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Nur wenige Stunden vor der Einigung zwischen Pristina und Belgrad hat die tschechische EU-Ratspräsidentschaft den Vorschlag für eine Visaliberalisierung für Bürger:innen des Kosovo aufgrund der aktuellen politischen Spannungen mit Serbien im Zusammenhang mit Kfz-Kennzeichen zurückgenommen.

Le Parlement européen a appelé à l’annulation d’un protocole d’accord controversé de 2019 entre la Turquie et la Libye, qui provoque depuis sa signature des tensions en Méditerranée.

La Pologne a envoyé des notes diplomatiques à ses alliés de l’Union européenne et de l’OTAN afin d’obtenir leur soutien dans le cadre du litige qui l’oppose à l’Allemagne concernant les 1 300 milliards d’euros de réparations qu’elle réclame pour la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

Außenminister Rastislav Káčer und EU-Abgeordnete haben den ungarischen Ministerpräsidenten Viktor Orbán scharf dafür kritisiert, dass er einen Schal mit der historischen Landkarte Großungarns trägt.

Das Europäische Parlament hat am Mittwoch Russland als staatlichen Sponsor des Terrorismus anerkannt. Alle fünf Mitglieder der Fraktion der bulgarischen Sozialdemokraten stimmten dagegen.

La guerre menée par la Russie en Ukraine a contraint le gouvernement allemand à reconsidérer bon nombre de ses plans présentés il y a un an lors de la formation de la coalition de « feux tricolores », modifiant ainsi certaines lignes et les politiques clés du pays.

Der Vorschlag der Europäischen Kommission für einen EU-weiten Gaspreisdeckel sei eindeutig unzureichend und gehe nicht in die richtige Richtung, sagte der spanische Premierminister Pedro Sánchez am Mittwoch.

New guidance issued by the US Treasury adds more detail to a complex plan by the European Union, G7 nations and Australia to cap the price of Russian oil starting on 5 December.

Das Europäische Parlament wurde am Mittwochnachmittag (23. November) Opfer eines massiven Cyberangriffs, nur wenige Stunden nachdem die EU-Abgeordneten beschlossen hatten, Russland als staatlichen Sponsor des Terrorismus einzustufen. 

A Putyin és kormányzata által ukrán civilek ellen elkövetett bűntettek miatt az Európai Parlament strasbourgi plenáris ülésén a terrorizmust támogató és terrorista eszközöket használó állammá nyilvánította Oroszországot.

Az Európai Parlament 494 szavazattal, 58 ellenszavazat és 44 tartózkodás mellett elfogadott állásfoglalásában hangsúlyozta: Az Oroszország által az ukrán polgári lakosság ellen elkövetett szándékos támadások és atrocitások, a polgári infrastruktúra lerombolása, valamint az emberi jogok és a nemzetközi humanitárius jog egyéb súlyos megsértése terrorcselekménynek minősül, és kimeríti a háborús bűncselekmény fogalmát.

Mivel az Európai Unió hivatalosan nem nyilváníthat államokat a terrorizmus támogatóinak, ezért az EP felszólította az uniós intézményeket és a tagállamokat, hogy hozzák létre az ehhez szükséges jogszabályokat, és fontolják meg, hogy Oroszországot felvegyék a terrorimust támogató államok uniós jegyzékébe.

Az EP-képviselők felszólították az uniós tanácsot, hogy az orosz Wagner Csoportot, a Ramzan Kadirov csecsen vezető irányította 141-es különleges gépesített ezredet, valamint más orosz finanszírozású fegyveres csoportokat, milíciákat is vegyen fel a terroristák uniós jegyzékébe. Emellett szorgalmazták az Oroszországgal fenntartott diplomáciai kapcsolatok további lefokozását, ezen belül a kapcsolattartás minimumra korlátozását minden szinten. Felszólították továbbá a tagállamokat, hogy mielőbb hozzák meg döntésüket a Moszkva elleni kilencedik szankciócsomaggal kapcsolatban.

