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Vingt-deux ressortissants de Bosnie-Herzégovine détenus depuis des années dans des prisons du nord-est de la Syrie ont été transférés en Irak, où ils font désormais l'objet d'une enquête. Leur avenir judiciaire reste incertain, tandis que leurs familles disent n'avoir aucune information officielle.

- Le fil de l'Info / Radio Slobodna Evropa, Balkans Syrie, Bosnie-Herzégovine, Défense, police et justice, Relations internationales

Business Forum: Harnessing Opportunities, Unlocking Growth - March 12th, photo by IDB

By Claudia Escorza
MEXICO CITY, Apr 3 2026 (IPS)

In Asunción, Paraguay last month, finance ministers, central bank presidents, and private sector leaders gathered for the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) Annual Meetings to talk about growth.

In a session titled “Seizing Opportunities, Stimulating Growth” hosted by IDB Invest, the bank’s private sector institution, they discussed how investment and innovation could strengthen agribusiness and food systems across Latin America.

One place to start is clear: the IDB Invest should exclude industrial livestock production from its portfolio. Industrial animal agriculture is a leading driver of deforestation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions in the region.

It puts profits in the hands of a few, while rural and Indigenous communities are left to deal with dirty water, damaged land, and fewer ways to earn a living. Yet at the very session dedicated to agribusiness, livestock was conspicuously absent from the conversation.

If the IDB Invest won’t even acknowledge the problem, it’s obviously not trying to solve it. Public development money shouldn’t be funding an industry that worsens the climate crisis and harms communities.

Equally troubling is the lack of transparency when projects do move forward. When the IDB Invest supports a project, communities have a right to understand its risks, impacts, and benefits. That did not happen, for example, in the case of Pronaca, an Ecuadorian agribusiness company that received a $50 million loan from IDB Invest.

An independent investigation by the Bank’s own accountability mechanism found seven violations of environmental and social safeguards, including failures to disclose critical information and assess the company’s role in the contamination of a local river that the Indigenous Tsáchila community rely on for food and hygiene, and which holds deep spiritual significance within their cosmology.

But key environmental documents were classified as confidential, and meaningful information was never shared. This isn’t just a problem with the IBD’s internal procedures. It can have real impacts on human rights.

Perhaps most importantly, the IDB Invest must ensure the effective participation of affected communities from the very beginning of any project. In the Pronaca case, the investigation found no evidence that nearby Indigenous communities were consulted at all, even though one community is located just a few hundred meters from a facility.

This absence of consultation wasn’t accidental, but instead part of a deep imbalance of power, where decisions are made in boardrooms and imposed on territories without consent. Communities must have a seat at the table, not as an afterthought, but as decision-makers with the ability to shape, or reject, projects that affect their futures. Anything less is incompatible with the IDB Invest’s stated mission to reduce inequality.

This month’s meeting in Paraguay showed that the IDB Group is quite ambitious when it comes to growth in Latin America. However, it would be a mistake for the IDB to believe that growth is the only measure of progress and should be the priority no matter the cost.

Right now, the IDB has the opportunity and the responsibility to pursue a sustainable growth agenda by excluding harmful industries, committing to full transparency, and including the impacted communities at every step of the process. To do that, the IDB must listen to those who were not in the room, and must recognize that economic growth cannot be built on weakened ecosystems and silenced communities.

Claudia Escorza, the Latin America Regional Coordinator for “Stop Financing Factory Farming (S3F) coalition, is based in Mexico City, and advocates sustainable food systems.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Public Domain. Smoke rises above Tehran, Iran. Source: UN News

By Daniel D. Bradlow
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Apr 3 2026 (IPS)

By Easter 2026 it was still not clear when – or how – the war initiated by Israel and the US against Iran would end. But what was already clear was that it would harm Africa in a number of ways.

Firstly, it would adversely affect the global supply and prices of oil and gas, fertilisers and food. Secondly, local currencies would be affected. More than a month after the war had started a number of African currencies had begun to lose value against the US dollar.

Thirdly, interest rates stopped falling and further rate increases were highly likely. Fourth, there will be a decline in access to affordable foreign financing.

How should Africa respond?

African countries cannot avoid being harmed by the current Gulf war. Nevertheless, based on my work in international economic law and global economic governance, I think there are two lessons that, if followed, can help the continent emerge from the crisis in a better place.

First, governments and societies need to be pragmatic. Their first priority must be to do whatever they can to mitigate the impact of the war, particularly on their most vulnerable citizens. This will require governments to make trade-offs.

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They will have to reallocate budgets to at least maintain the level of imports necessary to meet the society’s basic needs. They will need to convince their creditors to help finance their necessary imports. They will also need to persuade them to be flexible enough that they leave governments with at least some policy space.

