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On Thursday, 11 December 2025, the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) will organise a public hearing on "Illegal Settlements in the West Bank". This hearing will provide an opportunity to assess recent developments on the ground. The discussion will inform the next steps of the European Parliament in holding the EU institutions accountable for the effective implementation of its positions on settlements.
Over 700,000 Israeli settlers live across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, covering an estimated 14% of the territory. These settlements are illegal under international law, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention, and stand in contradiction with UN Security Council Resolution 233 (1967). Settlement expansion is a major obstacle to the viability of a two-state solution, the only path to sustainable peace endorsed by the European Union and the international community.
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AFET hearings
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

On Monday, 15 December, the Committees on Foreign Affairs and on Development and the Subcommittee on Human Rights will hold a joint exchange of views with representatives of the 2025 Sakharov Prize laureates Andrzej Poczobut from Belarus and Mzia Amaglobeli from Georgia.
Andrzej Poczobut is a journalist, essayist, blogger and activist from the Polish minority in Belarus. Known for his opposition to Alexander Lukashenko's regime, he has become a symbolic figure in the struggle for freedom and democracy in Belarus. Detained since 2021 and sentenced to eight years, he has endured solitary confinement. In a resolution adopted on 15 March 2023, the European Parliament called Andrzej Poczobut's immediate and unconditional release. Mzia Amaglobeli, a Georgian journalist and director of online media outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti, is the first female political prisoner in Georgia since its independence, and a fighter for freedom of expression. Detained in 2025 and imprisoned for two years, Amaglobeli has become a prominent symbol of Georgia's pro-democracy protest movement. The European Parliament demanded on 19 June 2025 Mzia Amaglobeli's immediate and unconditional release and condemned the Georgian Dream authorities.
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Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

La fin de semaine s’annonce agitée sur le plan météorologique. Plusieurs wilayas du pays subissent déjà un temps froid et très humide, et les prévisions […]

L’article La météo en Algérie ce 05/12 : quelles sont les wilayas touchées par la pluie, la neige et le froid ? est apparu en premier sur .

The UN General Assembly in session. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Anwarul Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Dec 5 2025 (IPS)

From its inception, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) has been engaged in improving its working methods, mindful of, as early as in 1949, “… the increasing length of General Assembly sessions, and of the growing tendency towards protracted debates”.

Since the leadership of legendary Ambassador Samir Shihabi of Saudi Arabia as President of the General Assembly (PGA) during the 46th session in 1991 and thereafter, the Assembly’s agenda has included a dedicated item on the revitalization of the work of the Assembly and its Main Committees.

Since the 60th session in 2005, under the guidance of its articulate and forward-looking President, Ambassador Jan Eliasson of Sweden, the Assembly has established the Ad Hoc Working Group on the revitalization of the work of the General Assembly. Its mandate was to “to identify ways to further enhance the role, authority, effectiveness and efficiency of the General Assembly”.

Till now, more than 200 outcomes have been recorded in 30 different areas. The incumbent President of the landmark 80th session, Annalena Baerbock of Germany has now taken the initiative to move forward substantively on this perennial exercise of the world’s most universal multilateral body.

Election of a Woman as the Next Secretary-General

I would strongly suggest that her forward-looking leadership would restore the operational credibility of the United Nations by including in its revitalization exercise the role of the Secretary-General, facilitating the election of a woman as the next Secretary-General, transparency of the UN’s budgetary processes, addressing the current and future liquidity crises, and meaningful inclusivity of civil society in the Assembly’s work.

The role, functions and leadership of the Secretary-General need special attention of the Assembly as the appointing authority. The 75th PGA in 2020 Volkan Bozkir has rightly identified that “the Secretary-General is the engine and the transmission system”.

It is unfortunate that questions have been raised about the reticence of the Secretary-General in getting his hands dirty and in getting more proactively involved in and in mobilizing his senior management team towards ending the ongoing global conflicts and wars and promoting peace and reconciliation.

