Au-delà des aspects militaires, le plus important après cette attaque de drones est d’interpréter les messages qui sont envoyés par l’Ukraine à la Russie.
En premier lieu, il faut bien voir que l’effet militaire est limité. L’attaque a été réalisée grâce à des drones légers de taille moyenne avec des charges militaires peu importantes. L’objectif n’était pas d’affaiblir militairement la Russie, mais d’envoyer un certain nombre de messages aux Russes et à Vladimir Poutine.
Le premier message est de nature politique. Durant toute la campagne d’hiver, la Russie a frappé toutes les installations énergétiques ukrainiennes pour affaiblir la capacité de résistance des Ukrainiens. L’objectif était d’atteindre leur moral. Le message de cette frappe est de montrer qu’au sortir de l’hiver, l’Ukraine est toujours debout, que le moral des Ukrainiens n’a pas été atteint par la campagne militaire hivernale de la Russie, qu’ils ne se contentent pas de se défendre : ils peuvent aussi attaquer.
Le deuxième message qui est envoyé est que la base industrielle et technologique de défense (BITD) ukrainienne est intacte malgré toutes les frappes de la Russie et qu’ils sont capables de produire en grande quantité des drones, certes rustiques, mais peu chers, et capables de frapper le territoire russe. La défense des Ukrainiens ne repose donc pas uniquement sur les armements livrés par les Européens ou que les Européens auront achetés aux Américains pour les fournir aux Ukrainiens. C’est une frappe « made in Kiev » et non « made in OTAN » et cela a donc aussi pour but d’affecter le moral des Russes : l’Ukraine est capable de leur résister y compris sans les armements livrés par les Européens.
Le troisième message est que Kiev peut désormais frapper Moscou. Celui-ci se divise en deux plans.
En premier lieu la guerre se déroule depuis le début sur le territoire ukrainien et les Occidentaux ont pris bien soin de demander aux Ukrainiens de ne pas frapper le territoire russe dans sa profondeur avec les armements qu’ils leur ont livrés. Or, ici on a bien une escalade dans le conflit, non pas tant par l’intensité des frappes, mais du fait de l’extension de son champ géographique au territoire russe, et ce jusqu’à Moscou. Mais les Ukrainiens ont toutefois pris bien soin d’utiliser leurs armements et non des armements occidentaux pour ne pas mettre dans l’embarras les Européens, voire entraîner une réaction négative de Donald Trump.
En second lieu, l’Ukraine a montré qu’elle était capable de lancer une frappe massive tout en moins en nombre, et ce, allant jusqu’à viser Moscou. Ces drones ont franchi plus de 500 km, ils n’ont pas été arrêtés par la défense aérienne russe et il est frappant de constater que les vidéos qui ont circulé ont été réalisés par des habitants de Moscou et de sa banlieue. L’impact psychologique est énorme et c’est bien l’effet recherché : montrer aux citoyens russes que « l’opération spéciale » de la Russie en Ukraine est un échec et que plus de quatre ans après le début de cette guerre la peur peut changer de camp.
L’article Quels sont les enseignements de l’attaque de drones de l’Ukraine contre Moscou ? est apparu en premier sur IRIS.
Ce mercredi 20 mai, un véritable cocktail météorologique frappe le Grand Sud algérien. Météo Algérie place plusieurs wilayas en vigilance face à l’arrivée d’orages parfois […]
L’article Alerte Météo Algérie : fortes pluies, vents violents et tempêtes de sable, plusieurs wilayas sous alerte est apparu en premier sur .
Javed Aslam, président de la communauté pakistanaise en Grèce depuis 2005, est menacé d'être expulsé au Pakistan par les autorités grecques. Son asile a été révoqué en mars, il a fait appel de cette décision.
- Le fil de l'Info / Personnalités, Migrants Balkans, Courrier des Balkans, Grèce, Populations, minorités et migrationsCredit: Bibbi Abruzzini/Forus - Rabat, Morocco
By Silla Ristimäki, Miguel Santibañez, Emeline Siale Ilolahia and Aoi Horiuchi
HELSINKI, Finland / SANTIAGO, Chile / SUVA, Fiji / TOKYO, Japan, May 20 2026 (IPS)
Just four years of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development remain. What comes after 2030 is already a political battleground.
