Half of Afghans need humanitarian aid but rising violence is preventing deliveries, a senior European Union humanitarian official said on Wednesday (3 February), reiterating calls for a ceasefire between the Afghan government and the insurgent Taliban.
The European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič visited Kabul to announce the EU will provide €32 million for humanitarian projects in 2021.
“Increasing violence and conflict is the main cause for the humanitarian need in this country,” he said. “We very much hope and call for an immediate, unconditional and comprehensive ceasefire.”
Whilst #AfghanPeaceProcess is ongoing, humanitarian aid is the central way to reach more than half of ?? population, some 19 million people.
It is paramount that all parties to the conflict facilitate the delivery of emergency relief. Protecting civilians cannot wait for peace. pic.twitter.com/ISuCp93DCe
Violence has risen in the war-torn nation, dashing hopes that a US-brokered peace process in Doha would reduce conflict while the Afghan government and the Taliban negotiated a political settlement.
Even during the usually subdued winter months, fighting has taken place around the country along with a wave of assassinations of government officials and civil society members.
On Wednesday a blast in Kabul killed a police officer, and unknown attackers killed a religious leader in the southern city of Kandahar and a judge in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
Lenarčič called on the government and the Taliban “to understand that allowing for full and unimpeded humanitarian access is their obligation under humanitarian law.”
Lenarčič said that the amount of the EU’s humanitarian aid could rise. Those funds are separate from the $12 billion over the next four years that foreign donors including the EU pledged in November.
The European Union and its member states should draw the consequences of the current stalemate in multilateral talks aimed at reforming the Energy Charter Treaty and consider a coordinated withdrawal, Paris has said in a letter seen by EURACTIV.
Signed in the early 1990s to protect oil and gas companies from political risk when investing in the former USSR, the treaty has since been decried as outdated by the EU, which wants to reinstate its “right to regulate” and align the treaty with its international climate obligations.
However, negotiations have been slowed down by the treaty’s requirement to take decisions by unanimity. And despite three rounds of talks held last year among the 54 signatories, not much progress has been made.
“In the absence of decisive progress on the reform of the Energy Charter Treaty in 2021, all consequences should be drawn,” says the letter, sent to the European Commission in December, ahead of the third round of talks.
“The option of a coordinated withdrawal of the European Union and its member states should be raised publicly from now on, while its legal, institutional and budgetary modalities should be assessed,” it adds.
The missive – showing France’s growing impatience with the slow progress in the reform talks – was signed by four French ministers and state secretaries involved in the Energy Charter Treaty negotiation: Bruno Le Maire (economy and finance), Barbara Pompili (ecological transition), Franck Riester (external trade) and Clément Beaune (European affairs).
“After two years of preparatory discussions, between 2017 and 2019, and three formal rounds of negotiations in 2020, it is clear that the process of modernising the ECT is not on track,” the ministers write.
“The current dynamics of the discussions are not likely to produce results for several years” and the EU’s objectives in the talks are “far from being achieved,” the letter states.
In 2019, EU countries gave the European Commission a mandate to revise the treaty, saying it must reinstate Europe’s “right to regulate” in areas like climate change and workers’ rights.
But those objectives are not shared by all the 54 signatories to the Energy Charter Treaty, which includes countries like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan, all highly reliant on fossil fuels.
“Not all Contracting Parties seem to share European ambitions in the field of the fight against climate change,” the four French ministers wrote, pointing out that the EU’s willingness to “exclude fossil fuels from the scope of the modernised ECT” is currently opposed by countries whose economies remain dependent oil, gas and coal.
Other aspects of the reform also appear to be in a dead end. At the last negotiation round in December, Japan refused to revise the most controversial aspect of the treaty – the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism – which refers litigations to private tribunals where judges are nominated by the parties in the dispute.
Instead, the EU has proposed to refer cases to a future “Multilateral Investment Court”, which is currently being negotiated at UN level.
