African Union stance on the Sahara issue: incipient change

In the Western Sahara Advisory Opinion, formal questions specifically requested by the General Assembly were only on terra nullius and ‘legal ties’ at the time of Spain’s colonization of the Saharan Provinces. however, two other issues, which had not been specifically requested, were added to the formal question of ‘legal ties.” The additional issues concern the right to self- determination and ‘territorial sovereignty.’ The statements on additional issues have recently been referre ...

The self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic’s (SADR) declaration on the Guerguerat crisis, in November 2020, to terminate the 1991 ceasefire agreement and go to war with Morocco raises a problem regarding the legality of third States granting State recognition to the self-declared SADR. International law imposes an obligation on third States to not grant ‘premature recognition.’ Moreover, premature recognition would constitute illegal intervention in the internal affairs of t ...

Durant  son  mandat  (2012-2020),  le  Premier  ministre  Shinzo  Abe  s’est évertué  à  démontrer  le  fort  intérêt  duJapon  pour  l’Afrique,s’engageant notamment sur un soutien financier d’un total de 60 milliards de dollars lors des sommets de la Tokyo International Conference on African Development(TICAD)  en  2013  et  2016  et  dévoilant  sa  vision  pour «un  Indo-Pacifiquelibre  et ouvert»(«Free  and  Open  Indo-Pacific»–FOIP)  lors  de  la TICADVI à Nairobi. Pour autant, ...

The proposal for a European Union New Pact on Migration and Asylum, submitted by the European Commission on September 23, 2020, for approval by the European Parliament and the European Council, aims to provide a comprehensive response to the challenges posed to EU countries by migration and asylum. It is another step in the politically toxic attempts to reconcile the many fractures dividing Europe around the issue of migration: between the Mediterranean countries of first arrival of ...

Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso… L’insécurité fait tache d’huile au Sahel, menaçant de s’étendre aux pays du Golfe de Guinée. Le terrorisme a entraîné la formation de milices d’auto-défense communautaires, et ainsi créé des « friches » sécuritaires dans tout le Sahel, du Bassin du lac Tchad à la région du Liptako-Gourma. Les budgets consacrés à la défense augmentent, contrairement à ceux qui soutiennent le capital humain, santé et éducation. Dans un contexte de croissance démographique so ...

According to this month’s OECD economic outlook, global GDP --- which took a huge hit from the pandemic and is still 3% below its level of a year ago – will not recover its pre-pandemic level until the end of 2021. In a downside scenario, the return could take almost a year longer. The OECD predictions, which imply high and protracted unemployment, are in line with the view of many other official and private organizations. The arrival of effective vaccines such as Pfizer-BioNTech wa ...

“When I got home late that night, the house was dark and Michelle was already asleep. After taking a shower and going through a stack of mail, I slipped under the covers and began drifting off. In that luminal space between wakefulness and sleep, I imagined myself stepping toward a portal of some sort, a bright and cold and airless place, uninhabited and severed from the world. And behind me, out of the darkness, I heard a voice, sharp and clear, as if someone were right next to me, ...