More than ever, your support is decisive!

Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, the UN Water Conference, the humanitarian debate, and in this editorial the urgent need for relief for the beleaguered Armenians of Artsakh, as well as the implications of government decisions for Official Development Assistance and humanitarian aid.

More than ever, your support to Armenians of Artsakh is essential….

….pour share our concern and solidarity with the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh, victim of a blockade by Azerbaijan which has cut off the only road to Armenia since December 12.

Artsakh is the territory given to Azerbaijan by Stalin during the Soviet Union (USSR). Artsakh voted for independence in a referendum on December 10, 1991, at the time of the break-up of the USSR, like Armenia, Azerbaijan and other republics, but under international rules validating Stalin’s choice, Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, is officially part of Azerbaijan.

Artsakh is home to 120,000 men, women and children who live on their ancestral land, of which the 13th-century monasteries are intangible proof, as are the history books, memories and cemeteries. But military force and realpolitik intend to condemn them to submission, reclusion, exile or death!

Here we are faced with the scorned right of a people to self-determination, in the face of the diktat of Stalin’s choice, endorsed today by force of arms and diplomatic conformism. But where is the famous “duty to protect” so dear to the UN and humanitarian organizations? Shouldn’t what was good yesterday for the populations of Kosovo, Libya and East Timor also apply today to the Armenians of Artsakh? Is there a double standard here, and why?

Armenia and Azerbaijan are currently engaged in tripartite international negotiations with the United States, the European Union and Russia. The Armenian Prime Minister, NIkol Paschinian, had to go under the knife and say that Artsakh was in Azerbaijan, while demanding guarantees for the safety of Armenians in Artsakh.

Abandoning Artsakh to Azerbaijan opens the way to the risk of ethnic cleansing, destabilization and confrontation in the South Caucasus.

Let’s fear that this calculation, whose logic is understandable in the name of peace and stability, could provoke exactly the opposite, i.e. Azeri military action against Artsakh, leading to ethnic cleansing against a backdrop of rivalry between a Western bloc and Iran’s ally Russia, which would then see the Caucasus tip into confrontation. Just light the fuse!

Seriously, who could guarantee the safety of Artsakh’s 120,000 Armenians if they came under the control of Azeri President Ilham Aliyev’s regime, which is just like Turkish President Erdogan for his opponents and minorities? Would we not be witnessing a colonization of settlement, as Turkey is doing today in northern Syria, from which it has expelled the resident Kurdish population? So, who can really commit to ensuring this security, the United States, the European Union, NATO or Russia and Iran?

This is the dilemma and the tragedy of a people living on their ancestral lands, who risk being sacrificed on the altar of the law of the strongest, endorsed by the powerful who modestly look the other way. Yet NATO did protect Serbian enclaves after Kosovo’s de facto independence was recognized by Western countries.

In any case, if this Artsakh crisis were to end badly, if it were to provoke war or ethnic cleansing and forced exile, then we would have to ask out loud who is responsible, and whether a status quo and good-neighborly solution would not be preferable, with serious security guarantees.

Read the letters we’ve received from the inhabitants of Artsakh, which we publish in this issue, and come along to the Salle Gaveau on June 28 to listen to actors, actresses and intellectuals read these letters, which say “Artsakh is our birthplace on this planet” or “I’m afraid of genocide”.

If we all mobilize, if others do so in other countries, if eminent moral and intellectual authorities rise up, if certain political leaders show dignity and courage, if the UN listens, if President Macron is faithful to his commitments, then perhaps together we can save Artsakh, whose people simply want to live free in their own country!

Friends and family ask me why I stand by Artsakh. The answer is simple. Every people has the right to live freely in their own country, especially small peoples who are always the most threatened, if not sacrificed, in history, like the indigenous peoples we also want to honor in this edition.

If you’d like to support the Armenians of Artsakh, the Coordination des Organisations Arméniennes de France (CCAF) is organizing a rally on Sunday June 4 at 3.30pm at Place du Trocadéro in Paris.

More than ever, your support to humanitarian aid is essential….

… to mobilize together, wherever you are, to increase resources for Official Development Assistance (ODA) and humanitarian aid in France and around the world. In fact, why not rename APD as APDH, i.e. Aide Publique au Développement et à l’Humanitaire (Official Development and Humanitarian Aid), to finally recognize the existence of humanitarian aid as an inescapable international reality that concerns everyone.

And this is precisely the moment in France. Already in 2018, as part of Emmanuel Macron’s first quinquennium, the CICID took historic decisions to significantly increase ODA, humanitarian aid, partnerships with NGOs and the development-humanitarian nexus in particular. This year, we have a new appointment with ourselves regarding our country’s role in international solidarity.

And I’d like to take this opportunity to dispel an opposition that needs to be overcome. You can be a sovereignist and still believe that France has international responsibilities towards other peoples. One can be a universalist or a European federalist and recognize the historical reality of nation-states, their role in broader alliance frameworks up to the level of the United Nations, and their duty to contribute to the development of countries and populations on our planet who need it.

We are now entering the ODA and humanitarian sequence of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term. Broadly speaking, the trajectory of increase is already set. In 2022, we reached 0.56% of GNP, and the Law of August 4, 2021 (LOP-DSIM) presented by the government and then voted by parliament set France’s contribution at 0.7% in 2025! All that’s left to do, of course, is to translate this into priorities and action plans.

The problem is that the recent Presidential Development Council of May 5 set 10 strategic priorities, but said nothing about the 0.7% which is the means! Nothing either about the role of humanitarian and development associations as operational partners! Is this a cause for concern? Is the announcement reserved for the “Summit for a New Global Financial Pact” on June 22 and 23 in Paris? In any case, the Law of August 4 set France’s contribution at 0.7% from 2025.

A word about the 10 priorities of the Presidential Development Council. There’s nothing to say about the 10 priorities, except that one of them is missing, and it’s a big one: the 11th priority is water! It’s astonishing to discover that, in the wake of the UN Conference on Goal 6 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there’s nothing on water at a time when its scarcity, pollution and the impact of global warming causing drought and flooding have never been such a threat worldwide, and even in France now, with fires and 50 departments already on water alert this spring!

For a Humanitarian Aid for the Public Aid.