Feed aggregator

Jeudi 18 septembre, le chancelier allemand Friedrich Merz effectuait sa première visite officielle à Madrid depuis son entrée en fonction en mai. Le désaccord le plus marqué entre lui et le Premier ministre espagnol Pedro Sánchez a porté sur Israël.

The post À Madrid, Friedrich Merz et Pedro Sánchez divisés sur la question d’Israël appeared first on Euractiv FR.

The room at the Swiss Inn Nexus Hotel in Bole was silent but tense as Sunita Narain, one of the world’s most influential environmental voices, fixed her gaze on rows of African journalists, scientists, and policymakers. Her tone was gentle, but the words cut deep. “Us, we are—I call us the ants of the world, […]

Les législateurs allemands ont approuvé, jeudi 18 septembre, le budget du pays pour l’année 2025, qui prévoit d’importants investissements dans l’armée et les infrastructures.

The post L’Allemagne adopte enfin son budget 2025 appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Das müssen Sie wissen: Russland: Die Botschafter beraten heute über das 19. Sanktionspaket des Blocks.; UN: Die EU-Staaten einigen sich vage auf ein Klimaziel für 2035; Merz x Sanchez: Amtsantritt in Madrid ein politischer Tango; Verteidigung: Brenner-Basistunnel ein Meilenstein für Verteidigungsmobilität.

Credit: Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 19 2025 (IPS)

Thousands of Afghans who fled to the USA when the Taliban took over in August 2021 now face the prospect of deportation to countries they’ve never been to. People who risked everything to escape persecution, often because they helped US forces, now find themselves treated as unwanted cargo under the Trump administration’s anti-migration policy.

Trump’s expanded deportation programme targets an estimated 10 million foreign-born people who live in the USA but lack proper legal documentation. This includes people who entered the country without authorisation, whose visas have expired, who’ve had their asylum claims denied, whose temporary protected status has lapsed, or whose legal status has been revoked or suspended. Within a hundred days of Trump’s inauguration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had arrested over 66,000 people and removed over 65,000. Some 200,000 had been deported by August.

But the Trump administration isn’t simply removing undocumented immigrants to their countries of origin. It’s increasingly embracing a particularly cruel tactic: dumping people in distant countries they’ve no connection with. This deportation strategy shows how the US government is willing to flout basic humanitarian principles in pursuit of political goals.

The government has invoked an obscure immigration law to deport people to other countries, offering financial incentives or applying diplomatic pressure to compel states to accept US deportees. Around a dozen have recently accepted such deals, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay in the Americas, and Eswatini, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda in Africa. This geographic spread dispels any pretence that the policy is about returning people to transit countries: it’s about finding anyone willing to accept money in exchange for unwanted human cargo.

The programme is nakedly transactional, with rewards taking the form of direct payments, trade concessions, sanctions relief and diplomatic benefits. Uganda signed a formal agreement with the US government amid US sanctions on government officials, suggesting it traded migrant acceptance for improved diplomatic relations and potential sanctions relief. Rwanda’s deal coincided with US-brokered talks over the Democratic Republic of the Congo conflict, indicating that the deportation agreement was being leveraged in unrelated diplomatic negotiations. It’s highly unlikely the US government will criticise the human rights records of repressive states such as El Salvador, Eswatini and Rwanda now it’s struck migration management deals with them.

Human rights flouted

Although the USA has a long history of outsourcing asylum processing, these practices have been taken to another level under Trump. The administration is prepared to deport people to war zones, authoritarian states and directly to prison. These arrangements violate core principles of international law, including the right to seek asylum and the prohibition against returning people to places where they’ll face danger.

A particularly shocking example involves Venezuelan deportees sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Centre, an overcrowded jail notorious for human rights abuses. In March, the US government accused 238 Venezuelan men of being gang members based on little more than tattoos and fashion choices to justify their expedited removal to this hellish facility. The administration agreed to pay El Salvador US$6 million to house deportees, effectively buying prison space for people whose only crime was seeking safety in the USA. These deportees were later returned to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap, raising further questions about the use of migrants as diplomatic pawns.

Trump’s approach isn’t limited to recent arrivals. Unlike previous policies focused on border enforcement, it targets longtime residents – people who’ve spent years building families, careers and community ties.

This has sparked unprecedented resistance. People have mobilised in ways that transcend traditional political divides, with teachers protecting students’ families, employers refusing to cooperate with raids, religious leaders offering sanctuary and neighbourhoods forming mutual aid networks and early warning systems.

In response to ramped-up ICE raids seeking to fulfil arrest quotas of 3,000 people a day, people have protested in cities across the USA. Resistance has been particularly intense in sanctuary cities such as Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco – primary targets for federal operations to arrest migrants. Civil society activists have confronted ICE agents, blocked deportation vehicles, protested at airports and launched boycott campaigns against companies profiting from deportations.

