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« Les accords d’Abraham ont plutôt encouragé la guerre que la paix au Moyen-Orient »

LeMonde / Afrique - Sun, 13/09/2026 - 07:00
Six ans après leur signature, les accords d’Abraham, loin de généraliser la normalisation israélo-arabe, ont aggravé les dissensions au Moyen-Orient, analyse l’historien Jean-Pierre Filiu dans sa chronique au « Monde ».
Categories: Afrique

En Ethiopie, le changement climatique pousse les éleveurs pastoraux à se convertir à l’agriculture vivrière : « C’est loin d’être une solution miracle »

LeMonde / Afrique - Sun, 13/09/2026 - 05:45
Dans le sud-est du pays, les épisodes de sécheresse, toujours plus intenses, menacent l’existence des pasteurs nomades. Certains ont choisi de se sédentariser pour cultiver la terre.
Categories: Afrique

Exonération, taux unique : le plan choc de Matignon sur les donations pour «faire circuler le patrimoine plus tôt vers les jeunes générations»

Le Figaro / Politique - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 20:18
INFO LE FIGARO - Un document interne du gouvernement, dévoilé par Le Figaro, prévoit un relèvement temporaire des plafonds de dons familiaux et une baisse drastique de la fiscalité sur les donations classiques.
Categories: France

«Participation au redressement des finances publiques» : Sébastien Lecornu lance une concertation sur la désindexation des retraites

Le Figaro / Politique - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 20:10
INFO LE FIGARO - Dans une lettre que Le Figaro s’est procurée, le premier ministre donne mandat à ses ministres pour négocier avec les présidents de groupe, avec plusieurs options évoquées.
Categories: France

La lame du dollar et la plaie monétaire

Le Monde Diplomatique - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 19:50
Washington vole rarement au secours de ses alliés. Contrairement aux apparences, les récentes interventions du Trésor américain pour soutenir le yen ne dérogent pas à cette règle. Loin d'être motivées par une forme d'altruisme, elles répondent aux préoccupations des États-Unis quant au coût de (…) / , , , ,

Dakar 2026 : la flamme olympique reçue par le président Diomaye Faye ce samedi

BBC Afrique - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 18:38
Allumée à Athènes, la flamme olympique est reçue ce samedi à Dakar par le président Bassirou Diomaye Faye.
Categories: Afrique

La raffinerie nigériane d’Aliko Dangote au seuil de la plus grande entrée en Bourse d’Afrique

LeMonde / Afrique - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 16:30
De Lagos à Nairobi en passant par Johannesburg, les milieux financiers africains s’enthousiasment pour l’introduction à la Bourse de Lagos de la raffinerie de Lekki, qui s’ouvrira lundi 14 septembre sur fond de bénéfices en forte hausse et d’une géopolitique mondiale favorable.
Categories: Afrique

"Cela fait 7 ans que j'attends que mon fils m'appelle maman"

BBC Afrique - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 14:41
Rehema, qui s'est fait connaître sur la scène gospel d'Afrique de l'Est dès le début de l'année 2020 grâce à des titres tels que "Chanzo", "Ndiyo Yako" et "Nina Ushuhuda", explique qu'à cette époque, elle luttait contre le chagrin et l'amertume liés à son refus d'accepter l'état de santé de son premier enfant.
Categories: Afrique

'Where do we go?': How Israel's 'yellow line' is closing in on Palestinians

Globalsecurity.org - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 14:00
Ola Ishtiwi sits with her children in front of the remains of her home in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, a few metres away from a series of painted cement blocks Israel has placed to mark what has become known as the "yellow line".
Categories: Defence`s Feeds

Washington Warns US Companies Over Dealing With Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan

Globalsecurity.org - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 14:00
The US State Department has urged American companies to exercise extreme caution when considering business transactions with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan after a former US official attended the signing of a deal between a Saudi energy group and the hard-line authorities.
Categories: Defence`s Feeds

