New Delhi: Ahead of the Paris Olympics, the French government is driving homeless migrants out of the city. The initial ‘relocation plan’ — a voluntary programme intended to alleviate Paris’s emergency housing shortage — is now being seen as controversial as people are put on buses and asked to leave the city, with some even facing threats of deportation. It has been criticised by many who describe it as a form of “social cleansing”.
The Olympic Village, constructed in one of Paris’s poorest suburbs — home to the highest percentage of immigrants — has become a focal point for these actions. Thousands of people live there in street encampments, shelters, or abandoned buildings.
Around the city over the past year, the police and courts have evicted roughly 5,000 people, most of them single men, according to Christophe Noël du Payrat, a senior government official in Paris, The New York Times reported. They have been allotted temporary shelters after which they are screened for asylum and some are given deportation orders. While Paris does not have permanent shelters for the homeless, the migration issue has been a long-standing one in election manifestos.
Critics argue that these measures are more about optics than addressing the root causes of homelessness and poverty. A representative of Doctors of the World, an international humanitarian organisation, told The Guardian that this was being done for Paris to “appear in the most flattering light possible” by “hiding the misery under the rug”. This approach has been condemned by over 60 French organisations as merely pushing the problem out of sight without providing sustainable solutions, euronews reported.
Alliance of juntas rebuffs ECOWAS
In a bid to push out Western allies and claim legitimacy and independence, military juntas in three West African countries — Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger — have formally hailed the signing of a mutual defence pact, moving a step further away from the rest of the nations in the region.
Marking a significant shift in the region’s political landscape, leaders of the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States met Saturday at Niger’s capital, Niamey, where they called their treaty a step towards greater integration. The first summit of the new bloc took place months after these countries withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and a day before an ECOWAS meet. The formal announcement about leaving ECOWAS was made in January, with the three nations serving a one-year notice period.
The three countries were initially suspended by ECOWAS due to successive coups and widespread violence. In Mali, the military ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in 2020, citing corruption and the government’s failure to address security challenges posed by Islamist insurgents. Niger experienced a coup in 2023, leading to the removal of President Mohamed Bazoum. Burkina Faso has also witnessed a series of coups, with the most recent in September 2022, driven by discontent over the government’s handling of security issues.
ECOWAS was founded on May 28, 1975, in Lagos, Nigeria. Its members include Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. ECOWAS citizens enjoy visa-free travel and can live and work across member nations – similar to the European Union.
However, dissatisfaction has grown over ECOWAS’s reliance on a French-backed currency, the West African CFA franc, as well as the bloc’s perceived failure to prevent coups and uphold democratic norms.
The juntas portray the formation of the Sahel alliance as a declaration of independence from foreign powers, particularly former colonial power France, which has had a longstanding military presence in the region.
“Our people have irrevocably turned their backs on ECOWAS,” said Niger’s head of state, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, at the Sahel group meeting in Niamey.
ECOWAS has appointed Bassirou Diomaye Faye — Africa’s youngest democratically elected leader — as an envoy to engage with the three breakaway nations. “I hope that by the end of the notice period, we will have had enough conversations to reconcile views and strengthen the organisation,” Faye has said.
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Kenya’s William Ruto dissolves cabinet after tax reforms protests
After major opposition to a tax reform bill led to protests, deaths, and dozens of injuries, Kenyan President Ruto dissolved his cabinet Thursday. To set up a “broad-based government”, Ruto says he will hold consultations with different sectors. This comes weeks after protesters angered by tax hikes scaled the Parliament building, parts of which were set ablaze., pp
Ruto has promised that operations will continue uninterrupted in the transitional period under the supervision of senior civil servants. The dissolution also doesn’t affect certain functionaries such as the deputy president, who cannot legally be dismissed, or the prime cabinet secretary, who also serves as the foreign affairs minister.
The tax reform bill, which sparked widespread protests, proposed significant hikes in taxes, a move seen as detrimental by many Kenyans already grappling with economic hardships, disproportionately affecting the country’s most vulnerable populations. The resulting public outcry led to violent clashes between protesters and security forces.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s widow sentenced to death
An Iraqi court sentenced Asma Mohammed, the first wife of former Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to death for her involvement with the extremist organisation and the detention of Yazidi women.
The Karkh Criminal Court in Baghdad handed down the judgment under Iraq’s anti-terrorism law, according to a statement issued Wednesday by the country’s Supreme Judicial Council. The charges against Mohammed included collaborating with IS and using her home in Mosul to detain kidnapped Yazidi women.
At least nine Yazidi women and children were allegedly brought to her homes as slaves, reflecting the brutal treatment Yazidis faced under IS rule. These women were later taken captive by IS fighters in Sinjar, northern Iraq.
Mohammed expressed remorse, saying that she felt “ashamed” and was “very sorry” for what happened to the Yazidi women and children, the BBC reported. Rights groups have raised concerns over the rushed trial and vague charges.
The sentencing of al-Baghdadi’s widow comes nearly five years after United States special forces killed the IS leader, who had declared a self-proclaimed “caliphate” across large parts of Iraq and Syria. Under al-Baghdadi’s command, IS fighters systematically killed thousands of Yazidi men and forced Yazidi women into sexual slavery during their advance through northern Iraq in 2014.
Mohammed, also known as Umm Hudaifa, was apprehended in 2018 while living under a false name in Turkey and was extradited to Iraq in February this year. Following her extradition, she was remanded in custody as authorities investigated her for terrorism-related crimes.
(Edited by Rohan Manoj)
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