Second, states and societies need to identify opportunities within the crisis for actions that over the medium term can help them meet their financing, economic, environmental and social challenges. This requires collaboration between the state and its non-state stakeholders. Business, labour, religious groups, civil society organisations and international organisations all have something to contribute.

Oil price surge is hurting African economies: scholars in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa take stock

Action in the short run

The focus of Africa’s efforts in the short term must be on minimising the negative effects of the war and on managing the state’s external debts in the most sustainable and effective way.

This is easy to state, but hard to implement. This is particularly the case in the current international environment, in which it is not realistic to expect donor countries and other international sources of finance to be particularly generous.

African countries will need to convince their creditors to acknowledge that this crisis is beyond Africa’s control and that they should not compound the pain that’s being experienced. This will require, at a minimum, that the creditors agree to suspend debt payments for the next year.

Creditors have already accepted the principle that debt payments can be suspended when debt challenges arise from sources beyond the debtor’s control. Many of them have accepted clauses requiring such action under specific conditions in their most recent debt contracts. They also did this during COVID.

Second, African countries, which are already heavily indebted, should challenge their multilateral creditors to accept the consequences of being among the biggest creditors for the continent. This includes the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank. By custom these institutions are treated as preferred creditors.

This means that they get paid before all other creditors. Instead of participating in any debt restructurings, they also make new loans to the debtor in crisis. This shifts the debt restructuring burden onto the debtor’s other creditors. It also increases the total amount owed to the multilaterals.

This cannot continue. These institutions need to be more creative in providing Africa to financing. This should include:

• Using their financial resources to guarantee the financial transactions of African countries so that they can reduce their borrowing costs and attract new equity investments.
• More generously supporting innovative debt for development swaps. These involve creditors agreeing with African sovereign debtors to convert a portion of the existing debts into financing for specific local projects, for example in health or education.
• Helping African governments convert their foreign exchange denominated debts into local currency debts at affordable interest rates.

Third, governments should work with the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions to use these institutions more effectively to finance African development. For example:

• They should require the institutions to only undertake transactions that are consistent with their development mandates. This means no more opaque transactions like the recent one that the African Finance Corporation concluded with Senegal.
• African governments should take the necessary action to activate the African Financial Stability Mechanism that they agreed to establish last year. This would create a useful financial safety net for the continent.

Fourth, African governments must build on the efforts they began last year to become a more effective advocate for African development financing interests at the international level. Among these efforts was the initiative by African ministers of finance to develop common African positions on sovereign debt restructurings. Another was South Africa’s launch of the African Expert Panel that proposed a number of initiatives on African debt and development financing.

In the medium term

African countries should advocate for the IMF to review its governance arrangements so that it becomes more accountable and responsive to developing countries, including African states and societies.

They should also advocate for the IMF to more use its existing resources, including its gold reserves, more creatively to support Africa.

Second, Africa should call for a debate on the preferred creditor status of multilateral financial institutions. This has become particularly relevant because the members of the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions are claiming that, like all other multilateral financial institutions, they are entitled to this status.

It is not clear that there are good arguments for excluding these institutions from preferred creditor status while protecting the position of the legacy institutions. This suggests that there is a need for some general principles that help determine which institutions should be treated as preferred creditors. These should be acceptable to all multilateral financial institutions and other market participants.

Third, African societies must make every effort to demonstrate that they are taking control of their own development. They should demand that their governments and all other actors in African development finance behave responsibly in regard to the financial, economic, environmental and social aspects of these transactions.

Another medium-term objective should be to limit the illicit financial flows that are so often associated with international trade and investment. This goal would be advanced by the successful conclusion of the current efforts to agree on a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation.

Prof Daniel D. Bradlow, Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria, was Senior Non-Resident Fellow, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University and Professor Emeritus, American University Washington College of Law

Source: Conversation Africa

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Depuis 40 ans, Thierry Monasse immortalise les dirigeants lors des grands sommets et réunions de l'UE à Bruxelles

The post « Je ne suis pas là pour flatter » : découvrez l’homme derrière les clichés sur le vif de l’UE appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Le conseil de Macron à Trump : soyez sérieux et parlez moins

The post Les alliés européens exhortent Trump à cesser ses critiques incendiaires contre l’OTAN appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Durrës, le principal port d'Albanie, est au cœur d'une relocalisation controversée avec la création d'un vaste complexe touristique, aujourd'hui dans l'impasse. Or, un projet européen de 2009 prévoyait une extension et une réorganisation du port plus efficace et bien moins coûteuse.

- Articles / PS Albanie, Relations internationales, Albanie, Courrier des Balkans, Adriatique

Également dans l'édition de vendredi : le détroit d'Ormuz, Thierry Monasse, des députés européens en Chine, le responsable de l'« Horloge de l'Apocalypse »

The post Moquerie au sommet appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Written by Marcin Szczepański.