The scale of resistance has prompted an unprecedented federal military intervention, with the government illegally deploying over 4,000 national guard troops and 700 marines to Los Angeles.

A choice to be made

Trump’s policies are legitimising xenophobia and racism, poisoning political discourse and polarising society. When it’s the world’s most powerful democracy that treats refugees as tradeable commodities, it sends an unmistakable signal to all the world’s authoritarian leaders: human rights are negotiable.

The USA faces a choice between two different versions of itself. It can continue down the path of transactional cruelty, treating human beings as problems to be exported, empowering authoritarian regimes and undermining international law. Or it can fulfil its humanitarian and human rights obligations, provide safe and legal pathways for migration and help address the root causes that force people to flee their homes.

The USA must suspend all offshore migration management agreements, stop deporting asylum seekers to unsafe countries and countries they have no connection with and restore the principle that seeking safety isn’t a crime but a fundamental human right.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Advisor, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

 

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');  

Le président ukrainien prévoit que les contributions des membres de l’OTAN pour l’achat d’armes américaines pour l’Ukraine via le mécanisme PURL s’élèveront à environ 3,5 milliards de dollars (2,9 milliards d’euros) d’ici octobre.

The post Volodymyr Zelensky s’attend à recevoir 3,5 milliards de dollars d’ici octobre pour l’achat d’armes américaines appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Dans l'édition d'aujourd'hui : les ambassadeurs de l'UE se réunissent pour discuter du 19e paquet de sanctions contre la Russie, plusieurs milliers de manifestants ont protesté contre l'austérité en France, les États membres de l'UE s'accordent provisoirement sur un vague engagement climatique pour 2035.

The post Maroš Šefčovič contre le bloc de la nostalgie appeared first on Euractiv FR.

United Nations Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Jennifer Xin-Tsu Lin Levine
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19 2025 (IPS)

A United Nations report calling for the global abolition of surrogacy has sparked intense debate among experts, with critics arguing that blanket bans could harm the very women the policy aims to protect.

Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, issued a report on violence against women and girls with a specific focus on surrogacy as a form of exploitation. The report, officially titled “The different manifestations of violence against women and girls in the context of surrogacy,” was published on July 14, 2025, and is slated for discussion at the upcoming UN General Assembly session in October.

The report calls surrogacy “direct and exploitative use of a woman’s bodily and reproductive functions for the benefit of others, often resulting in long-lasting harm and in exploitative circumstances.”

It further delves into the danger of surrogacy business models, in particular, which embrace the ambiguity of international law to churn a profit, often at the expense of both the surrogate and the prospective family. Alsalem recommends the abolition of surrogacy and asks member states to “work towards adopting an international legally binding instrument prohibiting all forms of surrogacy.”

One of the largest problems with surrogacy today, according to Senior Lecturer at Swinburne University Jutharat Attawet, is a lack of comprehensive education and legal standards around the practice. This results in social alienation and false conceptions, which worsen exploitation of people who participate in surrogacy—they are not provided adequate resources

Attawet, who specializes in surrogacy healthcare and domestic policy, considers surrogacy itself a beneficial tool for nontraditional family building. However, she acknowledges the steps it has to take to ensure autonomy and respect for surrogates.

Attawet’s research, cited in Alsalem’s report, shows that approximately 1 percent of babies born in Australia are from surrogates, so although the number has doubled over the past decade, doctors are not familiar with the process. Furthermore, legislation is primarily top-down rather than region- or area-specific. Since doctors in places like Australia are “intimidated by the language” surrounding surrogacy due to minimal education, they are less willing to openly engage with the procedures. This pushes families to seek surrogates elsewhere, where laws are less stringent and doctors more comfortable with the procedures.

Another incentive for overseas surrogacy, Attawet says, is lack of national support for surrogacy. Since it does not fulfill the criteria of most healthcare insurance plans, prospective parents often seek a more affordable surrogacy birth internationally. This further contributes to the exploitation both she and Alsalem note in their respective research—international surrogacy is much more difficult to regulate between different countries’ laws and often primarily harms the surrogate and the child, who is less likely to know their birth mother from an international surrogacy.

Alsalem criticized the practice of international surrogacy as an exploitative technique to perpetuate wealth inequality between different countries, but many experts argue that the job is one of the few accessible, well-paying jobs for child-bearing people who need to care for their family full-time. Polina Vlasenko, a researcher whose work was also cited in Alsalem’s report, explained to IPS that international surrogacy in Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia “is the type of job you can combine with being a full-time caretaker of your kid… it still benefits women.”

Vlasenko elaborated, saying that most workers in the surrogacy industry, including intermediaries and clinicians, were women who had some sort of pre-existing connection to the process—often being former surrogates. To ban surrogacy entirely, Vlasenko argues, would merely harm women in all facets of the industry rather than resolving wealth gaps. She said, “this inequality is much deeper than services of surrogacy.”

