European Union

The Romanian government has withdrawn its controversial decree decriminalising certain corruption offences. At the same time Prime Minister Grindeanu announced that a new bill with similar content would be presented to parliament. Despite the government's climbdown hundreds of thousands across Romania demonstrated against corruption on Sunday. The press also takes the view that the Romanians can no longer trust their government.

Air pollution levels have reached record levels in several Central and Eastern European countries during this bitterly cold winter. Smog alerts have been issued several times in Budapest, Warsaw, Sofia and other European cities in recent weeks. Poverty is inducing people to use anything they can get their hands on for heating, journalists explain, and criticise the politicians for failing to take effective action.

A federal judge has overturned Trump's entry ban for citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Trump criticised the decision by the "so-called judge" as "ridiculous". A legal challenge filed by the Department of Justice with a US appeals court has failed, meaning that the ban will remain blocked. Journalists voice relief that the courts have put Trump in his place.

The EU wants to limit migration from Northern Africa by intensifying cooperation with Libya. Stepped-up controls of the Libyan coastline are to dissuade refugees from crossing the Mediterranean and encourage them to remain at reception centres in the country, the heads of state and government resolved at their meeting in Malta. An agreement with an unstable state will achieve nothing, commentators stress, and see Moscow taking a leading role.

General : The internal market committee votes this week on new rules to improve the quality and independence of safety and environmental tests for new cars. The economic committee discusses the latest economic and monetary developments, while the civil liberties committee debates whether to extend temporary internal border checks in some European countries with representatives from the European Commission.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : The internal market committee votes this week on new rules to improve the quality and independence of safety and environmental tests for new cars. The economic committee discusses the latest economic and monetary developments, while the civil liberties committee debates whether to extend temporary internal border checks in some European countries with representatives from the European Commission.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Today at 15:00, the Subcommittee will exchange views with Ivanna Klympush-Tsindsadze, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, on the deterioration of the security situation in the East of Ukraine, in particular around Avdiivka.
Further information
Revised draft agenda
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

The Council discussed the situation in Libya and adopted conclusions.

For thousands of years the mysterious and life-creating power of women has been recognised and cherished. But her sexuality and power to create life is also feared.

In many communities around the world there have been attempts to contain or neutralise this power by literally cutting it away. Every year on 6 February this harmful practice comes under the spotlight as the world observes International Day for Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation.

The harmful practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) takes many forms. In some places FGM constitutes a small cut of the clitoris on infants. In others, it means the scraping of the entire vulva and a stitching of the labia so extreme that urination and menstruation may be affected and the consummation of marriage becomes a painful, bloody and sometimes deadly affair. Justification includes ensuring chastity and marriageability, religious or cultural obligation, hygiene, aesthetics and initiation into womanhood.

Wherever or for whatever reason it is practised, FGM represents a violation – of autonomy, of bodily integrity, and of the right to health. Because it is perpetrated on girls too young or powerless to resist, it also constitutes a form of child abuse.

Although prevalence rates are declining, some 200 million girls and women worldwide have suffered through FGM. The survivors typically live in around 30 countries from Africa’s Atlantic coast to the Gulf of Aden, through the Middle East and Indonesia. Many of these countries have high fertility rates and a young population, so the absolute number of girls being cut could increase in the near future.

“Wherever or for whatever reason it is practised, FGM represents a violation of rights and a form of child abuse”

FGM follows the people who practice it, and it has been exported to every continent, making FGM a global concern. Girls in diaspora communities in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand are subjected to the practice. While FGM is banned and punishable under national law in all of these countries and regions, the practice is continues to be inflicted clandestinely on girls. We at UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, also know of girls who have been taken to their home countries during school holidays and cut. In Europe, an estimated 180,000 girls are at risk every year, in particular in Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, where large diaspora communities from areas that practice FGM now reside.

The fact that the practice is now a global issue requires a global response. The international community has taken a strong stance against this assault on the human rights and the dignity of women and girls, highlighted in numerous regional and international declarations and in three resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015, also call for an end to the practice globally by 2030.

To achieve this ambitious goal we need to accelerate current efforts by grassroots organisations, individuals and communities. Many of these groups are supported by UNFPA’s Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation, organised in collaboration with UNICEF.

One of the promising approaches UNFPA endorses is the creation of bridges between diaspora and their communities of origin, as well as among groups addressing FGM around the world. This year’s International Day for Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation has adopted the ‘building bridges’ approach as one of its main themes.

The building bridges approach promotes sharing experiences and adapting good practices for addressing FGM. For example, gynaecologists and obstetricians in Western countries have received guidance from colleagues in Africa who have more experience in dealing with the physical and emotional harm the practice can cause. Child protection services are collaborating with asylum-seekers, and civil society organisations provide additional resources and lessons on how to stop the practice.

Dialogue and discussions take place across virtual bridges, such as webinars, videoconferences, group emails and web platforms. This idea of bridges is relevant to accelerating a shift in social norms as well: bridges of communication can keep the conversation evolving.