The world has changed since the European Union adopted its first economic security strategy in 2023. An increasingly confrontational geopolitical environment and the possibility of coercive behaviour from both China and the United States require a longer term strategy to reduce dependencies as well as a short-term ability to react swiftly to threats. On 3 December 2025, the European Commission adopted its new communication on economic security aiming to switch up a gear, from finding ad-hoc responses to crises based on risk identification, to proactive risk anticipation and mitigation. This new approach also focuses on providing clarity on the strategic and coherent use of the many instruments already available in the EU toolbox.

Aiming for a safer and more resilient EU economy, the Commission’s communication proposes ways to protect and develop strategic industries and reduce the EU’s vulnerabilities to coercion and other disruption. To build a solid knowledge base for informed decision-making and common understanding of risks and responses, the approach seeks to strengthen data gathering, analysis and overall economic security policy governance, with increased public and private stakeholder participation. To boost coherence, the Commission wants to adapt existing policy tools to deployment with a clear aim of managing economic security risks, taking possible impacts across policies into account. The Commission will seek to close existing security gaps with new instruments, such as the revised Blocking Statute.

The communication met with mixed reactions from the expert community, with both praise for taking the much needed step in the right direction, as well as criticisism for its insufficient response to the stark challenges facing the EU. The European Parliament is preparing its opinion on the role of trade in strengthening the EU’s economic security, to be adopted in the coming months.

Read the complete briefing on ‘Strengthening EU economic security – From crisis response to proactive anticipation: Joining the dots for a resilient economy‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

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An Israeli assault is pushing the fragile country to the brink.

A deal Tehran could take.

The international human rights system depends on the work of local defenders, but offers them little protection once they become politically inconvenient.

Zum ersten Mal in der Geschichte leben mehr Pensionierte in der Schweiz als Junge unter 20. Neue Statistiken liefern Futter für die Debatte um die 10-Millionen-Schweiz.

AMERIKA EGYESÜLT ÁLLAMOK

Operation Epic Fury – nő a feszültség az új katonai művelet körül

 Az Egyesült Államok hadügyminisztériuma megerősítette az Operation Epic Fury elnevezésű katonai művelet elindítását, amely elsősorban Irán ellen irányul, és a Közel-Kelet stratégiai fontosságú térségeit érinti. A hadműveletek középpontjában az iráni területek mellett a Perzsa-öböl és különösen a Hormuzi-szoros áll, amely a globális olajszállítás egyik kulcsfontosságú útvonala. A Pentagon közlése szerint az akció célja az iráni katonai és biztonsági infrastruktúra gyengítése, beleértve rakétabázisok, haditengerészeti egységek és egyéb stratégiai létesítmények elleni csapásokat. A művelet több haderőnem összehangolt részvételével zajlik, légierő, haditengerészet és különleges egységek bevonásával. Amerikai tisztviselők szerint a hadjáratot hónapokig készítették elő, és hírszerzési információk alapján indították meg.

A konfliktus a beszámolók szerint február végén kezdődött, és rövid időn belül regionális feszültséggé szélesedett. Egyes források szerint több ezer iráni célpontot értek csapások, ami tovább növeli az eszkaláció kockázatát a térségben. A bejelentést követően nemzetközi és belföldi kritikák is megjelentek. Elemzők arra figyelmeztetnek, hogy a művelet könnyen kiszélesedhet, különösen a Perzsa-öböl térségében jelen lévő más államok bevonódásával. Emberi jogi szervezetek átláthatóságot követelnek, és a civil lakosságot érintő következményekre hívják fel a figyelmet.

Az amerikai Kongresszus több tagja részletes tájékoztatást kért a művelet céljairól és jogi alapjáról. A Fehér Ház ugyanakkor hangsúlyozta: az akció az Egyesült Államok nemzetbiztonsági érdekeit szolgálja, és szükség esetén további lépések is várhatók.

A következő napokban, hetekben várhatóan további részletek derülnek ki az Operation Epic Fury kiterjedéséről, miközben a nemzetközi közösség kiemelt figyelemmel követi a Közel-Kelet egyre feszültebbé váló helyzetét.

