Diplomacy & Crisis News

The government seeks to avoid Evergrande Group becoming Beijing’s Lehman Brothers.

The 76th session of the UN General Assembly is due to begin on 14 September, and it will be very different from 2020’s fully virtual gathering. UNGA 76 will still be overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but that won’t stop leaders (some of them in the Assembly Hall) from addressing urgent global challenges. Here are five things you should know about 2021’s “hybrid” event.

The UN humanitarian affairs chief warned on Wednesday that Syria, after more than a decade of war, remains “caught in a downward spiral” and that “the country will continue to be a place of tragedy, so long as the conflict continues.” 

The United Nations announced on Wednesday that all Gabonese military units deployed to the peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic, MINUSCA, are to be sent home immediately, following credible reports alleging that unidentified ‘blue helmets’ had abused five girls.

Beijing has used the “war on terror” to target its own minorities like Uyghurs.

A nationally televised debate mostly highlighted the weaknesses of the leading contenders to succeed German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A supposedly Orwellian system is fragmented, localized, and mostly targeted at businesses.

Closing Guantánamo Bay isn’t enough.

South Sudan has made history with the appointment of two women to senior leadership positions within its Transitional National Legislature, the top United Nations official in the country told the Security Council on Wednesday, as he encouraged parties to build on these gains in efforts to overcome significant political and security headwinds.

States should place moratoriums on the sale and use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems until adequate safeguards are put in place, UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet said on Wednesday.       

Pas un jour, en Irak, sans que l'on annonce des morts : des militaires de la coalition, mais aussi des diplomates et surtout des civils innocents. Cette guerre apporte le chaos dans la région ; elle est aussi une guerre contre le peuple américain. / États-Unis, Irak, Violence, Torture, Guerre (...) / États-Unis, Irak, Violence, Torture, Guerre d'Irak 2003-2011 - 2005/08

The domestic consumption of meat from wild animals has significant impacts on most species protected under the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), says a new report released on Wednesday, including increasing the risk of diseases spreading from animals to humans.  

America’s man in Afghanistan reflects on Trump’s ill-fated peace deal, the pullout, and how everything went wrong.

Découper la mer en zones spécialisées, comme on aménage les terres ? Portée par une directive européenne qui entrera en application en septembre, cette idée part d'un constat : certains espaces juxtaposent des activités parfois incompatibles (transport, pêche, gazoducs, aires protégées, exploitation (...) / Droit international, Économie, Énergie, Mer, Mutation, Relations internationales, Transports, Géographie, Mer Baltique, Environnement, Pêche, Technologies vertes, Frontières - 2016/07

/ Russie, Pétrole, Prison, Transports, Géographie, Matières premières, Charbon, Arctique, Gaz naturel - Espace et territoire / Russie, Pétrole, Prison, Transports, Géographie, Matières premières, Charbon, Arctique, Gaz naturel - Espace et territoire

The global economy is expected to bounce back this year with growth of 5.3 per cent, the fastest in nearly five decades, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The UN Secretary-General, on Wednesday, urged the world to “learn from the lessons of the past 18 months, to strengthen democratic resilience in the face of future crises.” 

Nor would they desire to.

 

The conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh appears today as frozen again. Yet it remains fundamentally unsolved. Arguably, the conflict is currently as much a time-bomb as it had been before the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. From the point of view of general post-Soviet geopolitics and generic international relations as well as law, two principal issues appear as paramount for the search for a solution of the conflict.

First, the absent or incomplete international reception of the Armenian narrative about Nagorno-Karabakh has little to do with Armenia, Karabakh, the Caucasus and post-Soviet situation. The problem of the Armenian apology for its territorial claim is not a lack of historical or/and demographic justification. Instead, its partly solid grounding in some (though not other) periods of Karabakh’s past is paradoxically the very reason why it will find only limited understanding outside Armenia.

Armenian commentators’ picking of certain historical facts in favor Karabakh’s independence or inclusion into Armenia is a strategy that can be applied by other nationalists in entirely different regions around the world. There are a number of territories across the globe which are, like Karabakh, in view of their history or/and demography politically “misplaced,” according to those or that nationalists. An international acceptance of the Armenian justification for breaking up Azerbaijan or for even enlarging Armenia could thus open a pandora box. There is little prospect for the Armenian quest of a “liberation” of Nagorno-Karabakh ever becoming broadly accepted, therefore. Instead, the Armenian government, people and diaspora need to find – together with, rather in opposition to, Azerbaijan – a solution to this dilemma via direct negotiations with their supposed enemy.

Second, on the Azerbaijani side, there may today be a time of pride and celebration regarding Karabakh. Yet, the current geopolitical constellation around the Southern Caucasus could change. The main regional actors – Russia, Turkey and Iran – all have authoritarian governments prone to abrupt leadership or even regime transitions. As a result, there may, in the future, be also radical changes in the foreign policy preferences of Moscow, Ankara and Teheran, in store.

For instance, a more fundamentalist future Russian president could take a different approach vis-à-vis the Christian-Orthodox aspect of Karabakh’s history than Vladimir Putin. Or a more pro-European or introverted future Turkish president could soften Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan. The entire region is geopolitically undetermined, organizationally underdeveloped, and potentially unstable.

In the same way in which Baku was in 2020 able to exploit a peculiar geopolitical constellation for a successful military campaign, Yerevan may, in the future, be tempted to accomplish yet another territorial revision, if it believes that the situation in Ankara, Moscow and Teheran has changed to its advantage. Therefore, Azerbaijan should not repeat Armenia’s mistake of merely focusing and relying on powerful outside actors. The solution of the conflict lies in direct negotiations between Baku and Yerevan rather than in mere propping up of domestic mobilization, military capacities, and geopolitical alliances. Ideally, Armenia and Azerbaijan should become more deeply embedded in old and new multilateral international and regional organizations that would include both countries and provide more effective platforms for conflict solutions than currently such organizations as the Council of Europe or Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe do.

https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/andreas-umland-why-direct-negotiations-between-baku-and-yerevan-are-the-only-way-to-go.html

 

À la mort de Murray Bookchin, en 2006, le Parti des travailleurs du Kurdistan (PKK) a promis de fonder la première société qui établirait un confédéralisme démocratique inspiré des réflexions du théoricien de l'écologie sociale et du municipalisme libertaire. Une reconnaissance tardive pour ce militant (...) / États-Unis, Communisme, Écologie, Femmes, Idées, Intellectuels, Kurdes, Mouvement de contestation, Socialisme, Anarchisme, Environnement - 2016/07