“Some diaspora families may not be aware of shifting attitudes back home and continue to cut their daughters out of a sense of religious or cultural obligation”

A recent survey has revealed a seismic shift in personal beliefs on FGM. In Somalia, for example, the prevalence rate has dropped from 98% to 65% in the past few years, and social acceptance of the practice is plummeting, with a substantial majority of women (82%) opposing it. Only one-third of women surveyed said they had cut their daughters. More than 70% of the men stated that they would marry a girl who was not cut, signifying that the cultural importance placed on female genital mutilation in preparing a girl for marriage is no longer strong.

Some diaspora families have abandoned the practice and became powerful spokespersons against it in their communities of origin. This is extremely relevant information for families and their daughters who live in other countries. They may not be aware of shifting attitudes and expectations about FGM back home, and who might continue to cut their daughters out of a sense of religious or cultural obligation.

Ending FGM by 2030 will spare millions of girls who would otherwise face this emotional, physical and human rights violation. The building bridges approach has the potential to speed up the efforts that are ongoing in many countries around the world.

We know that the end of FGM is in sight, but for the sake of women and girls, we must make every effort to hasten its demise.

The post Building bridges to end female genital mutilation appeared first on Europe’s World.

About a decade ago in the US, there was a minor scandal about a ‘bridge to nowhere’: substantial federal funds had been appropriated to build a bridge to replace a little-used ferry to an Alaskan island, mainly – it appeared – to serve the pork-barrel politics of Washington.

Theresa May might find herself reflecting on this tale as she returns from the informal meeting of EU heads in Malta on Friday. Alongside the ostensible purpose of the summit – to discuss migration policy and plan for the future of the EU – this was a last opportunity for May to demonstrate her bone fides to colleagues ahead of Article 50 notification next month.

May arrived in Valletta as the only one of the participants to have met Donald Trump since his inauguration, a meeting secured at great speed to bolster her tentative plans for the UK to use Brexit as a springboard to get out into the international system. Taking Trump’s vague enthusiasm for pursuing free trade negotiations as a mandate for this course of action, May’s message to the European Council was two-fold.

Firstly, the UK wishes the EU well in its future development, both because a healthy EU is – politically and economically-speaking – good for the UK, and because May recognises that now is not the time to raise backs, on the verge of a set of negotiations where the UK will be asking much of the EU.

Secondly, May offered the UK a link to the US, an intermediator with a Trump administration that has, by turns, bemused and shocked many in Europe. Playing on both the historic ties that the UK has with the US and the potential close relationship that May talks of for Article 50, May was arguing that the UK still matters.

As far as this went, it represents as coordinated and developed a plan as May has presented to date.

The problem, as so often, is that the UK appears to have made its plans without much reference to what the EU is discussing.

At one level this is very understandable, because the two are heading in different directions: the UK government has to think about what is good for the country’s future path, while the EU has a very different set of concerns. Valletta is a case in point, with the need to regulate migrant flows across the Mediterranean a matter of pressing concern for the EU27 in a way that it certainly isn’t for the UK.

However, at every other level, it represents a failure of British government policy, one that has long characterised the UK’s membership of the EU. The unwillingness – or inability – of successive generations of British politicians and civil servants to conceptualise European integration as anything other than a matter of economic cooperation has led to repeated category errors in policy.

Valletta highlighted this mismatch in a number of ways.

Firstly, the EU’s self-image is that of a substantial and significant part of the international system, with enough depth and scope to be able to fend for itself. May’s offer of a bridge across the Atlantic looked both condescending and irrelevant: the mood music in many European capitals is that Trump will be handled with the longest of spoons or simply ignored as much as possible until a successor arrives in the White House. As Dalia Grybauskaitė, archly noted, “I don’t think there is a necessity for a bridge. We communicate with the Americans on Twitter.”

Secondly, Brexit still looks like an irritant to the EU27. For all of May’s fine words in Valletta, the general impression of the UK is that there is still no clear plan or process for Article 50. Recall that the meeting came after the confusions and vaguenesses of May’s Lancaster House speech, Parliament’s first steps to passing an Article 50 Bill and a White Paper that struggled to offer any substantive policy positions.

For several months after the referendum, Brexit looking like it might be one of the more manageable problems on the EU’s agenda: self-contained, removing a less-than-fulsome partner from the mix, and heading away from the EU rather than heading towards it. More recently, that confidence has been turning into uncertainty about timing and concern that the UK lacks the set of objectives it will need to guide itself through the negotiations. Sympathy looks in very short supply in EU27 capitals, even with a Maltese Presidency than might be expected to be a natural ally.

Once again, May is like the guest who turns up at a party, bearing some inappropriate gift. Worse still, she appears to have little interest in maximising her opportunities: having set up a bilateral with Angela Merkel for Friday afternoon, it was cancelled at short notice, as May felt she had covered the necessary points in an informal chat during a walkabout earlier in the day. Maybe this was discretion – not taking up time with empty rhetoric – but it also speaks to the lack of a detailed plan that May can share with those she will need to convince in the coming months.

And that Alaskan bridge? It never got built in the end. In a time of profound political uncertainty, both domestically and internationally, the UK is going to have to find a better gambit if it is to demonstrate its value to an EU that teeters on the edge of turning in on itself.

 

This post was originally written for www.ukandeu.ac.uk 

The post A bridge to nowhere? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.