Ceasefire in Gaza, diplomatic changes in Africa... New global equilibrium in sight?
Groundbreaking progress and coming summits or deals can give hope this week, despite huge challenges. Let's tour the world.
Dear readers,
This week, some good news, and how to look at world affairs for the coming months, from a global south perspective…
In Gaza, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into force o Sunday 19 at 9:15GMT, after a nearly three-hour delay on scheduled plans, due to a dispute over the hostage list…
After 15 months of horrors, bombardments, and over 46,000 deaths, all NGOs reporting ethnic cleansing, famine and alarm on genocidal massacres, the region is going through slight progress, with hostages and prisoners from both sides being released.
The ceasefire deal comes in three stages. In the first, 33 hostages are set to be released over six weeks in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The remainder are to be released in a second phase.
In Gaza, thousands of Palestinian police officers have been deployed in the territory “as part of a government plan to maintain security and order across various governorates”. Municipalities have started “reopening and rehabilitating streets”.
But all night, the Israeli strikes continued, and the attacks killed at least eight Palestinians since the planned start of the ceasefire, including one person in Rafah…
Some background and reflections below.
Israel-Hamas war
Qatar announces Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage swap after 15-month conflict
Qatar's prime minister said Wednesday that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza starting on Sunday and a hostage and prisoner exchange after 15 months of war.
Issued on: 15/01/2025
Palestinians celebrate the announcement of a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, on Jan. 15, 2025. © AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana
Negotiators reached a deal on Wednesday for a ceasefire in the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, an official briefed on the negotiations told Reuters, after 15 months of conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and inflamed the Middle East.
The agreement follows months of on-off negotiations brokered by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, with the backing of the United States, and came just ahead of the 20 January inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres while welcoming the deal said it was "imperative" that the ceasefire removes obstacles to aid deliveries as he welcomed the deal that includes a prisoner and hostage exchange.
Link to my blog: https://melissa-on-the-road.blogspot.com/2025/01/gaza-ceasefire-deal.html
In response to reports that Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire agreement set to take effect on 19 January 2025, Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said in a statement sent to journalists:
“The news of a ceasefire agreement will bring a glimmer of relief to Palestinians who have been victims of the genocide perpetrated by Israel. But this agreement has been cruelly long overdue.”
She added that Israel has “consistently and deliberately blocked and hindered the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza”:
“Civilians have faced unprecedented levels of famine, and children have died of starvation. The international community, which has so far failed to persuade Israel to fulfil its legal obligations, must ensure that it immediately allows the delivery of vital supplies to all areas of the occupied Gaza Strip to ensure the survival of the Palestinian population.”
On the mediation - let’s remind that the timing suggests that an important factor was the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House. Trump had threatened that "all hell would break loose" if a deal was not reached and the hostages freed.
In fact, the American press made this the centre of the issue...
As his inauguration approached, Trump reiterated his demand that a deal be struck quickly, even going so far as to send his envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
Witkoff claims to have worked with President Joe Biden’s team and his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. However, when asked about the roles of Trump and Witkoff, Biden implied that their intervention was ridiculous...
One more note: The former director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, professor at Princeton, wrote that “Netanyahu seems to have used the excuse of Trump’s threat to insist to his far-right allies that he had no choice but to accept a ceasefire.”
Whether that excuse works remains to be seen.
“That the fate of 2 million Gazans depends on such political manoeuvring is outrageous,” he concluded.
I could not agree more…
The ceasefire in the Gaza began Sunday morning at 0630 GMT, mediator Qatar said on Saturday after Israel's cabinet voted to approve the truce and hostage-prisoner release deal.
More here about the details and what comes next:
Gaza ceasefire deal: What you need to know
The news from Gaza evolves quickly.
The ceasefire started on 19 January (my birthday, and I had no other wish…).
But this is only the first and easy part… A lot remains to do to bring the region to peace, let alone bring justice… A ceasefire is not even a peace deal.
Then, let’s not forget the crimes committed (as I reported in this piece for instance), and in this interview:
Africa
2025 is an important year for the African continent as the G20's presidency is held for the first time by a member, South Africa, as I discussed in my previous post.
More on this here: Africa takes centre stage as South Africa maps ambitious G20 agenda
But the year will also see the split of the West African Economic group Ecowas, the end of French military presence, new partnerships with the US and China, as major security and diplomatic reshuffles take place. Spotlight on Africa talks to a group of experts and analysts to explore Africa's new diplomacy.
In my coming podcast episode, I focus on Africa’s diplomacy.
The beginning of the year is already bringing novelty and rapid change.
In West and Central Africa French soldiers are being pushed out... And Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger insist on leaving the West Africa economic regional bloc.
And that's without mentioning the new presidency of Donald Trump in the United States, and its competitiveness with China abroad…
How could this year unfold for Africa’s leading nations and their partners?
Will the continent take a more central place in the global diplomatic conversation as many expect?
This is what we are going to discuss in this next episode, with three experts in African politics and diplomacy: Cameron Hudson from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CISC) in Washington DC, USA; Michael Dillon from King's College, London, UK; and Thierry Vircoulon, a brilliant Africa researcher currently based in France.
To listen, go to this link from Tuesday:
Spotlight on Africa
An in-depth look at an important story affecting the African continent today.
As resentment towards Macron grows in Africa, France's foreign policy is questioned
While French President Macron had promised in 2017 to reset the relationship between Africa and France, the situation looks much worse than under his predecessors, and most allies are now demanding the departure of French troops. Experts look at what went wrong.
The French president criticised of African countries during his annual address to ambassadors on 6 January, and their supposed "ingratitude" towards Paris… All that after a year of mistakes and bad words… So, who was surprised when West African leaders quickly denounce his arrogance?
Macron also tried to claim that the announced withdrawal of French military bases from West Africa had been negotiated, which all of these leaders deny.
Now the row is growing on the African continent and France is no longer welcome in any of its former partners.
From mistake to mistake
To dig into this poor state of affairs, I spoke to Thierry Vircoulon, an Africa researcher at the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI), and he reckoned that what Macron said was definitely off script… And not helpful!
"He is very much used to speaking his mind publicly, which of course is not a good idea," he told me. "He made many mistakes like that in the past. The problem is that, with social media now, these kinds of little sentences become the main argument. And that's why he should be much more careful when he's speaking."
According to Roland Marchal, a brilliant researcher at CNRS on Africa and professor at Sciences Po Paris, all observers of African politics were surprised by Macron's discourse and tone, especially as the recent French military missions in Africa were not considered a success.
"In Mali in particular, when the French mission left, the security situation had deteriorated significantly, especially after 2016. It was a failure, in all honesty," Marchal told me.
In Africa however, many think that Macron's display of arrogance should not even be given too much importance.
"Hostility towards the former colonial power, observable for several years in most of the Francophone countries on the continent, is the result of half a century of domination, arrogance, and indifference," the Senegalese economist Ndongo Samba Sylla, wrote in a recent report, titled "Behind the 'anti-french sentiment', the revolt against Françafrique".
"Longstanding resentment towards former colonial powers in many Francophone African countries has been shaped by a history of oppressive rule and disregard for local populations," he added.
Fall-out all over
The open row with Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger seems the hardest to fix, as the countries are now run by military juntas, blaming France at any occasions.
So no one was surprised when the Burkinabe leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, said that Macron had "insulted all Africans" in his speech.
For Traoré, Macron views Africans as inferior. "To him, we are not human beings," he said.
But Chad, Senegal, and Côte d'Ivoire were until very recently considered as French strongholds and allies. So their recent decisions to ask French troops to leave can be blamed on Macron, according to most experts.
While Macron and his government decided to focus on more fruitful economic partnership, with Morocco and Nigeria for instance, it does not mask his diplomatic failure and could bode poorly in other parts of Africa.
Mistake in militarisation
One point most experts also agree on is that if the French military strategy in Africa failed. It didn't stop the jihadists in the Sahel, or conflicts in Central African Republic. And it alienated local populations.
But the biggest mistake was to put all efforts on the army to begin with.
Gilles Holder, anthropologist at the French National Centre for Research (CNRS), told the French daily newspaper Le Monde in November 2023 that "France has been trapped by the postcolonial tool of its military interventions. Since independence, unlike the British, it has not invested enough in economic and cultural fields."
Marchal agrees.
In November 2024, Macron's new envoy Jean-Marie Bockel said that none of these African partners wanted the French to leave. The following weeks proved him wrong.
For Vircoulon,”over time, this historical security pact set up after colonial times became more problematic, also less relevant for the African countries.”
Now, the reasons that once underpinned French military cooperation in Africa have almost all disappeared, according to Vircoulon, but "instead of demilitarising the French-African relationship, the French government is seeking to invent a new model of military partnership that is politically risky," he told me.
Reality on the ground in West Africa forces France to leave.
For Machal, Macron should get on with this new reality.
The analyst adds that, in a couple of years, the Sahel states will most probably transition to civilian rule, and France could miss an opportunity to build a different kind of relationship, peaceful and finally more respectful.
For more on other parts of Africa…
Ecowas and the Sahel
Fears for the future in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso over Ecowas withdrawal
The withdrawal of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso – who have formed their own Alliance of Sahel States – from West African bloc Ecowas is set to take effect on 29 January, with security experts and members of the diaspora voicing concern over what lies ahead.
Issued on: 15/01/2025
By: Melissa Chemam
On Saturday, 11 January on Paris's Place de la République, dozens of people were protesting against the decision to withdraw from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), announced last year by Bamako, Niamey and Ouagadougou.
The group is made up of members of the diaspora from Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, and exiled political opponents.
Boubacar Mintou Koné, a member of the Malian political opposition in exile, told me: "This withdrawal from Ecowas, currently under way, has been carried out without the necessary consultation of all the nation’s active forces and without a referendum to ask the entire Malian people whether or not we should remain in Ecowas."
He supports the call for a return to constitutional order and the transfer of power from the military junta – which seized power in 2021, in what was the country's third coup d'état in 10 years – to democratically elected institutions.
Video:
Security threat
The withdrawal of the three countries from Ecowas poses major issues in terms of population circulation, trade and security.
Bakary Sambe is the regional director of the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute, a think tank specialising in security and conflict resolution, who works on integration issues in West Africa.
"In itself, the creation of the Sahel States Alliance through the Liptako Gourma Charter presaged a weakening of Ecowas and the tacit disappearance of the G5 Sahel, which was a key player in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel and West Africa in general," he wrote on the institute's site.
For Sambe, the withdrawal risks the fragmentation of regional counter-terrorism efforts, and could have a negative impact on the African Union's efforts in terms of security and cooperation.
"Groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaeda are committed to the establishment of these states, denouncing democratic governance," according to Oluwole Ojewale, research fellow at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, and regional coordinator at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS Africa).
He told The Conversation: "Their influence and operational model are on the rise. They are radicalising the population, heightening sectarian strife and aggravating the difficulties of already volatile regions. Operating in parts of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Chad, these groups aspire to form a jihadist caliphate in the Sahel region."
And, in the Americas…
Finally, January 2025 was also marked by a very sad anniversary on the other side of the planet, in the Caribbean.
I went to Haiti in 2008 when based in Miami, and since worked on important Haitian projects and documentaries from France (its former colonial power). The country’s history has changed my understanding of our world affairs… If you don’t know much, it might change yours too.
Haiti
Haiti's future remains 'hanging in the balance' 15 years after earthquake
Remembrance of the catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010 comes as the country faces major challenges, including gang violence and extreme poverty.
Issued on: 12/01/2025
By: Melissa Chemam
"I remember the day the earthquake happened very, very well. That year, I was 19 years old, I was in my final year of high school. I lived in a two-storey house. I was working on a maths assignment with my cousin, it was about 4:45pm, when suddenly the earth started shaking. I had no idea what was happening and I started running."
Claudine St Fleur will never forget the day the earthquake struck Haiti. It claimed the life of her aunt, who was her only caregiver. "She was everything to me," Claudine told RFI, speaking from Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, via a poor connection.
