The Interview

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, said it was time to reassess Western policy vis-à-vis Syria and that the approach followed in recent years had failed. “The only end to the crisis is a political solution,” he added. The Jordanian minister also hinted that his country was favourable to bringing Syria back into the Arab League.

FRANCE 24 spoke to Antonio Vitorino, the director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the world's main intergovernmental body dealing with migration. This year, more than 30 million people were displaced because of climate change, according to IOM figures. Amid some pessimism over the likely outcome of the upcoming COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Vitorino warned world leaders: "We need to act immediately".

FRANCE 24 spoke to Jerry Tardieu, national coordinator of Haiti's "En Avant" (Forwards) political movement and a former opposition MP. Haiti is still reeling from the July assassination of the president, as well as recent kidnappings of missionaries and a deadly earthquake. Tardieu told us that the widespread chaos in the country can be explained by "a collusive relationship" between the authorities and all-powerful armed gangs. Gangs now control "most neighbourhoods of the capital" Port-au-Prince, Tardieu said.

Lazarus Chakwera, the president of Malawi, who is also currently chair of the Southern African Development Community, gave an interview to FRANCE 24 from Dubai. He hailed Malawi and Zambia as "examples of what democracy is about". Chakwera insisted that overall, "democracy is getting consolidated" on the continent, in spite of "erratic events", referring to the recent coups in Mali, Guinea and now Sudan. He described such coups as being "not the African way".

October 9th, 2021 was the 40th anniversary of France’s abolition of the death penalty. To mark the occasion, President Emmanuel Macron announced the organisation of a “high-level meeting” at the United Nations starting in early 2022. The meeting’s goal? To “convince” leaders of countries that still use the death penalty of the “urgency of abolishing it”. Robert Badinter, who served as France’s justice minister 40 years ago when the death penalty was abolished, continues to fight for the universal abolition of capital punishment. He speaks to FRANCE 24.

In an exclusive interview with FRANCE 24, former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo discusses why he set up a new political movement after his old party, the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), "lost its identity". Despite previously saying that he wanted to step back from politics, Gbagbo told FRANCE 24 that he hasn't ruled out running in the country's 2025 presidential elections and is firmly against a proposal that would disqualify presidential candidates who are more than 75 years old.

FRANCE 24 spoke to this year's joint Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa, co-founder of the digital media company Rappler and an outspoken critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Asked whether journalism is becoming more dangerous around the world, she told FRANCE 24: "It is more dangerous, it requires more sacrifices, just to do what journalists have always done."

In an interview with FRANCE 24, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai insisted the country was not in a new Cold War with China despite lingering tensions over trade. She also stressed that the US was keen to repair ties with France and Europe after a recent Australian submarine dispute, which led to the first-ever recall of a French ambassador to the United States.

FRANCE 24 spoke to Fawzia Koofi, who was Afghanistan's first female deputy speaker of parliament. She was also part of the negotiating team representing the previous Afghan government that met with the Taliban in Doha. She believes the Taliban were never actually "meaningful" or "serious" about what they promised on women's rights during the negotiations: she says they just wanted to obtain the withdrawal of US troops. But Koofi believes the country's new rulers will have "no choice" but to work with women.

FRANCE 24 spoke to Ali Maisam Nazary, head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), an anti-Taliban military alliance which recently set up a parallel government in response to the Taliban taking power. Nazary claimed that the country's new rulers "are not victorious" in Afghanistan's north-eastern Panjshir region, that the "resistance is continuing" and that the NRF actually controls "more than half" of Panjshir, despite Taliban "propaganda" to the contrary.