In their letter, the French ministers found it “regrettable” that no progress has been made on reforming the ECT’s arbitration system. Talks at UN level are likely to drag on for many more years, the letter said, calling this prospect “unsatisfactory”.
Together, the EU and its 27 member states account for more than half of the 54 contracting parties to the ECT, the ministers underlined, saying this is “a considerable lever that should be exploited now by sending a strong political signal to the other states” in the treaty.
“At the next Energy Charter Conference, the European Union and the member states should collectively express their serious concerns about the conduct of the modernisation process and indicate that, in the absence of decisive progress in 2021, all consequences should be drawn.”
As we enter the first months of 2021, increasing numbers of reports of variants of the COVID-19 virus mark a new development in the pandemic. A variant dominant in the WHO European Region is of concern as it shows signs of being able to spread more easily between people.
Research and observations indicate that the variant spreads across all age groups, and children do not appear to be at higher risk. However, with increased transmissibility, this variant does raise concern: if we do not continue and redouble the measures to slow its spread, there will be a higher impact on health facilities already under stress.
Since the start of the pandemic, WHO has been routinely monitoring and assessing whether variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, result in changes in transmissibility, clinical presentation or severity, or whether they impact on countermeasures, including diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.
“Variants are a common phenomenon and are not in themselves dangerous, but they can be if they change the behaviour of the virus; therefore, we need to monitor these developments closely,” says Dr Richard Pebody, who leads the epidemiology and surveillance response on COVID-19 in WHO/Europe. “We are working with experts around the world to monitor and identify which variants are of concern and how they might affect our response.”
A dominant variant in the European Region
The dominant variant currently circulating in the Region is SARS-CoV-2 VOC 202012/01, so named because it was the first “variant of concern” (VOC) detected in December 2020. This variant was originally found in the United Kingdom and has now spread to many countries in the European Region, some reporting circulation within their country. There is currently no evidence that available vaccines are any less effective in preventing it, but there is some evidence that it spreads faster.
Epidemiological and virological investigations are underway in the affected countries to further assess the transmissibility, severity, risk of reinfection and antibody response with regard to new variants. It is expected that continued virus circulation is likely to result in more variants being detected over time.
Higher transmissibility is a risk to health systems
VOC 202012/01 has spread to 30 countries in the Region, with 22 503 cases reported as of 22 January 2021. Many of those countries are projecting that this variant might become dominant in the coming weeks, outnumbering non-variant cases of the COVID-19 virus.
WHO/Europe is still learning about the possible impact of this and other variants. We need to differentiate the significance of these changes for scientific purposes and for public health. The reason we are particularly interested in some variants is that they appear to spread more easily between people.
“Higher transmissibility does not mean a variant transmits in a different way, rather the variant just spreads better. This is cause for concern since as more people get infected with COVID-19, more people will be hospitalized. If this causes our health-care systems to become overwhelmed and less able to cope, more people could be at risk of dying from the virus,” explains Dr Catherine Smallwood, who leads the COVID-19 response team at WHO/Europe. “It is this scenario we are trying to avoid, which is why it is more important than ever to slow down transmission with the use of public health and social measures.”
Working together to contain COVID-19 spread
As the virus variants continue to spread across the Region, it is necessary to increase commitment and engagement to address them.
Countries need to increase sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 viral isolates and report them. WHO also urges continuing and redoubling all of the basic public health and social measures that are known to work, including testing, isolating and treating cases, contact tracing, and quarantine for contacts of cases. Everyone is part of this effort and individuals will need to be extra careful and continue protective measures such as hand hygiene, physical distancing, and wearing a mask when needed.
Let’s not forget that COVID-19 is already a serious disease, and everything should be done to control its spread.
Few topics are as delicate as religion — especially in the Middle East.
Officially, Arab states have major Muslim populations, varying from around 60% in Lebanon to almost 100% in Jordan or Saudi Arabia. Since the countries’ religious establishments also serve as governmental bodies, governments play a significant role in religious life, as they often control prayers, media or school curriculums.
However, several recently conducted and very comprehensive surveys in the Middle East and Iran, have come to similar conclusions: They all show an increase in secularization and growing calls for reforms in religious political institutions.