She and her cousin lived in a tent for weeks, and only found refuge thanks to an uncle months later. An American friend of her aunt, who used to live in the same house as them, later helped her to pursue her studies.
But despite her resilience after the devastation, Claudine is unemployed now – thanks to a new set of challenges Haiti is facing. "I lost my job because of the gangs and violence," she says.
To read the while story: What Haitians remember and hope, 15 years after the devastating 2010 earthquake
Multiple crises
The Haitian capital has since been witnessing a spike in violence, especially due to the rule of gangs over the past two years, despite the presence of a multinational security mission from 2024.
These armed gangs are accused of widespread murder, kidnapping and sexual violence.
The United Nations says gangs control around 80 percent of Port-au-Prince, and regularly attack civilians despite the deployment earlier this year of a multinational security mission led by Kenya.
President Jovenel Moise's 2021 assassination exacerbated instability, and consequences of many natural disasters, including the 2010 earthquake but also hurricanes and other quakes, have worsened the crisis.
Nearly half the population now lives in severe hunger and extreme poverty, according to the International Rescue Committee who put Haiti on its list of the top 10 crises the world can’t ignore in 2025.
But Haiti has suffered from political violence for decades, due to political instability, years of dictatorship followed by poor governance, US interventions and the consequences of the enormous debt inflicted by the former colonial ruler, France, since Haiti's independence in 1804.
The role of France and the US
France thus lost its then-richest colony, and Haitians have had to pay over 112 million francs to France - about $560 million - until 2022, according to research from The New York Times and to academic centres.
The cost of these 'Reparations for Freedom', as many call them, could now amount to about $560 million in today’s dollars.
In his book Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti (2024), Jake Johnston, researcher and writer at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC (CEPR), also showed how long-standing US and European capitalist goals ensnared and re-enslaved Haiti under the guise of helping it.
"To the global West, Haiti has always been a place where labor is cheap, politicians are compliant, and profits are to be made," he writes.
"Over the course of nearly 100 years, the US has sought to control Haiti and its people with occupying police, military, and euphemistically-called peacekeeping forces."
Earthquakes and hurricanes only further devastated a state already decimated by the aid industrial complex, he concludes.
There would be more to say.
I’m thinking of Brazil, where a friend of mine just moved and where more and more readers seem to find my blog… Thinking about Mayotte, and Europe, where the far right is gaining a country per semester... But this is more than enough for a post.
One last note…
Overdose of opinion everywhere
One online phenomenon that keeps rising with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, is opinion journalism.
If I find that some interesting, insightful and documenting opinions from competent people with lots of experience can be beneficial, the increasing influx of opinion everywhere is making our job more complicated than ever!
Reports started to alert about this evolution from at least 2019, here is one from the USA.
Tom Rosenstiel, professor at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism and co-author of The Elements of Journalism, explained how the rise of 24-hour cable TV has tilted the media world off its “just the facts” axis.
Social media did the rest, and it affect the written world more than ever now.
Opinion pieces are so much faster to write than reporting and analysis in journalism, and they are also more click-bait and attract comments & responses, as each readers want to be part of the conversation…
Now that we know why a certain billionaire bought Twitter and rename it darkly, and that Meta is officially following the same path, can we agree to stop the chatter?
Meanwhile, how many crucial stories get overlooked..?
Now, journalism is the first profession threatened by rising dictators and polluting billionaires. To stop them, opinion pieces will never be the answer.
Don't talk only about the powerful! Stop obsessively adding fuel to the wire… Don’t even read all of what bad leaders say, they only want to occupy more space, if not all the space.
What I’d (humbly) suggest: Read important reportage, about people, real life, social change, not more opinion pieces... You can develop your own critical thinking by deepening your knowledge.
Arguing endlessly won’t solve our issues… But inspirations, information and good examples might.
Thanks for reading, as always.
If you care, share and help other people subscribe, always for free, for more news from the world, the whole world, not just the US and the UK.
Best,
melissa
Melissa Chemam
Journalist & Writer
> Podcast: Spotlight on Africa
Blog: https://melissa-on-the-road.blogspot.com/
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/melissachemam
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MelissaChemam