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Une délégation gouvernementale conduite par le ministre d'Etat en charge du développement et de la coordination de l'action gouvernementale s'est rendue mercredi 28 février 2024, à la frontière entre le Bénin et le Niger. L'objectif de cette descente de la délégation composée de trois ministres, est de s'enquérir de l'effectivité de l'ouverture des frontières après la décision de la CEDEAO.

Samedi 24 février 2024, la CEDEAO à l'occasion d'une session extraordinaire tenue à Abuja a décidé de la levée de sanctions contre le Niger, le Burkina Faso, le Mali et la Guinée. Au nombre des sanctions levées par l'organisation sous régionale au terme de ses assises, figure la réouverture des frontières avec ces pays sous sanctions depuis quelques mois.
Quelques heures après cette décision de la CEDEAO, une délégation du gouvernement béninois composée des ministres Abdoulaye Bio TCHANE du développement et de la coordination de l'action gouvernementale, Romuald WADAGNI de l'économie et des finances et Gaston DOSSOUHOUI de l'agriculture, de l'élevage et de la pêche, s'est rendue à la frontière entre le Bénin et le Niger s'enquérir de l'effectivité de l'ouverture.
Le constat sur le terrain, est rassurant. Toutes les barrières côté béninois ont été levées, et toute marchandise en provenance de Cotonou pour Niamey peut facilement traverser la frontière. Mais côté nigérien, l'on maintient encore le blocus. Face à cette situation, le ministre d'Etat en charge du développement et de la coordination de l'action gouvernementale a émis le vœu que les barrières soient levées afin que les populations des deux pays puissent vaquer à leurs occupations.
Mais en attendant, les activités informelles se développement bien. Abdoulaye Bio TCHANE a rappelé à l'occasion, la décision de la CEDEAO qui appelle également les autorités du Niger et des autres pays de l'AES à participer à une rénovation de la CEDEAO, à taire les petites querelles entre Etats, et à avancer vers la reconstruction de ce qui est fait jusqu'là dans la sous-région, et salué de partout. « C'est le moment de reconstruire et je pense que le Nigériens comme les Burkinabè, les Maliens seront prêts à avancer dans cette direction », a confié le ministre d'Etat.

F. A. A.

Die Kluft zwischen den beiden mächtigen Rechtsaußenparteien im Europäischen Parlament, der AfD und Le Pens Rassemblement National, wächst. Der Streit um die Distanzierung zur Remigration bedroht ihre europäische Zusammenarbeit und die Zukunft ihrer gemeinsamen Fraktion.

Mercredi 28 février, les sénateurs français ont largement voté en faveur (267 pour, 50 contre) de l'inscription dans la constitution de "la liberté garantie" aux femmes "de recourir à une interruption volontaire de grossesse".

In today’s edition of the Capitals, find out more about Sweden being ‘on its toes’ after Russia pledged countermeasures over its NATO bid, Bulgaria becoming the main route for Russian gas imports to the EU and Ukraine in 2025, and so much more.

Alors que l’Allemagne a légalisé l’usage du cannabis vendredi 23 février, en France les réactions sont mitigées quant à ses effets sur la santé des consommateurs et sur la lutte contre le trafic de drogues.

La Suède se dit prête à répondre aux menaces de contre-mesures annoncées par l’ambassade russe à Stockholm suite à l’annonce de son entrée imminente dans l’OTAN, a déclaré mardi le Premier ministre suédois Ulf Kristersson.

La version finale de la révision du règlement sur les indications géographiques, votée au Parlement mercredi (28 février), renforce notamment la protection des produits sur le web et auprès des industriels. Les verts reprochent toutefois la faiblesse des engagements environnementaux.

The rest of this decade will see deeper integration of EU electricity grids to enable a sharing of renewables across the bloc - and with, a power boost for the Ljubljana-based EU energy watchdog ACER.

Hundreds of thousands of Greeks took to the streets of Athens on Wednesday (28 February) as the Mediterranean country marked a year since a deadly train accident killed 57 people amid complaints that the authorities are trying to cover up those responsible.

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny's funeral will be held in Moscow on Friday (1 March), his wife Yulia announced, but she said she was unsure if it would pass off peacefully and that plans for a civil memorial service had been blocked.

Die EU-Kommission plant umfassende Maßnahmen zur Entwicklung der Rüstungsindustrie und Erhöhung der Kriegsbereitschaft. Dazu gehören Subventionen zur Steigerung der Produktionskapazitäten, zum Aufbau von Reserven und zur Förderung von Investitionen.

The ruling majority in parliament refused on Wednesday to dissolve the sabor and call elections, despite demands from the opposition, which has vowed to protest in retaliation.

Das EU-Parlament hat am Dienstag (27. Februar) seinen Standpunkt zur Überarbeitung der Führerscheinrichtlinie verabschiedet. Es befürwortet die Idee, bei der Erneuerung ihres Führerscheins eine Selbsteinschätzung vorzunehmen und 17-Jährigen das begleitende Fahren zu erlauben.

Children look at their destroyed homes in Rafah city, in the southern Gaza Strip. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba

By James Elder
GAZA STRIP, Feb 29 2024 (IPS)

Nothing could prepare me for my recently concluded mission into the Gaza Strip, where children face catastrophic conditions.

