In a fervent appeal to the global community, Prime Minister James Marape of Papua New Guinea has called on US President Donald Trump to “rethink” his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and current global climate initiatives.
Marape’s plea came during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting held in Davos, Switzerland, on 23 January 2025.
Expressing deep concern for the impacts of climate change on Papua New Guinea and other vulnerable Pacific Island nations, Marape highlighted the dire consequences these nations face due to rising sea levels and increasingly severe weather patterns.
“The effects of climate change are not just theoretical for us; they have real, devastating impacts on our fragile economies and our way of life,” he said.
The Prime Minister emphasised that while it was within President Trump’s prerogative to prioritise American interests, withdrawing the United States — the second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide– from the Paris Agreement without implementing measures to curtail coal power production was “totally irresponsible”, Marape said.
“As a leader of a major forest and ocean nation in the Pacific region, I urge President Trump to reconsider his decision.”
He went on to point out the contradiction in the US stance.
US not closing coal plants “The United States is not shutting down any of its coal power plants yet has chosen to withdraw from critical climate efforts. This is fundamentally irresponsible.
“The science regarding our warming planet is clear — it does not lie,” he said.
Marape further articulated that as the “Leader of the Free World,” Trump had a moral obligation to engage with global climate issues.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape’s plea to President Trump. Video: PNGTV
“It is morally wrong for President Trump to disregard the pressing challenges of climate change.
He must articulate how he intends to address this critical issue,” he added, stressing that effective global leaders had a responsibility not only to their own nations but also to the planet as a whole.
In a bid to advocate for small island nations that are bearing the brunt of climate impacts, PM Marape announced plans to bring this issue to the upcoming Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).
He hopes to unify the voices of PIF member countries in a collective statement regarding the US withdrawal from climate negotiations.
US revived Pacific relations “The United States has recently revitalised its relations with the Pacific. It is discouraging to see it retreating from climate discussions that significantly affect our region’s efforts to mitigate climate change,” he said.
Prime Minister Marape reminded the international community that while larger nations might have the capacity to withstand extreme weather events such as typhoons, wildfires, and tornadoes, smaller nations like Papua New Guinea could not endure such impacts.
“For us, every storm and rising tide represents a potential crisis. Big nations can afford to navigate these challenges, but for us, the stakes are incredibly high,” he said.
Marape’s appeal underscores the urgent need for collaborative and sustained global action to combat climate change, particularly for nations like Papua New Guinea, which are disproportionately affected by environmental change.
New figures show possible cost of increased trade barriers.
Analysis published today by the Office of the Chief Economic Advisor has estimated Brexit trade barriers could impact Scotland’s economy by £4 billion.
This estimated economic cost is from the reduction in trade alone – not counting changes to productivity, investment or migration.
Business Minister Richard Lochhead said the report demonstrated the urgent need to reverse the damage of Brexit to boost living standards and revenue for the NHS.
According to the Trade Modelling Report, Scottish exports could be lower by 7.2% or £3 billion compared to continued EU membership.
The chemical and pharmaceutical sector is estimated to be one of the hardest hit by post-Brexit trade barriers, with an estimated 9.1% reduction in output, followed by the computer and electronics sector with an estimated 7.7% fall. The 4.9% output drop estimated for the agrifood sector represents a loss of £827 million.
Business Minister Richard Lochhead said:
“On the eve of the fifth anniversary of Brexit, these new figures highlight the urgent need to change course to boost the economy and increase public revenue for the NHS.
“This is the latest in a long line of studies highlighting how badly Brexit continues to impact Scotland and should cause the UK Government to consider its approach to economic growth.
“The Scottish Government has been clear that Scotland’s place is in the EU and the huge European single market. But we are also a voice for greater co-operation with the EU right now and we urge the new UK Government to forge a much closer relationship with our fellow Europeans.”
The report is the first to specifically analyse the impact of the UK’s post-Brexit trade agreements on Scotland’s economy. It examines the expected effect of actual or potential free trade agreements between the UK and Australia, India, Switzerland and Turkey, as well as the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and EU. It then compares that with the trade benefits Scotland would have received from continued EU membership.
This report makes estimates based on the impact of trade barriers and does not account for changes in productivity and investment due to Brexit. This means that some of the headline figures differ from those in other reports – such as in modelling by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which showed that UK GDP could be 5.7% lower – as they look at the overall impact of Brexit on the economy.
Source: Switzerland – Department of Foreign Affairs in English
At its 29 January 2025 meeting, the Federal Council was informed about how the cuts to development cooperation decided on by Parliament will be implemented. In late December, Parliament made cuts of CHF 110 million to the 2025 budget and CHF 321 million to the 2026–28 financial plan for bilateral and multilateral development cooperation. The cuts do not affect humanitarian aid, peace promotion or support for Ukraine.
Corrie Hermann. – Dear President of the European Parliament, dear Roberta Metsola, dear Presidents, dear Members, Commissioners, excellencies, distinguished guests, this story about one Holocaust victim is dedicated to every one of the 6 million victims whom we deplore today.
My father, Hermann Pál, was born on 27 March 1902 in Budapest, in a well-to-do family. At the time, Budapest was still the second capital of the Habsburg Empire – the era which Stefan Zweig depicts in Die Welt von Gestern. The Jewish citizenry had become gradually an integral part of the community, and joined intensively in the professional, cultural and financial life.
Hermann Pál was intelligent and musical, and was admitted, at the age of 15, as a cello student at the famous Franz Liszt Academy, established in 1875 – the cradle of many generations of top musicians from Hungary. His best friend became the violinist Székely Zoltán, who would become a worldwide-known soloist and the first violinist of the New Hungarian String Quartet. Pál developed not only as a cellist but also as a composer. His teachers were Kodály and Bartók.
Even before the formal completion of his training, he reaped his first success in a private concert at the house of Arnold Schönberg with the ‘Sonata for Cello Solo’, which Kodály had composed a few years earlier. A performance of this sonata at a concert in Switzerland, which was organised by the International Society of Contemporary Music, was the first step in his international career.
But in the meantime, the First World War had raged in Europe. The Habsburg Empire was no more. Hungary’s wings had been clipped by the Trianon Treaty, and the new leader, Admiral Horthy, was the first one to introduce antisemitic laws. The young cellist went to Berlin and changed his name from the Hungarian Hermann Pál to Paul Hermann.
In Berlin, musical life was blooming. Paul took lessons at the Staatliche Academische Hochschule für Musik. To earn a living, he became a teacher at the progressive Volksmusikschule Berlin-Neukölln and he played in all kinds of ensembles: Baroque music, the great classics – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven – and contemporary compositions by Hindemith, Ernst Toch and, of course, Kodály and Bartók.
The tie with Zoltán Székely was to endure all his life. Zoltán had settled in the Netherlands. Together they gave concerts which were favourably reviewed in the Netherlands, Germany and England. In London they stayed often at the house of a Dutch couple, Jacob de Graaff and Louise Bachiene. De Graaff was a wealthy businessman. He and his wife were lovers of art and music, and liked to entertain young artists. They admired the two musicians so much that in 1927 they bought a Stradivarius violin for Zoltán and, in 1928, a Gagliano cello for Paul. That cello has a leading part in this story.
Louise de Graaff corresponded frequently with relations in the Netherlands, and when Paul Hermann was scheduled to play in Amsterdam, she urged her young niece, Ada Weevers, to go to the concert and meet the artist. This meeting was such a success that they became engaged and married in 1931. They settled in an apartment in a new Berlin quarter, Charlottenburg. I was born in 1932 and there are pictures of my father holding me on the balcony.
But in 1933 came bad luck. On 30 January, Hitler became Reichskanzler in Germany and a threatening atmosphere for Jewish people becomes immediately acute. Jews are fired from public functions. Paul Hermann loses his job. The little family seeks refuge with Ada’s parents in the Netherlands. In the summer holiday, they stay near the seaside and, when swimming, Ada gets caught in a vortex in the waves and nearly drowns. She inhales water, it leads to pneumonia and she dies a few months later.
Paul Hermann joins Hungarian colleagues in Brussels. Together they perform as the Gertler Quartet. They tour Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary. He has left me with my maternal grandparents; a younger sister of my mother takes loving care of me. Every time my father visits is delightful. The whole family adores him.
After a few years in Brussels, Paul Hermann moves to Paris and continues his international career. On 4 August 1939, I turned seven. I remember him coming, always with his cello. Only recently, I found a letter my father wrote to a friend telling me about all the difficulties he had to get permission from the French authorities to cross the border to Holland. Foreign Jews are already under suspicion.
But I only know it’s my birthday, a party. As a present, my father gives me the new French book, ‘Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant‘, and he teaches me my first French words: ‘Babar entre dans l’ascenseur, il monte dix fois en haut et descend dix fois en bas mais le garçon lui dit “ce n’est pas un joujou, monsieur l’éléphant”‘.
But again, the atmosphere is threatening. War breaks out at the end of August. Borders are closing. All foreign visitors return hastily. That winter, Western Europe is mobilised, but the fighting is in the east. We can still correspond. But in the spring, Hitler looks toward France. The French army is preparing the defence. Paul Hermann joins a régiment de marche de volontaires étrangers to assist the French army. In June, the Germans are in Paris. Northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands are occupied and under German rule. As a schoolchild, I remember the little boards everywhere: ‘Verboden voor Joden‘.
In France, the southern region is at first not occupied. People feel relatively safe there. Hermann and his cello stay first with the de Graaff couple, who have moved from London to the region south of Bordeaux, but then he moves to a room in Toulouse. He has some pupils and can give a few recitals. Censorship makes corresponding very difficult. We get only very few letters.
Sometimes he can visit Ada’s brother, Jan Weevers, who has an agricultural business in a village about 150 km from Toulouse. This brother-in-law supports him as much as he can. But in 1942, all France is occupied. The terror of the Gestapo reigns also in Toulouse. In Budapest, Berlin, Paris, Paul Hermann has been able to flee from antisemitism. Now this is not possible anymore. He takes false papers, names himself de Cotigny and hopes for the best.
But on 21 April 1944, he is arrested in a street raid, taken to the Toulouse prison and transported to Drancy, the assembling camp near Paris, from where the transports for the concentration camps departed.
In May 1944, he is put in a wagon with 60 other men as a part of transport number 73 from Drancy. While the train is waiting at the station, he manages to write a note to his brother-in-law and throws it out of the train. A kind passenger, who probably realises this could be a last message, posts it. Miraculously, it reaches Jan Weevers. It reads:
«On nous a dit que nous allions travailler à l’Organisation Todt. Nous sommes pleins d’espoir malgré tout. Quant à mes instruments, je te prie de sauver ce que tu peux.»
There is hardly any transportation, but Jan Weevers manages to go to Toulouse, where Paul’s rooms have been sealed by the Gestapo. Spoils of war. He forces a window and exchanges the precious Gagliano cello for a cheap student’s instrument. He takes it home. Paul’s cello is saved.
Transport 73 is not put to work for the organisation Todt. It is sent all through Europe to Kaunas in Lithuania. We don’t know what happened, but only a handful of the 900 prisoners who arrived in Kaunas will return after the war.
In the Netherlands, 1944-1945 is the hardest year of the war. There is no food, no heating. The infrastructure is heavily destructed. In May 1945, the Canadians entered the city where we lived. The Nazi regime capitulates, and it is immense joy.
Only weeks later, we hear what has happened in France. Investigations by Jan Weevers have been in vain. Will Paul Hermann return? In Tony Judt’s standard book Postwar, we read about the chaos in Middle Europe: many millions of displaced persons roam in deplorable conditions through what is left of Germany. Some returned home after months or years. Many don’t. Gradually we realise Paul will never come back.
Surrounded by a beloved extended family, I grow up, go to the university to study medicine, marry, have a family. As a doctor, I work mainly in public health. And at the end of my career, I am elected in the Netherlands Parliament for the Green Party. After retirement, I am reminded of a pile of handwritten music scores which have been laying around for more than 60 years. They are old compositions of my father. He played music with his colleagues in all kinds of combinations.
The Dutch foundation Forbidden Music Regained, which focuses on the work of composers who were persecuted by the Nazis, is interested. They are greatly impressed by the quality of the music, and organise concerts and recordings. My son Paul, named after his grandfather, develops into the coordinator of this legacy and makes it accessible to musicians all over the world.
When he’s visiting cousins in Los Angeles, they introduce him to the Recovered Voices project of the Los Angeles Colburn School of Music, which is also aimed at persecuted composers. Top cellist Clive Greensmith is enthusiastic about Hermann’s music, especially about a draft for a piece for cello and orchestra. Paul has a friend, an Italian composer, Fabio Conti, who makes the draft into a complete piece for cello and orchestra using themes from other Hermann compositions. Greensmith plays the premiere in 2018, in Lviv, Ukraine.
But another staff member in Los Angeles, Carla Shapreau, says: ‘Yes, this is the music. But where is that Gagliano cello?’ In 1953, Jan Weevers took the cello to the Netherlands. It has been sold to finance my studies, but we don’t know who bought it.
Carla enlists the help of Oxford-based biography writer Kate Kennedy, who is working on a book about the duality of cellists and their cellos. Kate also gets under the spell of the Hermann story, and she looks for the cello literally all over the world – asking cellists, luthiers, instrument dealers, music schools, browsing through auction catalogues. Who knows the whereabouts of a Gagliano cello made in 1730 with the text ‘Ego sum anima musicae’ – I am the soul of music – on the side? But Kate does not find it. The publication date of her book nears; she feels defeated.
The book Cello is published. Cellists everywhere read it. And then Kate gets a mail from a Chinese cello professor, Jian Wang, acting as jury member for the Concours Reine Elisabeth here in Brussels in 2022. He has noticed a cello. It is in the possession of the Robert Schumann Musik Hochschule in Düsseldorf, and only their best students are permitted to play it. At a presentation of Kate’s book Cello in the Wigmore Hall in London, where my father performed 100 years ago, Australian Sam Lucas plays, on Paul Hermann’s cello, one of his compositions.
Between 1920 and 1940, Paul Hermann played the same cello in all Western and Central Europe. Searching for this icon of European culture has connected people from all over the world: from Europe to Los Angeles to China to Australia. And its amazing story has captured interest everywhere.
For me, this is a reunion in spirit with the father whom I have missed for 85 years.
Hitler has burned books, destroyed paintings and buildings, murdered millions of people. But music is invincible.
Ego sum anima musicae. Freude, schöner Götterfunken. Alle Menschen werden Brüder.
Source: Switzerland – Department of Foreign Affairs in English
In Switzerland, it will no longer be possible to adopt children from abroad in the future. The Federal Council has instructed the Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP) to prepare a consultation draft on a ban on international adoptions by the end of 2026 at the latest. An independent group of experts has concluded in its report that even well-crafted adoption laws cannot prevent abuse and that a ban is the best way to adequately protect all those affected, particularly children.
WISeArt’s Exclusive Reveal of Yan Balestra’s Anvil Wonderland to be Held at WISeKEY’s Geneva Headquarters from January 30 to February 2
Geneva, Switzerland January 29, 2025: WISeKey International Holding Ltd. (“WISeKey”) (SIX: WIHN, NASDAQ: WKEY), a global leader in cybersecurity, AI, Blockchain, and IoT operating as a holding company, today announced that its WISe.Art subsidiary is offering collectors and art enthusiasts an array of diverse projects during ArtGeneve, the iconic annual contemporary art fair to be held from January 30 to February 2, 2025. In this vibrant atmosphere, the various projects will give art aficionados a glimpse into Yan’s unique Neo-Pop vision, blending fine art, digital storytelling, and pop culture nostalgia, a true insight on augmented reality with artists selected by Espace L as well as a world première which will revolutionise the music industry using AI to the advantage of human musicians.