«Nous ne serons jamais macronistes !» : au Campus des Jeunes LR, les militants attendent avec «confiance» le discours de Bruno Retailleau

Le Figaro / Politique - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 13:22
REPORTAGE - À Nogent-sur-Marne ce samedi matin, les militants regardent l’horizon 2027 et soutiennent leur candidat à la présidentielle sur une ligne d’indépendance assumée à droite, loin d’un bloc central jugé responsable de «faillites».
Categories: France

'I've turned the page' - Camara on Chelsea deal collapse

BBC Africa - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 12:07
Monaco and Senegal midfielder Lamine Camara says he is moving on from his failed £47.1m move to Chelsea.
Categories: Africa

'It's like a dog set loose on us' - fear over Kenya's crackdown on foreign traders

BBC Africa - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 12:00
The authorities have struggled to contain the fallout, as frightened migrants flee the country.
Categories: Africa

"Mes enfants sont morts brûlés vifs sous mes yeux"

BBC Afrique - Sat, 12/09/2026 - 10:56
Florence Amunga est une survivante des violences postélectorales de 2007 au Kenya. Sa maison a été incendiée en pleine nuit alors qu’elle s’y trouvait avec ses enfants.
Categories: Afrique

Why AfD Appeals to So Many Germans

Foreign Policy - Fri, 11/09/2026 - 22:30
The far-right party surges in a regional election.

Festivals 2024 in Europa: Die Top-Events

The European Political Newspaper - Fri, 11/09/2026 - 21:46

Europa im Jahr 2024 ist das Ziel für Festival-Fans. Von den legendären Performances des Glastonbury Festivals in England bis hin zu den magischen Tanzmusik-Erlebnissen bei Tomorrowland in Belgien – jedes Event bietet einzigartige Momente und unvergessliche Erlebnisse. Diese Übersicht der Top-Events führt Sie durch die beliebtesten Festivals, an denen Musikliebhaber aus aller Welt zusammenkommen. Bereiten Sie sich darauf vor, die faszinierendsten Klänge und Atmosphären Europas zu entdecken!

Das Wichtigste in Kürze

  • Glastonbury Festival in England: Legendäre Performances und unverwechselbare Atmosphäre.
  • Tomorrowland in Belgien: Magische Tanzmusik-Nächte unter freiem Himmel.
  • Roskilde Festival in Dänemark: Vielfältige Musikgenres und herausragende Musikgenüsse.
  • Sziget Festival in Ungarn: Episches Inselspektakel mit Musik, Kunst und Kultur.
  • Rock am Ring in Deutschland: Top-Bands der Rock-Szene und unvergessliche Live-Auftritte.
Glastonbury Festival, England: Legendäre Performances und einzigartige Atmosphäre

Das Glastonbury Festival in England ist bekannt für seine legendären Performances und die einzigartige Atmosphäre, die es unverwechselbar macht. Hier können Sie einige der weltbesten Künstler erleben, während Sie sich inmitten einer lebhaften und begeisterten Menge befinden.

Ergänzende Artikel: Europa Mappe: Alles in einem

Coachella Festival, Spanien: Top-Künstler und trendige Festivalbesucher Festivals 2024 in Europa: Die Top-Events

Das Coachella Festival in Spanien ist ein absolutes Highlight unter den Festivals 2024 Europa. Es zieht nicht nur Top-Künstler aus der ganzen Welt an, sondern auch trendige Festivalbesucher, die sich dem charismatischen Mix aus Musik und Mode hingeben. Seien Sie bereit für eine beeindruckende Mischung aus großer Bühne und einem einzigartigen Erlebnis inmitten spanischer Kultur.

Sich durch Musik zu verbinden, ist eine der schönsten Möglichkeiten, die Menschlichkeit zu feiern. – Herbie Hancock

Roskilde, Dänemark: Vielfalt und herausragende Musikgenüsse

Roskilde in Dänemark ist bekannt für seine Vielfalt an Musikgenres und bietet Festivalbesuchern jedes Jahr ein beeindruckendes Line-up. Neben den großen internationalen Künstlern treten auch lokale Talente auf, was für eine spannende Mischung sorgt. Das Festivalgelände lädt dabei zum Entdecken neuer Klänge ein und überzeugt durch seine besondere Atmosphäre sowie herausragende Musikgenüsse. Hier erleben Sie unvergessliche Momente und musikalische Highlights an jeder Ecke.

