the colour of our skin was accepted as correct and normal.”

When she is not working as head of growth for BrandUp Global, she echoes Ms. Angelou in telling other African-American families why they must relocate to the continent. “I explain the benefits that it provides Black children to live in societies where their skin colour is not an issue.”

Ms. Cleveland, whose children are learning Zulu and Kiswahili in primary school, said they are more well-rounded and intellectually challenged abroad. “They have a better childhood. We no longer worry about sending them to school and wondering if they’re going to make it back safely.”

“I have a sense of peace here [in South Africa.] Here, I’m a better mother.”

When asked whether she had any plans to return home, she answered: “Where? America? I have a sense of peace here that I shouldn’t have to give up. We don’t worry about getting pulled over by the police. I’m not operating with that anxiety as a parent anymore. Here, I’m a better mother.”

For Ms. Cleveland, Africa is home.

Sonya Beard is a writer and educator based in New York.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Um noch vor Ende der Legislaturperiode eine Einigung zu erzielen, hat das Europäische Parlament am Mittwoch (7. Februar) seine Änderungsanträge zu den neuen Regeln für die höchst umstrittenen neuen Gentechniken (NGTs) angenommen.

Die EU müsse bei Spannungen zwischen Serbien und dem Kosovo Vermittler und "unparteiisch" bleiben, forderte der chinesische Botschafter nach einem Treffen mit dem serbischen Präsidenten Aleksandar Vučić. China ermutigte die EU aber auch, weiter den Dialog zu fördern.

This week, the Beyond the Byline podcast looks at the Greens congress, their pro-electoral pledge and the candidates that will represent the coalition in the elections.

Die Liste der deutschen Randparteien, die einen Sitz im Europäischen Parlament anstreben, wird länger. Auch die Klimaaktivisten der "Letzten Generation" wollen die EU-Politik "richtig aufmischen".

Die EU-Partei der Europäischen Konservativen und Reformern (EKR), an deren Spitze die italienische Ministerpräsidentin Giorgia Meloni steht, hatte zuletzt versucht, sich gemäßigter zu geben. Nach dem gestrigen Beitritt der rechtspopulistischen Partei Reconquete kann dieser Versuch allerdings als gescheitert gelten.

Thursday, 8 February

Source : © European Union, 2024 - EP

Thursday, 8 February

Source : © European Union, 2024 - EP

Thursday, 8 February

Source : © European Union, 2024 - EP

Thursday, 8 February

Source : © European Union, 2024 - EP

 
Woke, adjective; woker, wokest. Chiefly US slang – Being aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice). Disapproving: politically liberal or progressive (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme.
Webster’s Dictionary

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Feb 8 2024 (IPS)

“Woke” was for a century, especially among black people in the US, an inspirational concept. However, almost overnight it turned into a pejorative. Like using the term “politically correct” as an insult, calling someone “woke” came to imply that the referred person’s views are excessively ridiculous, or even despicable. Being “anti-woke” has become an indication that you do not belong to an assumed group of “do-gooders”, who at the expense of right-minded “ordinary” citizens assert the demands of interest groups, which declare themselves to be discriminated against due to their ethnicity/race, gender, sexual preference, and/or physical or psychological disabilities.

Originally being woked meant to be attentive to injustice, in a sense indicated by Martin Luther King Jr. in his 1967 book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.

In those days to be woke meant to be knowledgeable about and attentive to threats to tolerance, compassion and human rights. Or like the R&B group Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes sang in 1975: “Wake up everybody, no more sleeping in bed, no more backwards thinking, time for thinking ahead!” Martin Luther King’s statement and the R&B tune might be compared with opinions currently expressed by former US -, and maybe would-be, president Donald J. Trump:

… political correctness is just absolutely killing us as a country. You can’t say anything. Anything you say today, they’ll find a reason why it’s not good.

I don’t like the term “woke” because I hear, “Woke, woke, woke.” It’s just a term they use, half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Biden-administration is “destroying the country with woke”, accusations repeated by European right-wingers declaring that their nations also are destroyed by woke, like Hungary’s Orbán who stated that “we [the Hungarians] will not give up fighting against woke ideology”.