In my twenty years with UNICEF, traveling from one humanitarian crisis to the next – from famines to floods and war zones to refugee camps – I’ve simply never seen such devastation and despair as is happening in Gaza.

The intensity of the attacks, the massive number of child casualties, the desperation and panic of the people on the move – people who already have nothing – is palpable. It is humanitarian disaster on top of humanitarian disaster.

Near the start of the recent brief pause in fighting, we set out early in the morning at Rafah on the border with Egypt. Our convoy of trucks carrying vital humanitarian aid made its way slowly in a punishing journey north to Gaza City, which hadn’t seen aid in weeks.

The two cities are just 35 kilometres apart, but travelling through a war zone always makes distances seem more daunting. Along the way, I saw apartment building after apartment building, home after home, flattened by the bombings, a dystopian scene that stretched for miles.

In Gaza City I got out to look more closely at a building that had been reduced to rubble. Inside, I noticed bloodstains, but it’s impossible to know whether the people who were pulled out of this mass of concrete survived.

I will never forget how a man in his 60s walked out from the ruins of a recently bombed apartment building. At first, I thought he was indicating the number 10, as in 10 people had been killed. But he corrected this, using a stick to write in the dirt: 30. It wasn’t the number of people killed. It was the number of his extended family members killed in the blast.

This man had lost everyone, his whole extended family, everyone he loved. At the start of this war, UNICEF said Gaza was a “graveyard for children and a living hell for everyone else.” It has only gotten worse as the bombing and fighting have continued.

There was a hope that the devastation seen before the pause would not be repeated should the fighting resume. But after hearing hundreds and hundreds of rounds of artillery and more explosions, I could tell that it’s happening.

Within hours, the humanitarian pause felt too long ago.

I walked across the wreckage of what I was told was once a tight-knit community that is now broken glass, rubble and steel crunching under my feet. Homes sliced open, their contents exposed like doll houses, the inside of lives laid bare.

Against the grey rubble, eerie remnants of normalcy cropped up, like a sofa on a third-floor apartment with no walls, or a painting on the only wall left standing after a blast.

I looked at what was once a child’s bedroom, with pink blankets, a cupboard, shelves full of books, fluffy stuffed toys. It looked like the room of any 12-year-old girl, from any middle-class family, anywhere in the world. It was largely untouched. The little girl would have been safe if she wasn’t in another room with her family when the home was struck.

Driving through Gaza there’s never much time for reflection. The aid convoy needs to keep moving.

Along the route we saw the same theme repeated in neighborhood after neighborhood: basic needs are not being met. People need water and nourishment. Hospitals need medicine. This convoy has all those things. But despite our efforts and those of our UN colleagues, I know it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough.

As one of my UNICEF colleagues noted just a couple of weeks into the war, the killing and maiming of children, abduction of children, attacks on hospitals and schools, and the denial of humanitarian access are a stain on our collective conscience. It was true then, it remains true now.

From Gaza City we pushed further north, to Jabaliya. The first thing I noticed were the piles of rotting garbage outside hospitals, offices and schools. Sanitation and rubbish collection services have broken down completely, of course, as trucks have no fuel to collect it and the conflict has displaced most of the workers who do these jobs anyway.

One hospital we visited, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, was utterly chaotic. It was overcrowded, loud, intense. Our trucks were delivering medical supplies while wounded people were being rushed in bleeding.

We eventually made it back to the south of Gaza, to what we call the Joint Operation Centre. That’s where dozens of UN workers meet to discuss the next mission. The mood was sombre. We all know what Palestinian families need: they need more of everything, especially medicines, water, fuel, food.

But genuine safety for Gaza’s children depends on parties to the conflict ensuring that humanitarians have unimpeded access to civilians wherever they are… on our ability to bring water, essential food, nutrition supplements, fuel and other humanitarian supplies into the territory… and on parties implementing an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

Unless those conditions are met, children in Gaza are now in danger from the sky, disease on the ground, and death from hunger and thirst. Nowhere is safe.

The children of Gaza have suffered enough. We need a humanitarian ceasefire, and peace, now.

James Elder is UNICEF’s spokesperson. Follow him @1james_elder

Source: UNICEF BLOG

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Two emergency ordinances aimed at establishing state aid programs to partially compensate losses suffered by beekeepers and farmers were passed by the government on Thursday in response to the crisis triggered by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Les dissensions entre les deux principaux partis d’extrême droite du Parlement européen, l’AfD (Alternative pour l’Allemagne) et le Rassemblement national de Marine Le Pen se creusent, menaçant leur unité européenne et l’avenir de leur groupe parlementaire commun, le groupe Identité et Démocratie.

With the expected end of Russian gas transit through Ukraine at the end of this year, the Balkan Stream gas pipeline through Bulgaria will become the main supply route for the EU and Ukraine, as discussed during the visit of the EU’s top energy official, Ditte Juul Jorgensen, to the dispatch centre of state-owned gas company Bulgartransgaz (BTG).

The Chamber of Deputies refused to amend the law to allow same-sex marriage, instead approving only same-sex ‘partnerships’ with limited rights.

La Chambre des députés tchèque a refusé de modifier la loi pour autoriser le mariage homosexuel, se contentant d’approuver des « partenariats » assortis de droits limités entre personnes de même sexe.

While the EU auditors find that the European Commission´s annual rule of law reporting lacks transparency and accountability, EU lawmakers have voiced concerns about its susceptibility to political influence.