Perspective

The only Palestinian competitor at this year’s Paris Paralympics spoke to FRANCE 24 of his experience participating in the Games which came to a close on Sunday. A para-athlete from Gaza, Fadi Aldeeb, who has lost over 15 family members to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, said Paris 2024 delivered important messages of “peace”, “human rights” and “humanity”.

The president of the sea charity founded by anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, who was arrested in Greenland over a month ago, has hit out at the judge in the case as well as at Japan. Lamya Essemlali, president of Sea Shepherd France, told FRANCE 24 that the judge is refusing to examine evidence provided by the group that she says proves his innocence. 

This year would have been the 100th anniversary of one of the most significant black American writers of all time – James Baldwin. The accomplished author grew up in Harlem, New York but spent much of his later life living in France. Baldwin was a novelist, playwright and poet as well as a militant activist for civil rights and the LGBTQ+ community. 

Human rights groups are reacting with fury after a further curtailing of women’s rights in Afghanistan. New laws brought in last month impose severe new restrictions on women that oblige them to not only cover their faces, but also forbid them from raising their voices or reading aloud in public. Although Western countries and blocs like the US and EU have condemned the new laws, NGOs say much more could and should be done. In Perspective, we spoke to Heather Barr, interim women's rights deputy director for Human Rights Watch.

French President Emmanuel Macron is continuing his search for a new prime minister, almost two months after inconclusive snap elections. He’s meeting with two of his predecessors, François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as two other senior French politicians who are both tipped as candidates to be the next premier. The latter are Bernard Cazeneuve (pictured), a former member of the Socialist Party, and Xavier Bertrand, a member of the conservative Les Républicains party and president of the northern Hauts-de-France region. For the first in a new series of Perspective we spoke to Renaud Foucart, a senior lecturer in economics at Lancaster University Management School. 

Western leaders gather in Washington to celebrate NATO’s 75th anniversary amid growing concern over the Alliance’s future, which could be endangered if former president Donald Trump is re-elected in the upcoming US elections. A Trump victory could also spell the end of US aid for Ukraine. German Marshall Fund Research Fellow Gesine Weber spoke to us in Perspective.

France’s next prime minister may not come from the left despite the left-wing alliance New Popular Front’s (NPF) winning the most seats in the French legislative elections. Despite the NPF’s victory, it failed to secure a majority in parliament which the centre and the right could achieve if they banded together. Senior Lecturer in economics at Lancaster University Renaud Foucart joined us in Perspective.

France needs to watch out for the ongoing rise of the far right as the National Rally prepares for the presidential election in three years' time. That's the view of an expert on the far right, who says that after the party's loss in the legislative elections it can once again present itself as the outsider in French politics. Jim Wolfreys from Kings College London says the party is still prepared to adopt discriminatory, racist measures and is prepared to be more authoritarian than others, but that it now has time to properly prepare its candidates for the 2027 election, weeding out those with controversial pasts. He spoke to us in Perspective.

"The nation rallied against the National Rally." That's the analysis from our political expert after France's legislative elections returned a hung parliament, with the far-right bloc finishing third. He says that France's left wing stood down its candidates where required, and that in the end the country as a whole chose to not endorse the far right. Andrew Smith, a lecturer in liberal arts at Queen Mary University of London, joined us in Perspective.

Fourteen months of intense conflict have left Sudan facing the world’s worst hunger and displacement crisis. That's according to the International Rescue Committee's country director. Eatizaz Yousif told us there has been a huge displacement of people as they flee the fighting between the army and the RSF paramilitaries, and that the number of safe places people can escape to continues to shrink. In the last few weeks alone, it's estimated that more than 55,000 people have fled the Sinja region in southeastern Sudan. In all, tens of thousands of people have been killed across the country since war broke out in April of last year. Eatizaz Yousif spoke to us in Perspective.