The “woke nightmare” of anti-woke activists might be compared to a futuristic short story Kurt Vonnegut wrote as a warning of threats to self-expression. Harrison Bergeron is a dystopian satire taking place in the year of 2081, 120 years after the story was written. According this nightmare a US, “politically correct” Constitution dictates that all Americans have to be entirely equal. No one is allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. Ruthless agents of a Handicapper General enforce equality laws by forcing citizens to wear so called handicaps, i.e. masks for those who are too beautiful, earpiece radio-transmitters for the intelligent, which blast out noises meant to disrupt their thoughts, and heavy weights for the strong and athletic.

To many, this equality delirium is now becoming a reality. “Woke” is found at the epicentre on both the left and right side of the political spectrum. It has become a pervasive catchphrase for a wide variety of social movements related to issues concerning LGBTQ rights, feminism, immigration, climate change and marginalised communities. The woke concept is accordingly an abhorrence for people opposed to phenomena like the toppling, or besmirching of statues deemed to honour villains. Another “woke initiative” making opponents agitated are efforts to ensure an environment supportive of transgender and/or gender non-conforming individuals, by advising against using “gender identifying” terminologies like father/mother, male/female, brother/sister etc., while propagating for the installation of separate toilets for transgender people. Another alleged woke proposal, which tend to upset people, are attempts to rebrand religious holidays by recommending a “neutral terminology” and even decide against their open celebration. Related to this is the implementation of measures to please religious fundamentalists, like separate gender-based rules when it comes to dress, sports, education, etc. To large swaths of the general public such a development indicates “political correctness” gone mad.

However, the problem with assaults on “political correctness” is that they might go too far, emboldening obscurantists, who have been lurking in the shadows, to bring their hate speech into the light of day. Anti-wokes are also lowering the bar for what is considered to be an acceptable discourse among politicians and other leaders, while forcing them further to extreme positions. “Woke” has become a slur dividing the world in “us” and “them”, without exploring the reasons for different beliefs. Influencers have declared that what they call The Great Awokening has become a cult of “leftist social justice”. An almost religious, fundamentalistic sectarianism with followers demonstrating a fervour similar to that of born-again zealots, who want to punish heresy by banishing sinners from society, or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame.

One political pressure group infected by anti-woke feelings are Climate change deniers, who use pseudoscience to contradict a scientific consensus about the threat of climate change. Efforts are made to sweep legitimate concerns about this lurking danger under the rug. One of many examples of dangerous white-washing is the Fox Channel-promoted and influential Republican politician and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee, whose 2023 The Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change, falsely minimize fossil fuel emissions’ contribution to global warming.

Such storytelling might be considered in the light of President Trump’s environmental policies, which erased or loosened almost 100 rules and regulations concerning pollution in the air, water and atmosphere, as well as they were instrumental in the US withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Such actions critically influenced and slowed down global efforts to reduce emissions and prompted other governments to downplay scientifically based warnings about the urgency of putting a stop to fossil fuel burning.

One of many indicators of a growing support to anti-wokers is the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), which in October 2023 celebrated its first conference in Greenwich, London, featuring 100 speakers, attracting 1,500 delegates from 71 nations The event was labelled as “one of the largest gatherings of the global centre-right in recent British history”, an “anti-woke Davos”. The ARC is an international organisation, which purpose is to replace a “sense of division and drift within Conservatism and Western society at large, with a renewed cohesion and purpose”. The Conference was inaugurated with a speech by Philippa Stroud, “the Baroness Stroud” a Conservative Party Peer in the British House of Lords and leader of several conservative think tanks. She greeted the participants with the words: “You are all here because you are personally invited, since you are people with courage, vision and a transformative way of thinking.”

This was different from the Trumpist movements’ less unpolished and forthright anti-woke meetings. The ARC conference was more lavish, polished and academic, though even if the packaging was different the messages were similar. Conservative and liberal speakers were critical of what they considered to be a failed liberal social order, fomenting climate alarmism, totalitarianism, “cultural Marxism”, and lack of parental responsibility.