Sziget Festival, Ungarn: Ein episches Inselspektakel

Das Sziget Festival in Ungarn bietet ein episches Inselspektakel, das seinesgleichen sucht. Hier erleben Sie eine außergewöhnliche Mischung aus Musik, Kunst und Kultur auf der malerischen Óbudai-Insel in Budapest. Jedes Jahr zieht es Tausende von Besuchern an, die sich auf die vielfältigen Bühnenshows und interaktiven Installationen freuen.

Lesetipp: Allianz Vermögensbildung Europa: Ihre Optionen

.table-responsiv {width: 100%;padding: 0px;margin-bottom: 0px;overflow-y: hidden;border: 1px solid #DDD;overflow-x: auto;min-height: 0.01%;} Festival Ort Merkmale Glastonbury Festival England Legendäre Performances und einzigartige Atmosphäre Coachella Festival Spanien Top-Künstler und trendige Festivalbesucher Roskilde Festival Dänemark Vielfalt und herausragende Musikgenüsse Tomorrowland, Belgien: Magische Tanzmusik unter freiem Himmel Tomorrowland, Belgien: Magische Tanzmusik unter freiem Himmel – Festivals 2024 in Europa: Die Top-Events

Tomorrowland in Belgien ist das Festival schlechthin für Tanzmusik-Enthusiasten. Unter freiem Himmel erleben Sie magische Nächte, begleitet von den besten DJs der Welt. Eingebettet in eine fantastische Kulisse bietet Tomorrowland nicht nur herausragende Musik, sondern auch eine unvergessliche Atmosphäre.

Interessanter Artikel: Inseln in Europa: Paradiese entdecken

Primavera Sound, Spanien: Indie-Vibes und innovative Klänge

Das Primavera Sound Festival in Spanien zieht Musikliebhaber aus ganz Europa an. Mit seinen Indie-Vibes und innovativen Klängen bietet es eine Plattform für aufstrebende Künstler ebenso wie für etablierte Namen der Musikszene. Das unverwechselbare Line-Up garantiert ein unvergessliches Erlebnis für Fans alternativer Musikrichtungen.

Isle of Wight, England: Kultige Musikgeschichte trifft modernen Sound

Das Isle of Wight Festival in England ist bekannt für seine reiche Musikhistorie. Seit seiner Eröffnung 1968 hat es einige der herausragendsten Namen der Musikbranche begrüßt. Künstler wie Jimi Hendrix und The Who haben die Bühne betreten, und ihr Vermächtnis wird jedes Jahr aufs Neue gefeiert.

Heute gelingt es dem Festival, eine Brücke zwischen kultiger Musikgeschichte und modernen Klängen zu schlagen. Besucher können sowohl _legendäre_ Klassiker als auch aufstrebende Künstler genießen. Die Atmosphäre ist von einem Gefühl der Nostalgie durchdrungen, ohne dabei die aktuellen Trends aus den Augen zu verlieren.

Rock am Ring, Deutschland: Die besten Bands der Rock-Szene

Rock am Ring, Deutschland ist das ultimative Ziel für Fans der Rock-Szene. Das Festival bietet Ihnen die einzigartigen Gelegenheiten, einige der besten Bands des Genres live zu erleben. Bekannte Künstler wie Metallica, Foo Fighters und Muse haben hier bereits die Bühne gerockt.

Die Atmosphäre beim Rock am Ring ist einfach unvergleichlich. Mit einer Vielzahl an Ständen, Aktivitäten und einem riesigen Campingplatz kommt garantiert keine Langeweile auf. Wenn Sie ein echter Rock-Fan sind, darf das Rock am Ring Festival 2024 in Europa auf keinen Fall in Ihrem Kalender fehlen!