Anvil Wonderland: As the whimsical and the bold ooze with creativity, Anvil Wonderland invites audiences into a dynamic and colourful world where classical animation meets contemporary art. Inspired by the iconic cartoon trope of falling anvils, the piece transforms this playful chaos into a modern-day tribute to resilience.
The 60 x 80 cm acrylic on canvas piece features striking colours of pure blue, red, yellow, black, and white showcasing Yonel, the mischievous central figure of Yan’s artistic universe, captured mid-leap in a vibrant and daring composition. Accompanying the physical piece is an exclusive NFT animation: a 9-second loop that brings Yonel to life, diving into the unknown with his signature energy and spirit. The package will be released for sale to the public simultaneously live at the WISeKEY’s headquarters and online via the WISe.ART platform.
This unique combination of physical and digital artistry provides collectors with a phygital experience that seamlessly bridges the worlds of traditional fine art and cutting-edge innovation.
About Yan Balestra: Yan Balestra is a contemporary artist celebrated for his Neo-Pop aesthetic and ability to combine extreme sports culture, retro-futuristic elements, and bold storytelling. Through Yonel, his artistic alter-ego, Yan invites audiences to reconnect with their inner child and embrace the joy of exploration and imagination. His work serves as a bridge between playful nostalgia and the forward momentum of contemporary art. https://www.instagram.com/yanbalestra/?hl=en https://platform.wise.art/author/yan/
About SpinDreams: Hydroelectric transmutations in the Swiss landscape by River Oracle, Lea Sblandano, Nacoca Ko, Paulo Wirz, Ricardo Meli, Paul Fritz, Antoine Félix Bürcher, Hugo Landlade and Jan Steenman. The project was initiated in 2022 to bridge the fluidity of analog and digital reality questioning dreamlike realities and newer technologies, nature’s resources feeding human energies. The art pieces act as semiotic talismans, focal points that draw awareness to the ceaseless metamorphic interplay between the tangible and the virtual.
About Espace_L: Inaugurated in 2011, Espace_L is rapidly becoming the reference in Geneva for contemporary art. The gallery interacts in distinct sectors by presenting internationally recognized artists and by orchestrating art meetings, to raise awareness and question current art movements questioning technology and the philosophy of art.
About “20 Song” by Soren Sorenson aka Dorian Gray: Dorian Gray’s approach is, above all, exploratory, a way to understand how AI can enrich the creative process and open new avenues of expression. “20-version song” is a manifesto for augmented musical creation, where artificial intelligence becomes an ally, not a substitute for humans. The project does not stop there: it invites the public to participate in the experience, navigate this sound labyrinth, discover the 20 interpretations, and choose their favorite by voting directly on the site, a democratic approach that gives a playful and participatory dimension to this unique musical exploration.
About The Good Token Society:In the dynamic landscape of Web3, the need for support, federation, promotion and representation has never been more pressing. The Good Token Society is a hub for sustainable, global technology development, a base for initiatives focusing on the confluence of impact, technology, and finance.A collective of innovators, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders passionate about the intersection of technologies and impact. We must shift from reactive to proactive and being prepared for the future. Despite facing challenges, blockchain players persist in enhancing capabilities. We are transitioning from theoretical experimentation to tangible business solutions.
The Event: Yan Balestra’s opening exhibition will take place at WISeKEY headquarters, 58 Avenue Louis Casaï in Geneva, Switzerland on January 29, from 4 to 9 pm, by appointment offering an intimate opportunity for collectors, curators, and art enthusiasts to explore Yan Balestra’s latest creation. While the event is not officially affiliated with ArtGeneve, it takes advantage of the vibrant energy surrounding the city’s most prestigious art week, providing a compelling space for attendees to discover Yan’s unique artistic narrative.
SpinDream will be on show at the Espace_L booth at ArtGeneve and 20 Song will go live on the air simultaneously.
Sales Details: The NFTs attached to all these various projects will be available for purchase with Crypto Currencies or Credit Card payment on WISe.ART, WISeKEY’s innovative platform for fine art and digital NFTs. This unique phygital piece offers collectors a rare opportunity to own a one-of-a-kind work of art that bridges the worlds of nostalgia, creativity, and cutting-edge digital innovation.
About WISe.ART: WISe.ART, powered by WISeKEY, combines blockchain technology with the fine art world to create a secure and innovative space for artists and collectors. It is a cutting-edge platform designed to bring physical and digital art into a new era of authenticity and accessibility.
About WISeKEY:
WISeKey International Holding Ltd (“WISeKey”, SIX: WIHN; Nasdaq: WKEY) is a global leader in cybersecurity, digital identity, and IoT solutions platform. It operates as a Swiss-based holding company through several operational subsidiaries, each dedicated to specific aspects of its technology portfolio. The subsidiaries include (i) SEALSQ Corp (Nasdaq: LAES), which focuses on semiconductors, PKI, and post-quantum technology products, (ii) WISeKey SA which specializes in RoT and PKI solutions for secure authentication and identification in IoT, Blockchain, and AI, (iii) WISeSat AG which focuses on space technology for secure satellite communication, specifically for IoT applications, (iv) WISe.ART Corp which focuses on trusted blockchain NFTs and operates the WISe.ART marketplace for secure NFT transactions, and (v) SEALCOIN AG which focuses on decentralized physical internet with DePIN technology and house the development of the SEALCOIN platform.
Each subsidiary contributes to WISeKey’s mission of securing the internet while focusing on their respective areas of research and expertise. Their technologies seamlessly integrate into the comprehensive WISeKey platform. WISeKey secures digital identity ecosystems for individuals and objects using Blockchain, AI, and IoT technologies. With over 1.6 billion microchips deployed across various IoT sectors, WISeKey plays a vital role in securing the Internet of Everything. The company’s semiconductors generate valuable Big Data that, when analyzed with AI, enable predictive equipment failure prevention. Trusted by the OISTE/WISeKey cryptographic Root of Trust, WISeKey provides secure authentication and identification for IoT, Blockchain, and AI applications. The WISeKey Root of Trust ensures the integrity of online transactions between objects and people. For more information on WISeKey’s strategic direction and its subsidiary companies, please visit www.wisekey.com.
Press and Investor Contacts
WISeKey International Holding Ltd Company Contact: Carlos Moreira Chairman & CEO Tel: +41 22 594 3000 info@wisekey.com
WISeKey Investor Relations (US) Contact: The Equity Group Inc. Lena Cati Tel: +1 212 836-9611 lcati@equityny.com
Disclaimer This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning WISeKey International Holding Ltd and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of WISeKey International Holding Ltd to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. WISeKey International Holding Ltd is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
This press release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities, and it does not constitute an offering prospectus within the meaning of the Swiss Financial Services Act (“FinSA”), the FinSa’s predecessor legislation or advertising within the meaning of the FinSA. Investors must rely on their own evaluation of WISeKey and its securities, including the merits and risks involved. Nothing contained herein is, or shall be relied on as, a promise or representation as to the future performance of WISeKey.
Assistant professor Frank Cackowski, left, and researcher Steven Zielske at Wayne State University in Detroit became suspicious of a paper on cancer research that was eventually retracted.Amy Sacka, CC BY-ND
Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale and dissemination of bogus scholarly research, undermining the literature that everyone from doctors to engineers rely on to make decisions about human lives.
It is exceedingly difficult to get a handle on exactly how big the problem is. Around 55,000 scholarly papers have been retracted to date, for a variety of reasons, but scientists and companies who screen the scientific literature for telltale signs of fraud estimate that there are many more fake papers circulating – possibly as many as several hundred thousand. This fake research can confound legitimate researchers who must wade through dense equations, evidence, images and methodologies only to find that they were made up.
Even when the bogus papers are spotted – usually by amateur sleuths on their own time – academic journals are often slow to retract the papers, allowing the articles to taint what many consider sacrosanct: the vast global library of scholarly work that introduces new ideas, reviews other research and discusses findings.
These fake papers are slowing down research that has helped millions of people with lifesaving medicine and therapies from cancer to COVID-19. Analysts’ data shows that fields related to cancer and medicine are particularly hard hit, while areas like philosophy and art are less affected. Some scientists have abandoned their life’s work because they cannot keep pace given the number of fake papers they must bat down.
The problem reflects a worldwide commodification of science. Universities, and their research funders, have long used regular publication in academic journals as requirements for promotions and job security, spawning the mantra “publish or perish.”
But now, fraudsters have infiltrated the academic publishing industry to prioritize profits over scholarship. Equipped with technological prowess, agility and vast networks of corrupt researchers, they are churning out papers on everything from obscure genes to artificial intelligence in medicine.
These papers are absorbed into the worldwide library of research faster than they can be weeded out. About 119,000 scholarly journal articles and conference papers are published globally every week, or more than 6 million a year. Publishers estimate that, at most journals, about 2% of the papers submitted – but not necessarily published – are likely fake, although this number can be much higher at some publications.
While no country is immune to this practice, it is particularly pronounced in emerging economies where resources to do bona fide science are limited – and where governments, eager to compete on a global scale, push particularly strong “publish or perish” incentives.
As a result, there is a bustling online underground economy for all things scholarly publishing. Authorship, citations, even academic journal editors, are up for sale. This fraud is so prevalent that it has its own name: paper mills, a phrase that harks back to “term-paper mills”, where students cheat by getting someone else to write a class paper for them.
The impact on publishers is profound. In high-profile cases, fake articles can hurt a journal’s bottom line. Important scientific indexes – databases of academic publications that many researchers rely on to do their work – may delist journals that publish too many compromised papers. There is growing criticism that legitimate publishers could do more to track and blacklist journals and authors who regularly publish fake papers that are sometimes little more than artificial intelligence-generated phrases strung together.
To better understand the scope, ramifications and potential solutions of this metastasizing assault on science, we – a contributing editor at Retraction Watch, a website that reports on retractions of scientific papers and related topics, and two computer scientists at France’s Université Toulouse III–Paul Sabatier and Université Grenoble Alpes who specialize in detecting bogus publications – spent six months investigating paper mills.
This included, by some of us at different times, trawling websites and social media posts, interviewing publishers, editors, research-integrity experts, scientists, doctors, sociologists and scientific sleuths engaged in the Sisyphean task of cleaning up the literature. It also involved, by some of us, screening scientific articles looking for signs of fakery.
What emerged is a deep-rooted crisis that has many researchers and policymakers calling for a new way for universities and many governments to evaluate and reward academics and health professionals across the globe.
Just as highly biased websites dressed up to look like objective reporting are gnawing away at evidence-based journalism and threatening elections, fake science is grinding down the knowledge base on which modern society rests.
As part of our work detecting these bogus publications, co-author Guillaume Cabanac developed the Problematic Paper Screener, which filters 130 million new and old scholarly papers every week looking for nine types of clues that a paper might be fake or contain errors. A key clue is a tortured phrase – an awkward wording generated by software that replaces common scientific terms with synonyms to avoid direct plagiarism from a legitimate paper.
Frank Cackowski at Detroit’s Wayne State University was confused.
The oncologist was studying a sequence of chemical reactions in cells to see if they could be a target for drugs against prostate cancer. A paper from 2018 from 2018 in the American Journal of Cancer Research piqued his interest when he read that a little-known molecule called SNHG1 might interact with the chemical reactions he was exploring. He and fellow Wayne State researcher Steven Zielske began a series of experiments to learn more about the link. Surprisingly, they found there wasn’t a link.
Meanwhile, Zielske had grown suspicious of the paper. Two graphs showing results for different cell lines were identical, he noticed, which “would be like pouring water into two glasses with your eyes closed and the levels coming out exactly the same.” Another graph and a table in the article also inexplicably contained identical data.
Zielske described his misgivings in an anonymous post in 2020 at PubPeer, an online forum where many scientists report potential research misconduct, and also contacted the journal’s editor. Shortly thereafter, the journal pulled the paper, citing “falsified materials and/or data.”
“Science is hard enough as it is if people are actually being genuine and trying to do real work,” says Cackowski, who also works at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Michigan. “And it’s just really frustrating to waste your time based on somebody’s fraudulent publications.”
Wayne State scientists Frank Cackowski and Steven Zielske carried out experiments based on a paper they later found to contain false data. Amy Sacka, CC BY-ND
He worries that the bogus publications are slowing down “legitimate research that down the road is going to impact patient care and drug development.”
The two researchers eventually found that SNHG1 did appear to play a part in prostate cancer, though not in the way the suspect paper suggested. But it was a tough topic to study. Zielske combed through all the studies on SNHG1 and cancer – some 150 papers, nearly all from Chinese hospitals – and concluded that “a majority” of them looked fake. Some reported using experimental reagents known as primers that were “just gibberish,” for instance, or targeted a different gene than what the study said, according to Zielske. He contacted several of the journals, he said, but received little response. “I just stopped following up.”
The many questionable articles also made it harder to get funding, Zielske said. The first time he submitted a grant application to study SNHG1, it was rejected, with one reviewer saying “the field was crowded,” Zielske recalled. The following year, he explained in his application how most of the literature likely came from paper mills. He got the grant.
Today, Zielske said, he approaches new research differently than he used to: “You can’t just read an abstract and have any faith in it. I kind of assume everything’s wrong.”
Legitimate academic journals evaluate papers before they are published by having other researchers in the field carefully read them over. This peer review process is designed to stop flawed research from being disseminated, but is far from perfect.
Reviewers volunteer their time, typically assume research is real and so don’t look for signs of fraud. And some publishers may try to pick reviewers they deem more likely to accept papers, because rejecting a manuscript can mean losing out on thousands of dollars in publication fees.
“Even good, honest reviewers have become apathetic” because of “the volume of poor research coming through the system,” said Adam Day, who directs Clear Skies, a company in London that develops data-based methods to help spot falsified papers and academic journals. “Any editor can recount seeing reports where it’s obvious the reviewer hasn’t read the paper.”
With AI, they don’t have to: New research shows that many reviews are now written by ChatGPT and similar tools.
María de los Ángeles Oviedo-García, a professor of marketing at the University of Seville in Spain, spends her spare time hunting for suspect peer reviews from all areas of science, hundreds of which she has flagged on PubPeer. Some of these reviews are the length of a tweet, others ask authors to cite the reviewer’s work even if it has nothing to do with the science at hand, and many closely resemble other peer reviews for very different studies – evidence, in her eyes, of what she calls “review mills.”
PubPeer comment from María de los Ángeles Oviedo-García pointing out that a peer review report is very similar to two other reports. She also points out that authors and citations for all three are either anonymous or the same person – both hallmarks of fake papers. Screen capture by The Conversation, CC BY-ND
“One of the demanding fights for me is to keep faith in science,” says Oviedo-García, who tells her students to look up papers on PubPeer before relying on them too heavily. Her research has been slowed down, she adds, because she now feels compelled to look for peer review reports for studies she uses in her work. Often there aren’t any, because “very few journals publish those review reports,” Oviedo-García says.