Climate change was not dismissed, but reporting on its dangers were described as misleading and dishonest. The climate change activist Greta Thunberg was described as suffering from a “histrionic personality disorder” and it was declared that the climate movement had similarities to narcissism and hysteria. The conference’s opposite and more “positive” message was that energy and prosperity are interconnected and that a continuous use of fossil fuels is decisive for lifting countries out of poverty. Climate change will reduce prosperity, but not eradicate it. A somewhat spurious assertion.

A double-edged message is common for most anti-woke affirmations and the ARC conference’s self-proclaimed “positive attitude” was an example of this. The individual’s value, personal responsibility and right to self-determination were emphasized and contrasted to “the woke culture’s” insistence on structural explanations for group adversity. Not a word was uttered about inequality and/or the State’s concern and responsibility for equal rights to education and health care, instead it was declared that “State interference is not the solution, but the problem”.

The nuclear family was described as a recipe for success. Mothers had to be encouraged to stay at home for at least three years, but it was not explained how this would be socio-economically realized. Nothing was said about the fact that not all families are happy, or the importance of a loving home where chores are shared, instead there were obscure statements about “conservative family values”, attacking abortion and same-sex marriages.

The anti-woke movement, as it emerged during the ARC conference, claims to be a revolt against the Establishment. However, many of the speakers were extremely privileged, or even millionaires, being representatives of the same elite, which the movement declares it wants to distance itself from. What made Donald Trump so successful was not that he was like his voters, but that he made them consider him to be one of them. It’s one thing to formulate a story, another to achieve it in reality. In many ways, the anti-woke movement appears to be a myth to live by, rather than a serious attempt to wake up to a threatening reality and do something about it. In many respects, the anti-woke movement appears to be more of a hankering for bygone times than a search for innovative visions for the future. On a wall in the conference room was a huge poster with a quote from the US social anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” One might wonder – What kind of change?

Main sources: Ekman, Malin (2023) ”Petersons massmöte vill stoppa ‘woke-sjukan’”, Svenska Dagbladet, 12 October. Vonnegut, Kurt (1968) Welcome to the Monkey House. New York: Delacorte.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Written by Gisela Grieger.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) will hold its 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi from 26 to 29 February 2024. Priority items on the MC13 agenda are likely to include the reform of the WTO’s dispute settlement function; new disciplines to eliminate fisheries subsidies that encourage overfishing and overcapacity, to complement the multilateral Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies adopted at MC12 in June 2022 and currently under ratification; the integration of the plurilateral Investment Facilitation Agreement into the WTO legal architecture; and the extension of the e-commerce moratorium. WTO members are set to endorse formally the WTO accession of Comoros and Timor-Leste, increasing the organisation’s membership to 166.

Restoring a fully and properly functioning WTO dispute settlement system

Since December 2019, the Appellate Body – the second instance of the WTO’s dispute settlement body – has been paralysed, after the United States (US) repeatedly blocked the nomination of new judges to review appeals of first-instance panel reports. In line with the MC12 mandate to restore a functioning dispute settlement system by 2024, WTO members have held informal negotiations on two separate tracks: one that has led to a draft consolidated text on issues other than the appeal mechanism, and another for the debate on the appeal mechanism that as of January 2024 was still focused on ‘the identification of certain concepts that could offer a solution to this critical issue’. Speaking for the Appellate Body’s main critics, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, at the G20 Summit in India in August 2023, stated that the ongoing new and constructive process of reforming the WTO’s dispute settlement function ‘requires a fundamental rethink’ with a view to ending ‘the practice of judicial rulemaking’, among other things. She emphasised that the US had tabled 30 ideas, including on the appeal mechanism. At a US think-tank event in September 2023, she specified key points of the US position, e.g. the need for appropriate alternatives to litigation (leading by example, the US recently resolved all its trade disputes with India through methods other than litigation), an end to ‘judicial overreach’, for WTO members’ policy space to be restored, to allow them to regulate on climate-change issues and non-market practices, and for members to remain free in their legitimate national-security judgements. Some commentators do not expect a breakthrough at MC13, since the 2024 deadline coincides with the US presidential election year, in which repairing a system that in the US is perceived by both Democrats and Republicans as having allowed the ‘China shock‘ that eliminated millions of US jobs would politically be very challenging for the Biden administration.