Szerző:

Merényi Vivien

 

KANADA

 35 év után először: Kanada is elérte a NATO 2%-os védelmi célját

 1990 óta először érte el a kanadai védelmi költségvetés a NATO által elvárt 2%-os szintet a 2025–2026-os évben. A több mint 63 milliárd dolláros befektetés mérföldkő, hiszen jól reflektálja az állam törekvéseit az ország biztonságának megerősítésére.  Az említett összegből 14 milliárdot szánnak kibervédelemre, illetve a világűrbeli kapacitásokra. A befektetések nem kizárólag a harcképességek fejlesztésére irányulnak; nagy hangsúlyt kap a hírszerzés, a kritikus infrastruktúra, illetve az ipar és innováció is. Kanada Védelmi és Iparfejlesztési Stratégiája nemcsak az ország biztonságát erősíti meg, hanem a gazdaságra is rendkívül pozitív hatással lehet. A befektetésekkel és az új projekteken keresztül 65 ezer új munkahelyet hozhatnak létre, ezzel közel 7,7 milliárd dollárral nőhet az ország GDP-je jövőre.

Erősödő ottawai-canberrai kapcsolatok

 Mark Carney kanadai miniszterelnök március elején tett ausztrál látogatásával erősítette meg a két ország közötti kapcsolatot. Ausztrália csatlakozott a Kanada által létrehozott Kritikus Ásványkincsek Szövetségéhez. Ez azért is kulcsfontosságú, mivel a két országban található a globális lítiumkészletek nagyjából harmada, illetve a globális vastermelés 40%-a, így ezen keresztül akár a Kínától való függés is enyhíthetővé válik a közeljövőben.

Az ásványkincseken kívül, Ausztrália talán a legfontosabb védelmi partnere Kanadának az indo-csendes-óceáni térségben. Ez több aspektusában is megjelenik, például a hírszerzés terén. Azonban az új megállapodások szerint megkezdik a kanadai katonák kiképzését az úgynevezett Arctic Over-The-Horizon radarokon, amellyel hatékonyabbá válik a sarkvidék védelme. További célja a megállapodásnak megkönnyíteni és megerősíteni a védelmi ipari cikkek, innovációk mozgását a két ország között.

Aláírtak továbbá egy egyetértési megállapodást a mesterséges intelligencia biztonságáról (MOU on AI Safety), azzal a céllal, hogy a két ország szakértői támogassák egymás munkáját az MI által okozott fenyegetésekkel kapcsolatban.

Szerző:

Faragó Bulcsú

 

LATIN-AMERIKA

Shield of the Americas – Trump új katonai kezdeményezése a drogkartellek ellen

Március 7-én a floridai Doralban tartott csúcstalálkozón jelentette be Trump elnök a „Shield of the Americas” (Amerika Pajzsa) kezdeményezést, egy Washington által vezérelt katonai és biztonsági koalíciót, melynek célja a transznacionális drogkartellek és szervezett bűnözői hálózatok elleni közös fellépés. Trump beszédében az ISIS-ellenes koalícióhoz hasonlította, hangsúlyozva a katonai erőt a kartellek „megsemmisítésére”.

Az amerikai elnök Miamiban 12 latin-amerikai ország vezetőjével találkozott, többnyire jobboldali és szélsőjobboldali politikusokkal (pl.: Argentína, Paraguay, El Salvador). A csúcstalálkozón nem volt jelen Mexikó, Brazília, és Kolumbia sem. Ez előrevetítheti a koalíció legnagyobb gyengeségét, hiszen a térség legnépesebb, baloldali vezetésű államai nincsenek benne. Mexikó elnöke, Claudia Sheinbaum, például határozottan elutasítja az Egyesült Államok katonai beavatkozását Mexikó területén, „inváziónak” tekinti.

A találkozón tartott munkaebéden mind Mark Rubio külügyminiszter, mind a nemrégiben kinevezett Kristi Noem, az „Amerika Pajzsa” különleges megbízottja kiemelte, hogy az Egyesült Államok prioritását a Nyugati-félteke élvezi, összhangban Washington legújabb Nemzeti Biztonsági Stratégiájával.

A koalíció elsődleges céljának eléréséhez Trump kifejezetten katonai megoldásokat szorgalmaz, amely már március 3-án az amerikai és ecuadori erők által közösen végrehajtott fegyveres, sőt bombázásos műveletek formájában meg is valósult feltételezett drogkereskedők ellen Ecuadorban.

A katonai célok mellett a kezdeményezés másik, kritikus célja a kínai befolyás („rosszindulatú külföldi beavatkozások”) visszaszorítása a térségben. „Nem engedjük meg, hogy ellenséges külföldi befolyás megvesse a lábát ezen a féltékén, beleértve a Panama-csatornát is.” – jelentette ki egyértelműen Trump. Ezzel az „Amerika Pajzsa”a drogellenes harcot egy szélesebb körű, geopolitikai szuverenitási játszmává emeli.

 Szerző:

Rohoska Réka

A Amerika, 2026 Március bejegyzés először Biztonságpolitika-én jelent meg.

What makes BRICS silence on the war in West Asia particularly deplorable is that two fellow BRICS members -- Iran and the UAE -- are directly caught in the war.