An ‘absolutely huge’ problem
It is unclear when paper mills began to operate at scale. The earliest article retracted due to suspected involvement of such agencies was published in 2004, according to the Retraction Watch Database, which contains details about tens of thousands of retractions. (The database is operated by The Center for Scientific Integrity, the parent nonprofit of Retraction Watch.) Nor is it clear exactly how many low-quality, plagiarized or made-up articles paper mills have spawned.
But the number is likely to be significant and growing, experts say. One Russia-linked paper mill in Latvia, for instance, claims on its website to have published “more than 12,650 articles” since 2012.
An analysis of 53,000 papers submitted to six publishers – but not necessarily published – found the proportion of suspect papers ranged from 2% to 46% across journals. And the American publisher Wiley, which has retracted more than 11,300 compromised articles and closed 19 heavily affected journals in its erstwhile Hindawi division, recently said its new paper-mill detection tool flags up to 1 in 7 submissions.
Day, of Clear Skies, estimates that as many as 2% of the several million scientific works published in 2022 were milled. Some fields are more problematic than others. The number is closer to 3% in biology and medicine, and in some subfields, like cancer, it may be much larger, according to Day. Despite increased awareness today, “I do not see any significant change in the trend,” he said. With improved methods of detection, “any estimate I put out now will be higher.”
The paper-mill problem is “absolutely huge,” said Sabina Alam, director of Publishing Ethics and Integrity at Taylor & Francis, a major academic publisher. In 2019, none of the 175 ethics cases that editors escalated to her team was about paper mills, Alam said. Ethics cases include submissions and already published papers. In 2023, “we had almost 4,000 cases,” she said. “And half of those were paper mills.”
Jennifer Byrne, an Australian scientist who now heads up a research group to improve the reliability of medical research, submitted testimony for a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in July 2022. She noted that 700, or nearly 6%, of 12,000 cancer research papers screened had errors that could signal paper mill involvement. Byrne shuttered her cancer research lab in 2017 because the genes she had spent two decades researching and writing about became the target of an enormous number of fake papers. A rogue scientist fudging data is one thing, she said, but a paper mill could churn out dozens of fake studies in the time it took her team to publish a single legitimate one.
“The threat of paper mills to scientific publishing and integrity has no parallel over my 30-year scientific career …. In the field of human gene science alone, the number of potentially fraudulent articles could exceed 100,000 original papers,” she wrote to lawmakers, adding, “This estimate may seem shocking but is likely to be conservative.”
In one area of genetics research – the study of noncoding RNA in different types of cancer – “We’re talking about more than 50% of papers published are from mills,” Byrne said. “It’s like swimming in garbage.”
When retractions do happen, it is often thanks to the efforts of a small international community of amateur sleuths like Oviedo-García and those who post on PubPeer.
Jillian Goldfarb, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Cornell University and a former editor of the Elsevier journal Fuel, laments the publisher’s handling of the threat from paper mills.
“I was assessing upwards of 50 papers every day,” she said in an email interview. While she had technology to detect plagiarism, duplicate submissions and suspicious author changes, it was not enough. “It’s unreasonable to think that an editor – for whom this is not usually their full-time job – can catch these things reading 50 papers at a time. The time crunch, plus pressure from publishers to increase submission rates and citations and decrease review time, puts editors in an impossible situation.”
In October 2023, Goldfarb resigned from her position as editor of Fuel. In a LinkedIn post about her decision, she cited the company’s failure to move on dozens of potential paper-mill articles she had flagged; its hiring of a principal editor who reportedly “engaged in paper and citation milling”; and its proposal of candidates for editorial positions “with longer PubPeer profiles and more retractions than most people have articles on their CVs, and whose names appear as authors on papers-for-sale websites.”
“This tells me, our community, and the public, that they value article quantity and profit over science,” Goldfarb wrote.
In response to questions about Goldfarb’s resignation, an Elsevier spokesperson told The Conversation that it “takes all claims about research misconduct in our journals very seriously” and is investigating Goldfarb’s claims. The spokesperson added that Fuel’s editorial team has “been working to make other changes to the journal to benefit authors and readers.”
That’s not how it works, buddy
Business proposals had been piling up for years in the inbox of João de Deus Barreto Segundo, managing editor of six journals published by the Bahia School of Medicine and Public Health in Salvador, Brazil. Several came from suspect publishers on the prowl for new journals to add to their portfolios. Others came from academics suggesting fishy deals or offering bribes to publish their paper.
In one email from February 2024, an assistant professor of economics in Poland explained that he ran a company that worked with European universities. “Would you be interested in collaboration on the publication of scientific articles by scientists who collaborate with me?” Artur Borcuch inquired. “We will then discuss possible details and financial conditions.”
A university administrator in Iraq was more candid: “As an incentive, I am prepared to offer a grant of $500 for each accepted paper submitted to your esteemed journal,” wrote Ahmed Alkhayyat, head of the Islamic University Centre for Scientific Research, in Najaf, and manager of the school’s “world ranking.”
“That’s not how it works, buddy,” Barreto Segundo shot back.
In email to The Conversation, Borcuch denied any improper intent. “My role is to mediate in the technical and procedural aspects of publishing an article,” Borcuch said, adding that, when working with multiple scientists, he would “request a discount from the editorial office on their behalf.” Informed that the Brazilian publisher had no publication fees, Borcuch said a “mistake” had occurred because an “employee” sent the email for him “to different journals.”
Academic journals have different payment models. Many are subscription-based and don’t charge authors for publishing, but have hefty fees for reading articles. Libraries and universities also pay large sums for access.
A fast-growing open-access model – where anyone can read the paper – includes expensive publication fees levied on authors to make up for the loss of revenue in selling the articles. These payments are not meant to influence whether or not a manuscript is accepted.
The Bahia School of Medicine and Public Health, among others, doesn’t charge authors or readers, but Barreto Segundo’s employer is a small player in the scholarly publishing business, which brings in close to $30 billion a year on profit margins as high as 40%. Academic publishers make money largely from subscription fees from institutions like libraries and universities, individual payments to access paywalled articles, and open-access fees paid by authors to ensure their articles are free for anyone to read.
The industry is lucrative enough that it has attracted unscrupulous actors eager to find a way to siphon off some of that revenue.
Ahmed Torad, a lecturer at Kafr El Sheikh University in Egypt and editor-in-chief of the Egyptian Journal of Physiotherapy, asked for a 30% kickback for every article he passed along to the Brazilian publisher. “This commission will be calculated based on the publication fees generated by the manuscripts I submit,” Torad wrote, noting that he specialized “in connecting researchers and authors with suitable journals for publication.”
Apparently, he failed to notice that Bahia School of Medicine and Public Health doesn’t charge author fees.
Like Borcuch, Alkhayyat denied any improper intent. He said there had been a “misunderstanding” on the editor’s part, explaining that the payment he offered was meant to cover presumed article-processing charges. “Some journals ask for money. So this is normal,” Alkhayyat said.
Torad explained that he had sent his offer to source papers in exchange for a commission to some 280 journals, but had not forced anyone to accept the manuscripts. Some had balked at his proposition, he said, despite regularly charging authors thousands of dollars to publish. He suggested that the scientific community wasn’t comfortable admitting that scholarly publishing has become a business like any other, even if it’s “obvious to many scientists.”
The unwelcome advances all targeted one of the journals Barreto Segundo managed, The Journal of Physiotherapy Research, soon after it was indexed in Scopus, a database of abstracts and citations owned by the publisher Elsevier.
Along with Clarivate’s Web of Science, Scopus has become an important quality stamp for scholarly publications globally. Articles in indexed journals are money in the bank for their authors: They help secure jobs, promotions, funding and, in some countries, even trigger cash rewards. For academics or physicians in poorer countries, they can be a ticket to the global north.
Consider Egypt, a country plaguedbydubiousclinical trials. Universities there commonly pay employees large sums for international publications, with the amount depending on the journal’s impact factor. A similar incentive structure is hardwired into national regulations: To earn the rank of full professor, for example, candidates must have at least five publications in two years, according to Egypt’s Supreme Council of Universities. Studies in journals indexed in Scopus or Web of Science not only receive extra points, but they also are exempt from further scrutiny when applicants are evaluated. The higher a publication’s impact factor, the more points the studies get.
With such a focus on metrics, it has become common for Egyptian researchers to cut corners, according to a physician in Cairo who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. Authorship is frequently gifted to colleagues who then return the favor later, or studies may be created out of whole cloth. Sometimes an existing legitimate paper is chosen from the literature, and key details such as the type of disease or surgery are then changed and the numbers slightly modified, the source explained.
It affects clinical guidelines and medical care, “so it’s a shame,” the physician said.
Ivermectin, a drug used to treat parasites in animals and humans, is a case in point. When some studies showed that it was effective against COVID-19, ivermectin was hailed as a “miracle drug” early in the pandemic. Prescriptions surged, and along with them calls to U.S. poison centers; one man spent nine days in the hospital after downing an injectable formulation of the drug that was meant for cattle, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As it turned out, nearly all of the research that showed a positive effect on COVID-19 had indications of fakery, the BBC and others reported – including a now-withdrawn Egyptian study. With no apparent benefit, patients were left with just side effects.
“There’s a huge academic incentive and profit motive,” says Lisa Bero, a professor of medicine and public health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the senior research-integrity editor at the Cochrane Collaboration, an international nonprofit organization that produces evidence reviews about medical treatments. “I see it at every institution I’ve worked at.”
But in the global south, the publish-or-perish edict runs up against underdeveloped research infrastructures and education systems, leaving scientists in a bind. For a Ph.D., the Cairo physician who requested anonymity conducted an entire clinical trial single-handedly – from purchasing study medication to randomizing patients, collecting and analyzing data and paying article-processing fees. In wealthier nations, entire teams work on such studies, with the tab easily running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“Research is quite challenging here,” the physician said. That’s why scientists “try to manipulate and find easier ways so they get the job done.”
Institutions, too, have gamed the system with an eye to international rankings. In 2011, the journal Science described how prolific researchers in the United States and Europe were offered hefty payments for listing Saudi universities as secondary affiliations on papers. And in 2023, the magazine, in collaboration with Retraction Watch, uncovered a massive self-citation ploy by a top-ranked dental school in India that forced undergraduate students to publish papers referencing faculty work.
The root – and solutions
Such unsavory schemes can be traced back to the introduction of performance-based metrics in academia, a development driven by the New Public Management movement that swept across the Western world in the 1980s, according to Canadian sociologist of science Yves Gingras of the Université du Québec à Montréal. When universities and public institutions adopted corporate management, scientific papers became “accounting units” used to evaluate and reward scientific productivity rather than “knowledge units” advancing our insight into the world around us, Gingras wrote.
This transformation led many researchers to compete on numbers instead of content, which made publication metrics poor measures of academic prowess. As Gingras has shown, the controversial French microbiologist Didier Raoult, who now has more than a dozen retractions to his name, has an h-index – a measure combining publication and citation numbers – that is twice as high as that of Albert Einstein – “proof that the index is absurd,” Gingras said.
Worse, a sort of scientific inflation, or “scientometric bubble,” has ensued, with each new publication representing an increasingly small increment in knowledge. “We publish more and more superficial papers, we publish papers that have to be corrected, and we push people to do fraud,” said Gingras.
In 2024, Landon Halloran, a geoscientist at the University of Neuchâtel, in Switzerland, received an unusual job application for an opening in his lab. A researcher with a Ph.D. from China had sent him his CV. At 31, the applicant had amassed 160 publications in Scopus-indexed journals, 62 of them in 2022 alone, the same year he obtained his doctorate. Although the applicant was not the only one “with a suspiciously high output,” according to Halloran, he stuck out. “My colleagues and I have never come across anything quite like it in the geosciences,” he said.
According to industry insiders and publishers, there is more awareness now of threats from paper mills and other bad actors. Some journals routinely check for image fraud. A bad AI-generated image showing up in a paper can either be a sign of a scientist taking an ill-advised shortcut, or a paper mill.
The Cochrane Collaboration has a policy excluding suspect studies from its analyses of medical evidence. The organization also has been developing a tool to help its reviewers spot problematic medical trials, just as publishers have begun to screen submissions and share data and technologies among themselves to combat fraud.
This image, generated by AI, is a visual gobbledygook of concepts around transporting and delivering drugs in the body. For instance, the upper left figure is a nonsensical mix of a syringe, an inhaler and pills. And the pH-sensitive carrier molecule on the lower left is huge, rivaling the size of the lungs. After scientist sleuths pointed out that the published image made no sense, the journal issued a correction. Screen capture by The Conversation, CC BY-ND This graphic is the corrected image that replaced the AI image above. In this case, according to the correction, the journal determined that the paper was legitimate but the scientists had used AI to generate the image describing it. Screen capture by The Conversation, CC BY-ND
“People are realizing like, wow, this is happening in my field, it’s happening in your field,” said the Cochrane Collaboration’s Bero”. “So we really need to get coordinated and, you know, develop a method and a plan overall for stamping these things out.”
What jolted Taylor & Francis into paying attention, according to Alam, the director of Publishing Ethics and Integrity, was a 2020 investigation of a Chinese paper mill by sleuth Elisabeth Bik and three of her peers who go by the pseudonyms Smut Clyde, Morty and Tiger BB8. With 76 compromised papers, the U.K.-based company’s Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology was the most affected journal identified in the probe.
“It opened up a minefield,” says Alam, who also co-chairs United2Act, a project launched in 2023 that brings together publishers, researchers and sleuths in the fight against paper mills. “It was the first time we realized that stock images essentially were being used to represent experiments.”
Taylor & Francis decided to audit the hundreds of articles in its portfolio that contained similar types of images. It doubled Alam’s team, which now has 14.5 positions dedicated to doing investigations, and also began monitoring submission rates. Paper mills, it seemed, weren’t picky customers.
“What they’re trying to do is find a gate, and if they get in, then they just start kind of slamming in the submissions,” Alam said. Seventy-six fake papers suddenly seemed like a drop in the ocean. At one Taylor & Francis journal, for instance, Alam’s team identified nearly 1,000 manuscripts that bore all the marks of coming from a mill, she said.
And in 2023, it rejected about 300 dodgy proposals for special issues. “We’ve blocked a hell of a lot from coming through,” Alam said.
Fraud checkers
A small industry of technology startups has sprung up to help publishers, researchers and institutions spot potential fraud. The website Argos, launched in September 2024 by Scitility, an alert service based in Sparks, Nevada, allows authors to check if new collaborators are trailed by retractions or misconduct concerns. It has flagged tens of thousands of “high-risk” papers, according to the journal Nature.
Fraud-checker tools sift through papers to point to those that should be manually checked and possibly rejected. solidcolours/iStock via Getty Images
The fraudsters have not been idle, either. In 2022, when Clear Skies released the Papermill Alarm, the first academic to inquire about the new tool was a paper miller, according to Day. The person wanted access so he could check his papers before firing them off to publishers, Day said. “Paper mills have proven to be adaptive and also quite quick off the mark.”
Given the ongoing arms race, Alam acknowledges that the fight against paper mills won’t be won as long as the booming demand for their products remains.
According to a Nature analysis, the retraction rate tripled from 2012 to 2022 to close to .02%, or around 1 in 5,000 papers. It then nearly doubled in 2023, in large part because of Wiley’s Hindawi debacle. Today’s commercial publishing is part of the problem, Byrne said. For one, cleaning up the literature is a vast and expensive undertaking with no direct financial upside. “Journals and publishers will never, at the moment, be able to correct the literature at the scale and in the timeliness that’s required to solve the paper-mill problem,” Byrne said. “Either we have to monetize corrections such that publishers are paid for their work, or forget the publishers and do it ourselves.”
