Humanitarian Assistance as Peace-Keeping - Beyond Charity -

The UN Secretary-General’s report of October 1, 2026 marks an important stage in the evolution of the political process concerning the Moroccan Sahara. As the first report issued since the adoption of Resolution 2797 (2025), it highlights renewed diplomatic momentum, marked by the resumption of substantive four-party negotiations led by the United States with United Nations support.This development reflects a gradual shift in a debate long focused on the territory’s final status tow ...

Le rapport du Secrétaire général des Nations Unies du 1er octobre 2026 marque une étape importante dans l’évolution du processus politique relatif au Sahara marocain. Le premier présenté depuis l’adoption de la résolution 2797 (2025), le rapport met en évidence une dynamique diplomatique nouvelle, caractérisée par la reprise de négociations substantielles à quatre sous l’impulsion des États-Unis et avec l’accompagnement des Nations Unies. Cette évolution traduit un déplacement ...

On August 7, 2026, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Défense Agreement, a collective-defense pact widely compared to NATO’s Article 5. This essay argues that the comparison is misleading. Mecca borrows NATO’s language of solidarity without yet possessing NATO’s institutional machinery, and the Houthi offensive against Saudi Arabia in September 2026 provided an early and revealing test of what the agreement actually means in practice. Neither Pakistan nor Turk ...

The next Secretary-General should begin with an act of institutional rebellion: refuse to become the Secretary-General ofeverything. Over three decades the office's political and administrative reach has spread across sustainable development, climate, health, migration, digital governance, financing, gender, food systems, and a still-growing list of global priorities. These issues are not unimportant; the trouble is that institutional ambition has simply outrun institutional capabil ...

The Mecca Agreement: A First Step Towards a New Regional Security Architecture? On 7 August, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed the Mecca Agreement, a trilateral defense pact aimed at strengthening collective security and defense cooperation between the three countries. At its core lies a collective defense commitment under which an attack on one member is considered an attack on all three. While many details concerning its practical implementation remain unclear, the agreeme ...

Is Europe Prepared for War?European public opinion is moving from treating a major conflict as unthinkable to regarding it as a possibility for which governments must prepare. Attention is increasingly focused on Russian hybrid operations, vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure and the risk of fragmentation within NATO. European defence policy is consequently undergoing a rapid transition from post-Cold War complacency towards preparations for high-intensity warfare. Recent ...

We Are Watching You In April 2026, the UK Ministry of Defence revealed that it had tracked a covert Russian submarine operation apparently intended to map critical undersea cables and pipelines in the North Atlantic and the North Sea. A Russian attack submarine and two specialised intelligence vessels operated by the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, commonly known as GUGI, were reportedly monitored for four weeks by the Royal Navy, including HMS St Albans and P-8 Poseidon ...

Three years after the adoption of the first National Action Plan (NAP) on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda, Morocco has made real institutional progress, but implementation is still inadequate. The extension of the NAP opens a window of opportunity to prepare a second, more ambitious and operational cycle.This Policy Brief identifies four persistent obstacles: a virtually stagnant female employment rate of 19.1%, less than 3% female representation in peacekeeping contingen ...

Trois ans après l'adoption du premier Plan d'Action National (PAN) sur l'Agenda Femmes, Paix et Sécurité (FPS), le Maroc affiche des avancées institutionnelles réelles mais une mise en œuvre encore insuffisante. L'extension du PAN ouvre une fenêtre d'opportunité pour préparer un second cycle plus ambitieux et opérationnel.Ce Policy Brief identifie quatre obstacles persistants : un taux d'activité féminine de 19,1% en quasi-stagnation, une représentation des femmes inférieure à 3% da ...