PAC 141 – A Political Ambition without Legal Constraints The COP21 Outcomes

By Weiting Chao. Translation: Lea Sharkey

The Paris Climate Conference (COP21) opened in Le Bourget on November 30, 2015. The conference reunited 147 State Leaders, negotiators representing 195 countries and 50 000 participants. On December 12, a global agreement replacing the Kyoto Protocol has been adopted…

PAC 138 – Oceans Issues: a Marginal Priority The Restricted Scope of COP21

By Valérie Le Brenne. Translation: Lea Sharkey

From November 30 to December 11, 2015, the 21st Convention of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21). Following intense talks, the negotiators compromised on a 40 pages agreement, aiming to restrict the global warming to 2 degrees Celsius…

PAC 137 – The Nobel Prize, a Commitment against Islamism The Tunisian Quartet, Nobel Peace Prize Winner 2015

By Josepha Laroche. Translation: Lea Sharkey

The Nobel Committee, reunited in Oslo, awarded this year (on October 9, 2015) the Nobel Peace Prize to the quartet who has been leading the « national dialogue » in Tunisia for more than two years. The committee pays here a tribute to « its decisive contribution in the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the ‘Jasmine Revolution’ of 2011 » This group is formed of four civil organisations…

PAC 133 – Broadening the Scope of Global Climate Talks What Must Be Done for CoP21 to Cope with Environmental Issues?

By Stefan C. Aykut. Translation: Cécile Fruteau

In December 2015, Paris will host the 21st Conference of the Parties to the Climate Convention (CoP21). Great expectations surround what is advertised as the global governance’s major environmental event since the conference is supposed to secure an international agreement to cope with global warming. More than twenty years of discussions since the subject had been first broached at the Conference of Rio in 1992 were necessary to enable this issue to get its own given place on the international agenda…

PAC 132 – The Illusory Rampart of State Sovereignty The Damaging Lack of Harmony of European Asylum Law

By Catherine Wihtol de Wenden. Translation: Lawrence Myers

In 2014, the EU received 625,000 asylum seekers, a figure not seen until then. Previously, the yearly number remained around 200,00 applications. In 2015, 300,000 people from around Europe (Libya, Syria, Iraq, the Horn of Africa) were forced to migrate due to the chaos facing their countries. Besides these facts, the drowning deaths of two thousand people at the borders of Europe are also deplored. Yet, the data continues to worsen. Between 2000 and 2015, an estimated 30,000 people perished in the Mediterranean. The overall number since 1990 stands at 40,000. At the same time, Angela Merkel’s speech in September 2015 was an unprecedented turning point. The German Chancellor announced that Germany was ready to host 800,000 asylum seekers in the coming months.