FAQ: Antworten auf häufig gestellte Fragen Wann findet das Glastonbury Festival 2024 statt? Das Glastonbury Festival 2024 findet vom 26. bis 30. Juni statt. Tickets sind ab November 2023 verfügbar. Wie komme ich am besten zum Sziget Festival in Ungarn? Die bequemste Anreise zum Sziget Festival erfolgt per Flug nach Budapest. Vom Flughafen Budapest (BUD) gibt es regelmäßige Shuttlebusse und öffentliche Verkehrsmittel, die direkt zur Festivalinsel Óbuda fahren. Alternativ können Sie auch mit Zug oder Auto nach Budapest reisen. Gibt es Altersbeschränkungen für das Tomorrowland Festival in Belgien? Ja, das Tomorrowland Festival hat eine Altersbeschränkung. Besucher müssen mindestens 18 Jahre alt sein, um Zugang zum Festivalgelände zu erhalten. Ein Altersnachweis ist beim Eintritt erforderlich. Welche Unterkünfte stehen beim Rock am Ring Festival zur Verfügung? Beim Rock am Ring Festival gibt es verschiedene Unterkunftsmöglichkeiten. Neben dem großen Campingplatz gibt es auch VIP-Campingbereiche, Glamping-Optionen und umliegende Hotels. Es wird empfohlen, die Unterkunft im Voraus zu buchen, da die Kapazitäten schnell ausgebucht sind. Welche Zahlungsmethoden werden auf dem Roskilde Festival akzeptiert? Das Roskilde Festival akzeptiert verschiedene Zahlungsmethoden, darunter Kreditkarten, Debitkarten und kontaktloses Bezahlen mit dem Smartphone. Bargeld wird auf dem Festivalgelände ebenfalls akzeptiert, jedoch sind die meisten Verkaufsstände und Bars auf bargeldlose Zahlungen eingerichtet. Kann ich mein eigenes Essen und Getränk zum Isle of Wight Festival mitbringen? Ja, Besucher dürfen ihr eigenes Essen und nicht-alkoholische Getränke zum Isle of Wight Festival mitbringen. Es gibt jedoch Einschränkungen für Glasbehälter und übermäßige Mengen an Alkohol. Alkoholkonsum ist nur in den vorgesehenen Bereichen gestattet. Gibt es besondere Sicherheitsmaßnahmen beim Primavera Sound Festival? Ja, das Primavera Sound Festival hat umfassende Sicherheitsmaßnahmen. Dazu gehören Sicherheitskontrollen am Eingang, regelmäßige Patrouillen durch Sicherheitspersonal und medizinische Versorgungsstationen auf dem Festivalgelände. Die Besucher werden gebeten, sich an die Anweisungen des Sicherheitspersonals zu halten und verantwortungsbewusst zu handeln. Welche umweltfreundlichen Maßnahmen werden auf dem Coachella Festival in Spanien umgesetzt? Das Coachella Festival in Spanien setzt verschiedene umweltfreundliche Maßnahmen um, darunter Recycling-Programme, die Reduzierung von Einwegplastik, Solarenergie für Bühnen und Infrastruktur sowie nachhaltige Essens- und Getränkeangebote. Besucher werden ermutigt, umweltbewusst zu handeln und ihren Abfall zu minimieren.

Der Beitrag Festivals 2024 in Europa: Die Top-Events erschien zuerst auf Neurope.eu - News aus Europa.

Categories: European Union

Central Asia Marks 20 Years of Its Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone With Renewed Call for Disarmament

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE - Fri, 11/09/2026 - 20:57

Central Asian states mark the 20th anniversary of the Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty with a joint foreign ministers' statement Credit: Kazakhstan MFA

By Katsuhiro Asagiri
TOKYO, Japan, Sep 11 2026 (IPS)

Twenty years after five Central Asian states signed a landmark treaty banning nuclear weapons across their region, their foreign ministers have used the anniversary to warn that faltering arms-control agreements, nuclear modernization and deepening international mistrust are placing global security under growing strain.