The conclusion after 25,000 interviews in Lebanon, by one of the largest pollsters in the region, the Arab Barometer, a research network at Princeton University and the University of Michigan, is “Personal piety has declined some 43% over the past decade, indicating less than a quarter of the population now define themselves as religious.”
One Lebanese woman told DW of her experience growing up in a conservative household. “I come from a very religious family, my parents forced me to wear the veil when I was only 12 years old,” said the 27-year-old, who does not want her name published out of fear of reprisal. “They constantly threatened me that if I remove my veil, I will burn in hell.”
Only years later, at university, she met a group of friends who were atheists. “I gradually became convinced of their beliefs, so one day before going to uni, I decided to remove my veil and leave the house,” she said.
“The hardest part was facing my family, deep down, I was ashamed that I put my parents down.”
The survey included 40,000 literate interviewees above 19 years in Iran, with an astonishing 47% reported to have gone from religious to non-religious
Iranians quest for religious change
A recent surveyamong 40,000 interviewees by the Group for Analysing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN), which researched Iranians’ attitudes toward religion, found that no less than 47% reported “having transitioned from being religious to non-religious”
Pooyan Tamimi Arab, assistant professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University and co-author of the survey, sees this transition, as well as the quest for religious change, as a logical consequence of Iran’s secularization. “The Iranian society has undergone huge transformations, such as the literacy rate has gone up spectacularly, the country has experienced massive urbanization, economic changes have affected traditional family structures, the internet penetration rate grew to be comparable with the European Union and fertility rates dropped,” Tamimi Arab told DW.
Compared with Iran’s 99.5% Shiite census figure, GAMAAN found that 78% of the participants believed in God — but only 32% identified themselves as Shiite Muslims. Figures show that 9% identified as atheist, 8% as Zoroastrian, 7% as spiritual, 6% as agnostic, and 5% as Sunni Muslim. Around 22% identified with none of these religions.
Tehran’s Hasan Abad, the only neighborhood in the region that brings together followers of four religions
“We see an increase in secularization and a diversity of faiths and beliefs,” Tamimi Arab told DW. From his point of view, however, the most decisive factor is “the entanglement of state and religion, which has caused the population to resent institutional religion even as the overwhelming majority still believes in God.”
A woman in Kuwait, who requested DW not publish her name due to safety concerns, also strictly differentiates between Islam as a religion and Islam as a system. “As a teenager, I didn’t find any proof of the government’s claimed regulations in the Quran.”
She recalls how, around 20 years ago, such thoughts had been mainly resented — but today the difference in the people’s attitude toward Islam can be felt everywhere. “Rejecting the submission to Islam as a system doesn’t mean rejecting Islam as a religion,” she explained.
The rise of the ‘nones’
The sociologist Ronald Inglehart, Lowenstein Professor of Political Science emeritus at the University of Michigan and author of the book Religious Sudden Decline, has analyzed surveys of more than 100 countries, carried out from 1981-2020. Inglehart has observed that rapid secularization is not unique in the Middle East. “The rise of the so-called ‘nones,’ who do not identify with a particular faith, has been noted in Muslim majority countries as different as Iraq, Tunisia, and Morocco,” Tamimi Arab added.
Saudi Arabia has re-assessed anti-religious thoughts as terrorism
The threat of changing attitudes
The more people differentiate between religion as a faith and religion as a system, the louder the calls for reforms. “The trend puts a dent in the efforts of Iran as well as its rivals, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, that are competing for religious soft power and leadership of the Muslim world,” said James Dorsey, senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Dorsey, an expert on the region, highlights two contrasting examples. While the United Arab Emirates has lifted the bans on alcohol consumption and unmarried couples living together, Saudi Arabia has labeled having atheist thoughts as a form of terrorism.
As an example, Dorsey references Saudi dissident and activist Raif Badawi, who was convicted of apostasy, or insulting Islam. Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for questioning why Saudis are obliged to adhere to Islam — and asserting that religion did not have the answers to all of life’s questions.