Complementing the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies

MC12 ended with the adoption of a multilateral Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies that prohibits support for illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, bans support for fishing overfished stocks, and ends subsidies for fishing on the unregulated high seas. WTO members have since negotiated a ‘second wave‘ of disciplines eliminating fisheries subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing. In January 2024, they held a ‘Fish month’ based on the latest endorsed draft text, with the aim of transmitting a clean text to ministers at MC13. Experts have stressed that WTO members continue to diverge on a wide range of topics, including on the details of exemptions for developing countries. Acceptances from two-thirds of WTO members are required for the Agreement to enter into force. By January 2024, 55 WTO members, i.e. roughly one-third of the WTO membership, had transmitted their instruments of acceptance.

Incorporating the Investment Facilitation Agreement into WTO legal architecture

In July 2023, a subset of more than 110 WTO members finalised negotiations on a plurilateral Investment Facilitation Agreement aimed at eliminating red tape that hampers investment. They opted for a plurilateral negotiating format to develop new WTO rules as a way of overcoming deadlock if consensus is elusive. The talks were launched under a 2017 Joint Statement Initiative after the failure of multilateral trade negotiations on a range of topics under the 2001 Doha Development Round. The 118 countries have since sought to incorporate the agreement, whose benefits would accrue to all WTO members under the most-favoured nation principle, into the WTO legal architecture as an ‘Annex 4 agreement‘. This requires consensus from all 164 current WTO members, some of which, including India and South Africa, are strongly opposed to such a move. They argue that only rules negotiated by all WTO members should be added to the WTO rulebook. Only 9 % of WTO members have never participated in a WTO plurilateral deal.

Extending the e-commerce moratorium

Since MC2 in 1998, WTO members have regularly extended the moratorium on the imposition of customs duties to electronic transmissions as part of the work programme on e-commerce, while the definition of ‘electronic transmissions’ as well as the moratorium’s scope and impact have remained controversial. Absent an MC13 decision to extend it, the moratorium will expire automatically in March 2024. The related debate at MC13 could yet again pit developed countries such as the EU and the US, which support the moratorium, against developing countries such as India and South Africa, which call for ending it. The latter have long claimed that, adding to the growing digital divide between developed and developing countries, the moratorium prevents developing countries from taking advantage of the growing imports of electronic transmissions. However, the US has argued that, as some studies have shown, a decrease in digital trade resulting from ending the moratorium would lead to a bigger economic loss for developing countries than potential foregone customs revenue. According to a 2023 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study, the cost of terminating the moratorium would be considerable. A 2023 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report emphasises other methods of revenue collection resulting from digital trade. As of December 2023, differences among WTO members on the moratorium’s future persist, ‘including the need for more discussions on its definition, scope and impact’.

Extending the TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines to diagnostics and therapeutics

At MC12, WTO members endorsed a five-year waiver for intellectual property (IP) protection under the WTO agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), to enable developing countries to manufacture and distribute COVID-19 vaccines. WTO members also mandated a decision within six months on a potential extension of this waiver to the production and supply of COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, as requested by India, South Africa and some 63 other WTO members. The debate in the WTO seems to have entered an impasse. US lobby groups as well as lawmakers have pressed the Biden administration to oppose a waiver extension. The former are concerned that the extension could stifle medical research, the latter that it ‘could outsource to foreign countries advanced manufacturing and research jobs that should exist in the United States’. A 2023 US International Trade Commission report states that ‘the wide disparity among countries in their ability to access COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics is the result of multiple factors, including access to IP, prices and affordability, regulatory approvals, healthcare infrastructure, and the healthcare priorities of governments’. The EU’s December 2023 statement to the WTO General Council on the follow-up to MC12 issues notes ‘that little progress has been made in this complex discussion and the positions of Members remain far apart’.