Végezetül az EP véleménye szerint az uniós országoknak az Európai Bizottsággal együtt mérlegelniük kellene azon országokkal szembeni intézkedések bevezetését, amelyek megpróbálnak segíteni Oroszországnak a kiszabott szankciók megkerülésében.

Ferenc pápa az ukránok szenvedését a sztálini időkben elszenvedett éhínséghez hasonlította
Az ukránul holodomornak, éhínségnek nevezett történelmi időszakhoz hasonlította a mai ukrajnai lakosság helyzetét Ferenc pápa. A katolikus egyházfő emlékeztetett arra, hogy szombaton lesz az 1932-33-as “borzalmas népirtás”, Ukrajnára vonatkozóan és ukránul a holodomor évfordulója. Felidézte, hogy a mesterségesen, éheztetéssel előidézett népirtást Sztálin vitte véghez szerte a Szovjetunióban, különösen Ukrajnában. Az egyházfő imára szólított fel a “genocídium áldozataiért és a számos ukránért, gyermekekért, nőkért, idősekért, akik ma szenvedik el az agresszió mártíromságát”. A kijevi parlament 2006. november 28-án fogadta el a törvényt, amellyel az éhínség éveit az ukrán nép ellen elkövetett népirtásnak nyilvánította.

The post Az EP terrorizmust támogató állammá nyilvánította Oroszországot appeared first on .

Polen hat diplomatische Noten an seine EU- und NATO-Verbündeten geschickt, um Unterstützung für seinen Streit mit Deutschland über 1,3 Billionen Euro an Reparationen aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg zu gewinnen, sagte der stellvertretende Außenminister Arkadiusz Mularczyk am Mittwoch.

"Not one woman less, respect our lives” writes a Peruvian woman on the effigy of a woman in a park in front of the courthouse, before a demonstration in Lima over the lack of enforcement of laws against femicides and other forms of violence against women. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Nov 24 2022 (IPS)

Violence against women has failed to decline in the Latin American region after the sharp rise recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, while preventing the causes of such violence remains a major challenge.

This is what representatives of the United Nations, feminist organizations and women’s movements told IPS on the occasion of the commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25."We attack the problem but not its causes. I have been talking for 30 years about the importance of preventing violence against women by fostering major cultural changes so that girls and boys are raised in the knowledge that it is unacceptable in any form." -- Moni Pizani

This date, established in 1999 by the United Nations, was adopted in 1981 at the first Latin American and Caribbean feminist meeting held in Colombia to promote the struggle against violence against women in a region where it continues to be exacerbated by high levels of ‘machismo’ or sexism.

The day was chosen to pay tribute to Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal, three sisters from the Dominican Republic who were political activists and were killed on Nov. 25, 1960 by the repressive forces of the regime of dictator Rafael Trujillo.

The date launches 16 days of activism against gender violence, culminating on Dec. 10, Human Rights Day, because male violence against women and girls is the most widespread violation of human rights worldwide.

“It is not possible to confirm a decrease in gender violence in the region at this post-pandemic moment,” said Venezuelan lawyer Moni Pizani, one of the region’s leading experts on women’s rights. “I could say, from the information I have gathered and empirically, that the level has remained steady after the significant increase registered in the last two years.”

Pizani, who retired from the United Nations, currently supports the UN Women office in Guatemala after a fruitful career advocating for women’s rights. She was twice representative in Ecuador for UN Women and its predecessor Unifem, then worked for East and Southeast Asia and later opened the UN Women Office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Panama City as regional director.

“Before the pandemic we used to talk about three out of 10 women having suffered violence, today we say four out of 10. The other alarming fact is that the impact is throughout the entire life cycle of women, including the elderly,” she told IPS in a conversation in Tegucigalpa, Honduras during a Central American colloquium on the situation of women.

UN Women last year measured the “shadow pandemic” in 13 countries in all regions, a term used to describe violence against women during lockdowns due to COVID.

Seven out of 10 women were found to have experienced violence at some time during the pandemic, one in four felt unsafe at home due to increased family conflict, and seven out of 10 perceived partner abuse to be more frequent.

The study also revealed that four out of 10 women feel less safe in public spaces.

