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Un billion de dollars équivaut à mille milliards de dollars. Si quelqu'un dépensait un million de dollars par jour, il lui faudrait plus de 2 700 ans pour dépenser un billion de dollars.

MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION
pursuant to Rule 115(2) and (3) of the Rules of Procedure
on the draft Commission implementing decision on the financing of the annual action plan in favour of the United Republic of Tanzania for 2026
(D115284/01 - 2026/2749(RSP))
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Les élections législatives anticipées du 7 juin confirment la domination de Vetëvendosje et d'Albin Kurti, sans lui offrir la marge de manœuvre dont il disposait après le scrutin de décembre 2025. Marqué par une participation en baisse et l'absence d'alternative crédible, le vote renforce la nécessité de compromis entre les principales forces politiques.

- Articles / Courrier des Balkans, Elections Kosovo, Kosovo Vetëvendosje, Kosovo, Politique

Les élections législatives anticipées du 7 juin confirment la domination de Vetëvendosje et d'Albin Kurti, sans lui offrir la marge de manœuvre dont il disposait après le scrutin de décembre 2025. Marqué par une participation en baisse et l'absence d'alternative crédible, le vote renforce la nécessité de compromis entre les principales forces politiques.

- Articles / Courrier des Balkans, Elections Kosovo, Kosovo Vetëvendosje, Kosovo, Politique

En mai 2025, le meurtre d'une jeune femme enceinte provoque l'émoi en Roumanie. Une loi pour prévenir et combattre les féminicides et les violences qui les précèdent est entrée en vigueur fin avril. Entretien.

- Articles / Femmes violences, Une - Diaporama, Roumanie, Courrier des Balkans

Niger, Mayahi, Village of Koren Habdjia. At the village health centre supported by UNICEF, mothers come for consultations with their children. This health centre provides care for childhood illnesses, maternal health, and pregnant women. It treats children for malnutrition and also provides delivery services. Credit: UNICEF/Islamane Abdou

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

Over the past few years, the humanitarian crisis in Africa’s Sahel region has expanded considerably, largely driven by a surge of violence—particularly in the Central Sahel. Although the crisis has been described by the United Nations (UN) as having “largely faded from the headlines” since its wake in 2012, millions of people across the region are in dire need of humanitarian assistance as civilian displacement, climate shocks, and widespread hunger rapidly spill across borders.

“The people of the Sahel are not on the sidelines of a global crisis; they are at the very heart of one of the world’s most severe and neglected emergencies,” said Charles Bernimolin, the regional head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for West and Central Africa. “Every funding gap has a human cost. When we cut a program, a child loses a meal, women and girls’ protection, and a family loses hope. We cannot allow a financing collapse to become a death sentence for millions of people.”

On June 3, OCHA published the 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Overview (HNRO) for the Sahel, detailing a pronounced and escalating humanitarian crisis across Chad, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Northeast Nigeria, and the Far North of Cameroon. OCHA estimates that approximately 24.3 million people across the region are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), this includes 7.5 million children in central Sahel alone.

According to figures from the United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe (UNRIC), the majority of terrorism-related murders in the world take place in the Sahel. Additionally, over the course of 2025, OCHA has recorded a sharp rise in civilian exploitation, significant disruptions to local economies, and the uprooting of entire communities across some areas.

The scale of needs is most pronounced in the central Sahel region, which hosts nearly three million internally displaced persons, roughly two million in Burkina Faso, 548,000 in Niger, and 415,000 in Mali. An additional one million refugees have been recorded across numerous neighbouring countries. According to figures from UNICEF, over 3.6 million people have been forcibly displaced as a direct result of violence this year.

In late April, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded a series of large-scale attacks that targeted multiple municipalities across Mali—including the capital, Bamako—resulting in significant civilian casualties and exacerbated displacement. Subsequent attacks between the Mali police and armed groups were reported in the following days

OHCHR also reported numerous allegations of serious human rights violations following the attacks, such as extrajudicial killings and abductions. In May, Mountaga Tall, a Malian politician and lawyer, was abducted from his home, while his wife was assaulted. The whereabouts of Tall, his wife, and several other abduction victims remain unknown.

Additionally, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued findings on May 6 that showed a significant rise in human rights violations against the Fulani ethnic group in Burkina Faso. The Fulani were found to be subjected to extrajudicial killings, abduction, torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and property destruction by state and non-state actors.