Razan Salman contributed to this article from Beirut.
… is value in studying one book at a time. Pick Genesis … , and just read through the book over and over and over … again. Studying one book at a time helps you … this approach is that some books are just hard to plow …
The European Union has questioned a move by … February 3, the spokesperson of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell … Power Broker Pull Strings
The EU statement contrasts with the response …
The EU will not scrap or alter controversial Brexit border arrangements for Northern Ireland in response to “unilateral demands or threats” from London, Ireland’s foreign minister has warned.
Simon Coveney said that the Northern Ireland Protocol was a result of the negotiation stance taken by Boris Johnson, telling those who fought for a hard Brexit: “You’ve got to own the consequences of your own decisions.”
While Dublin wanted to be “helpful” in smoothing trade by the use of existing flexibilities in the agreement, DUP first minister Arlene Foster’s demand for the removal of the protocol was “unrealistic” he said.
Cabinet minister Michael Gove is demanding an extension to January 2023 of grace periods to ease the flow of goods between Northern Ireland and the British mainland, following disruption which has seen empty shelves in supermarkets and long delays for lorries at ports.
And Mr Johnson has threatened to invoke safeguard measures in Article 16 of the protocol to suspend elements of the agreement, just days after he condemned Brussels for making the same threat over the export of vaccines.
Ms Foster today called on the PM to scrap the protocol, which her party has denounced as an “unmitigated disaster” for Northern Ireland.
“The Northern Ireland Protocol has not worked, cannot work and in light of our proposals to the government, needs to be replaced,” she wrote in the Daily Telegraph.
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“Indeed, across Northern Ireland there is growing anger at the current arrangements. The delicate political balance and relationships in Northern Ireland have been damaged and disturbed by the Protocol.”
Ms Foster was speaking after the UK and EU stood down some controls at Belfast and Larne ports following an “upsurge in sinister and menacing behaviour”.
But Mr Coveney told BBC Radio Ulster: “That’s unrealistic from Arlene Foster.
“This isn’t something that’s being imposed on Northern Ireland by the European Union. It’s something that was agreed and negotiated as a consequence of the kind of Brexit that the British government advocated and wanted, and was also supported in doing so by the DUP.”
Mr Coveney acknowledged that there had been “problems” with the implementation of the the arrangements, which effectively create a customs border in the Irish Sea, subjecting businesses to onerous paperwork and checks.
But he said: “The protocol isn’t going to be changed, this is about implementation and the flexibilities that are there.”
He said that the UK had failed to provide access to data on goods movements to EU observers as promised in the protocol.
In a letter to EU vice-president Maros Sefcovic ahead of a video meeting on Wednesday, Mr Gove demanded concessions including an extended grace period by the end of the week.
And Mr Johnson told the House of Commons: “We will do everything we need to do, whether legislatively or indeed by triggering Article 16 of the protocol, to ensure that there is no barrier down the Irish Sea.”
After discussions which both sides characterised as “constructive” last night, Mr Sefcovic is due to travel to London for further talks next week.
But Mr Coveney said: “The EU isn’t going to respond on the basis of unilateral demands or threats of consequences if they don’t give the British government what they want.
“There needs to be real engagement that has begun in relation to what’s possible within the parameters of the protocol.
“Certain parties have opposed the protocol from the outset, they also opposed the backstop, they also opposed the concept of sharing the customs union and the single market.
“You’ve got to own the consequences of your own decisions. If you force a certain type of Brexit, then that has consequences.
“And when the problems that all of us had been warning would flow from that kind of Brexit actually happen in reality, you’ve got to take responsibility for that.”
He added: “I’m not suggesting that there aren’t some issues that need to be resolved and some very real problems for businesses in Northern Ireland that we need to work on solutions to solve.
“But the core issue here is that this is the result of Brexit, not the result of the protocol. The protocol is about providing solutions to the disruption that Brexit actually forces on everybody.”