Pizani said the study showed that this violation of women’s human rights occurs in different age groups: 48 percent of those between 18 and 49 years old are affected, 42 percent of those between 50 and 59, and 34 percent of women aged 60 and over.

Venezuelan lawyer Moni Pizani, one of Latin America’s leading experts on gender issues, with a long career at UN Women and its predecessor Unifem, takes part in a Central American colloquium in Tegucigalpa on sustainable recovery with gender equality in the wake of the COVID pandemic. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

According to the same study, unemployed women are the most vulnerable: 52 percent of them experienced violence during the pandemic.

And with regard to mothers: one out of every two women with children also experienced a violation of their rights.

The expert highlighted the effort made by many countries to adopt measures during the pandemic with the expansion of services, telephone hotlines, use of new means of reporting through mobile applications, among others. But she regretted that the efforts fell short.

This year, the region is home to 662 million inhabitants, or eight percent of the world’s population, slightly more than half of whom are girls and women.

The level of violence against women is so severe that the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) cites it as one of the structural factors of gender inequality, together with gaps in employment, the concentration of care work and inequitable representation in public spaces.

Governments neither prevent nor address violence

Peru is an example of similar situations of gender violence in the region.

It was one of the countries with the strictest lockdowns, paralyzing government action against gender violence, which was gradually resumed in the second half of 2020 and which made it possible, for example, to receive complaints in the country’s provincial public prosecutors’ offices.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office Crime Observatory reported 1,081,851 complaints in 2021 – an average of 117 per hour. The frequency of complaints returned to pre-pandemic levels, which in 2020 stood at around 700,000, because women under lockdown found it harder to report cases due to the confinement and the fact that they were cooped up with the perpetrators.

Cynthia Silva, a Peruvian lawyer and director of the non-governmental feminist group Study for the Defense of Women’s Rights-Demus, told IPS that the government has failed to reactivate the different services and that the specialized national justice system needs to be fully implemented to protect victims and punish perpetrators.

Lawyer Cynthia Silva, director of the Peruvian feminist institution Demus, poses for a picture at the headquarters of the feminist organization in Lima. She stresses the need for government action against gender violence to include not only strategies for attending to the victims, but also for prevention in order to eradicate it. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

She stressed the importance of allocating resources both for addressing cases of violence and for prevention. “These are two strategies that should go hand in hand and we see that the State is not doing enough in relation to the latter,” she said.

Silva urged the government to take action in measures aimed at the populace to contribute to rethinking socio-cultural patterns and ‘machista’ habits that discriminate against women.

Based on an experience they are carrying out with girls and adolescents in the district of Carabayllo, in the extreme north of Lima, she said it’s a question of supporting “deconstruction processes” so that egalitarian relations between women and men are fostered from childhood.

On Nov. 26 they will march with various feminist movements and collectives against machista violence so that “the right to a life free of violence against women is guaranteed and so that not a single step backwards is taken with respect to the progress made, particularly in sexual and reproductive rights, which are threatened by conservative groups in Congress.”

Adolescent women and men in Lima, the Peruvian capital, wave a huge banner during the march for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25, 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that exacerbated such violence in Latin America. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

An equally serious scenario

Argentina is another example of gender violence – including femicides – in Latin America, the region with the highest levels of aggression against women in the world, the result of extremely sexist societies.

This is in contrast to the fact that it is one of the regions with the best protection against such violence in national and even regional legislation, because since 1994 it has had the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women.

The problem is that these laws are seriously flawed in their implementation, especially in the interior of the countries, agree UN Women, regional organizations and national women’s rights groups.

Rosaura Andiñach, an Argentine university professor and head of community processes at the Ecumenical Regional Center for Counseling and Service (CREAS), said it is worrying that in her country there are still high rates of femicide, despite the progress made in terms of legislation.

Between January and October 2022, there were 212 femicides and 181 attempted gender-based homicides in the country of 46 million people, according to the civil society observatory “Ahora que sí nos ven” (Now that they do see us).

