Agrégateur de flux

Krankheitsbedingte Fehltage von Beschäftigten in Deutschland sind 2022 stark gestiegen – Grund ist aber nicht primär die elektronische Krankschreibung – Atemwegserkrankungen und verändertes Verhalten nach der Pandemie sorgen für mehr Fehlzeiten am Arbeitsplatz – Teilkrankschreibung und mehr ...

In today's edition: Kallas frustration, UNIFIL, drones, and EPF

Le drone naval retrouvé le 8 mai dans la grotte d'une île grecque était bien ukrainien. « Il s'agit d'une question extrêmement grave, affectant la liberté et la sécurité de navigation », a réagi le ministre grec de la Défense, Nikos Dendias, ce mardi 12 mai. Comment ce drone, bourré d'explosifs, a-t-il pu se retrouver si loin de l'Ukraine et à quelles fins ?

Le Monténégro offre en théorie sa protection aux demandeurs d'asile persécutés dans leurs pays d'origine pour leur orientation sexuelle ou leur identité de genre. Dans la pratique, pourtant, les demandes sont presque toujours rejetées. Enquête.

- Articles / Monténégro, Migrants Balkans, LGBT, Populations, minorités et migrations, CIN Crne Gore, Une - Diaporama

Le Monténégro offre en théorie sa protection aux demandeurs d'asile persécutés dans leurs pays d'origine pour leur orientation sexuelle ou leur identité de genre. Dans la pratique, pourtant, les demandes sont presque toujours rejetées. Enquête.

- Articles / Monténégro, Migrants Balkans, LGBT, Populations, minorités et migrations, CIN Crne Gore, Une - Diaporama

In today's edition: Brazilian meat, food safety package, fertilisers

Ce mercredi, les médias en ligne à Kinshasa mettent en avant deux sujets majeurs : les sanctions américaines contre Kigali et les réactions critiques suscitées par la révision de la Constitution évoquant un possible troisième mandat du président Tshisekedi.

A propos du changement de la Constitution

Le Potentiel : RDC : Bruno Tshibala s’oppose à toute révision constitutionnelle et appelle au Dialogue National

Vasárnap ért véget a Csíkszeredai Könyvvásár 11. kiadása. Mintegy ötven kiadó, 130 meghívott és 10 ezer látogató – ez a négynapos esemény gyorsmérlege. Prigye Kinga a szervezőcsapat részéről, Hajdú Áron, a BookArt kiadó igazgatója szakmai partnerként jelentkezett be a Tetőteraszra. Házigazda: Rostás-Péter István

Articolul „Az irodalomhoz olvasó is kell” apare prima dată în Kolozsvári Rádió Románia.

Le Kosovo retournera aux urnes le 6 juin pour la troisième fois en 18 mois. Le coût du scrutin est évalué à dix millions d'euros, mais le pays va perdre bien plus en raison de son instabilité institutionnelle. Et rien ne garantit que ces nouvelles élections permettront de sortir du blocage... L'analyse d'Augustin Palokaj.

- Articles / Kosovo, Kosovo Vetëvendosje, Politique, Koha Ditore

Le Kosovo retournera aux urnes le 6 juin pour la troisième fois en 18 mois. Le coût du scrutin est évalué à dix millions d'euros, mais le pays va perdre bien plus en raison de son instabilité institutionnelle. Et rien ne garantit que ces nouvelles élections permettront de sortir du blocage... L'analyse d'Augustin Palokaj.

- Articles / Kosovo, Kosovo Vetëvendosje, Politique, Koha Ditore

A residential building in Beirut, Lebanon, lies in ruins. Credit: UNICEF/Fouad Choufany

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, May 13 2026 (IPS)

Violence has metastasized into humanity’s baseline condition. Yet international institutions remain paralyzed by vetoes and rivalry, offering hollow declarations while dehumanization becomes normalized. Coordinated action, not gestures, is desperately needed.

Global violence today is metastasizing, not contained; over 180,000 violent events reported globally by the International Institute for Strategic Studies signal a world in which conflict has become a baseline condition rather than an exception. More than 130 armed conflicts now rage—over twice the number of 15 years ago—shattering infrastructure, tearing apart social fabric, and normalizing dehumanization as a political weapon.

Women and children bear the brunt: hundreds of millions live within range of armed clashes, with millions of preventable deaths and lifelong trauma caused not only by bullets and bombs but by hunger, disease, and gender-based violence unleashed by war’s chaos.

Yet the UN system and the world’s democracies appear increasingly paralyzed—trapped in vetoes, geopolitical rivalries, and hollow declarations—offering gestures of concern rather than the coordinated, enforced accountability this modern plague of violence so desperately demands.

The global escalation of violence is a structural crisis rather than an aberration—one that reveals the failure of international institutions, exposing the normalization of suffering across political, economic, and societal dimensions.

The proliferation of violence signals not just an increase in armed confrontations but a breakdown in the very mechanisms meant to constrain conflict, rendering dehumanization a routine tool of power, as demonstrated in the following.

The Philosophical Angle

Violence represents the collapse of legitimate political authority and the rise of impotence masquerading as force. Hannah Arendt’s foundational insight remains essential: “Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course, it ends in power’s disappearance” (On Violence, 1970).

This speaks directly to today’s proliferation of conflicts, which indicate not state strength but institutional failure, where violence substitutes for the consent and legitimacy governments can no longer command. The resort to violence signals the exhaustion of political dialogue and the absence of legitimate power structures capable of resolving disputes.

Economic Disenfranchisement

Economic drivers are critical accelerants of contemporary violence through resource competition, commodity exploitation, and systemic inequality. Slavoj Žižek’s concept of systemic violence captures the pervasive economic roots: “Therein resides the fundamental systemic violence of capitalism, much more uncanny than the direct pre-capitalist socio-ideological violence: this violence is no longer attributable to concrete individuals and their ‘evil’ intentions, but is purely ‘objective,’ systemic, anonymous.”