Social worker and professor at Ohio State University Sharvari Karandikar similarly opposes the Special Rapporteur’s recommendation of abolition. In an interview with IPS, Karandikar explained that “in countries like India, it’s really hard to implement policies in a uniform way, and I think that one needs to have proper oversight of medical professionals and how they’re engaging in surrogate arrangements and medical tourism. Blanket bans do not work.”

She emphasized the dangers of surrogacy without regulation, saying it would only do more harm.

Instead, Karandikar advocates for “the safety, the better communication, more education, more informed choice and decision, more safeguards, better treatment options, and long-term health coverage for women who engage in surrogacy” as “a wonderful way to speak about women’s choices, decisions and their health instead of penalizing anyone.”

However, in order for the global conversation surrounding surrogacy to center around female agency, experts like Vlasenko say the perception of surrogates needs to change. She said, “Reproductive work is not always seen as violence or exploitation when it’s done by women for free at home… surrogate mothers are taking the only work that, in their situation, allows them to fulfill certain responsibilities like childcare and income generation. They think that they’re agents in this process, but society sees them as victims.”

Ultimately, the surrogacy debate reflects broader questions about women’s autonomy, economic inequality and reproductive rights. As Vlasenko noted, addressing the “much deeper inequality” that pushes women to surrogacy may prove more effective than focusing solely on limiting the practice itself.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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');   Related Articles

• Loss and Damage at COP30: Indigenous Leaders Challenge Top-Down Finance Models
• UN Mobilizes Amid Cascading Earthquakes in Eastern Afghanistan, Aiming to ‘Build Back Better’

Excerpt:

United Nations Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem recently released her report on violence against women and girls with a focus on surrogacy, one of the most controversial topics in the medical field.

Première journée de mobilisation réussie pour les syndicats, alors que plusieurs centaines de milliers de personnes ont manifesté hier dans toute la France contre l’austérité budgétaire, accentuant la pression sur le nouveau Premier ministre, Sébastien Lecornu.

The post « Taxer les riches » : des centaines de milliers de personnes dans les rues contre l’austérité appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Marguerite Gnakadé est devenue une critique virulente du dirigeant togolais Faure Gnassingbé, au pouvoir depuis longtemps.

A selection of the week's best photos from across the African continent and beyond.

A selection of the week's best photos from across the African continent and beyond.

Fin août 2025, la Croatie a détruit des cargaisons de fruits albanais contaminés. L'épisode révèle les failles du secteur agricole albanais et, alors que Tirana vise l'UE, l'urgence de réformes en profondeur.

- Articles / Courrier des Balkans, Agriculture, Albanie, Questions européennes, Economie, Santé

Displaced people from Jabalia, Gaza, live in a destroyed building in downtown Gaza City. Demand action to end escalating Israeli crimes against Palestinians. Credit: UN News

By Human Rights Watch
NEW YORK, Sep 19 2025 (IPS)

World leaders gathering at the United Nations General Assembly from September 22-30, 2025, should commit to protecting the UN from powerful governments seeking to defund and undermine the organization’s capacity to promote human rights and international justice, Human Rights Watch said today.

On the eve of the General Assembly’s annual general debate, world leaders will hold a summit on the situation in Palestine, which French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are expected to preside over.

“Human rights and the UN itself are in the crosshairs of powerful governments to an unprecedented extent,” said Federico Borello, interim executive director of Human Rights Watch. “World leaders should pledge action to ensure the world body has the resources and political support it needs to carry out its lifesaving human rights and humanitarian work around the world – in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti, and elsewhere people are in need.”

Governments should also take action to stop Israel’s escalating atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Human Rights Watch said. They should condemn and take steps to counter US sanctions against International Criminal Court (ICC) officials, prominent Palestinian organizations, and a UN expert.

They should rally behind institutions like the ICC, which is combating impunity for war crimes and other atrocities in Myanmar, Israel/Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere around the globe.

World leaders should use the September 22 Palestine conference to publicly commit to action aimed at ending decades of impunity for Israeli authorities’ violations of international humanitarian and human rights law against Palestinians. This summit, a response to the landmark July 2024 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territory, is a continuation of a high-level meeting in July.

That ICJ advisory opinion determined that Israel’s decades-long occupation is unlawful, breaches Palestinians’ right to self-determination, and is marked by serious abuses, including apartheid. At the September 22 conference, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and others have said they would recognize a Palestinian state.

However, those declarations risk being empty gestures unless states commit to concrete actions to stop Israel’s extermination of Palestinians and expansion of unlawful settlements.

Governments should suspend arms transfers to Israel, ban trade with illegal settlements, and impose targeted sanctions on Israeli officials responsible for ongoing crimes against Palestinians, including crimes against humanity and acts of genocide, Human Rights Watch said. States should also press Hamas and Palestinian armed groups to release all civilian hostages.