But that still wouldn’t fix the fundamental bias built into for-profit publishing: Journals don’t get paid for rejecting papers. “We pay them for accepting papers,” said Bodo Stern, a former editor of the journal Cell and chief of Strategic Initiatives at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit research organization and major funder in Chevy Chase, Maryland. “I mean, what do you think journals are going to do? They’re going to accept papers.”
With more than 50,000 journals on the market, even if some are trying hard to get it right, bad papers that are shopped around long enough eventually find a home, Stern added. “That system cannot function as a quality-control mechanism,” he said. “We have so many journals that everything can get published.”
In Stern’s view, the way to go is to stop paying journals for accepting papers and begin looking at them as public utilities that serve a greater good. “We should pay for transparent and rigorous quality-control mechanisms,” he said.
Peer review, meanwhile, “should be recognized as a true scholarly product, just like the original article, because the authors of the article and the peer reviewers are using the same skills,” Stern said. By the same token, journals should make all peer-review reports publicly available, even for manuscripts they turn down. “When they do quality control, they can’t just reject the paper and then let it be published somewhere else,” Stern said. “That’s not a good service.”
Better measures
Stern isn’t the first scientist to bemoan the excessive focus on bibliometrics. “We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons,” wrote the late statistician Douglas G. Altman in a much-cited editorial from 1994. “Abandoning using the number of publications as a measure of ability would be a start.”
Despite the declaration, metrics remain in wide use today, and scientists say there is a new sense of urgency.
“We’re getting to the point where people really do feel they have to do something” because of the vast number of fake papers, said Richard Sever, assistant director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, in New York, and co-founder of the preprint servers bioRxiv and medRxiv.
Stern and his colleagues have tried to make improvements at their institution. Researchers who wish to renew their seven-year contract have long been required to write a short paragraph describing the importance of their major results. Since the end of 2023, they also have been asked to remove journal names from their applications.
That way, “you can never do what all reviewers do – I’ve done it – look at the bibliography and in just one second decide, ‘Oh, this person has been productive because they have published many papers and they’re published in the right journals,’” says Stern. “What matters is, did it really make a difference?”
Shifting the focus away from convenient performance metrics seems possible not just for wealthy private institutions like Howard Hughes Medical Institute, but also for large government funders. In Australia, for example, the National Health and Medical Research Council in 2022 launched the “top 10 in 10” policy, aiming, in part, to “value research quality rather than quantity of publications.”
Rather than providing their entire bibliography, the agency, which assesses thousands of grant applications every year, asked researchers to list no more than 10 publications from the past decade and explain the contribution each had made to science. According to an evaluation report from April, 2024 close to three-quarters of grant reviewers said the new policy allowed them to concentrate more on research quality than quantity. And more than half said it reduced the time they spent on each application.
Gingras, the Canadian sociologist, advocates giving scientists the time they need to produce work that matters, rather than a gushing stream of publications. He is a signatory to the Slow Science Manifesto: “Once you get slow science, I can predict that the number of corrigenda, the number of retractions, will go down,” he says.
At one point, Gingras was involved in evaluating a research organization whose mission was to improve workplace security. An employee presented his work. “He had a sentence I will never forget,” Gingras recalls. The employee began by saying, “‘You know, I’m proud of one thing: My h-index is zero.’ And it was brilliant.” The scientist had developed a technology that prevented fatal falls among construction workers. “He said, ‘That’s useful, and that’s my job.’ I said, ‘Bravo!’”
Labbé receives funding from the European Research Council.
He has also received funding from the French National Research Agency (ANR), and the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.
Labbé has been in touch with most of the major publishers and their integrity officers, offering pro-bono consulting regarding detection tools to various actors in the field including STM-Hub and Morressier.
Cabanac receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC) and the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). He is the administrator of the Problematic Paper Screener, a public platform that uses metadata from Digital Science and PubPeer via no-cost agreements. Cabanac has been in touch with most of the major publishers and their integrity officers, offering pro bono consulting regarding detection tools to various actors in the field including ClearSkies, Morressier, River Valley, Signals, and STM.
Frederik Joelving does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: Switzerland – Department of Foreign Affairs in English
Electronic signatures on documents should be recognised in Switzerland and in the European Union (EU). At its meeting on 29 January 2025, the Federal Council instructed the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC) to draw up a corresponding mandate for negotiating with the EU, in collaboration with the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA).
Source: Switzerland – Department of Foreign Affairs in English
At its meeting on 29 January, the Federal Council approved Switzerland’s new reduction target under the Paris Agreement. This corresponds to the reduction path of the Swiss Climate and Innovation Act. By 2035, Switzerland should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 65 per cent compared to 1990 levels, and by 59 per cent on average between 2031 and 2035. The objectives are to be achieved primarily through domestic measures. At the same time, the Federal Council approved an amendment to the long-term climate strategy.
During its meeting on 29 January 2025, the Federal Council initiated the consultation on approving the basis under international law for the exchange of information under the OECD minimum tax. In the future, it should be possible for the multinational enterprise (MNE) groups concerned to submit the information centrally in a single jurisdiction. The implementing jurisdictions should also be able to check whether the tax calculations of MNE groups are correct. The consultation will run until 8 May 2025. This proposal does not address national implementation. The Federal Council is closely monitoring international developments.
During its meeting on 29 January 2025, the Federal Council decided to remove the European Union (EU) from the list of jurisdictions affected by the measure to protect the Swiss stock exchange infrastructure (protective measure) with effect from 1 May 2025. The Federal Council had activated the protective measure in 2019 to temporarily protect the Swiss stock exchange infrastructure in response to the non-recognition by the EU of the equivalence of Switzerland’s stock exchange regulations. As the EU has since revised the corresponding legal basis, the Swiss protective measure with respect to the EU is now no longer necessary and is to be deactivated for the benefit of Swiss companies. Switzerland will continue to seek recognition of equivalence and improved market access for financial service providers in the regulatory dialogue with the EU concerning the financial sector.
Source: Switzerland – Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport
At its meeting on 29 January 2025, the Federal Council approved the signing of a memorandum of understanding that will allow Switzerland to participate in the OSINT Centre of Excellence. This will strengthen the Federal Intelligence Service’s early detection capabilities for threats, dangers and crises.
At its meeting on 29 January, the Federal Council approved the negotiating mandate for an international treaty between Switzerland and Ukraine. In the process of rebuilding Ukraine, this will provide a legal basis for increased cooperation with the Swiss private sector.
STEINHAUSEN, Switzerland, Jan. 28, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Transocean Ltd. (NYSE: RIG) announced today that it will report earnings for the fourth quarter and full year 2024 on Monday, February 17, 2025.
The company will conduct a teleconference to discuss the results starting at 9 a.m. EST, 3 p.m. CET, on Tuesday, February 18, 2025. Individuals who wish to participate should dial +1 785-424-1116 approximately 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time and refer to conference code 540196.
The teleconference will be simulcast in a listen-only mode at: www.deepwater.com, by selecting Investors, News, and Webcasts. A replay of the conference call will be available after 12 p.m. EST, 6 p.m. CET, on February 18, 2025. The replay, which will be archived for approximately 30 days, can be accessed at +1 402-220-1152, passcode 540196. The replay also will be available on the company’s website.
About Transocean
Transocean is a leading international provider of offshore contract drilling services for oil and gas wells. The company specializes in technically demanding sectors of the global offshore drilling business with a particular focus on ultra-deepwater and harsh environment drilling services and operates the highest specification floating offshore drilling fleet in the world.
Transocean owns or has partial ownership interests in and operates a fleet of 34 mobile offshore drilling units, consisting of 26 ultra-deepwater floaters and eight harsh environment floaters.
For more information about Transocean, please visit: www.deepwater.com.
KOF has collaborated with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) newspaper to survey economists on fundamental and current economic questions. The results show that they reject state intervention such as rent controls and trade tariffs. On the other hand, opinions are divided along political lines when it comes to questions about easing Switzerland’s debt brake or subsidising environmentally friendly technologies.
The December 2024 survey consisted of 19 statements from various economic subject areas. Academic research economists based in Switzerland were questioned.
A total of 177 responses were received, which represents a response rate of 21 per cent.
The respondents* were also asked about three characteristics: their age, gender and political affiliation. As far as political affiliation is concerned, the proportion of respondents defining themselves as being (more) to the left (36 per cent) is higher than the proportion defining themselves as (more) to the right (20 per cent).
A large proportion (44 per cent) place themselves politically in the centre. However, it should be noted that 18 per cent of respondents did not answer the question about their political affiliation. A comparison of these characteristics shows that women and young people (tend to) position themselves on the left politically.
This is consistent with surveys (in German, French or Italian) conducted by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) among the Swiss population as a whole. The KOF-NZZ survey shows that political affiliation has a significant influence on the responses to 13 out of the 19 questions in the survey.
Competition and regulation: mostly sceptical about intervention
Four questions about market intervention show that the economists surveyed tend to favour only little regulation. A majority (71 per cent) are of the opinion that rent controls (tend to) reduce the quantity and quality of housing supply. Respondents who tend to define themselves politically as right-wing overwhelmingly agree with this statement (93 per cent).
Among left-leaning economists, around half (51 per cent) agree (25 per cent of them are undecided, i.e. neither agree nor disagree). There is unanimity on the question of whether tariffs and import quotas reduce a country’s material prosperity. A total of 81 per cent of economists (tend to) agree with this statement. This figure rises to 93 per cent among those with a right-wing political affiliation and is 70 per cent among those on the left.
The view that wage controls and/or price controls should (preferably) not be used as a means of combatting inflation is very widely held among the survey respondents, with 83 per cent agreeing with this opinion (93 per cent of right-wing respondents, 81 per cent of left-wing respondents and 86 per cent of those in the centre).
By contrast, the responses to the question of whether a binding minimum wage increases unemployment among young people and unskilled workers are less clear-cut: overall, 44 per cent (tend to) agree with this statement while 38 per cent (tend to) disagree.
A high proportion (18 per cent) neither agree nor disagree with the statement. The political affiliations are divided in their assessment of this question. While the majority of (more) right-wing respondents (72 per cent) agree with the statement that unemployment will (tend to) increase, the corresponding figure is 50 per cent for respondents from the centre. In contrast, the majority of (more) left-wing respondents (tend to) reject this statement (60 per cent).
Regulation of large Swiss banks: too-big-to-fail amendment controversial
Since Credit Suisse was acquired by UBS, the regulation of big banks has once again become the focus of public debate. Economists do not agree on whether it would be possible in principle to amend too-big-to-fail regulation, so that a major Swiss bank could be wound up without any risk to taxpayers in the event of a crisis. 47 per cent (tend to) agree with this statement, 14 per cent neither agree nor disagree, and 39 per cent (tend to) disagree. The influence of political affiliation on response behaviour is not very pronounced here.
Public debt: considered too high in many advanced economies
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sharp increase in government debt in many countries. This has triggered a broad debate about the extent to which public debt is too high in several countries. Overall, around two-thirds of survey respondents (tend to) consider it to be too high in many advanced economies. The majority of economists who define themselves as politically (more) to the right or in the centre agree with this statement (86 per cent and 75 per cent respectively). The situation is different in the case of respondents who define themselves politically as (more) to the left: 44 per cent of them agree with this statement, 30 per cent neither agree nor disagree, and 26 per cent disagree.
In Switzerland, the government spending ratio – i.e. public spending as a share of gross domestic product – is not considered to be too high. More than two-thirds of survey respondents reject the statement that the government spending ratio is too high. This view is fairly widespread across the political spectrum, although not equally pronounced in all cases. 48 per cent of respondents who define themselves as (more) right-wing reject this statement, 11 per cent are undecided and 41 per cent agree. The majority of other political affiliations reject this statement (59 per cent of respondents who define themselves as centrists and 90 per cent of those on the left).
The economists agree less about Switzerland’s debt brake. Overall, 37 per cent agree with the statement that the debt brake should be relaxed, 17 per cent are undecided and 46 per cent disagree. Of the (more) right-wing economists, 71 per cent disagree with the statement. Of those respondents who define themselves politically as centrists, 45 per cent disagree and 33 per cent agree. And, of the economists who see themselves as (more) left-wing, 47 per cent agree and 34 per cent disagree.
Inequality: wealth distribution too unequal according to around half of respondents
The economists were also asked about their views on inequality in Switzerland. A distinction was made here between disposable income and wealth. 41 per cent of respondents stated that disposable incomes should (probably) be distributed more equally. On the other hand, 36 per cent (tend to) reject this statement. However, the answers differed considerably depending on the respondents’ political preferences. 71 per cent of those with (more) left-wing leanings agree with the statement that incomes should be distributed more equally, while the same proportion of those with (more) right-wing leanings reject this statement. There is a mixed picture among economists who see themselves politically as centrists, with 30 per cent agreeing and 41 per cent disagreeing with the statement.
56 per cent consider the distribution of wealth to be (probably) too unequal. 29 per cent (tend to) reject this statement. This means that wealth inequality in Switzerland is viewed more critically than income inequality. However, the influence of political affiliation can be felt here in a similar way to the issue of income inequality. 75 per cent of right-wing respondents disagree with the statement that wealth should be distributed more equally, whereas 88 per cent of left-wing respondents agree with it. 53 per cent of those in the centre agree with the statement.
Causes of inflation: monetary explanation widespread
As far as the causes of inflation are concerned, a distinction can be made between monetarist and non-monetarist (e.g. Keynesian, supply-side or structural) explanations. Monetarists believe that inflation is a monetary phenomenon. This means that inflation – particularly beyond the short term – is a consequence of an expansion of the money supply that is greater than the increase in the real production of goods and services. Keynesian inflation theory, on the other hand, focuses on the Phillips curve, which shows that unemployment and the inflation rate are negatively correlated in the short term.
Both theories tend to meet with approval in the survey. However, approval of the monetarist approach is slightly higher: 58 per cent agree with the statement that inflation is (more likely to be) a monetary phenomenon. In contrast, just under half of respondents (51 per cent) are convinced that unemployment can be reduced in the short term by a higher inflation rate. Views on monetarism differ according to the respondents’ political affiliations: 76 per cent of the (more) right-wing respondents (tend to) agree with monetarism theory, while 68 per cent of economists in the centre of the political spectrum (tend to) agree. Of those respondents on the (more) left wing of the spectrum, 34 per cent (tend to) agree and 47 per cent (tend to) disagree. In contrast, the approval rates for the short-term Phillips curve do not differ greatly across the political spectrum (left: 50 per cent, centre: 61 per cent, right: 45 per cent).
Environmental policy: disagreement over industrial subsidies
The economists surveyed also commented on key environmental policy issues. There is disagreement on the question of whether the transition to green technologies in Switzerland should be subsidised by industry. While a total of 45 per cent of the economists surveyed were (mainly) in favour of this, 41 per cent were (mainly) against this approach. A further 14 per cent were undecided. The respondents’ political affiliations play a significant role in this question.
Industrial subsidies are rejected by 71 per cent of respondents who define themselves as (more) politically right-wing, as do 46 per cent of those in the political centre. In contrast, 65 per cent of respondents on the (more) left wing of the spectrum are in favour of such subsidies.
