Editorial

Olivier Beauvallet pays tribute to Benjamin Ferencz, who passed away last April, and recalls his essential role in the history of the 20th century as a prosecutor at Nuremberg, where he led the prosecution of the Einsatzgruppen (“death squads”) set up by Himmler and Heydrich in 1939 (see also the article by Benjamin Frencz and Yves Beigbeder previously published in this journal).

Pierre Calame reports on a lecture given at the Collège de France devoted to the work of Mireille Delmas-Marty, notably on the need to affirm the interdependence of societies on a global scale, in the wake of the 2001 World Citizens’ Assembly and the Universal Declaration of Human Responsibility.

Nandita Bajaj and Kirsten Stade analyze the cultural contradictions arising from discourses on human overpopulation associated with reproductive coercion, on the one hand, and pronatalism associated with the weakening of reproductive autonomy, on the other, against the backdrop of scientific evidence that population growth is one of the main drivers of multiple cascading environmental disasters.

Constance Gauthier discusses the socio-cultural issues linked to the feminization of the military in France, the teaching of human and social sciences in the army and training schools, which tend to modify military identity and modes of socialization in a spirit of mixity and diversity.

Haider A. Khan goes back to the question of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as seen in the West, mainly as a potential multilateral trading and investment area under Chinese leadership. Possible arrangements might  improve people’s well-being in various BRI countries, given the geopolitical context of troubled relations between China and the United States on the one hand, and China and the European Union on the other.

On the same topic, Marc Luyckx Ghisi wonders about the possibility of a common currency created by the BRICS ((Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and suggested at the G20 meeting in August 2022. It would be backed by assets such as raw materials, and would put an end to a thousand-year-old Western hegemony. The initiative could be joined by other states, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Argentina and African countries.

François Misser‘s study returns to the question of China’s penetration of the international scene, here in the geo-economic context of the heavy profits made in Africa from the extraction of the minerals used to build electric car batteries. However, supply is limited, and will be challenged in the future by alternatives such as the production of batteries with little or no lithium, or the recycling of those minerals.

Christian Tremblay returns to the question of plurilingualism with the creation of an Observatory dedicated to its maintenance on the African continent, while distinguishing plurilingualism from multilingualism. The Observatory defends plurilingualism in the wake of the founding of the European Observatory of the same type in 2005. The author underlines the philosophical significance of a monolingual ideology opposed to the plurilingual Imperative, essential to cultural diversity and universal values.

Nicole Morgan draws attention to the fact that the United States has signed but not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which aims to protect the rights of every human being under the age of 18. The Convention, which is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the world, includes the right to a name and nationality, freedom of expression and thought, access to healthcare and education, and freedom from exploitation, torture and abuse.

As usual, this issue includes Yves Beigbeder‘s latest Mélanges de notes personnelles et d’informations internationales, as well as the announcement of the latest and 54th edition of the SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) Yearbook, published this June and devoted to the evaluation of armaments, disarmament and international security.

The last section publishes reviews of the following books: Le grand Satan, le shah and l’imam. Les relations Iran/États-Unis jusqu’à la révolution de 1979, by Yann Richard, Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2022 and Histoire mondiale de la philosophie. Une histoire comparée des cycles de la vie intellectuelle dans huit civilisations, by Vincent Citot, PUF, 2022.

Paul Ghils