In February 2023, the European Commission submitted its most recent reform proposals to the WTO. They target three key areas for focused deliberation at MC13, namely trade policy and state intervention to support industries; trade and global environmental challenges; and trade and inclusiveness. In its resolutions, the European Parliament has been calling for WTO reform since 2008. In its resolution of 28 November 2019 on the crisis of the WTO Appellate Body, Parliament notably urged WTO members to preserve an independent two-tier WTO Appellate Body. Parliament has regularly adopted its position ahead of WTO ministerial conferences, such as MC12. In view of the forthcoming MC13, Parliament’s Committee on International Trade (INTA) on 24 January 2024 adopted a motion for a resolution by co-rapporteurs Bernd Lange (S&D, Germany) and Jörgen Warborn (EPP, Sweden). The draft resolution identifies revitalising a functioning WTO Appellate Body as a top-priority MC13 deliverable. Members also call on the WTO membership to ratify the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, to conclude its second phase, and to find a ‘fair and permanent’ solution for the e-commerce moratorium, emphasising the considerable dynamics in digital trade that [by 2020] accounted for 25 % of global trade. During the first February 2024 plenary session, Members are set to hold a debate on the forthcoming MC13 following a statement from the Commission, and to vote the resolution. A delegation of Members, led by INTA Chair Bernd Lange, is set to travel to Abu Dhabi at the end of February for the Parliamentary Conference session on the WTO.

Read this ‘at a glance’ on ‘Preview of the World Trade Organization’s 2024 Ministerial Conference‘ on the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Ähnlich wie die deutsche Regierung will nun auch der spanische Ministerpräsident Pedro Sánchez (PSOE, S&D), protestierende Bauern mit Zusagen zu Lebensmittelbepreisung und Bürokratieabbau beschwichtigen. Die rechte Opposition warnte derweil vor einer "Rebellion der Traktoren".

Republicans in the US Senate on Wednesday (7 February) defeated a bipartisan effort to bolster border security that had taken months to negotiate, but said they could still approve aid for Ukraine and Israel that had been tied up in the deal.

Az Ukrán Biztonsági Szolgálat (SBU) leleplezett egy orosz kémhálózatot, melynek tagjai az ukrán katonai erőkről és energetikai létesítményekről gyűjtöttek információkat. A négy aktív és egy volt titkosszolgálati tisztet hazaárulással vádolják.

A hálózat tagjai között volt a védelmi minisztérium, a külügyi hírszerző szolgálat és a regionális biztonsági szervezet tisztje is. Információkat szivárogtattak ki az ukrán katonák személyes adatairól, az odesszai erődítményekről, a harkovi rakétavetőkről és az ukrán csapatok mozgásáról.

Az ügy súlyát fokozza, hogy az egyik ügynök már a 2022-es orosz invázió előtt is az FSzB-nek szolgáltatott adatokat. A leleplezett kémek motivációja összetett: az FSzB a családjuk megölésével fenyegette őket, ha nem teljesítik a követeléseket, de valószínűleg pénzt is kaptak a kémkedésért.

Zelenszkij tisztogatást hajt végre

Az eset rávilágít Volodimir Zelenszkij ukrán elnök azon törekvésére, hogy átvilágítsa a vezérkart, a titkosszolgálatot és az államapparátust, és eltávolítsa a korrupciót és az orosz befolyást. Az elmúlt hetekben több híradás is beszámolt tisztogatásokról, korrupciós ügyekről és hatalommal való visszaélésekről.

Ezek az ügyek gyengítik Joe Biden amerikai elnök pozícióit, aki a Kongresszussal küzd az ukrajnai támogatások megóvásáért. A fegyverlopási ügy is kínos Zelenszkij számára, mert azt mutatja, hogy a korrupció még mindig mélyen gyökerezik az ukrán rendszerben.