On the other hand, the general attitude towards combatting pollution through emissions taxes rather than through the statutory imposition of limits is clearer. A clear majority of 78 per cent overall (tend to) prefer the introduction of emissions taxes over the imposition of limits. This preference applies across the political spectrum.
There is also a consensus when it comes to assessing the potential of new technologies. A total of 72 per cent of respondents (tend to) believe that carbon-neutral economic growth will be possible as a result of technological innovation. Only 12 per cent are (mainly) sceptical, while 16 per cent are undecided.
The role of central banks in climate policy is another topic that is repeatedly the subject of intense debate. In April 2024, for example, the National Council discussed climate rules for the Swiss National Bank (SNB). 62 per cent of the economists responding to the KOF-NZZ survey generally (tend to) reject the inclusion of climate targets in central banks’ mandates. By contrast, 28 per cent would (tend to) be in favour of such an extension of these mandates. However, the responses given differ significantly depending on political affiliation. 86 per cent of (more) right-wing respondents and 70 per cent of those located in the political centre (tend to) reject the inclusion of climate targets by central banks. Respondents on the (more) left wing of the spectrum are less clear in their preferences: a narrow majority of 53 per cent are in favour, 15 per cent are neither in favour nor against, and 32 per cent are opposed. It is also clear that female economists are more in favour of including climate targets than male economists.
Political views most influential in assessing distribution issues
The respondents’ political views play a role in their responses to the majority of questions. This influence is particularly strong in the case of questions on the distribution of both wealth and income. However, the responses to some of the questions on climate policy also differ according to political affiliation – for example, the role of central banks in climate policy or the use of industrial subsidies. The respondents’ political affiliations are also of great importance when assessing the impact of minimum wages and the public spending ratio in Switzerland.
On the other hand, views across the political spectrum are similar when it comes to the potential of new technologies for carbon-neutral growth, assessing the introduction of emissions taxes, capital rules for banks, and too-big-to-fail regulation. Assessments of the Phillips curve also hardly differ across the political spectrum.
———————— *Demographics of survey respondents: Of those surveyed, 14 per cent are younger than 35, 38 per cent are between 36 and 45, 22 per cent are between 46 and 55, and 26 per cent are older than 56. 84 per cent of respondents are male and 16 per cent are female. Broken down by age category, the proportion of women is highest (20 per cent) in the 36 to 45 age group. The lowest proportion of women (11 per cent) is in the over 56 age group.
The KOF-NZZ survey of economists covers topics relevant to economic policy in Switzerland and provides a means of publicising the views of economists conducting academic research. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) newspaper is KOF’s media partner in the preparation and interpretation of this survey. KOF and the NZZ jointly conducted a survey of major fundamental and topical economic issues in December 2024. Some of the questions are updated formulations of an international survey conducted by Bruno S. Frey, Werner W. Pommerehne, Friedrich Schneider and Guy Gilbert in 1980 (link to the paper). The survey was conducted between 2 December and 20 December 2024. 854 economists were contacted. Responses were received from 177 economists at 19 institutions. (ref. https://news.ethz.ch/d?p00ce04y00o6iq00d0000l3i0000000003muuielzwweyd2e3r5ll4si000bik000000o2qwjku )
Source: German Technology & Engineering Corporation (GTEC)
Karlheinz Zuerl, Interim Manager of the Year 2024*, has set up an international business network to bridge the gap between Western industrialized nations and the BRICS countries.
Berlin, January 28 2025 – A new international network of consultants and interim managers has been launched under the name “BRICS Project Network” to support Western companies in expanding their business in BRICS countries and vice versa. “The BRICS nations account for nearly half of the global population and produce over a third of the world’s economic output, surpassing the G7 countries,” explained Karlheinz Zuerl, CEO of the German Technology & Engineering Corporation (GTEC) based in Shanghai, China, which spearheads this initiative.
Karlheinz Zuerl said: “The further development of economic relations between the Western industrialized nations and the BRICS community helps all parties involved. The new network reportedly includes China, Hong Kong, India and Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand), the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Brazil and South America, Mexico, Canada (USMCA customs union), Russia, Eastern Europe and a number of African countries in the global south, such as South Africa, Ethiopia and Egypt.
Wide Range Of Services
Acting as a “bridge-builder” between these countries and the Western industrialized world, the new network offers a wide range of services: Management Consulting, Business Development, Project Management, Interim Management, Training and Education. Karlheinz Zuerl gave specific examples: “We carry out market analyses, set up international sales networks, initiate business partnerships and takeovers, represent companies at trade fairs and other events, take care of organizational development, look after human resources, set up branches on behalf of companies, carry out relocations and company transfers, optimize finances and local production and carry out restructuring to improve earnings.”
According to the information provided, the consultants and managers in the network have many years of experience in a wide range of sectors. Examples given include: Manufacturing, automotive, mechanical and plant engineering, construction, electrical and electronics, domestic appliances, environmental technology, information technology, pharmaceuticals and communications technology. If required, interim managers can take on operational roles such as general management, commercial management, project or quality management, research and development, human resources and finance, sales and marketing or change management.
Trade Disputes And Sanctions Weigh On Relations
Trade disputes between the US and China and sanctions against Russia are putting a strain on economic relations. The economic relationship between the Western industrialized nations and the BRICS countries is under severe strain. These tensions have led the BRICS to seek alternatives to reduce their dependence on Western financial systems, for example by discussing a common currency or reducing the use of the US dollar in trade.
“We are not politicians,” said Karlheinz Zuerl, “but business consultants and interim managers who build cross-border business relationships and investments that benefit all parties. Given the geopolitical tensions, the enormous economic potential for both parties is often underestimated. With experienced professionals like those in our network, this potential can be realized.”
He points out that a number of BRICS countries play an important role in technological development, as attractive manufacturing locations and as suppliers of raw materials and energy to the Western industrial world. Without China, India, Russia and Brazil, the Western economy would be much poorer,” said Karlheinz Zuerl, underlining the importance of the BRICS countries today.
* Karlheinz Zuerl was honoured by United Interim, the leading community for interim managers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and Steinbeis Augsburg Business School.
GTEC (https://gtec.asia) helps Western industrial companies to overcome challenges in Asia. The focus is on business development, the establishment and expansion of branches and production facilities, as well as restructuring and turnaround measures to bring automotive suppliers and mechanical engineering companies in critical phases back into the profit zone. Under the direction of CEO Karlheinz Zuerl, a team of consultants, experts and interim managers is on hand to work on-site with the client if necessary. The CEO himself is available for tasks as an interim general manager and for executive consulting. GTEC’s list of references includes corporations such as BMW, Bosch, General Motors and Siemens, large medium-sized companies such as Hella, Schaeffler, Valeo and ZF, as well as smaller medium-sized companies that are less well known but are operating all the more.
Headline: Thales Alenia Space to develop the payload for the third satellite of the Copernicus CO2M mission
The Copernicus CO2M mission will meet the European Union’s high-priority requirements to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by human activity
Brussels, January 28, 2025 – Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), has signed an amendment to its CO2M contract, worth 88 million euros, with the space segment prime contractor OHB System. This amendment provides for the development of the payload for the third satellite in the CO2M Copernicus mission, in addition to the first two satellites payloads that are currently under integration. Copernicus is the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space Programme. It provides accurate, timely and easily accessible information to improve the management of the environment, understand and mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure civil security for the benefit of all European citizens. The CO2M mission as part of the Copernicus Programme is developed by the European Space Agency with a co-funding made by the European Union and the European Space Agency.
The signature of this amendment marks a significant milestone in the pursuit of the CO2M mission to develop a European anthropogenic greenhouse gas monitoring capability. Following the awarding of the CO2M contract in 2020 for the development of the first two satellites of this mission, ESA has renewed its confidence in OHB System and Thales Alenia Space to provide a third satellite and payload. With this additional satellite, the CO2M constellation will further consolidate its operations, while enhancing the accuracy of CO2 measurements thanks to greater repeatability of acquisitions (more than 3 times a week at European latitudes).
The goal of the CO2M mission is to measure human-induced atmospheric carbon dioxide (and methane). These measurements will reduce current uncertainties in estimates of emissions of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels at sub-continental scales. This will provide the European Union with a unique and independent source of information to assess the effectiveness of public policies, and to track their impact on decarbonizing Europe and meeting national emissions reduction targets.
“We are proud to pursue the development of the Copernicus CO2M mission alongside the European Commission, ESA and OHB System,” said Hervé Derrey, CEO of Thales Alenia Space. “The CO2M mission is unique and marks an important milestone in European leadership with regards to climate change and greenhouse gases reduction. Thales Alenia Space will continue to bring its flight-proven Earth Observation expertise to this mission, which is essential to meeting the ambitious goal of measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by human activities.”
Each CO2M satellite’s payload includes three instruments:
A combined CO2/NO2 (carbon dioxide/nitrogen dioxide) instrument based on a near-infrared and shortwave-infrared spectrometer provided by Thales Alenia Space in France;
A Multi-Angle Polarimeter (MAP) based on four identical cameras, contained in a dedicated optical unit, provided by Thales Alenia Space in France;
A Cloud Imager (CLIM), derived from the flight-proven Proba-V instrument, provided by OIP Sensor Systems in Belgium.
CO2M will measure images of atmospheric columns of CO2 with the resolution, accuracy, time sampling and spatial coverage required to provide the key space component inputs of the Operational Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions Monitoring & Verification Support (MVS) Capacity.
The atmospheric measurements made by the combination of satellites and in-situ networks, especially CO2M, will provide Europe with a unique operational capability that will contribute to the global monitoring of fossil CO2 emissions[1], meaning CO2 emissions arising from anthropogenic activities, add carbon in the climate system with a huge impact on climate change.
More about industrial contributions
As prime contractor, OHB System is leading an industrial consortium including Thales Alenia Space and OIP Sensors to build the CO2M instruments. Thales Alenia Space in France is responsible for developing the CO2/NO2 Instruments and Multi-angular Polarimeters for the CO2M satellites. Thales Alenia Space in Spain will provide the S-band transponder (SBT) and the Instrument Control Unit (ICU), Thales SESO will provide key optical elements of the CO2/NO2 spectrometers (collimator mirrors and imagers optics), and Thales Alenia Space in Switzerland the telescope of the CO2/NO2 instrument.
[1] Sum of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, process CO2 emissions from cement production, process CO2 emissions from metal (ferrous and non-ferrous) production, CO2 emissions from urea production, urea application and agricultural lime, emissions from the combustion of biofuel (carbon-neutral over one year) and from land use, land-use change and forestry (including large-scale biomass burning of forest or peat fires).
ABOUT THALES ALENIA SPACE
Drawing on over 40 years of experience and a unique combination of skills, expertise and cultures, Thales Alenia Space delivers cost-effective solutions for telecommunications, navigation, Earth observation, environmental management, exploration, science and orbital infrastructures. Governments and private industry alike count on Thales Alenia Space to design satellite-based systems that provide anytime, anywhere connections and positioning, monitor our planet, enhance management of its resources, and explore our Solar System and beyond. Thales Alenia Space sees space as a new horizon, helping to build a better, more sustainable life on Earth. A joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), Thales Alenia Space also teams up with Telespazio to form the parent companies’ Space Alliance, which offers a complete range of services. Thales Alenia Space posted consolidated revenues of approximately €2.2 billion in 2023 and has around 8,600 employees in 8 countries, with 16 sites in Europe.
Ambassador Matilda Aku Alomatu Osei-Agyeman. (Photo: D. Calma/IAEA)
In a special meeting today the IAEA Board of Governors elected Ambassador Matilda Aku Alomatu Osei-Agyeman of Ghana as its Chairperson for 2025. She will complete the remainder of the term of office of her predecessor, Ambassador Philbert Abaka Johnson of Ghana, who was elected in September 2024. Ambassador Osei-Agyeman’s term commences today and will end in September 2025.
Ambassador Osei-Agyeman is the Permanent Representative of Ghana to the IAEA, the United Nations Offices and other international organizations in Vienna. A career diplomat with over 25 years of experience, she has held various positions in Ghana and abroad covering both bilateral and multilateral issues.
Prior to her appointment in Vienna, Ambassador Osei-Agyeman served as Minister Plenipotentiary and Deputy Ambassador in the Embassy of the Republic of Ghana to Italy from 2023 to 2024. She has also served in diplomatic postings in the United Kingdom, Malta, the United States of America and at Ghana’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland.
Ambassador Osei-Agyeman has also held numerous posts in Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, including, most recently, serving as Director of the Europe Bureau from 2021 to 2023 and as the first Director of the Candidatures Portfolio in 2021, where she ensured effective advocacy resulting in Ghana’s election as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for 2022 and 2023.
Ambassador Osei-Agyeman holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Ghana and a Master of Arts in international affairs from the Legon Centre for International Affairs & Diplomacy in Ghana. She has also participated in various courses on leadership and diplomacy.
What began in late 2016 as a peaceful protest by lawyers and teachers in Cameroon’s North West and South West regions quickly turned violent and developed into what’s become known as Cameroon’s anglophone crisis.
The protest was instigated by perceived marginalisation of Cameroon’s anglophone region, which makes up 20% of the nation’s 29 million people.
The conflict has resulted in immense destruction and casualties. Cameroon’s military responded to the protest with arrests and torture. Voices that called for complete secession of the anglophone regions from the Republic of Cameroon gained momentum.
They created a virtual Ambazonia Republic and an interim government in exile, and vowed to fight back. They formed a military wing, Ambazonia Self-Defence Force, which attacked and disrupted economic and social services in the region.
As of October 2024, over 1.8 million people have needed humanitarian assistance. Over 584,000 have been internally displaced. Over 73,000 have become refugees in next-door Nigeria. Over 6,500 have been killed.
One possible avenue that could be pursued to end the impasse is mediation, with help from other countries. But the Cameroonian government has repeatedly rebuffed intervention from organisations such as the African Union, arguing that the conflict is an internal affair.
It also ended a government-sponsored mediation by the Swiss in 2022.
It is clear to me, as a historian who has studied Cameroon foreign policy for the past three decades, that Cameroon’s leadership will not look to external actors to help solve their crisis.
Founding leader Ahmadou Ahidjo, and later his successor Paul Biya, did not respond to external pressure to address issues. Cameroon’s diplomatic relations are based on respect of national sovereignty and nonintervention in each other’s internal affairs.
My research shows that the Cameroonian leadership rejects outside intervention on issues it regards as within its sovereignty and internal affairs.
In the 1960s, Ahidjo used brutal force against a nationalist organisation called the Maquisard. His presidency was characterised by murders, imprisonments and torture.
Political rivals were imprisoned or forced to go into exile. Biya, who served in Ahidjo’s government, learned that repressive measures work. As president, he used similar tactics against rivals and the opposition.
But the use of force as a response to the anglophone protest was a miscalculation. The Biya regime failed to see the crisis in its context of changing times, misunderstood the sources of the conflict, and misread the role of social media in protest activities in the 21st century.
The crisis originated from a series of grievances: poverty, unemployment, political and economic neglect of the anglophone region, failure to treat French and English as equal languages in the country, and disrespect and disregard of English-speaking Cameroonians.
At the beginning protesters were generally peaceful, but things changed in 2017. Biya stated that Cameroon was being hijacked by “terrorists masking as secessionists” and vowed to eliminate them.
To anglophone leaders it was a formal declaration of war, and the message spread quickly on social media. The Biya team did little to slow or stop its spread, and anglophones inside and outside the country accepted the message as fact. It mobilised the region. And few took the time to read the full text of his remarks.