Central Asia Nuclear Free Zones

In a joint statement issued on September 8, the foreign ministers of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan reaffirmed their commitment to the Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia (CANWFZ), signed in Semipalatinsk on September 8, 2006. The treaty entered into force in 2009, establishing what remains the first and only nuclear-weapon-free zone located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and directly bordering two nuclear-armed states, China and Russia. The anniversary falls during Kazakhstan’s chairmanship of the treaty, which it assumed for 2026.

The ministers described the treaty as a symbol of Central Asia’s transformation from a region where nuclear weapons were once tested and deployed into one of the leaders of global disarmament efforts.

That history gives the anniversary weight. Semipalatinsk — now Semey — was the Soviet Union’s principal nuclear testing ground, where 456 tests were conducted between 1949 and 1989 across a site roughly the size of Belgium. An estimated 1.5 million people were affected by the fallout, and the health consequences have passed through three generations. Kazakhstan closed the site on August 29, 1991.

Semipalatinsk Former Nuclear Weapon Test site. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

This year brings together three milestones: the 35th anniversary of that closure, the 20th of the treaty, and the 30th of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) opening for signature. The zone itself was first proposed by Uzbekistan at the UN General Assembly in September 1993 and took thirteen years to negotiate.

Warning After Another Failed NPT Review

The anniversary arrives at a difficult moment for the global nuclear order. The ministers reaffirmed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the cornerstone of efforts to prevent proliferation and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons, but expressed regret that its Eleventh Review Conference, held in New York from April 27 to May 22 this year, ended without a substantive outcome — the third consecutive review conference to close without consensus, following those of 2015 and 2022.

They voiced particular concern over insufficient progress toward disarmament under Article VI of the NPT, the cessation of key arms-control arrangements and an alarming trend toward the modernization of nuclear arsenals, placing special responsibility on nuclear-weapon states and calling for new, verifiable mechanisms to prevent a renewed arms race.

Even as the review process stalled, the zones drew attention as one of the regime’s more durable achievements. At a Kazakh-hosted event on the margins of the conference, Robin Geiß, Director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, credited the Central Asian zone with a distinctive contribution in linking security to development, environmental protection and public health, while Mark Melamed of the Nuclear Threat Initiative cautioned that the zones’ achievements cannot be assumed to endure.

CTBT at 30 — Still Not in Force

On September 24, the CTBT will mark 30 years since it opened for signature. Yet it has still not entered into force. The Central Asian states called for its earliest possible entry into force and urged all states to refrain from any action that could undermine the norm against nuclear explosive testing.

The appeal follows a joint statement issued on August 29 — the anniversary of the test site’s closure, observed by the United Nations as the International Day against Nuclear Tests — in which Kazakh Foreign Minister Yermek Kosherbayev and Robert Floyd, Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, urged renewed action to end testing permanently. Much of the treaty’s machinery already functions despite its legal limbo: 308 facilities have been certified, bringing the International Monitoring System to more than 90 percent completion.

More than 300 International Monitoring System (IMS) facilities certified out of the 337 the CTBTO has planned are already in operation. Credit: CTBTO

The ministers also welcomed the 2014 signing by the five NPT-recognized nuclear-weapon states of the protocol providing negative security assurances to the zone. Four have ratified it; the ministers expressed hope that the United States would complete its ratification.

A Regional Model in a Fragmenting Nuclear Order

The declaration went beyond treaties to emphasize disarmament education, backing continued observance of the International Day for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Awareness — a Kyrgyz initiative marked annually on March 5, the date the NPT entered into force — and stressing the importance of involving young people.

Nuclear-weapon-free zones cannot substitute for the disarmament obligations of states that possess nuclear arsenals. But the Semipalatinsk Treaty demonstrates that non-nuclear states are not merely spectators in the global nuclear order: by acting collectively they can create binding regional norms and press nuclear-weapon states for security assurances.

