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La justice marocaine a condamné, jeudi, à des peines allant de trois mois à un an de prison les 18 supporters sénégalais détenus au Maroc depuis la finale de la Coupe d'Afrique des nations mi-janvier, qui avait été émaillée d'incidents.

Chinese official statements and comments from academics reflect a clear assessment that the polls have not altered the fundamental structure of bilateral relations.

Zimbabwe finish top of Group B at the T20 World Cup by stunning co-hosts Sri Lanka, West Indies maintain their unbeaten record, and Canada bid farewell to Navneet Dhaliwal with another defeat.

Damaturu, Yobe State, north-east of Nigeria. Credit: UN Women

By Zuzana Schwidrowski and Omolola Mary Lipede
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Feb 19 2026 (IPS)

Africa is home to approximately 160 million adolescent girls aged 10 to 19 (according to 2022 data by the United Nations Population Division). They embody the energy, creativity, and potential of the continent. It is undeniable that The Africa We Want, as envisioned in the African Union’s Agenda 2063, will not be realized without the full participation of this group which represents a key component of the continent’s current and future workforce.

Yet one of the most persistent obstacles to realizing this vision is the prevalence of child marriage and its devastating impact on the lives and welfare of Africa’s girls, and its negative impact on the economic potential of the continent.

Child marriage is one of the most underestimated structural constraints on Africa’s capacity to harness its demographic dividend.

Yet millions are being left behind

The statistics paint a concerning picture. According to the World Bank, four out of ten girls aged 15 to 19 in Africa (excluding North Africa) are not in school and not working, or are married or have children, compared to just slightly above one out of ten boys. On average, nearly one-third (32 percent) of young women (ages 15–24) are not in education, employment, or training (NEET), compared with 23 percent of boys in that age range (Figure 1).

In Africa, 130 million girls and women today were married before their 18th birthday, the highest incidence of globally (UNICEF, 2025). The prevalence of child marriage varies across the continent. Central and West Africa bear a disproportionate share of the global burden.

But even North Africa, with the lowest yet significant rate of child marriages, shows that this harmful practice persists across the continent (Figure 2). Moreover, nine out of ten countries with the highest incidence of child marriage are in Africa (Figure 3).

The data reflect the most recent available information for the period 2016-2023.

And economic costs are staggering

Child marriage is most frequently portrayed as a human rights violation or a social and health issue. It is. And indeed, complications from pregnancy and childbirth remain a leading cause of death for adolescent girls.

These tragic and most visible aspects, however, are only part of the story. Less visibly, but most frequently, child marriages are associated with early pregnancies and effectively exclude girls from education and formal economic participation at the very stage when investments in skills and learning yield the highest returns (Figures 4 and 5). Besides limiting individual futures, this practice thus has major economic implications for African countries and regions.

For African countries, as for some other developing countries, child marriage is a major unaddressed economic distortion. It distorts human capital accumulation and labor allocation, with economy-wide consequences for productivity and growth.

More specifically:

• Child marriage truncates education, limits skills acquisition, and impedes women’s participation in the formal labor markets
• Girls who marry early are far more likely to enter unpaid care work or low-productivity informal activities, with limited prospects for upward social mobility (Figure 6).
• Child marriage limits girls’ full integration into society by depriving them of their rights, identities, and agency. It creates dependency and stalls leadership potential.

The implications for Africa’s labor markets are particularly severe. Productive structural transformation requires a workforce that can move from low-productivity activities into higher value-added sectors, including manufacturing, modern services, and the digital economy.

When girls’ education and skills acquisition are cut short, the supply of skilled workers for these sectors is reduced. In turn, incentives of entrepreneurs to create and grow productive firms are curtailed. At the macro level, productivity growth, job creation in the formal sector, and diversification into high value-adding activities are diminished.

Economic costs of child marriages persist across generations. The practice is closely associated with early and high fertility, increased maternal morbidity and mortality, and poorer health and educational outcomes for children.

If unaddressed, these social outcomes lead to lower human capital (educational attainments and health) of the next generation, thus reducing labor productivity and innovation. Over time, they result in a persistent barrier to achieving fiscal sustainability, regional integration and inclusive growth.

These dynamics hamper Africa’s chances to seize demographic dividend. While the continent’s growing working-age population is viewed as a potential source of accelerated growth if accompanied by adequate investments in health, education, and job creation, child marriages are accompanied by reduced female employment in the formal sector (Figure 6).