She said the government still owes a debt to women in this post-pandemic context, as it fails to guarantee women’s rights by not adequately addressing their complaints.

“We do not want the same thing to happen as with a recent case: Noelia Sosa, 30 years old, lived in Tucumán and reported her partner in a police station for gender violence. They ignored her and she committed suicide that afternoon because she did not know what else to do. We are very concerned because the outlook is still as serious as ever in terms of violence against women,” Andiñach said.

It was precisely in Argentina that the #NiunaMenos (Not one woman less) campaign emerged in 2015, which spread throughout the region as a movement against femicides and the ineffectiveness of the authorities in the enforcement of laws to prevent and punish gender-related murders, because femicides are surrounded by a very high level of impunity in Latin America.

Moni Pizani, from UN Women, stressed that the prevention of gender violence should no longer fall short in the region.

“We attack the problem but not its causes. I have been talking for 30 years about the importance of preventing violence against women by fostering major cultural changes so that girls and boys are raised in the knowledge that it is unacceptable in any form,” she underlined.

This strategy, she remarked, “involves investing in youth and children to ensure that the new generations are free from violence, harassment and discrimination, with respect for a life of dignity for all.”

Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS coverage of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25.

In today's edition of the Capitals, find out more about criticism levelled at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz over defence spending, Vienna backing Croatia's Schengen admission, and so much more.

Alors que le Parlement européen a adopté mercredi (23 novembre) une résolution visant à reconnaître la Russie comme un État soutenant le terrorisme, les cinq membres du groupe des socialistes bulgares ont voté contre.

531959 OSCE Centre in Ashgabat

Forty students from the Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan and the International University for Humanities and Development completed an online course on the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and its role in the Central Asian region that took place from 21 to 23 November 2022.

The OSCE Centre in Ashgabat organized the three-day course to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Turkmenistan-OSCE co-operation.

Addressing the students, John MacGregor, Head of the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat, emphasized that “Turkmenistan’s permanent neutrality is consistent with the comprehensive approach to security, which is the foundational core of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.”  

“In a near future, many of you will become diplomats and will represent the interests of neutral Turkmenistan in the international arena”, added MacGregor. "It is our firm belief that this course will help you better understand the role of our organization in international relations, during the different historical periods of its existence, and today.”

Ida Manton, an expert and a scholar in the field of negotiations and mediation, who delivered the course, introduced students to the history of the OSCE, its structure, principles of decision-making and commitments across three dimensions of security. Students learnt about the mediation and dialogue facilitation in the OSCE and discussed negotiation life cycle and negotiation styles. Special emphasis was placed on the role of gender equality and relevant OSCE commitments.

“The enthusiasm and curiosity I encountered among the students in Ashgabat tells me that these young people have a great potential to turn into engaged diplomats with problem-solving creativity and effective communication capacity,” said Ida Manton.

“It was a real pleasure to interact with them and to see how much the youth can learn from the OSCE, from its history and the negotiated commitments that were created from Helsinki onwards,” added Manton.

The course also featured a simulation exercise, which enabled future diplomats to practice multilateral negotiation skills.

Armenia's leader vented his frustration on Wednesday (23 November) at the failure of a Russian-led security alliance to come to his country's aid in the face of what he called aggression by Azerbaijan.

Foreign Minister Rastislav Káčer and EU lawmakers strongly criticised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for wearing a scarf with the historical map of Greater Hungary. Historical Greater Hungary included territory currently owned by Slovakia, but also Romania, Croatia, Serbia and...

L’Italie et la France ont convenu mercredi de mettre en place des groupes de travail bilatéraux et de coopérer dans des secteurs stratégiques, ce qui semble débloquer les tensions autour de la question de l’accueil des migrants du navire de sauvetage Ocean Viking.

A group of Albanian environmental organisations have sued the government over Vlora Airport as they claim its construction violates several laws, and risks irreparable damage to the valuable ecosystem, mirroring concerns echoed by the European Commission.

The leaders of the pro-European parties We Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria are both ready to form a minority government if Boyko Borrissov’s GERB fails to form one first, they announced Wednesday. GERB won the early elections in October...