The brutality of the war on both sides intensified. Everything had all happened so quickly, and most did not anticipate the intensity of the violence.
In its diplomatic relations, Cameroon has a long history of protecting what it sees as its own business.
One example was in 1992, after the US administration criticised Biya for electoral fraud. The Cameroon government fired back. Biya withdrew Cameroon’s ambassador from Washington DC, and informed the US ambassador that America should stay clear of Cameroon’s internal affairs.
In 2008, tension erupted again when Biya changed Cameroon’s constitution to eliminate presidential term limits. The US ambassador criticised the move in the Cameroonian press. Again, Cameroonian officials pushed back, asking the ambassador not to interfere in the nation’s internal politics.
America’s disposition towards the anglophone crisis has been one of non-interference. Other major powers have responded similarly, asking both sides to end the violence.
The Cameroon government has rebuffed initiatives from Switzerland and Canada, both friendly to the country, publicly stating it asked no nation to mediate.
The rejection of the Swiss initiative was surprising, given that Biya spends much time in that country. Unlike the Swiss plan, in which conversations began, the Canadian initiative did not even take off.
Measurable indicators show that the Biya regime is failing to end the anglophone crisis. The killings – including those of law enforcement officers – kidnaps, brutality and ransom demands are now normalised in the anglophone region, especially in rural areas.
People are exasperated by public service announcements about what the government has achieved. Their condition remains much worse than it was in the pre-crisis period.
Ordinary people are focused on bread-and-butter issues and the desire for dignity and respect. But they don’t see it.
Young Cameroonians need to see both anglophone and francophone residents at every level of government, on every rung of the business ladder, in every management position, at every school — even on every billboard advertisement.
Only such a widespread and visible approach can convincingly challenge Cameroon’s pattern of discrimination and exclusion.
The Biya regime must commit to doing that and not be distracted by supporters urging him to be a candidate in the upcoming presidential election.
It is important to track and bring to justice the apparent sponsors of the killings in the country. This must be done while government keeps its promises to make things right for those living in the anglophone regions.
Finally, given China’s investment in Cameroon, it can do more to engage the Biya regime on the anglophone crisis. Like Cameroon, China’s policy also stipulates a policy of nonintervention, but it has repeatedly changed course when its strategic interests are threatened.
Major power status demands major responsibilities, and showing the will to stop chronic human rights violations remains an important obligation.
– Cameroon could do with some foreign help to solve anglophone crisis – but the state doesn’t want it – https://theconversation.com/cameroon-could-do-with-some-foreign-help-to-solve-anglophone-crisis-but-the-state-doesnt-want-it-244770
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Gerrit Kurtz, Peace and Conflict Researcher, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Intense fighting has ravaged Sudan since 15 April 2023. The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and its erstwhile comrades-in-arms, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Famine, displacement and mass atrocities are wreaking havoc in the country.
International mediation efforts have been lacklustre and fruitless. The United Nations security council has been preoccupied with other crises and blocked by its own divisions. The African Union has created diplomatic groups, a high-level panel and a presidential committee, none of which has been particularly active. It has been very slow in tackling the political process it wanted to lead.
The US and Saudi Arabia convened several rounds of talks, first in Jeddah, then in Switzerland. The Sudanese Armed Forces delegation failed to turn up in Switzerland. The Rapid Support Forces expressed willingness to talk peace, while simultaneously committing sexual and gender-based violence on a massive scale. The Biden administration only lately slapped sanctions on the top leaders of both forces, Abdelfattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemedti).
I have studied civil wars, mediation and peacebuilding for more than 12 years, with a focus on Sudan, including regular visits to the country and the region in the past five years. Based on this experience I have identified five reasons why mediation has failed. These are: the resistance of the conflict parties based on the dynamic nature of the war; continued military and financial aid by their external sponsors; as well as mediation attempts that were too narrow, not viewed as impartial, and lacking in coherence.
Clearly, a new approach to mediation is needed, not simply a new mediator. Turkey has recently offered to lead talks between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the United Arab Emirates, the main backer of the Rapid Support Forces, but Egypt, Kenya and several multilateral organisations also keep looking for opportunities.
Any new initiative will have to have certain components if it’s going to succeed:
political parameters, ideally set by a parallel civilian political process, of what might come next for Sudan should guide mediators
negotiations should take place in secret so that trust can be established
back channel communications networks must be established with potential spoilers without ceding undue legitimacy to them
a gender- and youth-inclusive approach
more effective international coordination
consistent pressure on the conflict parties and their external backers.
Why previous mediation efforts failed
Firstly, neither the Sudanese Armed Forces nor the Rapid Support Forces have shown significant willingness to stop hostilities.
The military fortunes of the two sides has waxed and waned. As long as either side feels successful militarily, they are unlikely to commit to sincere negotiations. Outright military victory leading to control of the whole territory (and its borders) remains out of reach for all.
Secondly, their respective allies have not shown any particular interest in peace.
External actors have provided military support to the warring parties, and helped finance them. The UAE is the main sponsor of the Rapid Support Forces. The Sudanese Armed Forces cooperates with Egypt, Eritrea, Iran and Russia, for arms deliveries and training. The UAE promised the US to stop supporting the Rapid Support Forces, but the arms flows continued.
Thirdly, some conflict management efforts were based on a flawed conflict analysis. There were attempts to organise a face-to-face meeting between Hemedti and Burhan, by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and the African Union. But the war is not primarily a contest of “two generals”. Neither Hemedti nor Burhan has full control of their forces. Nor is a renewed military government acceptable to large parts of Sudan’s vibrant civil society.
Fourth, mediation efforts suffered because some of the parties saw them as lacking impartiality. Sudanese Armed Forces leaders don’t trust Kenya, whose President William Ruto is closely aligned with the UAE and has, until recently, allowed the Rapid Support Forces to conduct meetings and a press conference in Nairobi. Kenya was supposed to lead the Intergovernmental Authority on Development quartet of mediators, which never really got off the ground. Similarly, Sudan remains suspended from the African Union.
Finally, there was a competition of mediation platforms, allowing the warring parties to shop for the most convenient forum for them.
What a path to a ceasefire might look like
International attention is currently focused on Turkish president Recep Erdogan, who has offered to mediate between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the UAE. The Sudanese Armed Forces has harshly criticised the UAE for its support to the Rapid Support Forces. The offer, then, is based on the assumption the UAE might actually cease that support.
Any new approach should differ from previous efforts.
Mediators should provide a broad sense of political parameters for a post-war (interim) order, ideally with strong input from Sudan’s civilian groups. Those could include a conditional amnesty as well as assurances of personal safety for the top military leaders and of some stake in a transitional period, without promising any blanket impunity or renewed power-sharing.
But international mediators should grant the warring parties political recognition and legitimacy only in exchange for feasible concessions.
Negotiations should take place in secret, allowing confidential exchanges between declared enemies. This is particularly important for the Sudanese Armed Forces given the rivalry among its leadership.
Back channel communications should be established to all actors with real constituencies in Sudan, without empowering them unnecessarily. Turkey is well-placed to reach out to senior members of the previous (Bashir) regime who have found exile there. They control large parts of the fighting forces on the side of Sudanese Armed Forces and could prove to be a major spoiler. The armed groups in the so-called “joint forces” would also need to feel somewhat included.
Mediators should find ways to include a broad array of civilian actors, in particular women and youth groups. Instead of only targeting “men with guns”, a peace process should be gender-inclusive.
Any lead mediator should keep other interested parties such as the EU, the UK, Norway, and the other countries and organisations already mentioned, informed and engaged.
Pressure should be kept up by the US, UK and EU on external backers of the two main warring parties, and target both military and financial flows. Policies, including further targeted sanctions, should be as aligned as possible.
Preparing for a window of opportunity
There’s no guarantee that the violence would cease even if these conditions were met. The main belligerents are likely to continue their current offensives. The Sudanese Armed Forces will try to oust the Rapid Support Forces from central Khartoum completely. The Rapid Support Forces will keep trying to take El Fasher, the only capital in Darfur not under their control.
The impending re-capture of Khartoum by the Sudanese Armed Forces may provide an opportunity for a new round of talks, if it comes with consistent international pressure. Mediators should be ready to push for an end to the fighting.
– Peace in Sudan: a fresh mediation effort is needed – how it could work – https://theconversation.com/peace-in-sudan-a-fresh-mediation-effort-is-needed-how-it-could-work-248330
What began in late 2016 as a peaceful protest by lawyers and teachers in Cameroon’s North West and South West regions quickly turned violent and developed into what’s become known as Cameroon’s anglophone crisis.
The protest was instigated by perceived marginalisation of Cameroon’s anglophone region, which makes up 20% of the nation’s 29 million people.
The conflict has resulted in immense destruction and casualties. Cameroon’s military responded to the protest with arrests and torture. Voices that called for complete secession of the anglophone regions from the Republic of Cameroon gained momentum.
They created a virtual Ambazonia Republic and an interim government in exile, and vowed to fight back. They formed a military wing, Ambazonia Self-Defence Force, which attacked and disrupted economic and social services in the region.
As of October 2024, over 1.8 million people have needed humanitarian assistance. Over 584,000 have been internally displaced. Over 73,000 have become refugees in next-door Nigeria. Over 6,500 have been killed.
One possible avenue that could be pursued to end the impasse is mediation, with help from other countries. But the Cameroonian government has repeatedly rebuffed intervention from organisations such as the African Union, arguing that the conflict is an internal affair.
It also ended a government-sponsored mediation by the Swiss in 2022.
It is clear to me, as a historian who has studied Cameroon foreign policy for the past three decades, that Cameroon’s leadership will not look to external actors to help solve their crisis.
Founding leader Ahmadou Ahidjo, and later his successor Paul Biya, did not respond to external pressure to address issues. Cameroon’s diplomatic relations are based on respect of national sovereignty and nonintervention in each other’s internal affairs.
My research shows that the Cameroonian leadership rejects outside intervention on issues it regards as within its sovereignty and internal affairs.
In the 1960s, Ahidjo used brutal force against a nationalist organisation called the Maquisard. His presidency was characterised by murders, imprisonments and torture.
Political rivals were imprisoned or forced to go into exile. Biya, who served in Ahidjo’s government, learned that repressive measures work. As president, he used similar tactics against rivals and the opposition.
But the use of force as a response to the anglophone protest was a miscalculation. The Biya regime failed to see the crisis in its context of changing times, misunderstood the sources of the conflict, and misread the role of social media in protest activities in the 21st century.
The crisis originated from a series of grievances: poverty, unemployment, political and economic neglect of the anglophone region, failure to treat French and English as equal languages in the country, and disrespect and disregard of English-speaking Cameroonians.
At the beginning protesters were generally peaceful, but things changed in 2017. Biya stated that Cameroon was being hijacked by “terrorists masking as secessionists” and vowed to eliminate them.
To anglophone leaders it was a formal declaration of war, and the message spread quickly on social media. The Biya team did little to slow or stop its spread, and anglophones inside and outside the country accepted the message as fact. It mobilised the region. And few took the time to read the full text of his remarks.
The brutality of the war on both sides intensified. Everything had all happened so quickly, and most did not anticipate the intensity of the violence.
In its diplomatic relations, Cameroon has a long history of protecting what it sees as its own business.
One example was in 1992, after the US administration criticised Biya for electoral fraud. The Cameroon government fired back. Biya withdrew Cameroon’s ambassador from Washington DC, and informed the US ambassador that America should stay clear of Cameroon’s internal affairs.
In 2008, tension erupted again when Biya changed Cameroon’s constitution to eliminate presidential term limits. The US ambassador criticised the move in the Cameroonian press. Again, Cameroonian officials pushed back, asking the ambassador not to interfere in the nation’s internal politics.
America’s disposition towards the anglophone crisis has been one of non-interference. Other major powers have responded similarly, asking both sides to end the violence.
The Cameroon government has rebuffed initiatives from Switzerland and Canada, both friendly to the country, publicly stating it asked no nation to mediate.
The rejection of the Swiss initiative was surprising, given that Biya spends much time in that country. Unlike the Swiss plan, in which conversations began, the Canadian initiative did not even take off.
Measurable indicators show that the Biya regime is failing to end the anglophone crisis. The killings – including those of law enforcement officers – kidnaps, brutality and ransom demands are now normalised in the anglophone region, especially in rural areas.
People are exasperated by public service announcements about what the government has achieved. Their condition remains much worse than it was in the pre-crisis period.
Ordinary people are focused on bread-and-butter issues and the desire for dignity and respect. But they don’t see it.
Young Cameroonians need to see both anglophone and francophone residents at every level of government, on every rung of the business ladder, in every management position, at every school — even on every billboard advertisement.
Only such a widespread and visible approach can convincingly challenge Cameroon’s pattern of discrimination and exclusion.
The Biya regime must commit to doing that and not be distracted by supporters urging him to be a candidate in the upcoming presidential election.
It is important to track and bring to justice the apparent sponsors of the killings in the country. This must be done while government keeps its promises to make things right for those living in the anglophone regions.
Finally, given China’s investment in Cameroon, it can do more to engage the Biya regime on the anglophone crisis. Like Cameroon, China’s policy also stipulates a policy of nonintervention, but it has repeatedly changed course when its strategic interests are threatened.
Major power status demands major responsibilities, and showing the will to stop chronic human rights violations remains an important obligation.
Julius A. Amin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Gerrit Kurtz, Peace and Conflict Researcher, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Intense fighting has ravaged Sudan since 15 April 2023. The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and its erstwhile comrades-in-arms, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Famine, displacement and mass atrocities are wreaking havoc in the country.
International mediation efforts have been lacklustre and fruitless. The United Nations security council has been preoccupied with other crises and blocked by its own divisions. The African Union has created diplomatic groups, a high-level panel and a presidential committee, none of which has been particularly active. It has been very slow in tackling the political process it wanted to lead.
The US and Saudi Arabia convened several rounds of talks, first in Jeddah, then in Switzerland. The Sudanese Armed Forces delegation failed to turn up in Switzerland. The Rapid Support Forces expressed willingness to talk peace, while simultaneously committing sexual and gender-based violence on a massive scale. The Biden administration only lately slapped sanctions on the top leaders of both forces, Abdelfattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemedti).
I have studied civil wars, mediation and peacebuilding for more than 12 years, with a focus on Sudan, including regular visits to the country and the region in the past five years. Based on this experience I have identified five reasons why mediation has failed. These are: the resistance of the conflict parties based on the dynamic nature of the war; continued military and financial aid by their external sponsors; as well as mediation attempts that were too narrow, not viewed as impartial, and lacking in coherence.
Clearly, a new approach to mediation is needed, not simply a new mediator. Turkey has recently offered to lead talks between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the United Arab Emirates, the main backer of the Rapid Support Forces, but Egypt, Kenya and several multilateral organisations also keep looking for opportunities.
Any new initiative will have to have certain components if it’s going to succeed:
political parameters, ideally set by a parallel civilian political process, of what might come next for Sudan should guide mediators
negotiations should take place in secret so that trust can be established
back channel communications networks must be established with potential spoilers without ceding undue legitimacy to them
a gender- and youth-inclusive approach
more effective international coordination
consistent pressure on the conflict parties and their external backers.
Why previous mediation efforts failed
Firstly, neither the Sudanese Armed Forces nor the Rapid Support Forces have shown significant willingness to stop hostilities.