OCHA reports that armed groups have begun expanding their influence across the central Sahel and Lake Chad Basin regions, stripping entire communities of protection services and any form of governance. Approximately 12,900 schools are estimated to have been closed as a result of escalating instability, leaving over 2.3 million children without education and leaving them increasingly vulnerable to recruitment and exploitation.

Children have been particularly hard-hit by this crisis, with UNICEF recording over 1,500 serious human rights violations against children. Schools continue to be targets for attacks, as a school in Mopti, Mali, was impacted by the presence of explosive devices and armed activity in May, affecting approximately 300 million. In the same period, UNICEF also recorded an attack on a community health facility in Gao, which disrupted access to medical care for roughly 2,700 children.

Recurring climate shocks across the region continue to exacerbate the crisis, with the Sahel warming considerably faster than the global average. Figures from OCHA show that roughly 590,000 people in the Sahel were impacted by violent floods in 2025 alone, with prolonged droughts and widespread desertification devastating local agriculture
and millions of livelihoods.

Prolonged climate shocks and protracted armed conflict have led to the Sahel region forming one of the world’s most severe hunger crises. OCHA projects that from June to August, approximately 15.4 million people could face crisis-level food insecurity or worse, including 1.5 million who could fall into emergency levels.

UNRIC reports that reduced food rations in Mali have resulted in a 64 percent increase in famine across numerous areas, leaving 1.5 million Malians severely food insecure. Additionally, rising fertiliser costs in the Sahel further exacerbate low agricultural yields, while rising fuel prices drive increasing food and aid costs.

Despite the vast and growing scale of needs, humanitarian funding for the Sahel has plummeted in recent years. Support from the international community for the region has reached its lowest level in a decade, with only 29 per cent of funding goals met in 2025, prompting aid organisations to scale back responses and prioritise the most vulnerable populations.

“Across the Sahel, humanitarian actors are implementing a Humanitarian Reset: refocusing on the most urgent needs, simplifying the response, and making sure limited resources have the greatest possible impact,” said Bernimolin.

“This means making difficult choices, improving efficiency, and bringing decision-making closer to affected communities. It also includes acting earlier through anticipatory action, expanding cash assistance, and strengthening support to national and local organizations, who play a key role in reaching people, especially in hard-to-reach areas,” he added.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese presents her latest report before delegates at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on 23 March 2026. Credit: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

For a few days in May, Francesca Albanese could live more easily. On 13 May, a US federal judge ruled that sanctions the Trump administration imposed on her violated her right to free expression. The government was forced to remove the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories from its sanctions list. But the reprieve lasted barely a week. On 27 May, after an appeals court suspended the ruling, the US Treasury restored sanctions.

The sanctions have been punishing. Due to the dominant role US institutions play in international financial transactions, Albanese can no longer use credit and debit cards. Her apartment in Washington DC has been seized, while Georgetown University ended her affiliation as a scholar. Her offence is to call out Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the occupation policies that preceded it.

An Italian citizen with a legal background, Albanese was appointed in 2022 and began her final term in 2025. She’s consistently been critical of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. In 2024, she presented her Anatomy of a Genocide report to the Human Rights Council. The report found reasonable grounds to conclude that Israel was committing genocidal acts in Gaza, and called for an arms embargo. Her 2025 report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, set out the complicity of major companies in Israel’s human rights atrocities.

Albanese’s demands for justice have brought a fierce backlash from Israel and its allies. Israel called for her to be removed from her post and banned her from visiting Israel and Palestine. The Trump administration followed suit in calling for her sacking. When it imposed sanctions on Albanese last July, it was the first time these had been applied against a UN independent human rights expert.

Sanctions politicised

Albanese isn’t the only target. Democratic states have long applied sanctions against dictators, terrorists and human rights abusers, but the Trump administration is increasingly using them as a weapon against people who defend human rights.

This month, Israel received widespread international condemnation for its actions against the Global Sumud Flotilla, a civil society-led initiative to defy Israel’s chokehold on aid for Gaza and bring vital humanitarian supplies by sea. Israel intercepted the boats in international waters, abducted those on board and subjected them to sickening abuse. When Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a video of himself taunting the abducted activists, democratic states including Canada, Italy and the UK deplored his behaviour, and France and Poland banned him from their countries.