Subsequently, productivity gains fall below potential and demographic opportunity risks becoming a demographic burden.

Despite the negative macroeconomic implications, child marriage is not included in the mainstream economic frameworks and discussions that inform macroeconomic planning and policies in Africa. It is typically addressed through social or legal interventions, while macroeconomic strategies, industrial policies, and fiscal frameworks proceed as if these aspects of human capital constraints were exogenous.

Such disconnect results in systematic underinvestment in one of the most binding constraints on Africa’s productive capacities.

Policymakers and the population at large need to rethink child marriage

From an economic perspective, the case for investing in girls is compelling. Analysis consistently shows that investments in girls’ education and health yield high returns, raising lifetime earnings, boosting productivity.

Under the ‘full gender equality scenario’, including closing gender gaps in education, employment, and decision-making could add up to a trillion USD to Africa’s GDP by 2043. Estimates also suggest that every dollar invested in adolescent girls’ health, education and empowerment can generate multiple dollar economic returns over time.

Translating evidence into effective policies will require a shift in approach — a one where ending child marriage is seen as a core component of Africa’s economic strategy. Indicators on adolescent girls’ education, employment, and unpaid care burdens should thus become an integral part of macroeconomic frameworks, labor market projections, and assessments of productive capacity.

Against this background, addressing the child marriage issue in Africa is a matter of economic necessity, given that successful Africa’s transformation requires unlocking the full productive potential of its population. This, in turn, demands sustained investment in girls as economic actors and not merely as beneficiaries of social programs.

Africa must finance Africa’s girls, and measures such as strengthened domestic resource mobilization, gender-responsive budgeting, and gender bonds could go a long way in this regard. Moreover, policymakers should view public spending aimed at reducing child marriages and supporting girls’ continued education as capital expenditure instead of pure social spending. This would help align fiscal frameworks with longer term growth targets.

Ending child marriage practice will not, on its own, ensure that Africa will reach its development goals. However, unless addressed, this structural barrier will continue to hamper productivity, competitiveness, and the delivery of the Agenda 2063.

Recognizing that ending child marriage is an economic as much as social imperative would be an important step forward. It would also place the girls’ empowerment where it belongs: at the center of Africa’s development strategy and its pursuit of inclusive and sustainable growth.

Zuzana Schwidrowski is the Director of Gender, Poverty and Social Policy Division at the ECA and Omolola Mary Lipede Fellow in the same Division.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Elena Lazarou, Director General, ELIAMEP

The 2026 Munich Security Conference gave the sense of a forum negotiating the terms of what comes next. The tone was measured, but the subtext was unmistakable: the assumptions that underpinned three decades of relative geopolitical coherence are eroding. What replaces them remains unsettled. On the positive side, it could be an opportunity.

Three core dynamics defining Munich this year were particularly interesting: transatlantic recalibration, the rising agency of middle powers and the Global South, and the expanding definition of security itself to match the geotechnological nature of our times. These trends are not new: they echo debates and concerns from previous years, but the discussion has evolved and the participants have matured and diversified.

Transatlantic Recalibration?

There was no open rupture between Europe and the United States. Yet neither was there a return to complacency. European leaders continue to affirm NATO’s centrality, yet strategic autonomy is no longer abstract rhetoric. From defense industrial capacity to energy diversification and digital infrastructure, Europe is hedging against systemic volatility. For the United States, alliance unity remains central but increasingly framed through domestic political sustainability – and domestic competition of identity related narratives. At the same time, for the European audience, one thing is clear: burden-sharing and alignment must be reciprocal and measurable. The transatlantic relationship is indeed recalibrating. And while the point was made that partnership endures; dependency does not.

Middle Powers and the Global South: From Participants to Architects?

No one knows dependency as well as some of what we now refer to as the middle powers of the ‘Global South’. Perhaps the most striking shift in this year’s Munich was not in what Western leaders said, but in who spoke with confidence. Middle powers — India, Brazil, the Gulf states — are no longer navigating between blocs; they are shaping the environment in which blocs operate. Their diplomacy is pragmatic and transactional. Engagement is diversified. Alignment is selective. This is now referred to by pundits as ‘multi-vector’ foreign policy and is increasingly appealing to states north and south. It could be argued that it is a return to what we once simply called ‘realist’.