In a recent op-ed, a former UNICEF Deputy Executive Director and a longtime UN watcher Kul Chandra Gautam even exhorted the SG “not to hide behind the glasshouse at Turtle Bay and go beyond invisible subtle diplomacy to more visible shuttle diplomacy.”

After choosing nine men successively to be the world’s topmost diplomat, I strongly believe that the United Nations should have the sanity and sagacity of electing a woman as its next Secretary-General.

In its resolution A/79/372 adopted as recently as on 5 September this year, the Assembly in its paragraph 42(c) says that “ Noting with regret that no woman has ever held the position of Secretary-General, encourages Member States to strongly consider nominating women as candidates” and it also asserted in its paragraph 42(k) that “The Secretary General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council, in accordance with Article 97 of the Charter”.

The same resolution (79/327) committed the UNGA “ … to the continued implementation of … its resolution 76/262 of 26 April 2022 on the veto initiative, to enhance the work of the General Assembly, taking into account its role on matters related to the maintenance of international peace and security …”. In the current exercise, this area, of course, needs further attention and elaboration.

Transparency and accountability are essential in the budget processes of the UN.

Two other areas which need more scrutiny are extra budgetary resources received from Member States and consultancy practices including budgetary allocations for that by the Organization. Special attention in these areas is needed to restore the UN’s credibility and thereby effectiveness and efficiency for the benefit of the humanity as a whole.

Future financial and Liquidity crises

Tough decisions needed to avoid future financial and liquidity crises needed genuine engagement by all sides, yes, ALL sides, in particular the major “assessed” contributors.

Peacekeeping operations also face increasing liquidity pressure as the outstanding contributions for that area are reported to be $3.16 billion. These accumulations have been building up for some years. Why was no extra effort made by all sides well ahead of time to avoid the recurrent panic about the Organization’s liquidity crises?

Today’s financial and liquidity crisis is not caused by recent withholding of payments by a few major contributors for political reasons. Outstanding contributions for UN’s regular budget reached $2.27 billion last month.

At the UN, though the “process is an intergovernmental one and thereby Member States-driven”, absence of civil society involvement would seriously undermine the role and contribution of “We the Peoples …”. PGA Bozkir asserted that “civil society is the pillar of democracy, and we must, after some time, find a way that civil society is (re)presented here”.

Enhancing the UN’s credibility

Also, I am of the opinion that a formalized and mandated involvement of and genuine consultation with the civil society would enhance the UN’s credibility. The UN leadership and Member States should work diligently on that without fail for a decision by the on-going 80th session of the General Assembly.

Under the bold, upbeat and clear-sighted leadership of the incumbent PGA Annalena Baerbock whose proactive and forward-looking role has already drawn wide appreciative attention, the international community needs to wish her best of luck in this very important endeavor to revitalize the apex body of most universal multilateral entity – the UN General Assembly – in a positive way.

For that, now is the time to discuss and to decide on the urgent, focused and meaningful areas of action. The UN’s long-drawn revitalization efforts in reality should not end again in the repetitive regularity of an omnibus of redundancy.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations; Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN; Initiator of the UNSCR 1325 as the President of the UN Security Council in March 2000; Chairman of the UN General Assembly’s Main Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Matters and Founder of the Global Movement for The Cultural of Peace (GMCoP

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Stephanie Hodge
NEW YORK, Dec 5 2025 (IPS)

Let’s just say the quiet part out loud: the UN is not reforming because it suddenly woke up one morning inspired by efficiency. It’s reforming because the Organization is broke. Not metaphorically broke. Not diplomatically broke. Actually broke. The kind of broke where arrears sit at $1.586 billion and everyone pretends that’s just an unfortunate bookkeeping hiccup instead of the fact that the lights are flickering.

So, the Secretary-General stands before the Fifth Committee and announces a slimmed-down 2026 budget, thousands of posts vanished, a payroll moved across continents, and a brave new era of administrative consolidation.