But the US government has done the opposite, imposing sanctions on four activists involved in organising the flotilla. The politicisation of sanctions is evident, given that one of Donald Trump’s first acts on returning to the presidency was to lift sanctions on violent Israeli West Bank settlers.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is also a target. Last year the Trump administration sanctioned nine ICC officials. The measures came after the ICC issued arrest warrants on crimes against humanity and war crimes charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ex-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and in retaliation for the court’s investigation into potential US war crimes in Afghanistan.

Trump sanctioned two ICC officials in his first term and has repeatedly attacked the ICC, with reports last year that his administration was threatening further sanctions to try to force revisions of the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, to explicitly prevent it having jurisdiction over non-member states such as the USA. Early in his second presidency, he issued an executive order threatening sanctions against anyone who participates in the ICC’s investigations. This sweeping order enabled the sanctions against Albanese.

Trump has also weaponised sanctions to block climate action. Last year the International Maritime Organization was about to finalise a deal to limit the shipping industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. At the last minute, adoption of the new rules was postponed when Trump threatened sanctions against states that supported the emissions curbs.

Chilling effect

Beyond their immediate effects, sanctions help repressive states smear human rights advocates as criminals and terrorists. For Albanese, sanctions form part of a broader campaign to restrict her right to speak out. She has received death threats, which have also been levelled against her daughter.

A broader chilling effect on civil society is visible. Concern about being penalised for sanctions violations caused two US-based human rights groups to pull out of the ICC’s annual meeting last year. For the Trump administration, sanctions are part of a wider onslaught on the rights of people and institutions to demand justice for Israel’s many human rights violations. They’ve come alongside violence against US protests in solidarity with Palestine, deportations of activists and threats to throw young people out of university and defund education institutions.

The misuse of sanctions also forms part of a broader assault on the institutions and rules of global governance. At the same time that the Trump administration is twisting international norms about how sanctions are used and who they’re applied to, it’s also choosing which organisations to participate in and which rules to follow depending on what it sees as the US national interest, and lashing out at international bodies and processes that bring human rights scrutiny.

A single ruling, now suspended, was never going to be enough against the Trump administration’s increasing use of sanctions as a tool to try to silence people. The democratic states that condemned Israel’s abuses against the flotilla activists must show the same resolve when the world’s most powerful state turns sanctions against people whose only offence is to insist that human rights apply everywhere, including in Gaza.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, 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

 

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GA During NPT Review Conference. Credit: Jonathan Granoff

By Jonathan Granoff
NEW YORK, Jun 10 2026 (IPS)

Martin Luther King Jr. , when he received the Nobel Peace Prize, reminded us of “The fact that most of the time human beings put the truth about the nature and risks of the nuclear war out of their minds because it is too painful and therefore not ‘acceptable’, does not alter the nature and risks of such war. The device of ‘rejection’ may temporarily cover up anxiety, but it does not bestow peace of mind and emotional security.” I have devoted many decades of my life to not ignoring the risk of nuclear annihilation and since 1995 have attended every Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to learn and hopefully contributed to a saner safer world.

The 191 nations which are parties to the third most important legal instrument of the 20th Century, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), recently finished a Review Conference at the United Nations in which the future of humanity was soberly discussed. It took place from April 27-May 22, 2026. Social media, major news outlets, and other media virtually ignored the gravity and importance of the deliberations. Only the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are arguably of greater significance than the NPT.

Without it there would likely be dozens of states with nuclear arsenals. Because of it there are only nine. Five – US, UK, France, China, and Russia — are members of the Treaty and India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea are the only nations in the world not parties to the Treaty.

The NPT arose because intelligence estimates during the 1960s reported that, by the end of the 1970s, there would be twenty-five to thirty states with nuclear weapons integrated into their national arsenals and ready for use. The Treaty entered into force in 1970. It is based on a bargain. In exchange for a commitment from the non-nuclear weapon states (today, some 186 nations) not to develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons and to submit to international safeguards intended to verify compliance with the commitment, the five NPT nuclear weapon states promised unfettered access to peaceful nuclear technologies (e.g. nuclear power reactors and nuclear medicine), and pledged to engage in good faith disarmament negotiations to achieve the elimination of their nuclear arsenals.

This promise of disarmament is the only expression by the five that they are legally bound to negotiate nuclear disarmament. It is reinforced by the historic 1996 Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which unanimously ruled that an obligation exists to pursue in good faith and conclude negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict, effective international control. This finding interpreted Article VI of the NPT as a binding requirement not to just negotiate in good faith but asserted an affirmative obligation to pursue and conclude negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament.

The Treaty had a provision that after 25 years it would be reviewed to be determined whether it would terminate, be extended for another specific period of time, or be extended indefinitely. It was agreed in 1995 that it would be extended indefinitely. However, there is an ongoing legal obligation that every five years there is a review conference to analyze compliance and establish commitments to action to fulfill the core bargain. This process should not be ignored.

A context of previous commitments that have been made and remain outstanding are worth noting. Yes, diplomatic and especially legal language is boring but remember these words are the best tools we have for preventing suffering at scales and horror beyond our capacity to imagine.

The choice is either the tools of law and diplomacy or facing the consequence of explosions giving off heat three times the face of the sun, fireballs tens of miles wide throwing tons of soot into the stratosphere rending the agricultural base of civilization destroyed, radiation spreading across the globe, and the callous use of devices which dwarf the destruction of Hiroshima or Nagasaki by magnitudes the mind cannot easily grasp.

The atomic bombs of World War II were each less than the equivalent of 20 tons of TNT. There are now bombs in the million tons ranges. If used they will not discriminate between children, elderly, or even other species. As the first generation that must decide not to be the last, we will have failed our duty to future generations and our duty to live as human beings during our brief journey together.

So, please look at the progress that has taken place and could take place again if we can generate the knowledge in the public and political will of leaders to simply save humanity from a fire of our own creation.

A bargain to gain the indefinite extension of the NPT was obtained in 1995. It was based on a Statement of Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament which “politically, if not legally, condition[ed] the indefinite extension of the treaty.” The Statement pledged to accomplish the following:

1. Complete a “Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by the end of 1996”
2. Reaffirm the commitment “to pursue . . . nuclear disarmament”
3. Commence “negotiations for a treaty to stop” production “of nuclear bomb material[s]”
4. “[S]harply reduce global nuclear arsenals”
5. Encourage “the creation of nuclear-weapon-free zones”
6. Vigorously work to make the treaty universal by bringing in Israel, Pakistan and India, who have nuclear weapons and remain outside the treaty
7. Enhance IAEA [ Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards and verification capacity 8. Reinforce negative security assurances already given to NNWS (Non-Nuclear Weapons States) “against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against them . . . .” (This means to not threaten to use nuclear weapons against states which have renounced nuclear weapons for themselves .)

At the first Review Conference of the Treaty in 2000 the here are some of the terms upon which unanimous agreement was obtained:

1. Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

The importance and urgency of signature and ratification, without delay and without conditions and in accordance with constitutional processes, to achieve the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

2. Nuclear Test Moratorium

A moratorium on nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions pending entry into force of that Treaty.

3. Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty

The necessity of negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament on a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

6. Elimination of Nuclear Arsenals

An unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.

7. The START II, START III, and ABM Treaties

The early entry into force and full implementation of START II and the conclusion of START III as soon as possible while preserving and strengthening the ABM Treaty as a cornerstone of strategic stability and as a basis for further reductions of strategic offensive weapons, in accordance with its provisions. (These treaties have been ended.)

9. Other Nuclear-Weapon States’ Actions

Steps by all the nuclear-weapon States leading to nuclear disarmament in a way that promotes international stability, and based on the principle of undiminished security for all:

– Further efforts by the nuclear-weapon States to reduce their nuclear arsenals unilaterally

– Increased transparency by the nuclear-weapon States with regard to the nuclear weapons capabilities and the implementation of agreements pursuant to Article VI and as a voluntary confidence-building measure to support further progress on nuclear disarmament

– The further reduction of non-strategic nuclear weapons, based on unilateral initiatives and as an integral part of the nuclear arms reduction and disarmament process

– Concrete agreed measures to further reduce the operational status of nuclear weapons systems

– A diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies to minimize the risk that these weapons ever be used and to facilitate the process of their total elimination

– The engagement as soon as appropriate of all the nuclear-weapon States in the process leading to the total elimination of their nuclear weapons

10. Excess Fissile Material

Arrangements by all nuclear-weapon States to place, as soon as practicable, fissile material designated by each of them as no longer required for military purposes under IAEA or other relevant international verification and arrangements for the disposition of such material for peaceful purposes, to ensure that such material remains permanently outside of military programmes.

13. Verification

The further development of the verification capabilities that will be required to provide assurance of compliance with nuclear disarmament agreements for the achievement and maintenance of a nuclear-weapon-free world.

In 2010 over 60 further commitments to making the world safer were made.

I recount the accomplishment of these commitments to highlight the diplomatic failure of the 2026 Conference where no final statement of agreement could be reached. We must be sober and recognize that the five states with nuclear weapons are either modernizing and thus making more usable their nuclear arsenals and/or expanding them, and the web of agreements that have constrained and contained proliferation and reduced risk have been eliminated by the actions of Russia and the US which possess over 85% of the world’s over 12,000 nuclear weapons. Threats of use are daily reported in the papers.

Treaty words and promises must mean something or else bullets become the verbs of communication. In the nuclear age this is too dangerous.

If the people of the world knew what diplomats could achieve if they were given the authority to use the skills of law and diplomacy, if they knew the daily risk of use of these devices by accident, design, or madness and the dozens of near uses by mistake, if they knew there is a better way, we could follow the path President Reagan and President Gorbachev opened which led to the reduction of the world’s nuclear arsenals by over 80%.

Today fear is an abused currency. In recent times we have seen how much can be created when hope and trust are invoked. The current downward spiral arising from the abusive arrogance of power exemplified by nuclear threats cannot lead to a better place. Our common humanity alone can bring us common security. It has been done before and it can be done again.

The 2026 NPT Review Conference demonstrated a failure by the five nuclear weapons states to work together to make the world a safer place.

Let us take the advice of Martin Luther King Jr. whose words when he won the Noble Peace Prize remain resonant today. “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.‬”

That is why in the face of apathy, ignorance, fear, war, dishonesty, and violence, those of us who know the life lived without caring, compassion, sincerity and the pursuit of truth is hollow cannot turn away from the imperative that is both moral and practical. The work to fulfill the legal duty to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and obtain their legal, verifiable elimination must continue. Working for peace is not an inconvenient truth but a blessing available to all of us.

Jonathan Granoff is President of the Global Security Institute.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Découvrir du sang dans ses selles ou sur le papier toilette génère une inquiétude immédiate. Le saignement rectal — rectorragie en médecine — constitue l’un […]

L’article Saignement rectal : quelles en sont les causes réelles selon la science ? est apparu en premier sur .

- Agenda / Croatie, France - Régions

- Agenda / Croatie, France - Régions

The financing required to build resilient water and sanitation systems continues to leave governments overburdened with debt repayments, excessive borrowing costs, and illicit financial flows. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi and Francisca Tatchouop Belobe
Jun 9 2026 (IPS)

Somewhere in Africa today, a woman will spend more than 30 minutes collecting water that may make her and her children sick. At the same time, her government will face severe fiscal constraints that will limit its ability to provide clean water, among other basic services.

This injustice sits at the heart of Africa’s development challenge. And, with a strong “El Niño” climate cycle currently developing and threatening to disrupt fragile water supplies, the situation can only get worse.

In several countries, debt servicing now consumes between 50 and 70 percent of government revenue, leaving little room for investment in critical sectors like water and sanitation

Africa loses billions of dollars every year through unfair sovereign credit ratings, illicit financial flows, and mounting debt repayments – all symptoms of a global financial system that wasn’t designed with African development in mind. Reforming that system could unlock critical resources for investment in water, sanitation, and the foundations of economic transformation.

Some 418 million Africans still lack basic drinking water services, while 779 million lack basic sanitation. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the only region in the world where the number without access to basic drinking water continues to rise, even as climate change intensifies droughts, floods, and water stress.

No country can industrialize without reliable water systems. No health system can function without sanitation. Agricultural transformation cannot succeed amid worsening climate shocks. And the demographic dividend cannot be realized if women and girls continue to spend hours searching for water instead of pursuing education and economic opportunity.

Yet the financing required to build resilient water and sanitation systems continues to leave governments overburdened with debt repayments, excessive borrowing costs, and illicit financial flows.

Three Essential Challenges

African governments routinely pay borrowing costs that far exceed their actual risk profile. Despite evidence showing Africa’s infrastructure default rates are lower than those in other developing regions, perceptions of risk remain disproportionately high – and those skewed risk perceptions are embedded in sovereign credit ratings. The result is an “Africa premium” that shrinks the fiscal space available for public investment.

Estimates suggest African countries could save up to $74.5 billion if ratings were based on less subjective assessments. Simulations using the Universities of St Andrews and Leicester GRADE model show the human impact of these distortions. In Ghana alone, correcting for bias embedded in sovereign ratings could create enough fiscal space to extend basic water access to more than 417,000 people and sanitation facilities for 381,537 people.

Africa loses vast resources through illicit financial flows, which take three main forms: trade mis-invoicing (falsifying invoices to misrepresent price, quantity, or quality of goods to evade taxes and duties); profit shifting (multinationals exploiting tax loopholes to move reported profits from high-tax countries to low-tax havens); and opaque cross-border transactions (international financial movements hidden by complex customs requirements, poor data transparency, or illicit practices).

UNCTAD estimates that the continent loses $88.6 billion annually to illicit financial flows — resources that could transform access to water and sanitation. In Nigeria alone, curbing trade mis-invoicing could extend water access to 2.56 million people and sanitation services to more than 4 million.

Addressing this challenge requires action globally and domestically. Beneficial ownership transparency, automatic exchange of financial information, and fairer international tax rules must be matched by stronger domestic revenue systems and governance reforms across Africa.

The third challenge is debt.

In 2024, Africa’s external debt service reached $84.4 billion – nearly five times the level recorded in 2010. In several countries, debt servicing now consumes between 50 and 70 percent of government revenue, leaving little room for investment in critical sectors like water and sanitation.

Meanwhile, debt restructuring processes remain too slow and too heavily weighted against debtor countries. The developmental consequences of the current debt burden are already measurable: simulations show that under a scenario in which debt service is capped at just 5 percent of government revenue, Egypt could achieve near-universal access to clean water and sanitation. In Ghana, a more flexible Eurobond restructuring could have resulted in more than a million people gaining access to water and sanitation.

African governments recognize the urgent need for fiscal space to invest in long-term priorities, especially water and sanitation systems that are essential for public health, climate resilience, food security, and economic productivity, hence their adoption,  of the Common African Position (CAP) on Debt — a continental strategy for sovereign debt management and reform so that debt becomes a tool for structural transformation rather than placing economies in a chokehold.

So, when our governments advocate for more concessional financing or lower borrowing costs, they’re talking about the lives of real people, often the most vulnerable: women and children.

The international community must take three steps to accompany Africa on its journey to an economic transformation that truly benefits its people.

First, sovereign credit rating methodologies for African economies must be independently reviewed to correct structural distortions that continue to overprice African risk.

Second, the international community must curb illicit financial flows through stronger transparency standards, fairer global tax rules, and meaningful enforcement mechanisms.

Third, the international debt architecture must be redesigned to support development rather than undermine it.

Sixty-three years ago, African leaders gathered in Addis Ababa to declare that Africa would shape its own destiny.

The continent possesses the resources, institutions, and ambition to drive its transformation. What remains is the political will — globally and domestically — to build a financial system that enables, rather than constrains, Africa’s development.

Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi is President and CEO of the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET). Francisca Tatchouop Belobe is the Commissioner for Economic Development, Trade, Tourism, Industry and Minerals (ETTIM) Department at the African Union Commission

À quoi ressemble une journée à 48 °C ? Pour ceux pour qui la chaleur extrême est une réalité quotidienne, bien des choses ont changé.

Next ordinary AFET committee meeting will be held on:

Monday 15 June 2026, room DE MADARIAGA S3, Strasbourg - extraordinary meeting jointly with DEVE and DROI

Wednesday 24 and Thursday 25 June 2026, room ANTALL 4Q2, Brussels

Meetings are webstreamed with the exception of agenda items held "in camera".

AFET - DROI calendar of meetings 2026
Meeting documents
Webstreaming
Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Omar Artan was set to become the first Somali to referee a game at the World Cup finals, but his place in history has been denied by US immigration authorities.

Omar Artan was set to become the first Somali to referee a game at the World Cup finals, but his place in history has been denied by US immigration authorities.

Omar Artan was set to become the first Somali to referee a game at the World Cup finals, but his place in history has been denied by US immigration authorities.

Nouvelle dégradation des relations franco-israéliennes : à quelques jours de l'ouverture du salon de l'armement terrestre Eurosatory, un des principaux du genre, le conseil de défense français refuse la présence d'officiels du gouvernement du premier ministre Benyamin Netanyahou, et enjoint les entreprises israéliennes d'armement de ne pas exposer de matériels offensifs, invoquant le non respect par Tel-Aviv des cessez-le-feu conclus au Liban et à Gaza.

- Défense en ligne / Israël, Armement, Armes (ventes d'), Industrie de l'armement, Diplomatie

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Scholarships help three women who grew up in poverty complete master's qualifications in the UK.