Central Asia has also shown that such zones can become more than geographic prohibitions. The five states have signed memoranda of understanding with the African Commission on Nuclear Energy and with the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, which administers the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco, and Kazakhstan hosted in Astana in August 2024 the second meeting of representatives of all existing zones. The limits are equally clear: three decades of advocacy have not produced a zone in the Middle East, which the ministers again called for.

Equally important is the link between diplomacy and human experience. The Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement, which helped drive the test site’s closure, showed that public pressure could move nuclear policy — and for Kazakhstan, cooperation with civil society has since been less a supplement to disarmament diplomacy than part of its foundation.

September 8 carries another anniversary. On that date in 1957, before 50,000 young people gathered at a stadium in Yokohama, Josei Toda, second president of the Soka Gakkai, issued a declaration calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, condemning them as an absolute evil that threatened the right of people everywhere to exist and entrusting their abolition to the next generation. The peace activity of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a lay Buddhist organization, traces its origin to that declaration.

A Group photo of participants of the regional conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear-free-zone in Central Asia held on August 29, 2023. Credit: Jibek Joly TV Channel

Official portrait of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Credit: President of the Republic of Kazakhstan

That commitment has taken concrete form alongside Kazakhstan. At the first Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in Vienna in 2022, Kazakhstan and Kiribati held a side event on victim assistance and environmental remediation together with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and SGI. The following year in Vienna, Kazakhstan’s Permanent Mission to the International Organizations, SGI and the Center for International Security and Policy (CISP) co-hosted an event on the consequences of the Semipalatinsk tests. A regional conference in Astana on August 29, 2023, convened by Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry and CISP with SGI, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the International Committee of the Red Cross, brought in third-generation survivors who described health damage still passing down the generations. A documentary on Semipalatinsk survivors produced by CISP with SGI was screened at UN Headquarters alongside the second TPNW Meeting of States Parties, and again in Astana when representatives of the zones gathered there.

For Japanese readers the connection is direct. Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced the use of nuclear weapons in war; Semipalatinsk experienced the consequences of testing them. During his visit to Japan in December 2025, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev warned at United Nations University in Tokyo that nuclear risks were rising again, invoking all three names in a call for concrete steps to reduce nuclear danger.

Twenty years after the treaty was signed, its significance may lie not only in what Central Asia chose to reject, but in what it has continued to build — a regional security architecture that seeks to make nuclear weapons less central, less legitimate and, ultimately, unnecessary.

Note: This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Categories: Africa

At Hammarskjöld’s Grave, Sixty-Five Years After Ndola

Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE - Fri, 11/09/2026 - 19:50

Credit: Conny Odengrund / Wiki Commons

By Jordan Ryan
Sep 11 2026 (IPS)

 
Late in August I stood at Dag Hammarskjöld’s grave in Uppsala. It is a quiet place, a long way from New York and from the wars the United Nations exists to prevent.

He died sixty-five years ago this month, on 18 September 1961, in an aircraft crash near Ndola, in what is now Zambia. He was fifty-six, on his way to seek a ceasefire in the Congo, where the secession of the mineral-rich province of Katanga had drawn a newly independent country into conflict and great-power rivalry.

Leaving the cemetery, I found myself thinking about the office he held and about a practice he helped build that the organisation has praised ever since but never fully sustained.

Hammarskjöld treated preventive diplomacy as a working method. He travelled repeatedly into crises, used the Secretary-General’s office when local conflicts threatened to become arenas of great-power rivalry, and kept an independent United Nations presence where member states could not or would not go. He negotiated before positions hardened and violence became harder to stop.

Suez, Lebanon and the Congo were very different crises, but he approached them as exercises of the same craft. He did not always succeed. The point was not that prevention always worked. It was that he regarded it as part of the job.

