Diplomacy & Crisis News

With Ethiopia experiencing its worst drought in decades the United Nations is reporting deepening food insecurity and &#8220severe emaciation and unusual livestock deaths&#8221 as the Organization&#39s humanitarian wing has allocated $17 million in emergency funding to help the Government tackle climate challenges and ensure timely food relief.

While the G20 Summit opened today in the Turkish city Antalya, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he will stress to world leaders that the global response to terrorism needs to be robust, but always within the rule of law and with respect for human rights.

On the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is highlighting that despite improvements in road safety, the world still faces some shocking injury and fatality figures.

Consensus at the closing of the 10th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Brazil today underscored the contribution of Information Communications Technologies (ICTs) and the Internet to the achievement of the recently adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the United Nations announced.

Supporters of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi brave the rain as they celebrate after hearing the first official results of the elections (AFP PHOTO / Nicolas ASFOURI).

Hello, FPA! This will be my first post here on the FPA blogs, and I am happy to make it on a topic of some importance: the elections in Myanmar. In what must stand out as one of the most astonishing political transformations of recent times, Myanmar has gone from being and isolated, semi-autarkic autocratic dictatorship to a rapidly democratizing society in less than five years. And Sunday’s elections, featuring former political prisoner and democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, are the greatest testament yet to that transformation.

In this quick video, I take a look at some of the background, and the process of the election itself, within the context of the broader “Global Narratives” framework I apply to my ongoing global coverage.

I look forward to bringing more of my distinct brand of international analysis to the FPA! Comments and questions of course welcome!

NB – This video was shot and edited before the results of the election were formally announced. Another video soon will discuss the results.

If you are interested in more of my analysis, please check out my YouTube channel, Globalogues

Le 6 novembre dernier, le dossier sur l’Algérie paru dans le dernier numéro de Politique étrangère (3/2015) a fait l’objet de la chronique « Idées & Débats : la revue du jour » dans le journal Les Échos.

« LE PROPOS

Fascinante en même temps que désespérante. Pleine de ressources mais tragiquement immobile : dans son dernier numéro, la revue Politique étrangère consacre un excellent dossier à l’Algérie, incapable encore aujourd’hui de sortir de la double impasse que constituent « son pouvoir militaro-sécuritaire » et sa « rente pétro-gazière », dont elle se sert pour acheter la paix sociale au lieu d’investir dans le rayonnement économique et culturel auquel pourrait légitimement aspirer cette grande puissance africaine.

L’INTÉRÊT

Un régime politique bloqué, une société – notamment les plus jeunes – désabusée, une montée de l’intégrisme religieux depuis le reflux de l’islamisme politique de masse des années 1990 : tel est le tableau, bien sombre, que dressent les auteurs d’un pays comme figé avant les inévitables changements qu’il va devoir adopter pour se sortir de l’ornière. Parmi les drames qui étreignent ce pays, il y a ce paradoxe d’une richesse dont il ne sait que faire, ces 730 milliards de dollars de revenus extérieurs engrangés entre 2000 et 2014 « dont près des trois quarts ont été recyclés dans la dépense publique », calcule la revue. Une inertie due au clientélisme, « le » mal algérien dont le pays n’a su se défaire depuis toutes ces années. À quand le réveil de l’Algérie ? »

D. Fo.

Article publié dans Les Échos, 6-7 novembre 2015, p.11.

 

We, the undersigned organisations, urge a coordinated global response to the escalating human rights crisis in Burundi, before it is too late. With an increase in killings – many by the security forces –, inflammatory and threatening public statements by high level officials and provocative attacks on the security forces by armed opposition, the international community is being put to the test.

(Own report) - Techniques of anti-Soviet propaganda that had been developed by Nazi officers, could serve today as a model for western anti-Russia psychological warfare operations, according to a semi-official publication from the entourage of the Bundeswehr. The current conflict between Russia and NATO has a "highly pronounced ideological dimension," analogue to the Cold War, explains the author Uwe Hartmann, a colonel in the German armed forces. According to Hartmann, the Russian side is using the "freedoms of Western open societies" to "influence" public opinion with the aim of "relativizing the value of rights and freedoms," "sowing discord" and "insecurity within the population." To counter this strategy, attributed to Russia, Hartmann recommends reversion to the methods of the so-called 'internal leadership' concept elaborated by Wolf Graf von Baudissin, who had been on Hitler's General Staff. This concept calls for preparing the armed forces as well as the society at large for a "permanent civil war" and for the leadership elite to convince Germans of the "worthiness of defending their country," while immunizing them against all "ideological temptations" and "propaganda attacks."

Scenes from last weekend's milestone elections.

NAIROBI, Kenya — A new report says Kenya’s military has done a brisk business in sugar and charcoal in Kismayo, Somalia, since pushing al-Shabab from the southern port city in 2012, but the trade has become a key financial lifeline for the terrorist group it is there to fight. Published by the nonpartisan watchdog organization Journalists ...

With the NLD on the brink of a landslide victory in Myanmar’s elections, attention is turning to what comes next.

The Israeli prime minister has come to make amends with the United States. At least for now.

Saudi women are running for office in upcoming municipal elections for the first time -- and discovering the rules as they go.

The onetime heavyweight champ has been ousted.

Voicing deep concern at those who exploit the suffering of refugees to stoke xenophobia and spew hate speech, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on European leaders, and the world at large, to stand true to the values of human of rights and respect the dignity of people fleeing conflict and poverty in Syria and elsewhere.

In what appears to be the result of a prank, a Google Maps search for the Islamic State's Russian acronym pinpoints a state-run television station in Moscow.

Liu Yiqian used credit card points to rise to the top of the art world.

Citing an enormous loss of $100 to $240 billion dollars in uncollected global corporate income tax revenues each year, Oh Joon, President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) today stressed the need to curb tax evasion and avoidance and called for stronger international tax cooperation.

The Security Council today strongly condemned the attack against a checkpoint of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), which followed an outbreak of violence in a camp for internally displace people in the town of Batangafo, during which one peacekeeper from Cameroon was killed.

The EU published clarifications Wednesday on its guidelines for labeling food made on Israeli settlements. But neither Palestinians nor Israelis seem too happy about it.