Voices from Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia present in the Bavarian capital underscored a structural gap (and not for the first time): global governance structures lag behind contemporary realities. Security debates emphasise defence and deterrence but still sideline debt distress, development financing, and climate vulnerability. In so doing, they do not resonate in much of the world.

For many of these countries, instability is fiscal, climatic, and demographic long before it manifests as military or territorial crises. Middle powers and Global South actors are asserting agency — and demanding that the architecture of order accommodate it.

One of the ‘quieter’ but consequential conversations focused on the intersection of development, humanitarian support, and security. Delegates from the Global South stressed that fragile states are destabilized not only by military threats, but by chronic underinvestment in infrastructure, social services, and governance. Humanitarian crises — from conflict-driven displacement to climate-induced food insecurity — are immediate pressures, but short-term aid alone cannot stabilize societies. But rather than just voicing concern, they also offered solutions, or at least proposals. An important one is that predictable development financing is preventive security. Long-term investment in education, health, energy, and infrastructure reduces the likelihood of crises escalating into broader regional instability.

On humanitarian support, experts from across the globe re-emphasized that it must complement, not replace, structural solutions. Emergency aid is essential to alleviate suffering, but without sustained development mechanisms, fragile states remain vulnerable to repeated shocks. Several voices emphasized that equitable financing, and mechanisms to address systemic vulnerabilities are critical to prevent recurring humanitarian crises. This is perhaps more important than ever, as the future of the United Nations and their reform enters the microscope – North and South. An opportunity is there, but a risk too. But the related conversations inside and outside closed doors highlighted a simple but often overlooked principle: stability is built before crises erupt, and humanitarian support is only one pillar in that architecture. Development and crisis response are inseparable in designing durable security strategies. We are focusing a lot on crises these days (in fact ELIAMEP has launched a series of events entitled precisely ‘Crises in Focus’) but we should be doing the same for the other part of security: development.

Technology and Artificial Intelligence: The accelerator?

Technology shaped nearly every conversation. Artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, digital infrastructure, and data governance are now integral to national power. Competitiveness in AI is by now established as a key source of strategic leverage, which allows states to ‘punch’ way above their size and to do so successfully. It has also changed irreversibly the nature of expertise that is required for geopolitical and foreign policy analysis, thus also becoming an important part of the conversation for the future of think tanks and policy advisory services.

Three undercurrents particularly stood out. First that technological sovereignty equals a degree of strategic autonomy: resilience in digital infrastructure is as fundamental as energy independence and military operational capacity. Second, that we stand at what is only the beginning of a major negotiation on the future of digital governance. From a European perspective, AI governance is seen as a mechanism for stability and for the upholding of fundamental human rights: without a governance framework with clear guardrails, AI-enabled disinformation, cyber disruption, and opaque military applications risk miscalculation. But to reconcile this with Mario Draghi’s urgency for global competitiveness, in a world of less or non-regulated actors, is a challenge. Finally, and related to global development, the AI divide has emerged as a strategic fault line: unequal access risks marginalizing countries and entrenching geopolitical inequality.

Details aside, the big question on everyone’s mind was: will technology set the agenda, or will it accelerate and support agenda setters?

Bringing it home: energy, connectivity and opportunities for Greece?

The Conference reaffirmed that energy and regional connectivity are central instruments of influence and security. European states are recalibrating energy sourcing, infrastructure, and cross-border supply chains to mitigate risk. Connectivity — from transport corridors to ports and digital networks — is not just economic facilitation; it is geopolitical leverage.

For Greece, these insights are particularly relevant. Its geographic position makes it a natural hub linking the Balkans, Eastern Mediterranean, and Middle East. Pipelines, LNG terminals, and interconnections with regional grids enhance both diplomatic leverage and energy resilience. Port and transport projects, including Piraeus and rail networks, strengthen Greece’s role as a regional hub for trade and strategic partnerships. Diversifying energy sources and linking energy and digital infrastructure amplifies national influence and mitigates vulnerability to external shocks. Engaging in multipolar diplomacy and regional connectivity initiatives allows Greece to build flexible coalitions that advance its foreign policy objectives while supporting EU strategic autonomy. Going back to one of the initial points made, multi-vector foreign policies are not just about diversifying partners, it is also about diversifying across policy areas, to raise leverage and set the agenda in as many fields as possible.