Preventive diplomacy has been restated as a priority many times since. Boutros Boutros-Ghali gave it a doctrine in An Agenda for Peace. Kofi Annan strengthened early-warning and mediation capacity. Ban Ki-moon issued the first Secretary-General’s report devoted to preventive diplomacy in 2011. António Guterres made the case again in A New Agenda for Peace. Member states restated it in the Pact for the Future, and the UN80 Initiative is reviewing how mandates are designed, implemented and assessed.

Doctrine is not what is missing.

Prevention remains politically difficult because success is hard to prove. A crisis that does not happen leaves no ruins, no displaced population and no peacekeeping budget against which the cost of prevention can be measured. Governments that will pay heavily once violence has escalated are often reluctant to fund the diplomacy that might have kept it from escalating.

The problem is also institutional. The United Nations is often better at identifying risk than at acting on it early. Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sahel, Myanmar and Gaza all illustrate, in different ways, how warning signs can accumulate while political space for preventive action narrows. Information moves through the system, but knowledge does not create an obligation to respond.

That is the problem the next Secretary-General will inherit.

Member states choosing António Guterres’s successor have asked useful questions about gender, regional representation, management and reform. They have also asked about prevention. Candidates have described it as a central responsibility of the office, proposed stronger mediation capacity and invoked Article 99 of the Charter, which allows the Secretary-General to bring to the Security Council’s attention any matter that may threaten international peace and security.

The harder question is what the office will do when warning signs are mounting, information is moving through the United Nations system, and the Security Council is unable or unwilling to act.

Hammarskjöld confronted that problem in a different era. In 1960, during the Congo crisis, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev demanded his resignation and proposed replacing the Secretary-General with a three-person ‘troika’ representing competing political blocs.

Hammarskjöld refused.

“It is very easy to resign; it is not so easy to stay on,” he told the General Assembly on 3 October 1960. “It is very easy to bow to the wish of a big Power. It is another matter to resist.”

Earlier in the same statement he had explained whom the United Nations was for.

“It is not the Soviet Union or indeed any other big Powers who need the United Nations for their protection,” he said. “It is all the others.”

That remains the strongest argument for an independent Secretary-General.

The major powers possess other instruments. Smaller and middle powers have fewer. When the Security Council works, the Secretary-General is one actor among several. When it does not, the office may still provide a channel for mediation, bring neglected crises into international view and give political weight to countries that cannot command attention through military or economic power.

That is why Hammarskjöld’s example matters now. He answered Khrushchev in public, and he could do so because of what he had already done in Suez, in Lebanon and in the Congo. His authority came from judgement, discretion and a willingness to keep working when powerful governments wanted him to stop.

Nor should prevention depend on finding another exceptional individual.

Sixty-five years after Ndola, the better tribute is to finish some of the work Hammarskjöld left behind: choose a Secretary-General prepared to exercise the office’s independence while prevention still has a chance to work, and give that office the political and institutional support to do so.

The great powers can still look after themselves.

The United Nations still matters most to “all the others.”

The author at Dag Hammarskjöld’s grave in Uppsala.

Related articles:

A Hundred Dollars for War, One for Peace
Governing the Ungovernable
When Destruction Becomes Policy: What the Munich Security Report Reveals About the Future of Global Governance

Jordan Ryan is a Senior Consultant to the Folke Bernadotte Academy and Senior Counsel (Social Impact) for Hamilton Advisors. He is also a former Vice President for Peace Programs at The Carter Center, where he led strategic planning and implementation of peacebuilding initiatives worldwide from 2015-2018.

This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished from the original with their permission.

IPS UN Bureau

 

 

 

 

Categories: Africa

Sanctions britanniques : Israël peut dormir tranquille

Le Monde Diplomatique - Fri, 11/09/2026 - 18:51
Au titre d'une initiative conjointe engageant douze pays dont la France, le ministre des affaires étrangères britannique a annoncé le 8 septembre, devant la Chambre des communes, de nouvelles sanctions visant les colonies israéliennes en Cisjordanie. Des dispositions tardives et dérisoires. / (…) / , , , ,

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