The military fortunes of the two sides has waxed and waned. As long as either side feels successful militarily, they are unlikely to commit to sincere negotiations. Outright military victory leading to control of the whole territory (and its borders) remains out of reach for all.
Secondly, their respective allies have not shown any particular interest in peace.
External actors have provided military support to the warring parties, and helped finance them. The UAE is the main sponsor of the Rapid Support Forces. The Sudanese Armed Forces cooperates with Egypt, Eritrea, Iran and Russia, for arms deliveries and training. The UAE promised the US to stop supporting the Rapid Support Forces, but the arms flows continued.
Thirdly, some conflict management efforts were based on a flawed conflict analysis. There were attempts to organise a face-to-face meeting between Hemedti and Burhan, by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and the African Union. But the war is not primarily a contest of “two generals”. Neither Hemedti nor Burhan has full control of their forces. Nor is a renewed military government acceptable to large parts of Sudan’s vibrant civil society.
Fourth, mediation efforts suffered because some of the parties saw them as lacking impartiality. Sudanese Armed Forces leaders don’t trust Kenya, whose President William Ruto is closely aligned with the UAE and has, until recently, allowed the Rapid Support Forces to conduct meetings and a press conference in Nairobi. Kenya was supposed to lead the Intergovernmental Authority on Development quartet of mediators, which never really got off the ground. Similarly, Sudan remains suspended from the African Union.
Finally, there was a competition of mediation platforms, allowing the warring parties to shop for the most convenient forum for them.
What a path to a ceasefire might look like
International attention is currently focused on Turkish president Recep Erdogan, who has offered to mediate between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the UAE. The Sudanese Armed Forces has harshly criticised the UAE for its support to the Rapid Support Forces. The offer, then, is based on the assumption the UAE might actually cease that support.
Any new approach should differ from previous efforts.
Mediators should provide a broad sense of political parameters for a post-war (interim) order, ideally with strong input from Sudan’s civilian groups. Those could include a conditional amnesty as well as assurances of personal safety for the top military leaders and of some stake in a transitional period, without promising any blanket impunity or renewed power-sharing.
But international mediators should grant the warring parties political recognition and legitimacy only in exchange for feasible concessions.
Negotiations should take place in secret, allowing confidential exchanges between declared enemies. This is particularly important for the Sudanese Armed Forces given the rivalry among its leadership.
Back channel communications should be established to all actors with real constituencies in Sudan, without empowering them unnecessarily. Turkey is well-placed to reach out to senior members of the previous (Bashir) regime who have found exile there. They control large parts of the fighting forces on the side of Sudanese Armed Forces and could prove to be a major spoiler. The armed groups in the so-called “joint forces” would also need to feel somewhat included.
Mediators should find ways to include a broad array of civilian actors, in particular women and youth groups. Instead of only targeting “men with guns”, a peace process should be gender-inclusive.
Any lead mediator should keep other interested parties such as the EU, the UK, Norway, and the other countries and organisations already mentioned, informed and engaged.
Pressure should be kept up by the US, UK and EU on external backers of the two main warring parties, and target both military and financial flows. Policies, including further targeted sanctions, should be as aligned as possible.
Preparing for a window of opportunity
There’s no guarantee that the violence would cease even if these conditions were met. The main belligerents are likely to continue their current offensives. The Sudanese Armed Forces will try to oust the Rapid Support Forces from central Khartoum completely. The Rapid Support Forces will keep trying to take El Fasher, the only capital in Darfur not under their control.
The impending re-capture of Khartoum by the Sudanese Armed Forces may provide an opportunity for a new round of talks, if it comes with consistent international pressure. Mediators should be ready to push for an end to the fighting.
Gerrit Kurtz is also a non-resident fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute and a member of the Forum New Security Policy of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
CMD Portal Awards 2025: AFL wins ‘Most Improved Bond Issuer’ award
AFL, the French local government funding agency, is rewarded for the second time by CMD Portal – a network of more than 35,000 bond market experts – and wins the “Most Improved Bond Issuer” prize, the most efficient bond issuer. This distinction reflects the bank’s proven ability to place its debt with a growing and diversified investor base across multiple currencies. Now well established as frequent bond issuer, AFL is on its way to become a significant borrower in the capital markets, offering investors the only diversified exposure to the French local public sector.
A funding program in full expansion for 10 years
Created 10 years ago by and for the French local authorities, AFL’s mission is to facilitate access to financing and is among the leading lenders to local governments.
Since its creation, the bank has been able to maintain its financial strength while expanding its operations. It has doubled its financing program, diversified its issuance currencies, and increased the frequency of both private placements and benchmark transactions with the objective to improve liquidity for investors. AFL’s bond issues are now located nearly on the entire Euro curve, which allows it to broaden its access to the market.
Ten years after the beginning of its activities, AFL’s balance sheet stands at nearly €11 billion, reflecting the dynamic growth in loan production granted to local authorities since its first bond issue in 2015.
Issuance of new products and expansion into new international markets
Since 2023, AFL has had the ability to issue callable bonds. On this segment, the bank has already and successfully completed six transactions of this type in 2024, with an average size of €37 million, totaling €221 million.
In April 2024, AFL entered the public Swiss Franc (CHF) market with an inaugural transaction of CHF 110 million. This strategic bond issuance broadened AFL’s already diverse investor base, which now spans France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Benelux, the UK, Northern Europe, and Asia.
The institution now has a base of more than 300 international investors, including banks, private banks, fund managers, insurance companies, pension funds, and a growing number of central banks and official institutions.
Lastly, in December 2024, AFL issued €50 million of subordinated debt securities, with the aim of enabling it to deploy its business plan while strengthening its equity base.
2024 constitutes a pivotal year for AFL in two respects:
AFL was able to maintain its AA- rating when S&P downgraded France’s sovereign rating from AA to AA- in May 2024, leading the bank to now share the same as the French central government. AFL has thus strengthened its position compared to other public sector banking institutions.
Additionally, the HQLA 1 qualification granted by the ACPR in respect of for AFL’s debt on June 21, 2024, following the change in the risk weighting of French local authorities to 0%, has contributed to significantly enhancing the eligibility of AFL’s debt securities in the portfolios of investors, particularly banks.
Key Takeaways:
€11 billion in loans granted over the past 10 years
3rd largest lender to French local authorities
Recognized as a public development bank in 2021
HQLA 1 since June 2024
AA-/AA- (S&P/Fitch) Same credit rating as the French government
About AFL
“The Company’s mission is to embody a responsible finance to strengthen the local world’s empowerment so as to better deliver the present and future needs of its inhabitants.”
By creating our bank, the first one that we own and manage, we, French local authorities, have decided to act to deepen decentralization. Our bank, Agence France Locale (AFL), is not a financial institution similar to any other. Created by and for local authorities, it aims to strengthen our freedom, our ability to develop projects and our responsibility as local public actors. Its culture of prudence spares us from the dangers of complexity and its governance from downward slides of conflicts of interest. The main objective is to provide local world with an access to cost-efficient resources, under total transparency. The principles of solidarity and equity drive us. We are convinced that together we go further. We decided that our institution would be agile, addressing all types of local authorities, from the largest regions to the smallest municipalities. We see profit as a means to maximize public spending, not as an end goal. Through AFL, we support a local world committed to take up social, economic, and environmental challenges. AFL strengthens our empowerment: to carry out projects in our territories, today and tomorrow, to the benefits of the inhabitants. We are proud to have a bank whose development is like us, even more responsible and sustainable. We are Agence France Locale.
Yesterday, the Swiss cloud provider Infomaniak officially inaugurated its new data center, which has been recovering 100% of the electricity it uses since 11 November. Located in a residential area of Geneva, on an underground site of the participatory and eco-responsible cooperative ofla Bistoquette, the data center has no impact on the landscape and recycles 100% of the local renewable energy it consumes. At full capacity, it will feed 1.7 MW (or 14.9 GWh/year) into the region’s heating network, enabling 6,000 Minergie-A households to be heated a year or 20,000 people to take a 5-minute shower every day. This new generation of data centers, which has already received a number of awards, has been documented by students from EPFL, IMD and the University of Lausanne with a view to making it open source and enabling it to be reproduced on a large scale.
Inauguration of the D4, a data center that is revolutionising the cloud industry
Infomaniak’s new data center, a symbol of technological innovation and sustainability, was officially inaugurated yesterday, with the public authorities and key project stakeholders in attendance. Their collective commitment was essential in making this world first a reality. The project exceeds the standards of similar infrastructures in terms of environmental integration and energy recovery.
Since 2 p.m. on 11 November 2024, all the electricity consumed by this structure, in the form of heat, has already been fed back into the district heating network of the Canton of Geneva. This achievement marks a key stage in the region’s energy transition, transforming an energy-intensive facility into an active player in energy recovery.
Currently operating at 25% of its potential capacity, Infomaniak’s data center will gradually increase its output to reach full capacity by 2028, guaranteeing a sustainable contribution to society for at least 20 years.
The future of the cloud: circular energy with no impact on the landscape
Having already won several awards for the energy efficiency of its infrastructures, which have been operating without air conditioning since 2013, Infomaniak is addressing four major challenges facing the cloud industry with this new data center model:
100% of the electricity used by the data center is reused to heat households via a district heating network.
The facility does not require additional water or air conditioning to be cooled.
It is built on an underground site in a residential area.
It has no impact on the landscape.
“In the real world, data centers convert electricity into heat. With the exponential growth of the cloud, this energy is currently being released into the atmosphere and wasted. There is an urgent need to upgrade this way of doing things, to connect these infrastructures to heating networks and adapt building standards,” explains Boris Siegenthaler, Infomaniak’s Founder and Chief Strategy Officer.
Nothing is wasted, everything is transformed
Unlike existing projects that recycle a fraction of the energy they consume, the system implemented by Infomaniak goes further.
All the electricity consumed (by servers, inverters, ventilation, etc.) is converted into heat at a temperature of 40 to 45°C. This heat is then transferred to an air/water exchanger, which integrates it into a hot water circuit. Heat pumps then raise its temperature to transfer the waste heat from the data center to the heating network.
The originality of the system lies in the use of both sides of the pump:
The gas in the heat pumps expands by capturing the energy in the water, which drops from 45°C to 28°C. This cooled water is fed into the air/water exchanger to cool the servers, eliminating the need for traditional air conditioning.
The gas in the pumps is then compressed to transmit energy to the district heating network, raising the water temperature to 67 °C in summer and 85 °C in winter to meet the needs of the district heating operator.
The recovery mechanism is therefore the same as the one that keeps the servers at an optimal operating temperature. The additional energy required to run the heat pumps is also recycled, and it is the cold released by this process that keeps the servers cool.
“Today, PUE, which measures the energy efficiency of data centers, is no longer sufficient in the face of the climate emergency. We also need to take ERE into account, which evaluates the energy actually consumed compared to the energy reused, as well as the ERF, which measures the proportion of the data center’s total energy that is reused for other purposes, such as district heating. Taken together, these three indicators provide a more complete picture of the energy impact of digital infrastructures,” explains Boris Siegenthaler, Infomaniak’s Founder and Chief Strategy Officer.
6,000 homes heated and 3,600 t CO₂e saved each year
At full capacity, the new data center will house some 10,000 servers in an underground area measuring 1,800 m2. It will provide the heating network with 1.7 MW, equivalent to the energy needed to heat 6,000 Minergie-A households per year or allow 20,000 people to take a 5-minute shower every day.
Geneva will avoid having to burn 3,600 t CO2e of natural gas per year or the equivalent of 5,500 t CO2e of pellets per year, not to mention eliminate 211 lorries per year transporting 13 tonnes of material and the microparticles associated with pellet transport and combustion.
An economically neutral operation
In financial terms, recycling waste heat is a neutral operation for Infomaniak. Without the servers, this data center cost CHF 12 million, including a CHF 6 million advance from the cloud provider to adapt heat levels those required by heating network. Part of this CHF 6 million was provided by the Cantonal Energy Office of the Canton of Geneva (OCEN) and the heating network operator (SIG). The remainder will be gradually amortised by the heat produced by Infomaniak, at cost price.
From finding the site (June 2019) to commissioning the first servers (December 2023), the project took a total of four and a half years to complete, whereas Infomaniak would usually build a data center in two years. The main challenges involved were finding a location that was both secure and close to a district heating network capable of permanently absorbing the associated volume of heat, and negotiating a contract with the district heating network operator.
Good for Europe’s technological sovereignty
This data center strengthens Europe’s technological sovereignty and creates value for many local companies by relying on equipment manufactured exclusively in Europe, with the exception of the security cameras used:
Trane heat pumps (France)
Ebmpapst fans (Germany)
Siemens power rails (Germany)
Siemens switchboard (Germany)
Minkels server racks (Netherlands)
ABB inverters (Switzerland)
Margen generator (Italy)
Meyer-Burger solar panels (Switzerland/Germany)
The local economy will also benefit directly from the impact of this project.
A new generation of data centers that is open source
This innovation can be reproduced and the expertise gained during the course of the project has been made available free of charge. This model works, demonstrating to the cloud industry and policymakers that it is possible to double the value of energy from data centers. It also shows that the digital sector should no longer be seen as an end consumer of electricity, but as an actor in the energy transition.
Infomaniak’s new data center, which was awarded the Swiss Ethics Prize and the Sustainable Development Prize of the Canton of Geneva in 2023, has been documented by UNIL, IMD and EPFL as part of the e4s.center programme to illustrate its energy efficiency in real time and make it easier to reproduce. This work is available for free at https://d4project.org/ and includes:
A technical guide explaining how to replicate this data center model.
Real-time monitoring of data center operational performance
A summary for policymakers with information to improve regulations on the design and sustainability of data centers
Two new similar data centers already planned
To support its growth, Infomaniak is actively looking for heating networks for its future data centers. “We already have 1.1 MW ready to be fed into a heating network, and by 2028, a new data center of at least 3.3 MW will be needed to meet demand. The principle is simple: we buy electricity locally and provide our carbon-free waste heat free of charge,” explains Boris Siegenthaler.
Ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to welcome you to this high-level conference organised by the Banque de France on speed and innovation, and how they could be disruptive for financial markets and market infrastructures. Let me thank Emmanuelle Assouan and her teams for setting up this event. I would also like to extend my warm thanks to all participants from industry, public authorities and central banks who will give their views during three roundtables today, including my colleagues and friends Andrea Maechler, Piero Cipollone and Naoto Shimoda.
It is apremièrefor a Banque de France conference to be held here at the Cinémathèque française, which is definitely an excellent venue for our theme of today: we are here in the place where speed is made art. As you know, cinema was invented in France by the Lumière brothers in the late 19th century. During the projection in 1896 of one of their very first movies,The arrival of a train at La Ciotat station, the audience was so overwhelmed by the moving image of a train coming directly at them that people ran away. But we do not fear speed anymore, on the contrary: it has become a key success factor in financial markets and market infrastructures, yielding high benefits. Transactions and their settlement have already become dramatically swifter over the last decades – notably in France, which was at the forefront in dematerialising securities – and will continue gathering speed. I will first elaborate on the reasons why, in a fast-moving environment, resilience must be preserved in order to ensure financial stability (I). Our public-private partnership has to evolve, with a view to enhancing cross-border payments and the holistic project of creating a shared ledger (II).