And everyone nods because what else can you do when you’re trying to keep a 1945 institution upright on a 2025 income stream? But the truth is far simpler than the polished speech: this is not bold reform. This is the UN tightening its belt to the last notch and pretending it’s a fashion choice.

The real solution is embarrassingly practical.

First, Member States have to pay what they owe. That’s it. That’s the root. You cannot starve an institution of a billion and a half dollars and then evaluate it for underperformance. You can’t expect the UN to deliver peacekeeping, human rights, climate action, oceans, cyber governance, gender equality, humanitarian assistance, and the rest of the alphabet of global problems when its bank account is emptier than its inbox during August recess.

Second, Member States need to stop adding new mandates while ignoring the ones already sitting unfunded in the corner like neglected houseplants. You cannot keep handing the UN new global responsibilities and then act surprised that the staff who once ran these mandates are now buried in work or—more likely—gone.

Third, the UN needs to do what every other global institution did a decade ago: consolidate the administrative empires. Forty different HR units. Forty different procurement interpretations. Forty flavours of “policy exceptions.”

This is not a sign of diversity; it’s a sign of institutional sleepwalking. One payroll system. One procurement backbone. One HR servicing model. That is what real efficiency looks like, not cutting the travel budget until only three people can attend a conference on another continent.

Fourth, move the repetitive administrative work to lower-cost duty stations. Not because it’s trendy, but because it’s rational. Shift the paperwork, not the expertise.

Relocate the forms, the workflows, the endless approvals—not the chemists, the human rights lawyers, the peacebuilders, the environmental scientists, the country advisers. Protect the people who actually deliver.

And finally, digitize the system so staff aren’t drowning in PDFs like some tragic archive-themed Greek myth. Half the UN’s memory is lost every time someone retires because it lives in Outlook folders from 2011. If the UN is going to survive, it needs modern, automated systems, not heroic acts of manual labour disguised as institutional knowledge.

None of this is glamorous. None of this is the stuff of commemorative plaques. But it is real. It is possible. And it is necessary.

The SG insists these cuts will not affect mandate delivery. But let’s be honest: no institution on earth can do more with less indefinitely. At some point, it simply does less. The only question is whether we choose what gets dropped or whether it drops itself.

UN80 has been sold as a transformation, but it is really a house-keeping operation performed with the water already turned off. If Member States want a functioning UN—one that can actually deliver on the mandates they vote for—they need to pay their dues, stop loading the wagon, and let the Secretariat modernize without political micromanagement.

That is the rice and the beans. Everything else is garnish.

And What About All Those Agencies?”

Whenever the Secretary-General announces a grand reform — especially one involving massive cuts, relocations, and talk of agility — there’s always one unspoken question hanging in the air like incense in a cathedral: And what about all those agencies?

Because let’s be honest, the UN family is not a family so much as a complicated set of second cousins who share a last name but not a bank account. The SG can trim 18% of Secretariat posts, merge payroll, consolidate admin, and talk about efficiency until New York freezes over — but the agencies?

They watch from the balcony like disinterested aristocrats at an estate auction, whispering: “Poor Secretariat… hope they manage.”

In reality, UN80 puts every agency on notice — not officially, not publicly, but structurally.

Here is the quiet truth:
If the Secretariat collapses under arrears, the agencies feel it next.

They pretend they won’t. They talk about voluntary contributions, earmarked funding, trust funds, vertical funds, and country programmes as if that protects them. But the whole UN system is tied together like one of those old wooden chairs: take out the wrong leg and suddenly the “independent” agencies wobble.

UNDP will smile and say its revenue base is safe — but the second the Secretariat starts relocating services to Bangkok and Nairobi, guess who also taps those services? UNDP. And UNICEF. And UN Women. And UNEP.

Everyone wants the cheaper admin backbone, until it becomes overcrowded like a budget airline terminal in August.

UNESCO and FAO will make statements about their distinct governance structures, but they’re already stretched so thin that one more global conference could snap them like linguine. WHO will keep its aura of authority, but even they know that when the Secretariat starts consolidating payroll and procurement, the agencies follow sooner or later, kicking and screaming in their Geneva offices while quietly drafting transition plans.