All in all, the MSC 2026 did not produce a grand doctrine. Instead, it revealed a world in transition. The international order is not collapsing outright (or under destruction as the catchy title of this year’s MSC publication framed the question). However, it is no longer comfortably anchored. The world is indeed witnessing some of its old assumptions falter. But it is also under renegotiation, and the stakes have never been clearer.

Photo: from the Munich Security Conference 2026 website

Une intervention militaire américaine contre l’Iran aurait des « répercussions très graves » sur la stabilité du Moyen-Orient, a mis en garde Bruxelles, alors que les spéculations autour d’une action imminente des États-Unis se multiplient.

The post L’UE met en garde les États-Unis contre toute attaque visant l’Iran appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Des organisations environnementales tentent de recentrer le débat sur la règlementation européenne des substances chimiques autour de ses objectifs premiers — la protection de la santé publique et de l’environnement — alors que l’industrie intensifie ses pressions sur la Commission européenne pour qu’elle renonce à une réforme déjà reportée de trois ans.

The post Des ONG pressent l’UE de relancer la réforme de la législation sur les produits chimiques appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Alors que les voyages internationaux reprennent, la croissance la plus rapide se produit en dehors des destinations touristiques habituelles, de l'Éthiopie au Bhoutan.

Green, circular buildings are crucial for climate change mitigation and resource efficiency, yet their employment impact in Sub-Saharan Africa remains unclear. This paper explores green job potential in Kigali, Rwanda—an urbanizing city with strong policy commitments and urgent housing needs. Employing a sequential mixed-methods design, we conducted 33 expert interviews and surveyed 546 firms across five construction value chain segments. We find that (1) many green jobs already exist, with 5.1% highly green and about 58% partly green based on practices performed; (2) green and circular practices are emerging through both policy support and grassroots innovation, (3) greening is positively, significantly correlated with employment growth for highly green firms, and (4) greening is significantly associated with improved job quality for all firms. Targeted support for firms in critical greening phases could boost job creation and quality. A mix of interventions is required to tackle cost competitiveness, skills and attitudes.

Green, circular buildings are crucial for climate change mitigation and resource efficiency, yet their employment impact in Sub-Saharan Africa remains unclear. This paper explores green job potential in Kigali, Rwanda—an urbanizing city with strong policy commitments and urgent housing needs. Employing a sequential mixed-methods design, we conducted 33 expert interviews and surveyed 546 firms across five construction value chain segments. We find that (1) many green jobs already exist, with 5.1% highly green and about 58% partly green based on practices performed; (2) green and circular practices are emerging through both policy support and grassroots innovation, (3) greening is positively, significantly correlated with employment growth for highly green firms, and (4) greening is significantly associated with improved job quality for all firms. Targeted support for firms in critical greening phases could boost job creation and quality. A mix of interventions is required to tackle cost competitiveness, skills and attitudes.

Green, circular buildings are crucial for climate change mitigation and resource efficiency, yet their employment impact in Sub-Saharan Africa remains unclear. This paper explores green job potential in Kigali, Rwanda—an urbanizing city with strong policy commitments and urgent housing needs. Employing a sequential mixed-methods design, we conducted 33 expert interviews and surveyed 546 firms across five construction value chain segments. We find that (1) many green jobs already exist, with 5.1% highly green and about 58% partly green based on practices performed; (2) green and circular practices are emerging through both policy support and grassroots innovation, (3) greening is positively, significantly correlated with employment growth for highly green firms, and (4) greening is significantly associated with improved job quality for all firms. Targeted support for firms in critical greening phases could boost job creation and quality. A mix of interventions is required to tackle cost competitiveness, skills and attitudes.

Facing Xi Jinping across a polished Beijing conference table—less a peer than a petitioner granted audience—Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that Canada was “set up well for the new world order.” The remark landed not as a strategy of trade diversification, but as a carefully choreographed kowtow, casting Canada in the obloquious role of an irritable middle power crossing the Pacific with the zeal of a court eunuch: eager to reassure an emperor while daring the prairie and Quebecer populists to absorb the snub. Carney’s January state visit to China—Canada’s first prime-ministerial foray in eight years—quickly produced headlines touting $4 billion in canola tariff relief and the announcement of a so-called ‘new strategic partnership,’ an institutionalized reset whose substance remained conspicuously thin, extending little beyond consultative dialogues and trade-facilitation committees. Yet the deeper story lay not in the press releases or handshake photos, but in the erratic motion beneath them. Canada’s foreign policy now swings like a toddler wielding scissors—so visibly that even Beijing itself declined to dignify the moment with a joint announcement. Indeed, Carney delivered the trade news alone, in a solo press appearance following the summit, a detail quietly emphasized when Global Times splashed front-page images of the Canadian prime minister speaking by himself, as if to underline who was indulging whom. The visit, then, was revealing not merely for the deals struck, but for the asymmetry it exposed: who Canada rushed to please, and whom it appeared willing to slight in exchange for short-term economic anesthesia.