The UN is in the throes of an existential financial crisis, largely due to the United States’ refusal to pay its assessed contributions – which countries are obligated to pay – and its cancellation of virtually all US voluntary funding for myriad UN agencies and bodies.

This is undermining UN humanitarian work, as well as human rights investigations in Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, Syria, Israel/Palestine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Myanmar, North Korea, and elsewhere.

The US is not alone in defaulting on its financial obligations to the UN. China, the UN’s second biggest contributor, has been delaying its payments to the organization’s regular budget and peacekeeping operations. Many other governments are also in arrears.

Wealthy governments in the European Union, UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and others have followed the US decision to gut its foreign aid programs by further reducing their own foreign aid budgets, exacerbating the UN’s financial troubles.

Governments that care about human rights should pay their assessed contributions in full and on time and increase voluntary contributions to the UN, prioritizing programs that protect human rights and save lives.

In 2023, the US contributed nearly $13 billion in assessed and voluntary contributions to the UN. That figure has dropped to nearly zero this year after Trump ordered a “review” of US contributions to the UN. It remains unclear if, when, and to what extent the US might resume UN funding.

The UN leadership should seek ways to reduce costs while avoiding across-the-board cuts that would disproportionately impact human rights work, which is already chronically underfunded. As the UN leadership presses ahead with a package of cost-cutting proposals as part of its “UN80” initiative, it should ensure that independent investigations of human rights abuses have the necessary resources to continue.

“UN monitoring and investigations can deter abusive governments from committing atrocities against civilians,” said Borello. “Powerful governments seeking to undermine the UN’s human rights and humanitarian programs should be condemned, not emulated. The lives of millions of people around the world depend on it.”

Leaders should press for meaningful action to address dire crises in Sudan and Haiti. In Sudan, civilians are facing famine, sexual violence, and other atrocities. In Haiti, criminal groups are expanding their control, escalating killings and sexual violence, including gang rape, forcing millions into displacement and facing acute food insecurity.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has declined to endorse calls from human rights defenders and member states to deploy physical protection missions to Sudan and Haiti.

On February 6, Trump issued an executive order that authorizes asset freezes and entry bans on ICC officials and others supporting the court’s work. The US government has so far imposed sanctions on the court’s prosecutor, his two deputies, six judges, the UN special rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territory Francesca Albanese, as well as three leading Palestinian civil society organizations.

These sanctions are a blatant attack on the rule of law and the international justice system. They aim primarily to thwart the ICC’s ongoing Palestine investigation, including the court’s pending arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.

UN member states should affirm their support for the ICC’s global mandate and civil society’s critical work, and call on the US government to cancel the sanctions program. Member states should also commit to concrete steps to protect the court from these sanctions, including through legislation like the EU Blocking Statute, which aims to shield European companies from the effects of extraterritorial sanctions.

Member states should further commit to international justice by implementing all of the ICJ’s advisory opinions, including the court’s July opinion calling climate change an existential threat to the planet and arguing that states’ failure to protect the climate triggers legal consequences.

Delegates should urge member states to press ahead with negotiations on an international treaty to prevent and punish crimes against humanity. The treaty will fill a gap in international law that contributes to impunity for egregious acts of murder, torture, enforced disappearance, sexual violence, and persecution, among others, inflicted on civilians around the world.

Horrific, systematic abuses the Taliban have continued committing against women and girls in Afghanistan since retaking power in 2021 exemplify why gender apartheid as a crime against humanity should be included in any eventual treaty on crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said.

“The UN and international human rights system are being put to the test,” said Borello. “To be on the right side of history, it’s crucial to push back against powerful governments trying to undermine international norms and demolish avenues for accountability.”

https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/17/un-world-leaders-should-commit-to-human-rights-international-justice
https://www.hrw.org/topic/united-nations
https://www.hrw.org/middle-east/north-africa/israel/palestine

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');  

The Chinese Communist Party has stepped up efforts to spread its influence in Europe. Whether it be through students, academics, "friends of China" groups or cultural players, China's ruling party is initiating new channels of communication coordinated directly by the United Front Work Department. [...]

A new trove of leaked emails from former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and former defence minister Benny Gantz have exposed further details about the business activities of discreet private intelligence firms Black Cube and Psy-Group, and their relationship with [...]

With its private beach, two pools and high-end rooms, the Veranda Pointe aux Biches four-star hotel is one of the [...]

Frenchman Marcus Détrez, 27, took up a consulting role earlier this month at the China University of Petroleum (CUPB), a [...]

In an unexpected consequence of the war in Ukraine, new nationalist groups have been on the rise and their political [...]

The UK's MI5 and MI6 are being sued by four members of a Libyan family in the latest action alleging [...]