I. A fast-moving financial system whose resilience must be preserved in order to ensure financial stability
Markets are undergoing structural changes, all driven by increased speed aimed at achieving higher efficiency. Automation and high-frequency trading are driving a rise in daily trading volumes; new participants have emerged, and incumbents have evolved. Nowadays, robots and algorithms are unlocking new possibilities, while artificial intelligence offers the promise of value added in trading, customer relationships and investment decisions. From photography to digital movies, from local theatres to global web platforms, cinematography has gone through technological revolutions over the years. However, whether it’s in cinema or finance, speed is not a goal per se. The social utility of certain accelerations such as high-frequency trading remains to be seen, and they carry risks. We must reflect on new guardrails to protect against possible increased market volatility – and even potential flash crashes caused by poorly coordinated algorithms that can amplify massive sell-offs.
Post-market processes are keeping pace with this acceleration in trading: settlement is getting ever faster. A few years ago, implementing T+2 (i.e. ensuring settlement within two days of transaction execution) was a major step forward for all players, as enshrined in the European CSDR regulation.i Nowadays we are once again aiming for more ambitious targets, with an objective of T+1 in Europe in 2027 – as has already been the case in the United States, Canada and Mexico since end-May last year. Interestingly, across the Atlantic, this evolution was driven by market players, who saw in the shortening of the settlement cycle an opportunity to further reduce liquidity, counterparty and operational risks. The American experience also shows that T+1 yields direct financial benefits, in particular a significant lowering of CCP margins. T+1 therefore received overall support in ESMA’s and the Commission’s public consultations. I trust that we are all well aware of the operational requirements and challenges to be met:ii preparatory work must start now, with the adaptation of IT systems and further automation of processes. It is also important to coordinate with the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and to pay due attention to the consequences in terms of shorter cut-offs – notably for FX transactions.
The tokenisation of assets is obviously another groundswell movement, which could further enhance the straight-through processing of trade and post-trade activities, and paves the way for yet another acceleration with a widespread implementation of T+0. It has the potential to generate even greater savings both for the financial industry and end-users. To date, the nascent DLTiii finance has used new forms of commercial bank money as settlement assets, such as tokenised deposits or so-called stablecoins. As experience has shown in the last few years, they are far from immune, and Europe has made the right step by adopting the MiCA regulation. Failing to regulate crypto-assets and non-banks today would merely sow the seeds for tomorrow’s financial crisis.
Beyond these regulatory issues, it has become more and more apparent that we currently lack the anchor provided by central bank money, which drastically reduces counterparty and liquidity risks, and crucially ensures the finality of payments. A wholesale central bank digital currency would ensure convertibility between tokenised assets, exactly as central banks currently ensure convertibility between commercial bank monies, allowing for delivery-versus-payment and payment-versus-payment. In short, tokenised central bank money would provide a “safety pivot”, and serve as a reliable basis of trust on which these new technologies could realise their full potential.
II. A step further with the interlinking of fast-payment systems and a European shared ledger to meet the challenges of transition and growth
Central banks must therefore keep up with these developments,iv in order to explore the potential of DLT and foster innovation while preserving the anchoring role of central bank money. Building among others on the Banque de France’s pioneering experiments between 2020 and 2023,v the Eurosystem conducted a series of new experiments on wholesale CBDC between April and November 2024,vi with the active involvement of the Banque de France, Banca d’Italia and Bundesbank as solution providers. We witnessed active industry participation in the Eurosystem experiments, and I would like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to your strong commitment – which, I believe, also reflects the growing awareness of the need for a safe settlement asset.
Together, we successfully tested numerous and very diverse use cases, ranging from primary issues to cross-currency payments, repos, margin calls and asset management, to give a few examples. Actual settlement was even tested for the lifecycle management of securities and secondary market transactions. With this ambitious programme, we have further delivered on our learning-by-doing approach, which is of the essence. As announced, the Eurosystem will draw lessons from the exploratory work, including on how to facilitate the provision of central bank money settlement for wholesale asset transactions on DLT platforms. Clearly, it is in the interest of both European commercial banks and the public sector to work together towards a tokenised European framework: money is and will remain a public-private partnership, which has to evolve.
As regards cross-border payments, the Eurosystem has launched initiatives to help improve them, including exploratory work on linking TIPS with other fast-payment systems such as UPI in India. We thereby support the G20 roadmap for creating a faster, cheaper, more transparent and accessible global payments ecosystem, while ensuring secure and reliable instant payments. The G20 roadmap also foresees, in the longer term, the use of tokenisation to further enhance cross-border payments.
We now need to bring all these advances together to create a global motion picture, in a holistic manner. Here, the idea of a “unified ledger” put forward by the BISvii looks like more than a promising technology: a rallying concept, or even a utopia. This next-generation market infrastructure would take one day in the future the shape of a shared, seamless and programmable platform that integrates central bank money, commercial bank money and tokenised financial assets – which would call for redefined and improved public-private partnerships. Accordingly, in April 2024 the BIS launched Project Agorá,viii to explore the tokenisation of cross-border payments to improve the existing correspondent banking model. This major project brings together seven central banks worldwide, including the Banque de France which represents the Eurosystem, and a large group of private financial firms. But a first and necessary step towards such a global infrastructure should be to build regional shared ledgers – one of which would be European.
A European shared ledger could prove an efficient means to overcome European market fragmentation and current inefficiencies, by facilitating the provision of seamlessly connected services across Europe. It would therefore act as a catalyst for a Savings and Investments Union, and provide tools such as green bonds and securities to finance the green transition, at a time where we have to mobilise Europe’s private savings surplus of more than EUR 300 billion a year. In short, it would be an important lever for achieving our climate but also digital transformations, which are among our main challenges; it would also help Europe to gain in both size – by unifying its single market – and speed. Achieving this ambitious vision requires moving forward step by step, in a phased approach. Rather than replacing existing infrastructures which have already helped to reduce fragmentation in Europe – like the harmonised settlement system T2S –, this new shared infrastructure would tackle markets which still rely on manual processes and lack standardisation, such as OTC markets and unlisted stocks. A crucial first step will be to make central bank money available on this infrastructure: this makes it all the more important to offer a wholesale CBDC solution in the short term to prepare this long term target.
Let me conclude with Billy Wilder, the director ofSome like it hot. He once gave this sound piece of advice: “If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.” This leads me to a twofold conclusion: first, that it is the right time to engage in the design and experimentation of market infrastructures of the future; second, that fast-paced transformations should not be at the expense of past achievements in financial stability, and increase risks. Central bank money must remain the settlement asset at the core of the financial system, whether tokenised or not. Under this condition, our common technological breakthroughs could contribute to meeting our major challenges. Thank you for your attention.
The Law Library of Congress recently published a multinational report, Access to Information for Persons with Disabilities in Selected Jurisdictions, which provides individual surveys of selected jurisdictions and gives an overview of their legislation on access to information for persons with disabilities. Providing access constitutes one of the human rights protections specifically guaranteed under article 21 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
Our research surveyed 27 jurisdictions, namely, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Congo (Democratic Republic), Denmark, Egypt, El Salvador, England, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, and Taiwan.
This report surveys how the rights of persons with disabilities are protected, notably, if a jurisdiction’s constitution expressly protects persons with disabilities. It further describes the rights to information, in particular legal information, access to justice, and culture, and includes current legislative proposals as they concern persons with disabilities. The report also surveys which jurisdictions offer publicly funded libraries that specifically serve the blind and visually impaired.
A majority of the jurisdictions surveyed are parties to the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled and the jurisdictions have adopted legislation and procedures to make convenience copies of copyrighted material available to persons with disabilities. Several jurisdictions are also part of networks facilitating such access, such as the Accessible Books Consortium, or provide access to Bookshare.
The report is accompanied by maps and a table of primary resources. The maps reflect our findings on surveyed jurisdictions with the first map describing whether jurisdictions expressly protect persons with disabilities in their constitutions. The second map illustrates whether the jurisdiction has specific legislation that addresses access to information for persons with disabilities. Additional maps show which countries have ratified the Marrakesh Treaty and what countries have designated “NLS-style” libraries, specifically mandated to provide access and services to persons with disabilities.
The report supported the Law Library’s Human Rights Day Webinar on Laws Governing Accessibility from Around the World.
We invite you to review our report, here.
The report is an addition to the Law Library’s Legal Reports (Publications of the Law Library of Congress) collection, which includes over 4,000 historical and contemporary legal reports covering a variety of jurisdictions, researched and written by foreign law specialists with expertise in each area. To receive alerts when new reports are published, you can subscribe to email updates for Law Library Reports (click the “subscribe” button on the Law Library’s website). The Law Library also regularly publishes articles related to human rights and civil liberties in the Global Legal Monitor.
Subscribe to In Custodia Legis – it’s free! – to receive interesting posts drawn from the Law Library of Congress’s vast collections and our staff’s expertise in U.S., foreign, and international law.
Source: Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – In English
The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) again warns consumers about the company AuraSwiss and the services it is offering. BaFin has already issued a warning, on 3 January 2025, about AuraSwiss and its website auraswiss.net, which has since been deactivated. The unknown operators are now using the nearly identical website auraswiss.co. BaFin suspects the operators of the websites of offering consumers financial, investment and cryptoasset services without the required authorisation.
The content of the websites is identical to other platforms that BaFin has previously warned consumers about and that display the same opening sentence: “Invest in Success Prosper with Confidence!”
Anyone conducting banking business or providing financial, investment or cryptoasset services in Germany may do so only with authorisation from BaFin. However, some companies offer these services without the necessary authorisation. Information on whether a particular company has been granted authorisation by BaFin can be found in BaFin’s database of companies.
BaFin is issuing this information on the basis of section 37 (4) of the German Banking Act (Kreditwesengesetz – KWG) and section 10 (7) of the German Cryptomarkets Supervision Act (Kryptomaerkteaufsichtsgesetz).
Please be aware:
BaFin, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt – BKA) and the German state criminal police offices (Landeskriminalämter) recommend that consumers seeking to invest money online should exercise the utmost caution and do the necessary research beforehand in order to identify fraud attempts at an early stage.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
A new ‘global growth team’ of UK Trade Envoys has today been appointed by the Trade Secretary to drive UK exports and investment.
A new ‘global growth team’ of UK Trade Envoys has today [28 January] been appointed by the Trade Secretary to drive UK exports and investment as the Government pulls every lever available to drive economic growth under its Plan for Change.
The 32 parliamentarians, drawn from across the political spectrum, have been assigned target markets across six continents and tasked with identifying trade and investment opportunities for businesses and championing the UK as a destination of choice for investment in those markets.
Each market has been identified as presenting significant potential for growing UK trade and Trade Envoys are appointed on their ability, relevant skills and experience. This can be based on their respective markets or UK sector knowledge, including previous government-to-government experience, as well as their commitment to the UK’s growth mission.
Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said:
Trade and investment are key to delivering economic growth, the number one mission of this Government and a key part of our Plan for Change.
That’s why I’ve launched a new team of Trade Envoys, who will use their experience, expertise and knowledge to unlock new markets around the world for British businesses, drumming up investment into the UK and ultimately driving economic growth.
They will work closely with the Department for Business and Trade. The announcement comes ahead of the new Trade Strategy in Spring, which will prioritise rebuilding our relationship with the EU and seizing opportunities to access new markets further afield.
Alongside bolstering exports, attracting investments, and removing trade barriers, the government is also resuming trade talks with FTA partners, including – so far – the GCC, Switzerland and South Korea.
The news comes as Trade Minister Douglas Alexander is in South Africa today as part of a multi-leg visit to the region to strengthen trade links and create opportunities for UK businesses.
The new appointments are:
Afzal Khan MP appointed to Türkiye
Alex Sobel MP appointed to Ukraine
Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP appointed to Ghana
Ben Coleman MP appointed to Morocco & Francophone West Africa
Calvin Bailey MP appointed to Southern Africa
Carolyn Harris MP appointed to New Zealand
Dan Carden MP appointed to Mexico
David Pinto-Duschinsky MP appointed to Switzerland & Lichtenstein
Fabian Hamilton MP appointed to Southern Cone
Flo Eshalomi MP appointed to Nigeria
George Freeman MP appointed to Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore & Brunei
Lord Iain McNicol of West Kilbride appointed to Jordan, Kuwait & the Palestine Territories
Lord Ian Austin of Dudley appointed to Israel
Baroness Jane Ramsey of Wall Heath appointed to Ethiopia
Jess Morden MP appointed to Central America
Lord John Alderdice appointed to Azerbaijan & Central Asia
Lord John Hannett of Everton appointed to Sri Lanka
Lord John Speller of Smethwick appointed to Australia
Josh MacAlister MP appointed to Brazil
Kate Osamor MP appointed to East Africa
Matt Western MP appointed to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos
Mohammad Yasin MP appointed to Pakistan
Naz Shah MP appointed to Indonesia & ASEAN
Paulette Hamilton MP appointed to Commonwealth Caribbean
Lord Richard Faulkner of Worcester appointed to Taiwan
Lord Roger Liddle appointed to Andean
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan appointed to South Africa
Baroness Rosie Winterton of Doncaster appointed to Bangladesh
Sarah Olney MP appointed to North Africa
Sharon Hodgson MP appointed to Japan
Lord Tom Watson of Wyre Forest appointed to Republic of Korea
Source: Switzerland – Federal Administration in English
The chairperson-in-office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Finland’s foreign minister Elina Valtonen, has appointed Christoph Späti as the Special Representative of the Finnish OSCE Chairpersonship for the South Caucasus. The Swiss expert, who most recently served as programme manager for the South Caucasus in the FDFA’s Peace and Human Rights Division (PHRD), took up the post of Special Representative on 21 January 2025.
The International Contact Group for the Great Lakes (ICG), chaired by Germany, gave a statement on the situation in eastern DRC.
The International Contact Group for the Great Lakes, including representatives from Denmark, Belgium, the European Union, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, strongly condemns M23 and Rwandan Defense Forces’ (RDF) capture of the town of Sake on 23 January and the current push to capture the city of Goma on 27 January. We call for urgent de-escalation, respect for the cease-fire, and operationalization of the verification mission. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Democratic Republic of the Congo must be respected.
We urge M23 and RDF to cease its offensive in all directions, allow humanitarian access to the city of Goma and withdraw. The M23 capture of Goma will have grave humanitarian and security consequences on the ground. Hundreds of thousands of people are currently fleeing their homes, adding to the millions already internally displaced in eastern DRC due to conflict. The renewed offensive of the M23 and the RDF undermines efforts to reach a peaceful resolution to the conflict, in particular the Luanda Peace Process led by Angolan President João Lourenço. We call on all regional leaders to push for a renewed diplomatic effort at this critical time. We urge the leaders of the DRC and Rwanda to return to the negotiating table, respect the August ceasefire and implement their commitments under the Luanda Process CONOPS.
We reaffirm our unwavering support for MONUSCO and are deeply alarmed by the findings and support the recommendations of the recent report of the UN Group of Experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1533. Any threat or attack against Peacekeepers or humanitarian personnel is unacceptable. Jamming and spoofing operations which are endangering the security of civilians, United Nations and humanitarian flights must stop. We deplore the deaths of the military personnel of the MONUSCO and the SAMIDRC and we express our deepest condolences to their families, the United Nations and their countries of origin.
The members of the ICG will continue to coordinate their efforts to constantly reassess the situation while urging all parties to live up to their commitments and responsibilities.