The international Focolare Movement that promotes unity and universal kinship has a new president for the next six years — Margaret Karram — an Arab Catholic, born 1962 in Haifa, Israel.
Karram is an expert in interreligious dialogue and will be the third president of Focolare for a six-year term.
Focolare was founded by Italian teacher Chiara Lubich in 1943 and aims to build “a more united world in which people value and respect diversity.
“We are inspired by Jesus’ prayer to the Father, ‘May they all be one,'” (John’s gospel. 17:21), says the movement on its website.
The election was held Jan. 31 and her appointment became effective Feb. 1 after it was confirmed by the Vatican Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life.
AMERICAN JEWISH UNIVERSITY
Karram received her degree in Jewish studies from the American Jewish University in Los Angeles and held various roles in the Focolare movement in Los Angeles and Jerusalem.
“Margaret was 15 years old when she first learned about the Focolare Movement and the spirituality of Chiara Lubich; a spirituality of unity that she embraced in a place where racial and religious intolerance still exists,” the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem wrote.
“Here I am! I am at your service. I am at the service of the Church, of the movement and humanity together with all of you,” said Karram, on her election by two-thirds of the 359 representatives in the Focolare General Assembly.
The election on Jan. 31 has been approved by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, in accordance with the Movement’s Statutes, Catholic News Service reported.
The new president by Focolare’s statutes will always be a woman.
The current assembly is occurring entirely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic after beginning on Jan. 24 and it will conclude on Feb. 7.
The participants in the assembly represent some of the different cultures, generations, vocations, members of different churches and religous faiths who are part of the Focolare Movement.
The interim World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Ioan Sauca sent a congratulatory message to Karram on her election.
CHRISTIAN, JEWISH, MUSLIM DIALOGUE
“Your commitment to promoting the dialogue between Christians, Jews, and Muslims as well as your engagement in a sustained dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians are inspiring assets for the worldwide Movement of Focolare and beyond.
“With your vast academic, ecumenical and interreligious experience I trust that you will become a bridge-builder and an ambassador of the central message and spirituality of the Focolare.”
Karram speaks Arabic, Hebrew, Italian and English. She has worked with various commissions and organizations dedicated to promoting interreligious dialogue among followers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Focolare said.
She worked at Italy’s consulate general in Jerusalem for 14 years and since 2014 had served as councilor for Italy and Albania at the Focolare’s international center; she was also co-responsible for dialogue between ecclesial movements and new Catholic communities.
She and Jewish scholar Yisca Harani received the Mount Zion Award for Reconciliation in 2013 for their work in fostering dialogue between different cultures and religions.
Karram received the St. Rita International Award in 2016 for promoting dialogue among Christians, Jews, Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians.
She succeeds Maria Voce, who was in office for two six-year terms. According to the Focolare movement’s statutes, the president should always be a woman and be chosen from among consecrated members who have perpetual vows.
Assembly members reelected Feb. 1 Spanish Father Jesus Moran Cepedano, 63, to a second term as co-president. The co-president must be a Focolarino priest and his primary role is to support and collaborate with the president.
The Focolare Movement operates in 180 nations and has over 140,440 members.
The word “Focolare” is Italian for “hearth” or “family fireside”.
While Focolare is the common moniker given to this organization, its official name when approved in 1990 as an International Association of the Faithful of Pontifical Right, was “Work of Mary”, according to Wikipedia.
Although the main fight over the EU’s Copyright Directive was lost back in March 2019, there are plenty of local battles underway. That’s a consequence of the fact that an EU Directive has to be implemented by separate national laws in each of the region’s 27 member states. Drawing up the local legislation is mostly straightforward, except for the controversial Article 17, which effectively brings in a requirement to filter all uploads. Trying to come up with a text that meets the contradictory obligations of the Directive is proving difficult. For example, although the law is supposed to stop unauthorized uploads, this must not be through “general monitoring”, which is not permitted in the EU because of the e-Commerce Directive.
