Diplomacy & Crisis News

European courts are targeting Russian assets in a $50 billion commercial dispute. That has the Kremlin apoplectic and threatening reprisals.

Thailand has confirmed its first case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, in a male traveller from Oman, and the World Health Organization (WHO) today is urging countries in Southeast Asia to step up vigilance and review preparedness to respond to the disease.

With only 13 per cent of a United Nations emergency agricultural appeal met by donors, Nepal’s farmers trying to recover from this year’s twin earthquakes will not be able to plant rice seeds before the start of the monsoon rains expected in the coming days and replenish livestock, fertilizers, and tools lost in the disaster, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Jeudi 18 juin, la librairie La 25e Heure, située 8 place du Général Beuret, à Paris, a accueilli la rencontre-débat autour du dossier « La Russie, une puissance faible ? », publié dans le numéro d’été (2/2015) de la revue Politique étrangère.

Une fois encore, le public est venu nombreux à cette rencontre pendant laquelle ont été analysés les attributs de la puissance russe, ses limites et son évolution depuis le début de la crise en Ukraine. De nombreuses questions politiques, économiques, diplomatiques, militaires et sociétales liées à la Russie ont été évoquées.

Intervenants

Marc Hecker : rédacteur en chef de la revue Politique étrangère et président du débat.

Tatiana Kastouéva-Jean : responsable du Centre Russie/NEI de l’Institut français des relations internationales où elle dirige la collection électronique trilingue « Russie.NEI.Visions ».

S’abonner à Politique étrangère.

The migrants trying to reach Europe give a renewed urgency to the debate on intervention: Can there be islands of peace and prosperity in an ocean of turmoil and despair? For the last 15 years, the answer was a resounding no. The unprecedented growth of UN peacekeeping operations, which saw the number of peacekeepers deployed increase from a few tens of thousands to more than 100,000, embodied a new activism of the international community.

The United Nations relief arm has called for over one billion dollars in funding in order to lift Yemen from a devastating crisis that has plunged the country into severe food insecurity and left it on the brink of an all-out humanitarian disaster, the Organization today confirmed, as national stakeholders from the Gulf state wrapped up UN-backed political consultations in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Dominican Republic must ensure that people whose citizenship was thrown into question by a 2013 ruling of the Constitutional Court will not be deported, the UN refugee agency said today.

A young man wants to smoke a cigarette but does not have the money to buy a pack.

“He has a slave girl, he goes and sells her to another man, and he gets enough money for a pack of cigarettes. That’s it. She is the value of a pack of cigarettes,” said Zainab Bangura, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

The treatment of children in judicial proceedings around the world, both civil and criminal, is not satisfactory and often “unacceptable,” the UN human rights expert on the independence of judges and lawyers said today and called on countries to develop justice systems that are sensitive to the needs of children.

The number of people fleeing their homes in Ukraine continues to rise, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The United Nations Security Council, reiterating today its support to the Agreement on Peace and Reconciliation in Mali, said it looked forward to the expected signing of the accord this weekend by the so-called ‘Coordination’ armed groups.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has strongly condemned the apparently racially motivated killings at an historic African American church in South Carolina in the southern United States, and expressed the hope that those responsible for such a “hateful act of violence” will be brought to justice.

&#8220A moral imperative and a legal obligation,&#8221 protecting children should never be jeopardized by national interests, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, deploring that 2014 was one of the worst years in recent memory for children in countries affected by conflict.

The head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has appealed “in the name of humanity and common decency” for a halt to the worsening violence against children in South Sudan that has seen boys reportedly castrated and left to bleed to death and girls as young as eight who have been gang raped and murdered.

The cholera outbreak in Tanzania continues to spread among the populations in the country’s western Kigoma region amid an influx of refugees from neighbouring Burundi, the United Nations health agency warned today as it detailed its ongoing response aimed at stemming the epidemic.

Six million people in Yemen are slipping towards severe hunger and now need emergency food and life-saving assistance, “a sharp increase” from the last quarter of 2014, according to a new joint study by two United Nations organizations.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the release of Pope Francis’ Papal Encyclical in which the leader of the Catholic Church deplored climate change as one of the principal challenges facing humanity and called for a ‘new dialogue’ about shaping the future of our planet.

En Syrie, en Irak, la progression des djihadistes de l’EI continue de mettre à nu la vacuité des choix de la coalition internationale. Longtemps en poste à Damas, Peter Harling, de l'International Crisis group, analyse ce fiasco comme une absence de stratégie, non pas militaire, mais de reconstruction du pays. « On ne se pose pas le problème du jour d’après », estime le chercheur.

The international community is experiencing a dramatic shift in the situation facing the world’s refugees as a global surge in war, conflict and persecution has caused a record number of people to flee their homes in search of safety, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

Noting that economic, political and social marginalization of Roma communities remains a major issue, a United Nations human rights expert urged thinking outside the “poverty paradigm” and adopting an integrated approach to address their plight.