The next global development framework is being shaped now: through quiet agenda-setting, shifting alliances, financing choices, contested norms, and decisions about who gets to participate and who is pushed to the margins. That matters because the world that will shape what comes next is not the world that adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.
The context is harsher, more fractured and less generous. Geopolitical fragmentation is deepening. Armed conflicts are distorting priorities. Climate impacts are accelerating. Development finance is under growing strain. Civic space is shrinking. Public trust in multilateralism is weaker. And too often, the rights, equality and accountability commitments that gave the SDGs their normative force are treated as negotiable.
“We step into the next decade against the background of climate chaos, growing inequality and increasing poverty. The scaffolding for positive change shall be to infuse democratic values in the blood stream of all our governments from the Right to the Left,” says Dr. Moses Isooba, executive director of the Uganda National NGO Forum and Vice-Chair of Forus.
The post-2030 debate must confront the political and structural weaknesses that limited implementation the first time around.
As a civil society network, we have been here from the very beginning. We have secured the adoption of the SDGs with the Beyond 2015 campaign, pushed for innovation and ambition, challenged power, brought forward the voices of communities, and held systems accountable. That role evolves and as we now look “beyond 2030”, we remain present, engaged, and determined to influence what comes next.
One message comes through clearly: the next agenda will only be credible if we are clear about three things — what must be defended, what must be demanded, and what must be declined.
What must be defended
Some foundations of the current framework remain essential and must not be traded away for the sake of political convenience.
The first is universality. One of the most important achievements of the SDGs was to establish that sustainable development is not only a concern for lower income countries, but a universal responsibility. Policies, consumption patterns and economic models that drive inequality, exclusion and ecological harm must be addressed in all regions. High-income countries must not only finance development but also reform their own adverse policies. If the next framework weakens the recognition that sustainable development must integrate social justice, equality, environmental sustainability, peace and human rights, it will not move us forward. It will mark a retreat.
The second is civic space. Civil society participation is one of the conditions that makes accountability, inclusion and implementation possible yet it is increasingly constrained by financial pressures, exclusion from global decision-making processes and erosion of fundamental rights. A future agenda which prioritises resources and protection for civil society supports the building of stable, sustainable societies.
The third is local leadership. Communities and local civil society actors remain closest to the realities that global frameworks claim to address, yet they are still structurally under-resourced and under-represented. Localisation beyond the “buzzword” can bring essential resources for problem diagnosis and planning, increasing effectiveness and legitimacy for sustainable development and peacebuilding.
And finally, what must be defended is multilateralism itself, not as an abstract ideal, but as the shared political space where common commitments can still be built.
“Safeguarding the structures created to advance peace, cooperation and rights sustains global hope and possibilities to address common global challenges. This is in the interests of us all, future generations and the planet.” Silla Ristimäki, Adviser at Fingo. “This is why ambitious reform of the UN cannot be separated from the post-Agenda 2030 discussion.”
What must be demanded
Defending core principles is not enough. Negotiations about the future must also correct what the Agenda 2030 left unresolved.
At the centre of this is financing. A credible post-2030 framework cannot rest on the same unequal financial architecture that has constrained implementation for years. Debt burdens, unequal fiscal space, volatile aid flows and weak commitments have all narrowed the room for governments and communities to act. Financing reforms must include debt restructuring and relief, fairer lending terms, increased concessional finance, stronger domestic resource mobilisation, tax justice, policy coherence and predictable support for civil society.
“Many countries are spending more on debt than education or health. We need to reform the current unjust international financial architecture,” says Aoi Horiuchi, Senior Advocacy Officer at JANIC, the civil society network for international cooperation in Japan.
Accountability must also be stronger. Voluntary reporting and soft review mechanisms have not been enough. A future agenda must be backed by mandatory, transparent and regular review, with independent oversight and a formal role for civil society and local actors in tracking progress and exposing implementation gaps.