As the various countries struggle to resolve these problems, it is no surprise that they are coming up with very different approaches. These are usefully summed up in a new post on the Kluwer Copyright blog. For example, France is implementing the Copyright Directive by decree, rather than via ordinary legislative procedures. As Techdirt reported, the French government is pushing through an extreme interpretation that ignores requirements for user protections. Germany, by contrast, is bringing in wide-ranging new law that contains a number of positive ideas:
a new “minor use” exception that would legalise minor uses of third party works on online platforms.
In addition, the proposal also introduced the ability for uploaders to “pre-flag” any uploads as legitimate, protecting them from automated blocking.
It limited the scope of the requirement for platforms to obtain licences to “works that users typically upload”. Platforms can meet their best efforts obligation to obtain authorisation by approaching collective management organisations and by responding to licence offers from rightsholders with a representative repertoire.
There is an irony here. One of the main reasons for introducing the Copyright Directive was to make copyright law more consistent across the EU. Article 17 is causing copyright law there to diverge even more.
The Kluwer Copyright blog has two more recent posts about Article 17, written by Julia Reda and Joschka Selinger. They look at an aspect of upload filters that could be of crucial importance in the case brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) by Poland, which seeks to have upload filters removed from the Copyright Directive.
On several occasions, the CJEU has thrown out blocking injunctions for violating the service providers’ freedom to conduct a business. In a recently published study on behalf of German fundamental rights litigation organization Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte e.V., the authors of this blog post argue that when ruling on the request for annulment of Article 17, the CJEU will have to balance all relevant fundamental rights, including the freedom to conduct a business. In this blog post, we will put the spotlight on this under-examined fundamental right. In part 1, we will discuss its relevance for the court case pending before the CJEU. We will examine the ways in which Article 17 places new burdens on online platforms that are fundamentally different from the voluntary copyright enforcement schemes employed by some of the larger platforms today. In part 2, we analyse those new platform obligations in light of the CJEU case law on the freedom to conduct a business and discuss the role of the proportionality mechanism included in Article 17 (5). We find that the legislator may have grossly underestimated the impact of Article 17 on the freedom to conduct a business.
The basic argument is simple. During the debate on the Copyright Directive, its supporters were deeply dishonest about how it would work in practice. They repeatedly claimed that it would not require upload filters, and denied that it would be hard to implement in a way that was compatible with existing EU laws. Unfortunately, the politicians in the European Parliament were taken in by these claims, and passed what became Article 17 without amendments.
But the case before the CJEU gives another chance to point out the truth about upload filters. The fact that they only exist for things like music and video, not all copyrightable material as Article 17 requires; that those don’t work well; and that even these flawed systems can only be afforded by Internet giants like Google. In practical terms, this means that smaller companies that allow user uploads will be unable to comply with Article 17, since it would require the use of technology that would be expensive to develop or license, and which wouldn’t even work properly. As such, a key argument in the CJEU case will be that upload filters represent an unjustified interference in the freedom to conduct a business in the EU, and should be thrown out. Let’s hope the CJEU agrees.
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The European Commission has invested €469 million in 105 COVID-19 research projects, with funding for 45 clinical trials taking the biggest share, of €118.9 million, according to the latest data.
Four vaccines projects received €108.2 million, while basic research projects analysing the biology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were awarded €38.2 million. A further 27 projects worth €88.3 million looked into crisis management and preparedness, and 28 projects worth €53.4 million aimed to increase health system resilience.
The 105 projects were funded through Horizon 2020 funding calls, the first of which was launched on 30 January 2020, the day the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a public health emergency. These are the biggest projects; in total the European Commission is putting €1 billion from Horizon 2020 into pandemic-related research, of which €780.8 million has been mobilised.
Of the total, €400 million is being distributed through InnovFin, of which €178.5 million has been allocated to vaccine development, including financing for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which was the first to be approved for use in the EU.
The Commission also awarded €100 million to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which has put money into a portfolio of COVID-19 vaccines. Another €25.3 million went to the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership.
Grants worth €171.6 million were awarded to smaller projects and SMEs through the European Innovation Council and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology
