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La parité linguistique, une violence faite aux valeurs familiales et à la langue. C'est ce qu'a déclaré dans son message pascal le patriarche Porfirije de l'Église orthodoxe serbe. En Serbie, État laïc, la parité linguistique est pourtant inscrite dans la loi.

- Articles / Une - Diaporama, Radio Slobodna Evropa, Serbie, Femmes violences, Société

Le ton monte avant les élections du 14 mai. Plus d'une centaine de personnes, dont des journalistes, avocats, artistes et membres du parti kurde HDP, ont été arrêtées près de Diyarbakır, dans le sud-est de la Turquie, en raison de « liens présumés avec le PKK ». Leur arrestation a donné lieu à des manifestations.

- Le fil de l'Info / Une - Diaporama - En premier, Une - Diaporama, Courrier des Balkans, Erdogan, Turquie, Politique intérieure

Le ton monte avant les élections du 14 mai. Plus d'une centaine de personnes, dont des journalistes, avocats, artistes et membres du parti kurde HDP, ont été arrêtées près de Diyarbakır, dans le sud-est de la Turquie, en raison de « liens présumés avec le PKK ». Leur arrestation a donné lieu à des manifestations.

- Le fil de l'Info / Une - Diaporama - En premier, Une - Diaporama, Courrier des Balkans, Erdogan, Turquie, Politique intérieure

Les ventes de voitures électriques vont poursuivre cette année leur « croissance explosive » et atteindre près d'un cinquième du marché mondial, a affirmé mercredi l'Agence internationale de l'énergie (AIE).

Zum Abschluss einer zweitägigen Konferenz in Prag haben die Parlamentspräsidenten der EU-Länder der Ukraine ihre Unterstützung im Kampf gegen die russische Aggression zugesagt. Dazu solle dem Land weitere humanitäre und militärische Hilfe geleistet werden.

Major green energy projects are sprouting up across Spain as it seeks to position itself as a future green energy leader – but experts have urged caution over costs and demand uncertainty.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Tuesday (25 April) condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but said in Ottawa that he expected Russians and Americans to work together on the International Space Station (ISS) until it is decommissioned.

Les élections en Turquie vont se dérouler dans des conditions « très difficiles » du fait de « l'état de la démocratie » dans le pays et des conséquences du séisme du 6 février, estime le chef des observateurs du Conseil de l'Europe.

Das französische Linksbündnis NUPES ist uneins darüber, ob es bei den Europawahlen 2024 als gemeinsamer Block antreten soll: Die linksradikale La France Insoumise (LFI) drängt auf eine gemeinsame Kandidatur, während die französischen Grünen und Kommunisten eher skeptisch sind.

In today’s edition of the Capitals, find out more about Sweden expelling five Russian diplomats accused of espionage, Visegrad farmers calling on the EU to reintroduce tariffs on Ukrainian grain, and so much more.  

La célébration en Italie, le 25 avril, de l’anniversaire de la libération du pays du fascisme et de l’occupation nazie est une occasion qui divise chaque année le pays.

A summit meant to reinvigorate talks between the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro and opposition political parties, attended by representatives from 19 countries and the EU, produced no concrete results on Tuesday (25 April), though a further meeting was planned.

The draft Critical Raw Materials act strikes a good balance between environmental and social safeguards, and the need for a quick ramp-up of critical metals supply. However, improvements are needed - particularly in Europe's relationship with the Global South, which will supply many of these materials, writes Julia Poliscanova.

The European Union launched a scheme on Tuesday (25 April) for European companies to place orders to jointly buy gas, with the aim of ensuring Europe has enough fuel and avoiding a repeat of last year's record-high energy prices.

Die schwedische Regierung hat am Montag bekannt gegeben, dass fünf russische Diplomaten wegen Spionagevorwürfen ausgewiesen wurden. Dies ist die erste Ausweisung seit der Reihe von Ausweisungen im Zuge des russischen Angriffs auf die Ukraine im vergangenen Jahr.

This week, EURACTIV’s health team dives into endocrine disruptors and the effect these chemicals can have on our hormonal system. For that, they talk with Doctor Angel Nadal.

A vote on Kosovo’s bid to join the Strasbourg-based international human rights body, the Council of Europe, has laid bare a raft of geopolitical issues and tensions across Europe, as well as creating bumps in the road in terms of...

A research rocket launched by Sweden Space Corp (SSC) early on Monday (24 April) from Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden malfunctioned and landed 15 km (9.32 miles) inside neighbouring Norway.

Einen Tag vor der erwarteten Veröffentlichung des Vorschlages zur Reform der EU-Schuldenregeln sorgt das Thema in der Ampel-Koalition für Wirbel. Während Bundesfinanzminister Lindner Härte zeigt, wollen die Grünen stärker auf die anderen EU-Länder zugehen.

The World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry delegates at Minamata COP-4, on 23 March, 2022, Bali, Indonesia. Credit: Kiara Worth, IISD/ENB (Earth Negotiation Bulletin)

By Charlie Brown
LOME, Togo, Apr 26 2023 (IPS)

The Minamata Convention on Mercury, a stellar success story to date, has been favorably compared to the prototype success story for a treaty on toxins: the Montreal Protocol. Both had a single focused mission; both gained universal support across the globe; both matched technological innovation with environmental science to discard old polluting methods.

But emerging after hidden negotiations with the mercury lobby is a GEF project with UNEP endorsement which ignores, if not outright defies, the will of the Parties. As COP5 approaches, here is the test case on whether Minamata continues to move our small planet toward an end to anthropogenic mercury—or become mired in corporate capture.

For the past decade, the Parties repeatedly rejected the agenda of the dental mercury lobby—the dentists who still cling to the 19th century tooth-unfriendly pollutant amalgam, despite it being 50% mercury and a health risk to their own dental nurses; and the waste industry, whose obvious self-interest is to keep amalgam going into perpetuity to sell their equipment.

Charlie Brown

The mercury lobby wanted a treaty focused on amalgam waste; the Parties said NO, this treaty is about use, not about waste. The mercury lobby wanted access to implant mercury fillings in all children, especially those in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; the Parties said NO, and adopted the Children’s Amendment at COP 4—which enters into legal force on 28 September 2023.

So, the dental mercury lobby met repeatedly with GEF and UNEP staff in sessions closed to the Parties . . . closed to the Minamata Secretariat . . . closed to the Minamata Bureau . . . closed to the dozens of CSOs who have actively pushed for a treaty to phase out anthropogenic mercury.

Violating their own standards, GEF and UNEP constructed (or allowed without objection) a project that bypasses the Children’s Amendment entirely in favor of trying to redirect the mission of the treaty from use to waste—the very position repeatedly rejected by the Parties since 2013.

Separators do not sell well because they do not and cannot eliminate mercury waste; they only catch the mercury in the dentist office—not the mercury implanted in people—and they require a massive infrastructure to ensure that even that partial waste, from dental offices, is properly disposed of. Only one solution ends mercury waste from amalgam: the switch to mercury-free dentistry.

The #1 beneficiary of this Greenwashing is the world’s only major publicly traded dental products maker expanding sales of amalgam: Southern Dental Industries (SDI) of Melbourne. While its competitors exited or scaled back amalgam—or never made it in the first place—SDI seized their exits as its opportunity to corner the amalgam market.

Just six weeks ago, in a call to its shareholders, SDI’s CEO boasted about its huge increases in amalgam sales, detailed its entry into new markets to sell amalgam, and affirmed her personal goal of ‘maximizing’ amalgam sales! Wriggling into a GEF-UNEP amalgam “reduction” project while increasing amalgam sales, SDI is the sole dental products company in a project partnership role—hence given market access denied to their mercury-free competitors in nations on three continents. Here is a classic case of Corporate Capture!

GEF’s requirement of stakeholder participation at the earliest stage was papered over via a legerdemain: a false claim that the NGOs are participating. Falsely listed as participants are the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, Bangladesh-based Environment and Social Development Organization, Germany-based European Network for Environmental Medicine, Philippines-based BAN Toxics, Nepal-based Center for Public Health and Environmental Development, Cameroun-based Centre de Recherche et d’Education pour le Développement, and U.S.-based Consumers for Dental Choice.

Equally troubling, RAP-AL Uruguay, who leads the campaign for mercury-free dentistry for Latin America, is preliminarily assigned to promote separator sales—a goal anathema to its very mission.

UNEP top brass in Nairobi and GEF top brass in Washington need to act:

• First, to determine who on their staffs submitted the plethora of false claims of CSO participation;
• Second, to kill this project, so that the Minamata Convention on Mercury does not become the treaty about corporate capture and greenwashing;
• Third, to use GEF funding to enact the will of the Parties as stated unequivocally in its 2022 Amendment: stop placing mercury fillings, for all time and all regions, in children and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is President, World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry