2023-12-19 15:15:54
The seizure lived in the world in 2023with the entrenchment of the Ukrainian war, the brutal resurgence of violence in the Middle East, and the setbacks in matters humanitarian and of Fundamental rights in different parts of the planet will continue in 2024, according to the analysis of the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), which this Tuesday presented the topics that will mark the international agenda in the coming year. In summary, as emphasized Pol Morillasthe director of CIDOB, 2024 “will be a year of urns and weapons“, with electoral processes in more than 70 countries and the impact of multiple conflicts that simultaneously fuel global instability.
In total, more than 4 billion people – almost 51% of the world’s population – will be called to vote next year in some of the countries with the greatest demographic weight or geopolitical influence in the world, such as the United States, the European Parliament, India , Russia, Taiwan, Mexico, Indonesia or Venezuela, in elective processes that will determine whether the trend erosive of the democracy. “The majority will vote in hybrid or non-democratic systemssome leaderships use the ballot box to reinforce themselves,” he highlighted Carmen Colomina, the coordinator of the international note. And many of these elections, she added, will be a “thermometer” to gauge the rise of the extreme right.
Artificial intelligence will have a special role. “It is already happening in a more innocent way, with the elaboration of messages using artificial intelligence (…) but we may see more sophisticated campaigns aimed at manipulate“, highlighted Colomina. In the opinion of CIDOB, 2024 will be the year of its “explosion and regulation“, after this December the EU reached a pioneering agreement to legislate this technology.
The war in Gaza
The brutal Israeli offensive in Gaza, launched on October 7 in retaliation for the bloody attacks by Hamas, will be one of the fundamental issues on the geopolitical agenda next year. According to the CIDOB researcher who is an expert in the Middle East Moussa Bourekbanext year will determine what form “the next stages of the Israeli military campaign” take, taking into account that Benjamin Netanyahu has assured that they will continue in the Strip until Hamas is completely eradicated despite the increasingly greater international isolation of Israel, and what will happen to Gaza once the offensive ends. On the other hand, the “regionalization of the conflict is already a reality”, with the escalation of Yemen’s Houthi rebels with attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea and its impact on the global economy, and an increase in hostilities on the border with the Lebanonwith the militia of Hezbollah.
In any case, Bourekba stressed, what will be difficult will be materializing the plan to create a Palestinian state that the international community demands, since for this the issue of the borders of Israel and decolonization of the occupied territories, two issues that the Tel Aviv government is unlikely to be willing to address.
2024 will also be the year of the consolidation of the so-called On Global against the hegemony of the West, which will have a critical moment with the expansion of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Iran. Together they represent 46% of the world’s population and 29% of global GDP. Although Colomina has pointed out that the most correct thing is to talk about “souths and norths”, with blocks increasingly “plural and heterogeneous“, and in which paradoxes may arise such as that the war in Ukraine, which until now was “the conflict that cemented the unity between the EU and the US”, may become the element that “increases the transatlantic distance” if Donald Trump returns to the White House and turns off the aid tap to kyiv.
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