The greed-driven exploitation of natural resources—from diamonds in Sierra Leone to oil in Venezuela and cobalt and other conflict minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo—finances rebellions and turns conflict into a profitable enterprise. Economic deprivation, geoeconomic confrontation through weaponized tariffs and sanctions, and commodity price shocks directly shape military capacity and conflict outcomes.

The Political Compulsion of Violence

Political violence emerges not merely from divergent interests but from the deliberate choice to pursue objectives through coercion rather than negotiation. The paralysis of the UNSC and democratic institutions reflects what Arendt identified as bureaucratic tyranny: “In a fully developed bureaucracy, there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. … everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act… where we are all equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.”

This captures the international community’s inability to enforce accountability—vetoes and geopolitical rivalries create a structural void where violence thrives unchecked. Political fragility and weakening institutions, seen in Syria and Myanmar, make societies vulnerable to breakdown, radicalization, and violent dissent.

Societal Fragmentation

Societal conditions create climates where violence becomes normalized through inequality and the erosion of social cohesion. Thomas Hobbes’s bleak assessment of unconstrained human nature remains relevant: in the state of nature, “the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” While Hobbes described a pre-political condition, his insight applies to societies where governance collapses and fear dominates, conditions now afflicting millions living within range of armed clashes.

Social norms that accept violence as conflict resolution, combined with economic inequalities and a lack of community participation, create environments where aggression flourishes. This normalizes dehumanization, where, as in Nigeria, Israel and South Africa, gendered violence, ethnic tensions, and historical grievances fuel recurring cycles of brutality.

Nationalism, Repression and State Complicity

State-level factors amplifying violence include the failure to address ethnic marginalization, resource competition, and the absence of functional governance. Walter Benjamin warned of violence’s relationship to law and state power: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism” (On the Concept of History, 1940).

This observation underscores how national institutions perpetuate violence through their foundational structures and exclusionary practices. Nations repeatedly falling victim to civil and international wars demonstrate governments’ inability to recognize and address destabilizing issues like political, religious, or ethnic marginalization. The weaponization of state apparatus through totalitarian mobilization of violence destroys the very space where political thinking and resistance might occur, as demonstrated in China and Eritrea.

Religious Instrumentalization

Religion, when co-opted by political actors or stripped of its ethical core, becomes a potent catalyst for violence, sanctifying exclusion and legitimizing brutality. Sectarian divides—whether in the Middle East, South Asia, or parts of Africa—transform identity into a battlefield where compromise is heresy and annihilation becomes duty. René Girard’s insight is instructive: “Religion shelters us from violence just as violence seeks shelter in religion.” When faith is manipulated to justify power or grievance, such as in India, Israel or Iraq, it ceases to restrain violence and instead consecrates it, deepening cycles of retribution and rendering conflicts existential rather than negotiable.

The convergence of these dimensions explains why violence has become a baseline condition rather than an exception. Several measures must be considered to de-escalate global violence. Although effecting change is extremely difficult, every effort must still be made, provided the public leads the charge through sustained protest, continuous advocacy, and relentless pressure on policymakers to enact change.

Reform UN Security Council Veto Power

Governments must constrain veto authority by restricting its use in cases involving genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Permanent members should abstain when directly involved, transforming the veto from obstruction into accountability and addressing institutional paralysis that enables unchecked violence.

Establish Functional Early Warning Systems

International bodies should implement systems linking detection to preventive action, closing the warning-response gap. These must integrate predictive analytics, local expertise, and cross-border coordination to anticipate violence months before eruption, enabling timely diplomatic and humanitarian intervention.

Address Economic Inequality and Insecurity

Governments should implement policies that reduce income inequality—including wage increases, tax reform, and financial assistance—aimed at addressing violence triggers. Targeted lending, job creation, and redistributive policies alleviate financial strain that fuels conflict and crime, making structural prevention more effective than reactive measures.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is President of the Institute for Humanitarian Conflict Resolution.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

  

 

Also, in Wednesday’s edition: Rama drama, train booking, Brazil grill

L’Organisation internationale pour les migrations (OIM) a révélé, mardi 12 mai à Bunia, la disparition de 245 enfants au cours de l’année 2025 dans la seule province de l’Ituri. Un chiffre jugé alarmant, présenté lors d’un atelier consacré à la traite des êtres humains et au trafic illicite des migrants.

La guerre change. Elle a toujours changé. Mais depuis le XXe siècle, le rythme de cette transformation s’est accéléré à une vitesse sans précédent. Les conflits modernes ne ressemblent plus aux batailles rangées d’autrefois — ils mettent en jeu des technologies, des doctrines et des menaces que les générations précédentes n’auraient pas pu imaginer. Des […]

Paris a clamé son désir d’investir sur le continent lors du sommet Africa Forward, qui s’est ouvert le 11 mai au cœur de la capitale kényane. Mais, sur ces marchés dynamiques, la compétition est rude.

Es ist das Treffen der Supermächte: Donald Trump besucht Xi Jinping in Peking. Während der US-Präsident nach vorweisbaren Erfolgen für seinen Wahlkampf sucht, hofft China auf ein Einknicken der USA in der Taiwan-Frage.

Mardi, un bateau de l’ONG Sea-Watch a été visé par des tirs provenant de Lybie alors qu’il venait en aide à 90 personnes fuyant ce pays d’Afrique. Les embarcations libyennes impliquées ont été fournies à Tripoli par l’Union européenne et l’Italie.

Diplomacy of the highest quality is more essential than ever.

Europe has 'failed on both counts' in pursuit of diversification and security of supply, analyst warns