“The Francophonie is a space of diplomatic influence which allows us to embrace the challenges of the century,” he declared at the opening of the 19th Francophonie Summit at the Cité internationale de la langue française in Villers-Cotterêts , 60 kilometers north of Paris. “It is a place where we can together carry out a diplomacy that defends sovereignty and territorial integrity everywhere across the planet,” he said in front of dozens of heads of state and government from Africa. to the Indo-Pacific.
“Which carries the same message alongside Ukraine, which is being attacked today, threatened in its borders and in its territorial integrity by the Russian war of aggression,” he underlined, while many countries of the South have refused to condemn the Russian offensive against its neighbor. “But who defends a vision where there is no room for double standards, where all lives are equal for all conflicts throughout the world,” he added, while the South often denounces double standards of the West in the management of international crises.
“Two-state solution”. “There can be no peace in the Middle East without a two-state solution,” continued the head of state, also referring to Lebanon “today shaken up in its sovereignty and its peace.” Alluding, without mentioning it, to China, Emmanuel Macron also pleaded for a “peaceful region” in the Indo-Pacific, “where no power can call this peace into question”.
The International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF) has 88 member states and governments. For the first time in 33 years, it is holding a summit in France, the organization’s headquarters. Emmanuel Macron also called for “building a digital order protecting citizens”, to “better fight against disinformation, the spread of hatred online, hate speech, racist and anti-Semitic”. OIF member countries have launched the “Villers-Cotterêts Appeal”, inviting major digital players to “build a safer and more diverse space and to fight against all this hate speech”.
© Agence France-Presse
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