Carney’s Situational Liberalism Awakens the Wrath of ‘We the Locals’ Populists in the Prairies and Quebec

In Alberta, the backlash initially assumed a sharper moral and constitutional edge—one that directly connected Ottawa’s foreign-policy posture to domestic legitimacy. Michael Kovrig, the former Canadian diplomat imprisoned in China for more than 1,000 days, warned that Carney’s Beijing visit risked squandering Canada’s hard-earned credibility on human rights. By emphasizing trade normalization while soft-pedaling issues of coercive diplomacy and political repression, Kovrig argued, Ottawa hollowed out its own claim to principled leadership, signaling that values were now negotiable when economic relief was at stake.

What Ottawa framed as pragmatic recalibration on China’s human-rights record soon collided in Alberta with long-standing anger over fiscal redistribution and energy policy, hardening a sense of alienation that fed the province’s separatist undercurrent. Weeks later, petition drives in central Alberta — including packed meetings in Red Deer — drew long lines of residents eager to sign on to a proposed independence referendum. Organizers reported strong turnout and enthusiasm, with roughly three in ten participants openly expressing support for leaving the federation altogether. The petition, if it reaches the required threshold, would force a province‑wide referendum later in the year, transforming diffuse resentment into a formal constitutional challenge

Alberta’s separatists have not limited themselves to domestic mobilization. Movement leaders have openly boasted of seeking audiences in the United States, even attempting to bend the ear of U.S. President Donald Trump and his circle to air grievances against Ottawa and to internationalize their cause. The spectacle of provincial activists shopping their complaints south of the border underscored how deeply federal authority has eroded in parts of the West. For many Alberta separatist critics, that erosion goes beyond economic decline and reflects a cumulative record of federal policy outcomes widely perceived as unfair: Alberta has been a net contributor under equalization payments since the mid‑1960s, contributing to redistribution while receiving none; pipeline conflicts culminated in the rejection of Northern Gateway (2016), the collapse of Energy East (2017), and the cancellation of Keystone XL (2021), reinforcing perceptions of federal obstruction even as Ottawa selectively intervened by purchasing and advancing Trans Mountain in 2018. Although Alberta gained three seats in the 2022 redistribution—holding 37 of 343 House seats (10.8 %) while representing roughly 11.6 % of the national population—representation debates still persist alongside ongoing economic grievances that endure even amid record oil production and profits in recent years.

Quebec’s response to Carney’s January visit to China followed a different but no less corrosive trajectory. In a January 12 social media post, Parti Québécois leader Paul St‑Pierre Plamondon denounced Carney’s “insane desire to suddenly forge an alliance with a totalitarian communist regime that already constitutes a threat to our national security, China,” while simultaneously voicing support for popular resistance against authoritarian rule elsewhere. What sovereigntist figures cast as a betrayal embedded in Carney’s China posture did not generate an entirely new grievance so much as strip the cover off a long‑simmering dispute with Ottawa over federal critical‑mineral governance—most clearly illustrated by the Barriere Lake mining case. In 2024, a Quebec court ruled that mining claims had been issued without proper consultation with the Mitchikanibikok Inik First Nation (Algonquins of Barriere Lake), reinforcing Quebec’s complaint that Ottawa’s drive to fast‑track critical‑mineral development routinely collides with constitutional consultation duties, legal predictability, and provincial authority over permitting.

Taken together, these provincial responses reveal the deeper consequence of Carney’s China gambit. What was presented as pragmatic liberal internationalism abroad has translated into fragmentation and suspicion at home—awakening resource localism both in the West and in Quebec. The visit exposed not just an asymmetry between Ottawa and Beijing, but a widening rift between Canada’s federal center and ‘We the locals’ it governs.

Environ un tiers des équipements militaires produits dans l’Union européenne et retrouvés en Russie transiteraient par la Turquie, selon un rapport publié le 19 février par l’institut allemand Ifo Institute.