WFP will insist it is different because it is operational. But operational agencies depend on global rules, global oversight, global HR, global justice systems — all housed in the Secretariat that just had 3,000 posts shaved off like a sheep at shearing season.

The Specialized Agencies always pretend they are immune until someone tries to harmonize systems, and then suddenly every executive head wakes up in a cold sweat muttering “gateway compliance” and “IPSAS alignment.”

What about UNHCR? They run on emergencies and adrenaline. They know exactly what this means: more work, fewer resources, and donor expectations rising faster than sea levels.

And the irony?

Every agency will publicly congratulate the SG on “courageous reform” while privately updating their risk registers with words like systemic, interdependency failure, and catastrophic liquidity contagion.

Because the truth is this:
If the Secretariat downsizes, everyone else eventually tightens their belt.

Not because they want to, but because global funding follows global politics, and global politics right now looks like a group of countries fighting over who forgot to pay the electricity bill.

So, what happens to all those agencies?

They watch the Secretariat shrink and hope the tide doesn’t reach their floor.

But the tide always reaches the next floor. Always.

UN80 is not just an internal reform. It’s the start of a system-wide reckoning.

A warning shot that the era of infinite mandates and shrinking wallets is over.

In the end, even the agencies know the rice-and-beans truth:

If Member States don’t fund the UN, the whole family — not just the Secretariat — goes hungry.

Stephanie Hodge, MPA Harvard (2006), is an international evaluator and former UN advisor who has worked across 140 countries. She is a former staffer of UNDP (1994-1996 & 1999- 2004) and UNICEF (2008-2014). She writes on governance, multilateral reform, and climate equity.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A nuclear test is carried out on an island in French Polynesia in 1971. Credit: CTBTO

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 5 2025 (IPS)

President Donald Trump’s recent announcement to resume nuclear testing rekindles nightmares of a bygone era where military personnel and civilians were exposed to devastating radioactive fallouts.

In the five decades between 1945 and the opening for the signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, over 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out all over the world. The United States conducted 1,032 tests between 1945 and 1992.

According to published reports and surveys, it was primarily military personnel who participated in U.S. nuclear weapons testing. The U.S. government initially withheld information about the effects of radiation, leading to health problems for many veterans.

And it was not until 1996 that Congress repealed the Nuclear Radiation and Secrecy Agreements Act, which allowed veterans to discuss their experiences without fear of treason charges.

Although a 1998 compensation bill did not pass, the government has since issued an apology to the survivors and their families.

Some civilians were exposed to radioactive fallout from early nuclear tests, like the Trinity test in New Mexico. And like atomic veterans, these civilians also suffered from long-term health effects due to their exposure to radiation, the reports said.

Dr. M.V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security Director pro tem of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told IPS one doesn’t know exactly what kind of nuclear tests might be conducted.

Even though the United States has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, in 1963, it did sign and ratify the “Treaty banning nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water,” commonly known as the Partial Test Ban Treaty.

Since then, he pointed out, all of its nuclear tests have been conducted underground. There are two kinds of environmental dangers associated with underground nuclear tests. The first is that radioactive contamination may escape into the atmosphere, either at the time of the explosion or more gradually during routine post-test activities.

“More than half of all tests conducted at the Nevada Test site have led to radioactivity being released to the atmosphere. The second is that the radioactivity left underground makes its way over a long period of time into groundwater or to the surface.”

In 1999, he said, scientists detected plutonium 1.3 kilometers away from a 1968 nuclear weapons test in Nevada. In addition to these environmental dangers, the greater danger is that if the United States resumes nuclear weapon testing, then other countries would follow suit.

“Already, we have seen calls to prepare to resume testing from hawks in other countries, such as India.”

Decades ago, Ramana pointed out, when the US government planned to test nuclear weapons at Bikini atoll, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) said, “What should be vaporized is not an obsolete battleship but the whole process of the manufacture of the atomic bomb.”