A tisztogatás szükséges, de kockázatos is

Zelenszkij tisztogatási kampánya szükséges ahhoz, hogy Ukrajna megnyerje a háborút és felkészüljön a NATO-tagságra. Azonban a kampánynak kockázatai is vannak. A tisztogatások meggyengíthetik a hadsereget és a titkosszolgálatokat, és politikai instabilitáshoz vezethetnek.

Fontos, hogy Zelenszkij óvatosan egyensúlyozzon a tisztogatás és a stabilitás fenntartása között. A siker kulcsa a nyílt kommunikáció, a jogállamiság tiszteletben tartása és a reformok átfogó végrehajtása lesz.

További fejlemények várhatóak

Az ukrán titkosszolgálat továbbra is nyomoz az ügyben, és további letartóztatásokra lehet számítani. A leleplezett kémhálózat ügye rávilágít a háború súlyosságára és az orosz fenyegetés mértékére. Ukrajnának minden erejét be kell vetnie a korrupció elleni küzdelemben és a nemzetbiztonság megerősítésében, hogy megnyerje a háborút és biztosítsa a jövőjét.

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On connait désormais le nombre de ministres conseillers qui seront nommés au Palais de la Marina. Le chef de l'Etat Patrice TALON à travers le décret N°2024-007 du 09 janvier 2024 portant définition des secteurs d'intervention des ministres conseillers à la présidence de la République a défini leur nombre ainsi que leurs secteurs d'intervention.

12, c'est le nombre de ministres conseillers qui seront nommés au Palais de la Marina. Le chef de l'Etat à travers le décret N°2024-007 du 09 janvier 2024 portant définition des secteurs d'intervention des ministres conseillers à la présidence de la République, a défini leurs secteurs d'intervention.

Liste des ministres conseillers et leurs secteurs d'intervention

Ministre conseiller aux affaires économiques
Economie et finances ; Développement, industrie et commerce ; Petites et moyennes entreprises ; et Promotion de l'emploi.

Ministre conseiller aux enseignements maternel, primaire et secondaire
Enseignements maternel et primaire ; enseignement secondaire

Ministre conseiller à l'enseignement technique et à la formation professionnelle
Enseignements secondaire, technique et de la formation professionnelle

Ministre conseiller à l'enseignement supérieur et à la recherche scientifique
Enseignement supérieur et recherche scientifique

Ministre conseiller aux affaires sociales et au travail
Affaires sociales et Microfinance ; Travail et fonction publique,

Ministre conseiller à la santé
Santé ; Affaires sociales et Microfinance

Ministre conseiller à la défense et à la sécurité
Défense nationale ; Affaires intérieures et sécurité publique ; Décentralisation et gouvernance locale ;

Ministre conseiller aux infrastructures, à la gouvernance locale et au cadre de vie
Cadre de vie, transports et développement durable ; Décentralisation et gouvernance locale ;

Ministre conseiller aux services publics
Eau, énergie et mines ; Numérique et digitalisation ;

Ministre conseiller à la justice et aux relations extérieures
Justice et législation ; Affaires étrangères ;

Ministre conseiller à l'agriculture
Agriculture, élevage et pêche ; Economie et finances

Ministre conseiller au tourisme, à la culture, aux arts et aux sports
Tourisme, culture et arts ; Sports ;
Selon l'article 3 du décret, il peut être procédé à la nomination d'autres ministres conseillers suivant les besoins.

F. A. A.

Auch bulgarische Behörden bereiten nun eine Strafverfolgung der russichen Führungsriege wegen des Angriffskrieges gegen die Ukraine vor. Dafür würden derzeit Änderungen am Strafgesetzbuch des Landes vorgenommen, sagte der bulgarische Justizminister gegenüber Euractiv Bulgarien.

Mehran Davari avait quitté l'Iran après avoir été été détenu et torturé pour sa participation aux manifestations anti-régime de 2009. Après 13 ans passés en Bulgarie, il a été arrêté et détenu par les autorités bulgares, risquant d'être expulsé vers le pays qui l'a persécuté.

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