And participation must mean more than consultation after decisions are already taking shape. Civil society needs a formalised, meaningful and safe role in both negotiating and implementing the future framework, especially for local actors and groups continuing to face structural or political exclusion.
“Meaningful change comes from meaningful participation. That’s why we need to defend civic space,” says Horiuchi.
What must be declined
Some directions already visible in early discussions must be rejected outright.
A thinner agenda that lowers ambition in the name of consensus must be declined. So must any attempt to weaken universality, rights, gender equality, civic freedoms or climate ambition for political expediency.
The continuation of a financial status quo that deepens inequality while speaking the language of partnership must also be declined. So must accountability arrangements that remain symbolic, selective or performative.
And tokenistic participation must be named for what it is. A process that brings civil society into the room for appearance’s sake while excluding it from agenda-setting, decision-making and follow-through is managed exclusion.
Finally, as development governance evolves, the expanding role of private and philanthropic actors must not come without public-interest safeguards, democratic oversight and accountability. Public goals cannot be left to unaccountable power.
We must get out of silos, create spaces of dialogue, of co-responsibility and raise the question of whether the post-2030 framework will be more honest about power, more serious about accountability, more capable of confronting structural inequality, and more open to those whose lives and rights are most at stake.
Our answer is here:
Defend what must not be lost.
Demand what must be corrected.
Decline what would weaken the future.
IPS UN Bureau
Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
Credit: Amnesty International
Vanuatu has spearheaded a UN General Assembly resolution, expected to be tabled on May 20, 2026, to endorse and operationalize the 2025 International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion, which confirmed that nations have binding legal duties to prevent and repair climate-related harm. The resolution, supported by a core group including Singapore and the Netherlands, calls for implementing these legal standards to protect vulnerable states from climate disasters, despite resistance from major polluters.
By Shristi Gautam and Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, May 20 2026 (IPS)
Normally, resolutions voted at the United Nations General Assembly do not make the headlines.
As nonbinding and mostly symbolic, rich in principles yet empty and lacking the power to carry consequences, these statements are shrugged off and ignored.
But there are exceptions, and today’s (May 20) UNGA vote is one of them. The reason is that a positive vote would constitute a significant development in the evolution of international environmental law. To understand what we are referring to, let us allow a small flashback.
Far from South Asia, a trailblazing effort to hold a private corporation accountable for climate-damaging harm played out in a German court in recent years. For the first time, a Peruvian farmer filed a case against a major German energy company, accusing it of gravely damaging his livelihood due to its contributions to climate warming.
Even though this case, known as Lliuya v. RWE, was ultimately rejected in May 2025, it opened a new era in one of the most promising fields for achieving climate justice: climate litigation.
In the words of experts from the Grantham Research Institute, Lliuya v. RWE “established a powerful legal precedent that can be replicated in courts worldwide and will shape the trajectory for future climate litigation: corporate greenhouse gas emitters can, in principle, be held liable for their contribution to climate change impacts.”
Climate litigation, as an approach to pursue justice, is relatively new but is on the rise worldwide. There are more and more legal cases being filed in courts of law to uphold the principles of climate equity and climate justice and to pursue the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, a precondition to the enjoyment of other rights, such as the right to life, health, and an adequate standard of living.
After years of litigation, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the state has an obligation to reduce emissions because adaptive efforts alone are insufficient. More groundbreaking cases followed. In the Los Cedros case, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court established another pioneering precedent, affirming the primacy of the Right of Nature over mining concessions.
These rulings created momentum for bolder climate action, both in courts and in the streets, where millions of people across the Global South and North protested vigorously against climate injustice.
Within the international climate regime established by the Paris Agreement in 2015, the voices of developing nations, especially small island developing states, grew louder in opposition to unchecked greenhouse gas pollution, mostly from the Global North.
Unfortunately, there have been only very partial advancements within the UNFCCC framework. Last year, Climate COP 30, chaired by Brazil in Belém and supposed to be the COP of action and implementation, ended in another major disappointment. It is difficult to find optimism that the upcoming COP 31 in Türkiye will bear the transformative results humanity so desperately needs.