The post La Turquie, plaque tournante des exportations indirectes d’armes de l’UE vers la Russie appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Quatre mois après les exactions commises à El-Facher dans le Darfour, après sa prise par les paramilitaires des Forces de soutien rapide (FSR), une mission d'enquête de l'ONU a fait état jeudi d'"actes de génocide". Le rapport documente notamment "des massacres, des viols généralisés, des violences sexuelles, des actes de torture (...) et des disparitions forcées" lors de la prise de la ville.

Already, Tarique Rahman has made clear that Bangladesh’s interests would guide foreign policy. China, India, and the United States are recalibrating their approaches accordingly. 

With discussions on a possible new, flexible, regional platform with Turkiye and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan is seeking to build backup security channels in a dynamic region.

The reconstruction of Syria lacks a solid foundation, as Ahmad Al-Sharaa and his interim government prefer to establish facts rather than a social consensus. In his victory speech, al-Sharaa promised a social contract, but protection, provision and participation are still lacking. The interim government has fallen short of its responsibility in all three areas as evidenced by a series of violence including the forceful takeover of Kurdish-dominated territory in early 2026, large-scale investments without clear benefit for Syria’s suffering population, and polarized public discourse lacking genuine commitment to pluralism and tolerance. Social rifts are deep, including within the Syrian diaspora, which also requires a minimum of trust and security – so only some members of the diaspora may choose to engage with their homeland. The international community should not remain silent over these destabilizing developments in Syria’s domestic politics.

The reconstruction of Syria lacks a solid foundation, as Ahmad Al-Sharaa and his interim government prefer to establish facts rather than a social consensus. In his victory speech, al-Sharaa promised a social contract, but protection, provision and participation are still lacking. The interim government has fallen short of its responsibility in all three areas as evidenced by a series of violence including the forceful takeover of Kurdish-dominated territory in early 2026, large-scale investments without clear benefit for Syria’s suffering population, and polarized public discourse lacking genuine commitment to pluralism and tolerance. Social rifts are deep, including within the Syrian diaspora, which also requires a minimum of trust and security – so only some members of the diaspora may choose to engage with their homeland. The international community should not remain silent over these destabilizing developments in Syria’s domestic politics.

The reconstruction of Syria lacks a solid foundation, as Ahmad Al-Sharaa and his interim government prefer to establish facts rather than a social consensus. In his victory speech, al-Sharaa promised a social contract, but protection, provision and participation are still lacking. The interim government has fallen short of its responsibility in all three areas as evidenced by a series of violence including the forceful takeover of Kurdish-dominated territory in early 2026, large-scale investments without clear benefit for Syria’s suffering population, and polarized public discourse lacking genuine commitment to pluralism and tolerance. Social rifts are deep, including within the Syrian diaspora, which also requires a minimum of trust and security – so only some members of the diaspora may choose to engage with their homeland. The international community should not remain silent over these destabilizing developments in Syria’s domestic politics.

Dem Wiederaufbau Syriens fehlt das Fundament, denn Ahmad Al-Scharaa und seine Übergangsregierung schaffen lieber Fakten als einen gesellschaftlichen Konsens. In seiner Siegesrede versprach Al-Sharaa einen Gesellschaftsvertrag, doch Schutz, Daseinsvorsorge und die Möglichkeit bürgerlicher Teilhabe lassen weiterhin zu wünschen übrig. Die Übergangsregierung ist ihrer Verantwortung in allen drei Bereichen nicht nachgekommen. Das zeigen, erstens, das wiederholte Wiederaufflammen von Gewalt, darunter die gewaltsame Übernahme des kurdisch dominierten Gebiets Anfang 2026, zweitens, die groß angelegten Investitionen ohne klaren Nutzen für die notleidende Bevölkerung und, drittens, die polarisierte öffentliche Debatte ohne echtes Bekenntnis zu Pluralismus und Toleranz. Die sozialen Gräben sind tief, auch innerhalb der syrischen Diaspora. Mangels Vertrauen und Sicherheit wird nur ein Teil der Syrer im Ausland bereit sein sich, über Rücküberweisungen hinaus, für ihr Heimatland zu engagieren. Die internationale Gemeinschaft sollte zu diesen besorgniserregenden Entwicklungen in der syrischen Innenpolitik nicht schweigen.