“That statement is still relevant. We should be shutting down the capacity to build and use nuclear weapons, not refining the ability to carry out mass murder,” declared Dr. Ramana.

Meanwhile, in the five decades between 1945 and the opening for signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, over 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out all over the world.

• • The United States conducted 1,032 tests between 1945 and 1992.

 

• • The Soviet Union carried out 715 tests between 1949 and 1990.

 

• • The United Kingdom carried out 45 tests between 1952 and 1991.

 

• • France carried out 210 tests between 1960 and 1996.

 

• • China carried out 45 tests between 1964 and 1996.

 

• India carried out 1 test in 1974.

Natalie Goldring, Acronym Institute’s representative at the United Nations, told IPS that President Trump’s threat to resume US nuclear testing is remarkably shortsighted and dangerous, even by his impulsive and reckless standards.

“President Trump seems to be making the incorrect assumption that the US government always gets the last move in foreign policy. He attempts to conduct foreign policy by issuing pronouncements, rather than engaging in the hard work of policymaking and diplomacy or even ensuring that his actions are legal.”

In this case, he is apparently assuming that the US government can unilaterally decide to resume nuclear testing without prompting the same actions from other countries, she said.

Proponents of permanent nuclear weapons development and nuclear weapons testing claim that testing preserves the reliability of the arsenal and sends a message of US strength to potential adversaries.

“But the United States already has a robust testing program to ensure the reliability of its nuclear weapons. Rather than demonstrating strength, a US return to nuclear weapons testing could be used as a justification to do the same by other current and prospective nuclear weapons states. In effect, it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

As William Broad recently reported in the New York Times, part of the challenge of interpreting President Trump’s pronouncement on nuclear testing is that it’s not clear what he means. Does he mean full-scale, supercritical testing, or is he talking about testing that produces an extremely small explosion, such as hydronuclear testing?

Either way, the US government would be breaking the testing moratorium that it has observed since 1992, she pointed out.

“Nuclear testing has ramifications and costs in many areas, including human, political, economic, environmental, military, and legal. States with nuclear weapons tend to focus on the perceived military and political aspects of these weapons.”

But they frequently ignore the profound human, economic, and environmental costs for those who were soldiers or civilians at or near test sites or in the areas surrounding those sites. Little attention or funding has been provided to survivors or to cleaning up the land poisoned by nuclear testing, said Goldring.

Rather than resuming nuclear testing, those funds could be used to help remedy the effects of past tests, including reducing some of the human and environmental costs.

Instead of threatening to resume nuclear tests and risking that other countries with nuclear weapons will follow our dangerous example, President Trump could take more constructive actions.

One immediate example is that the last nuclear arms control agreement between the US government and Russia, New START, expires early next year. This agreement limited the number of deployed nuclear weapons for both the United States and Russia and contained useful verification provisions that are unlikely to continue when the agreement expires.

It’s probably too late to negotiate even a simple follow-on agreement, but the US and Russia could still commit to maintaining New START’s limits, said Goldring.

If President Trump really wants to be the peacemaker he claims to be, he could commit the United States to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The TPNW is a comprehensive renunciation of nuclear weapons programs; States commit themselves not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use, or threaten to use nuclear weapons.

“Rather than taking us backwards, as President Trump proposes to do, we need to move forward.”

In 1946, Albert Einstein wrote, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

The TPNW offers a way forward out of this predicament. Testing will perpetuate and exacerbate the human, environmental, and economic costs, among others, she said.

This article is brought to you by IPS NORAM, in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International, in consultative status with the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Europe faces industrial collapse from high energy costs and inflexible green policies, the author warns. To protect jobs, policymakers must move beyond declarations and embrace pragmatism: reassess net-zero targets and diversify Europe's energy mix for sovereignty.

Any legal changes “must comply with the principles of political neutrality, responsibility and transparency”

The Council and the European Parliament reached a provisional agreement to simplify the EU deforestation regulation and postpone its application to ensure effective implementation.