But an extraordinary legal effort, initially launched by law students from the Pacific in 2021 and later embraced by the Government of Vanuatu, paid off. On 23 July last year, the International Court of Justice issued the landmark Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change. It was a truly game-changing moment for the fight for climate justice, even if the AO is non-binding.
Among its several remarkable aspects, the Paris Agreement’s obligations are not only procedural but also substantive, and states have stringent due diligence obligations. The ICJ also rejected the concept of “Lex Specialis,” clarifying that states’ obligations extend beyond the Paris Agreement, which, as a treaty, does not take precedence over other sources of law.
In plain terms, governments cannot hide behind the negotiations within the various climate COPs. They must do more. The ruling explicitly demands that states do whatever they can, within their means, to meet their commitments to reduce climate change.
It is not enough for a state to submit a Nationally Determined Contribution, its national plan to mitigate greenhouse emissions. A state may also be considered responsible for failing to take regulatory and legislative measures to limit not only its own emissions but also greenhouse gases produced by the private sector within its own borders.
The AO could not be clearer: “A breach by a State of any of the obligations identified by the Court in relation to climate change constitutes an internationally wrongful act entailing the responsibility of that State.”
Today, the Pacific island of Vanuatu, a true trailblazer showing that small developing nations can punch above their weight with moral leadership, is once again attempting to make history by bringing a UNGA Resolution on the AO.
Even without enforceable power, this resolution wants to reaffirm the principles enshrined in the Advisory Opinion, marking another step toward states’ accountability under international law.
According to the Climate Litigation Database, hosted by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, more than 3,000 lawsuits have been filed against governments and private-sector carbon emitters, including banks and asset management companies.
Today’s UNGA Resolution was supported by a diverse coalition including the Netherlands, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Barbados, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Jamaica, the Philippines, and Burkina Faso.
Despite Nepal’s limited international engagement in recent months due to its own political transitions and elections, the new government led by Prime Minister Balendra Shah must join this group of nations.
Nepal must devise a strategy to revamp its climate efforts at the international level and, critically, do so beyond the Paris Agreement negotiations. There must be recognition that future negotiations within the UNFCCC will not be less fraught or complicated.
A series of policy papers published by the British think tank ODI exposed the hypocrisy of many governments that, in theory, are sympathetic and supportive of the climate fight of small island developing states, yet in their own submissions before the ICJ, resisted and opposed further legal obligations beyond the Paris Agreement.
This duplicity is embraced not only by developed nations but also by India and China, two of the most vocal defenders of the rights of developing nations within the Paris Agreement framework.
The incredibly complex politics of climate negotiations mean only one thing: courts of law may end up offering the only realistic venue for climate-vulnerable nations to pursue redress. As explained by The Guardian, Vanuatu was even forced to compromise some of the most progressive and climate-justice-centered aspects of this resolution in order to build the widest possible coalition of supporting nations.
Meanwhile, the ongoing tensions in the Gulf are offering a silver lining: more and more nations are realizing that phasing out carbon emissions is becoming irreversible. A few weeks ago, a pioneering gathering was held in Santa Marta, Colombia, the first-ever conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Although Nepal was invited, there was no news of the government’s participation.
While climate negotiations within the UNFCCC should not be dismissed, it is time to embrace another approach to seeking climate justice. The pursuit of climate justice through local and international courts may offer the most effective remedy to ensure the primary goal of the Paris Agreement, limiting climate warming to 1.5°C, is realistically pursued.
Nepal’s government will surely cast the right vote at the UNGA today. At the same time, we hope the new federal government will do whatever it takes to reiterate and expand its commitment to international law to stop climate change in the highest courts and global forums. We also hope it will create a conducive environment for climate litigation to thrive and become a tool for climate accountability that reaches everyone.
Shristi Gautam is the Past Co-Lead of World’s Youth for Climate Justice, Nepal, and Founder of Nyaya Vatika; Simone Galimberti is the pro bono co-founder of The Good Leadership.
IPS UN Bureau
Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau