Tag: Peace

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Health

France’s Le Maire says peace and safety in danger if African Covid restoration left behind

France's Le Maire says peace and security at risk if African Covid recovery left behind

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Wednesday warned that peace, security and global stability are in danger if the world’s economic superpowers do not contribute to Africa’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

African leaders met in Paris over the past two days in a summit convened by France to strike a multibillion-dollar “New Deal” to aid the continent’s economic and health revival.

The Summit on the Financing of African Economies brought together 21 heads of state from Africa and leaders of continental organizations along with European leaders and the heads of major international finance organizations. In a press conference Tuesday night, French President Emmanuel Macron said the summit had yielded “a New Deal for Africa and by Africa.”

The signatories called for an additional $650 billion of IMF Special Drawing Rights to be released to close the gap between developed and emerging economies. However, only $33 billion of this has been earmarked for African countries and European leaders have vowed to donate their own shares in order to bring the total for the continent close to $100 billion.

The IMF may also contribute some of its gold reserves and in a joint communique after the summit leaders suggested that “flexibility on debt and deficit ceilings” could be used to further alleviate the burden.

G-7 and G-20 urged to contribute

Le Maire indicated on Wednesday that the French government would be pushing for greater contributions from other major economies at the upcoming G-7 (Group of Seven) summit in the U.K. in mid-June, and would also be reaching out to the G-20.

“Developed countries have invested more than 25% of their GDP to fight against the consequences of the crisis and to engage a very strong economic recovery. In Africa, it is less than 2% of their GDP,” Le Maire told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick, adding that this trajectory risked a great divergence in the recoveries of economies and health care systems.

Workers transport the second shipment of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine upon its arrival at the O R Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on February 27, 2021.

Kim Ludbrook | AFP | Getty Images

“This would be a very important danger not only from an economic point of view, but a real danger for security, for peace, for stability, for illegal immigration, so I really urge everybody to be aware of the current situation of the African countries and to be aware of the necessity of putting more money (into) Africa.”

He suggested that rather than just deploying grants, governments should look to invest in small and medium-sized enterprises, supporting African entrepreneurs who are “at the core of the economic recovery.”

Despite maintaining comparatively low Covid-19 infection and death rates compared to the rest of the world, sub-Saharan Africa is projected by the IMF to have experienced a 3.3% decline in economic activity in 2020, the region’s first recession in 25 years. GDP growth projections for 2021 also lag significantly behind the rest of the world’s 6% estimate.

The drop in activity is expected to cost the region $115 billion in output losses this year and could push another 40 million people into poverty, effectively wiping out five years of progress against poverty.

In Tuesday’s press conference, Macron also set a goal to vaccinate 40% of the population of Africa by the end of 2021, calling the current situation both “unfair and inefficient.”

‘Vaccine apartheid’

The summit has urged the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization and the Medicines Patent Pool to remove intellectual property patents blocking the production of certain vaccines.

IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva cautioned on Tuesday of dire global economic consequences if the vaccine rollout fails in developing countries and the health crisis continues.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday told France24 that he welcomed the group’s call for major economies in the northern hemisphere to share their vaccine supplies.

“They have a huge surplus and we have no access, and that to me is vaccine apartheid and it can also be characterized as vaccine imperialism,” Ramaphosa said.

“We will never be able to defeat the pandemic, Covid-19, if we try to defeat it in the northern hemisphere only and not in the south.”

A landmark proposal to waive intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines was jointly submitted to the World Trade Organization by India and South Africa in October.

Several months on, however, it continues to be stonewalled by a small number of governments. These include the U.K., Switzerland, Japan, Norway, Canada, Australia, Brazil, the EU and — until recently — the United States.

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Politics

How Do the Nobel Peace Prize Nominations Work?

How Do the Nobel Peace Prize Nominations Work?

Unlike major Hollywood awards ceremonies where it’s really an honor to be nominated, the Nobel Peace Prize accepts submissions from a potential pool of thousands of nominees.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects the winner, does not announce the nominees or those who nominated them until 50 years later, so that participants can report their contributions at their own discretion.

After the deadline for this year’s nominations last Sunday, Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian dissident leader; Greta Thunberg, the youth activist for climate change; and the World Health Organization were among the nominees, Reuters reported.

Also mentioned were Stacey Abrams, the former Georgian politician who was credited with increasing voter turnout last year, and Jared Kushner, son-in-law and advisor to former President Donald J. Trump. (Mr Trump himself has been nominated for the award in at least two years of his presidency – with no two nominations faked in 2018.)

Reuters polled Norwegian lawmakers “who have been shown to have chosen the winner”.

The list of those who can submit nominations is long, including members of national governments. Officials of international peace organizations; University professors in history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology and religion; and former recipients.

The Nobel Committee says the large number of potential nominators ensures a “wide variety of candidates,” but the group is excited about the process and has not responded to a request for clarification on the suitability of nominators.

In 1967, the last year available in the Nobel Committee Archives, 95 nominations were received (an individual or group can be nominated multiple times in the same year). The committee said there were 318 submissions last year, up from a record 376 in 2016.

There are few criteria for nominees, and the process has sometimes been exploited for naked political reasons.

As is well known, an anti-fascist legislator from Sweden nominated Adolf Hitler in 1939 in an act of satire. He “never wanted his submission to be taken seriously,” says a note on his nomination in the archive.

Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, was nominated twice in 1945 and 1948. Benito Mussolini, the Italian ruler, was nominated twice in 1935.

The selection process for determining a recipient is much more rigorous. The committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament will deliberate in secret from February. The group limits submissions to a “short list” of 20 to 30 candidates prior to months of examination. The recipient will be announced in October.

The Nobel Committee has stressed that nominations are not an endorsement of the group and “must not be used to imply membership of the Nobel Peace Prize”.

But Mr Trump provides an example of how nominations themselves can be used to gain influence.

In 2019, Mr Trump announced to his supporters that he had been nominated by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a claim Mr Abe would not confirm. (This year’s award went to Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia.)

Last year, after two European leaders said they had nominated Mr. Trump, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany called it “a hard-earned and well-deserved honor for this president.”

The 2020 award was later awarded to the World Food Program.

Mr Trump was actually nominated by two right-wing Scandinavian MPs. For his followers, however, the personal politics of the nominators or their low likelihood of receiving the award were less important than their looks.

“Every day Donald Trump is nominated for another Nobel Prize,” beamed Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham on her show. “It is obvious that Trump should receive the Nobel Prize.”

At a campaign event in October, Mr Trump complained that his nomination received less coverage than his predecessor’s. (President Barack Obama actually received the award in 2009.)

“I was just nominated for the Nobel Prize,” he said. “And then I turned on the fake news story by story. They talk about your weather on the panhandle and they talk about it. Story after story, no mention. Do you remember when Obama got it right in the beginning and didn’t even know why he got it? “

The award for Mr Obama, just nine months into his first term, was received with surprise and confusion even by the recipient.

“To be honest,” Obama said afterwards, “I don’t feel like I deserve to be with so many of the transformative personalities who have won this award, men and women who inspire and inspire me have the whole world through their courageous pursuit of peace. “

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World News

What to Know as Troubled Afghan Peace Talks Enter a New Part

What to Know as Troubled Afghan Peace Talks Enter a New Phase

KABUL, Afghanistan – After four decades of fierce fighting in Afghanistan, peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban have at least opened the possibility that the long cycle of violence may one day end.

But that milestone is still a long way off. The most recent round of discussions, which started in September, was fraught with bureaucratic problems and months of debates on minor issues.

And although these talks resulted in an agreement on the principles and procedures that will guide the next round of peace negotiations, they came with a price. As the two sides met in Doha, Qatar, bloodshed on battlefields and in Afghan cities rose sharply.

Now that the peace talks are due to resume on January 5th, details of the next negotiations remain unclear.

While both the Afghan government and the Taliban have announced that they will not publicly publish their priority lists for the next round of negotiations, security analysts, researchers, and government and Taliban officials expect the following – and what hinders these talks must be overcome.

The ultimate goal of the negotiations is to establish a political roadmap for a future government. The head of the government’s negotiating team, Masoom Stanikzai, said Wednesday that a ceasefire would be the delegation’s top priority. The Taliban, who have leveraged attacks against security forces and civilians, are instead trying to negotiate a form of government based on strict Islamic laws before discussing a ceasefire.

However, it will not be easy to get to these larger fundamental questions as both sides continue to cling to the meanings of fundamental terms such as “ceasefire” and “Islamic”. There are many forms of ceasefire, from permanent and federal to partial and conditional, yet the public portion of the February US-Taliban agreement calling for the full withdrawal of American troops mentions but does not specifically mandate or fully define them how it should look.

The Taliban also refuse to specify what they mean by “Islamic” and the government’s insistence on an “Islamic” republic has been the subject of intense debate.

“The Taliban say they want an Islamic system, but they don’t specify which ones,” said Abdul Haific Mansoor, a member of the Afghan negotiating team, pointing out that there are almost as many systems as there are Islamic countries.

The next round of talks will also be made more difficult by the Taliban’s demand that the government release more Taliban prisoners. The government’s release of more than 5,000 prisoners removed the final barrier to negotiations in September, but President Ashraf Ghani has so far refused to release any more.

Both sides used the violence on the ground in Afghanistan as leverage during the Doha negotiations, but the Taliban have been more aggressive in their attacks than the government, whose troops tend to stay at bases and checkpoints to respond to sustained attacks.

According to a New York Times review, the number of security forces and civilians rose during the ongoing talks in the fall, before the Afghan government and Taliban negotiators announced in early December that they had reached an agreement on procedures for future talks had cold weather likely contributed to the decline as well. At least 429 pro-government forces were killed in September and at least 212 civilians were killed in October – the worst tolls in any category in more than a year.

“The killing and bloodshed have reached new heights,” said Atiqullah Amarkhel, a military analyst in Kabul. “What kind of will for peace is that?”

Ibraheem Bahiss, an independent Afghan research analyst, said the Taliban are pursuing two paths simultaneously: violence and negotiation.

“Your goal is to come to power and have a particular system of government,” said Bahiss. “Whether they achieve it through conversation or through fighting, both of them have costs that they are willing to bear.”

Although the Taliban have greatly reduced direct attacks on US forces since February, the insurgent group has relentlessly expanded the territory it controls by besieging local security forces.

In response, the Americans have launched air strikes where Afghan troops were under extreme stress during the Taliban’s attacks. One Taliban official said the level of violence in the group was direct response to air strikes from the United States or to military and poorly received diplomatic action by the Afghan government.

US air strikes this fall rescued the crumpled defenses of Afghan units in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, revealing deficiencies in Afghan ground and air forces that are under constant attack. US officials said the deteriorating morale of the armed forces has raised concerns about General Austin S. Miller, commander of the US-led mission in the country.

At the same time, the number of American troops dropped from around 12,000 in February to an estimated 2,500 by mid-January. A full withdrawal is planned by May, when the deal goes into effect. This has left Afghan officials unsure of how their forces can survive without American support.

The importance of the talks with the United States was underscored in November when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Doha and met with negotiators, and again in mid-December when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark A. Milley, did the same.

A Pentagon statement said General Milley urged the Taliban to “reduce violence immediately,” a term that American officials have used several times this year and that is open to a wide range of interpretations. US officials are trying to balance the battlefield.

Both sides are also waiting to see whether President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will stick to the troop withdrawal schedule or possibly renegotiate the entire deal.

If Mr Biden decides to leave any remaining American anti-terrorist military force in Afghanistan after May 2021, as suggested by some US lawmakers, Mr Bahiss said, “The Taliban have made it clear that the entire deal would be void.”

In light of the allegations and suspicions in Doha, some Afghan analysts fear that talks could stall for months.

“The distrust between the two sides has increased violence, but nothing has been done to eradicate that distrust,” said Syed Akbar Agha, a former leader of the Taliban’s Jaish-ul Muslim group.

This could indefinitely delay serious attempts to address core government issues such as human rights, free press, rights for women and religious minorities, and democratic elections, among others.

Taliban negotiators have stated that they support women’s rights, for example, but only under strict Islamic law. Many analysts interpret this as the same harsh oppression of women practiced by the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

The deeply divided government in Kabul also fears that the Taliban will try to shorten the time before all American forces depart, while the Taliban claim that Mr Ghani, who was re-elected in a bitterly controversial election last spring, stands still to serve out his five year tenure. If a form of national unity or an interim government were agreed, Mr Ghani would be unlikely to remain in office.

Another complication is the division within the Taliban, from stubborn commanders in Afghanistan to political negotiators in Doha’s hotels. Some Taliban factions believe they should fight and defeat the Americans and the Afghan government, not negotiate with them.

Mr. Agha, the former Taliban leader, said little progress was likely unless an impartial mediator emerged that could destroy the lack of confidence in Doha.

“If not,” he said, “I don’t think the next round of talks will end with a positive result.”

Some analysts fear an even more threatening result. Torek Farhadi, a former advisor to the Afghan government, said: “One thing is clear – without an agreement we are facing civil war.”

Najim Rahim, Fahim Abed and Fatima Faizi reported from Kabul.

Categories
World News

Trump Incentives for Signing Peace Accords With Israel Might Be at Threat

Trump Incentives for Signing Peace Accords With Israel Could Be at Risk

WASHINGTON – For Sudan, agreeing to normalize relations with Israel was the price paid for being removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.

A similar diplomatic agreement with Israel sealed Morocco’s demand for the United States to recognize its sovereignty over Western Sahara.

UAE officials looking to buy clandestine F-35 fighter jets from the United States first had to sign up to the Abraham Accord, which was the result of President Trump’s campaign to promote stability between Israel and alienated or even hostile Muslim states .

Either way, the incentives the Trump administration dangled in exchange for the easing could fail – either rejected by Congress or overturned by the administration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Not only does this jeopardize the series of regional rapprochement agreements, but it also exacerbates a worldview that the United States cannot rely on to halt the end of diplomatic deals.

The Abraham Accords, Trump’s foreign policy achievement, have either re-established or re-established Israel’s economic and political ties with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco. Officials familiar with the government’s efforts said Oman and Tunisia could be the next states to join, and warming could be extended to countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, even after Mr Trump is in January Resigned from office.

The formal relaxation of tensions between Israel and its regional neighbors is, of course, a success that former Republican and Democratic presidents have long tried to promote.

“All diplomacy is a transaction, but these transactions mix things up that shouldn’t have been mixed up,” said Robert Malley, president and chief executive officer of the International Crisis Group, which is close to Antony Blinken, of Mr. Biden’s election as secretary of state.

Mr Malley predicted that the incoming Biden administration would seek to backtrack or water down portions of the normalization agreements that contradict international norms, such as the case of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, or otherwise seek to dilute longstanding United States policies such as the F. – 35 sales to the Emirates.

Congress has also sounded the alarm on the deal.

The Senate narrowly accepted the Emirates’ purchases of stealth jets, drones and other precision weapons last week, indicating concerns over expanded arms deals for the Persian Gulf. This could be reversed if the Democrats take control of the chamber after next month’s runoff elections in Georgia. Separately, the move is being reviewed by the Biden administration to ensure the $ 23 billion sale to the UAE does not detract from Israel’s military lead in the region.

A day after the Senate vote, Republican Armed Forces Committee chairman, Oklahoma Senator James M. Inhofe, said it was “shocking and disappointing” that the Trump administration had decided to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara and predicted it would be reversed. The United Nations, the European Union and the African Union regard Western Sahara as a disputed area.

“I am sad that the rights of the people in Western Sahara have been traded away,” Inhofe said in a statement. “The president was badly advised by his team. He could have made this deal without trading the rights of a voiceless people. “

Prime Minister Saad Eddine el-Othmani of Morocco said Tuesday that his government “didn’t want it to be an exchange”.

“We are not negotiating with the Sahara,” said Othmani in an interview with Al Jazeera. “But victory in this battle required company.”

Nowhere has the diplomatic agreement proved more delicate than in Sudan.

The State Department had already decided to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in order to compensate victims of the 1998 bombings against American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. As part of these negotiations, the Sudanese transitional government had called for the dismissal of all other terrorism lawsuits it had faced as a result of attacks in the 27 years it was on the list.

The Foreign Ministry agreed and countered last summer with a condition of its own: Sudan begins to thaw half a century of hostilities with Israel.

However, only Congress can grant Sudan the legal peace it is striving for. For the past few months, lawmakers have been bogged down as it would deny families of the victims of September 11, 2001, to challenge their days in court.

“We always wanted all terrorists to be held accountable for what they did on September 11,” said Kristen Breitweiser, an attorney whose husband was killed in the attacks on New York, in a statement released last week during angry negotiations in the Congress was published.

Sudan insists that it is not liable for the 9/11 attacks because al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden left his sanctuary in the country five years before they were carried out. But The Congressional compromise, which officials and others close to the negotiations said have been drafted, will allow the 9/11 lawsuits to continue, potentially holding Sudan liable for billions in compensation for victims.

Representatives from the Sudanese embassy in Washington declined to comment, but previously said the country could potentially withdraw from the peace accords with Israel if it does not receive immunity from terrorism lawsuits. As the Trump administration tries to keep the deal from falling apart, an official confirmed a Bloomberg report that the United States had offered Sudan a $ 1 billion loan to settle its arrears and annual development aid of up to $ 1.5 billion. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is expected to visit Sudan, Israel and the Emirates in a high-level delegation in the region next month.

Bahrain appears to be a single exception among countries incentivized under normalization agreements with Israel, although the Foreign Ministry this week labeled Iran-linked Saraya al-Mukhtar a terrorist organization, in part because of its aim of overthrowing the tiny Sunni monarchy.

It has also raised concerns among current and former government officials and conflict analysts that the United States will identify Houthi rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization in an attempt to convince Saudi Arabia to sign the agreements with Israel.

Officials close to the decision said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was inclined to use the designation to cut off Iranian support for the Houthis, who have taken control of most of Yemen, overthrowing its government and neighboring Saudi -Arabia on their five year border have attacked war. It could also ban the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemen’s major ports, most of which are controlled by the Houthis, and exacerbate famine in one of the world’s poorest countries.

It is doubtful, however, that the very name terrorism would convince Saudi Arabia – the most powerful monarchy in the Middle East – to normalize relations with Israel. This thaw could last for years, if it happens at all, and until then it could possibly be driven more by an increasing number of young adults in the kingdom who are more concerned with jobs and economic stability at home than a generation-old conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, said a secret trip Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made to Saudi Arabia last month to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was a bold signal of detente.

“These Arab countries want to be friends with Israel,” said Ms. Haley on Wednesday at the Israel-based DiploTech Global Summit.

Even if they disapprove of Mr. Trump’s transactional diplomacy, Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken will be cautious about withdrawing from Israel, which is the U.S.’s strongest ally in the Middle East and has significant political influence on American evangelicals and Jewish voters.

“I think President-elect Biden will try to move on with the momentum because it is beneficial to the US and US allies and I think this will be the right thing,” said Danny Danon, who retired this year as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Alan Rappeport reported from Washington and Aida Alami from Rabat, Morocco.