Latest news with #OrganisationInternationaledelaFrancophonie
AllAfrica
16-06-2025
- Politics
- AllAfrica
Francophone summit turns blind eye to Cambodia's cybercrime
The French-speaking world, as represented by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), will be holding its summit in Cambodia in 2026. So what could possibly go wrong? Plenty, actually. The OIF, which has 93 members, held its last summit in France in 2024. It has not held the event in the Asia-Pacific region since 1997, when Vietnam played host. So the idea of holding the summit in a poor country that usually struggles for attention, such as Cambodia, is logical and laudable. But everything is in the timing. The decision to hold the summit in Siem Reap, Cambodia, was announced by French President Emmanuel Macron in October 2024. It comes alongside an increasing body of evidence that organized cyber-criminals are operating inside Cambodia with Cambodian government protection. The country is the 'absolute global epicenter' of transnational fraud in 2025 and is primed for further growth in cyber-criminality, according to research authored by Jacob Sims and published in May 2025 by the Humanity Research Consultancy (HRC), a UK-based group that campaigns to end modern slavery. The Cambodian government had denied the claims made in the HRC report. The research finds that the cyber-scam industry, which relies on the forced labor of the victims of human trafficking, generates US$12.5 billion to $19 billion per year, or as much as 60% of Cambodia's GDP. An estimated 150,000 people are involved in cyber scams in Cambodia, according to the report. The HRC confirms a wealth of other research that cybercrime on an industrial scale is taking place in Cambodia, as well as elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The HRC finds that 'endemic corruption, reliable protection by the government, and co-perpetration by party elites are the primary enablers of Cambodia's trafficking-cybercrime nexus.' 'Cambodian state institutions systematically and insidiously support and protect the criminal networks involved in transnational fraud and related human trafficking,' the report says. Many of those accused of playing leading parts or obscured but purposeful roles in organized cybercrime are either connected with the ruling regime or are its core members. Hun To, a cousin of Prime Minister Hun Manet, is a director of Huione Pay, a financial conglomerate which has been cut off from the US financial system due to its alleged role in cybercrime. Ly Yong Phat, a permanent member of the central committee of the ruling Cambodian People's Party, was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury in 2024 for human rights abuses of trafficked workers subjected to forced labor in online scam centers. Cambodia's legal system, universally acknowledged as being completely under government control, is powerless to tackle the situation. It ranked 141 out of 142 countries globally in the 2024 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index. Among lower-middle-income countries, Cambodia ranks 38th out of 38. The idea of a global French-speaking community is in itself a dubious colonial relic. During the colonial period, France concentrated the Southeast Asian version of its mission civilisatrice on Vietnam and paid relatively little attention to Cambodia and Laos, which together made up French Indochina. French missionaries in the 19th century devised a system for transcribing the Vietnamese language into Roman letters, known as quoc-ngo, which became the national standard. The use of Chinese characters to write Vietnamese was stamped out at French insistence. This was a compromise solution in face of the extreme view of some French colonialists that Vietnam should simply abandon its language with everyone being made to speak French. There was no such romanization of the Khmer language, and the idea that Cambodia is a meaningful part of a 'French-speaking world' is a tenuous fiction. Today, the OIF estimates that only about 3% of Cambodians speak French. The historical Western focus on Vietnam as the region's main player continued into the post-Khmer Rouge period. During the 1990s, senior diplomats such as the US Ambassador to Cambodia Kenneth Quinn were specialists on Vietnam, not Cambodia. Quinn believed that the Hun Sen regime, a result of the Vietnamese invasion of 1979, was the best way to bring lasting peace and stability to Cambodia. With the country now recognized as a hub for state-protected organized cybercrime, the project has clearly not gone to plan. The best possible outcome from the summit, which the organizers may hope for, would be for Cambodia to make a sustained effort to combat organized cybercrime. We can expect some high-profile raids on cyber-slavery compounds as part of the summit preparations. However, previous Cambodian compound raids have left the organizers untouched, and the compounds have simply reappeared elsewhere in the country. Victims of human trafficking who thought they had been rescued by the Cambodian police were sold back into slavery. The evidence that the compounds are operating under government protection indicates that the pattern is likely to be repeated. If the idea is to try to hold the summit in Cambodia to make amends for the disastrous French colonial record in Southeast Asia, this is hardly the way to do it. David Whitehouse is a freelance journalist who has lived in Paris for 30 years. He has both French and British nationality.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso Quit Organization to Promote French
(Bloomberg) -- The military-led West African nations of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have announced their withdrawal from the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, which brings together French-speaking countries. The Dark Prophet of Car-Clogged Cities Washington, DC, Region Braces for 'Devastating' Cuts from Congress NYC Plans for Flood Protection Without Federal Funds A Malibu Model for Residents on the Fire Frontlines The juntas, which have broken ties with France, their former colonial master, said the organization no longer supports their national goals. Since coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the OIF, as the institution is known in its French acronym, has not backed 'these countries in realizing the legitimate aspirations of their peoples,' the foreign ministries of the three said in a joint statement. The group is 'becoming a guided political instrument.' Based in Paris, the OIF promotes the French language as well as political, educational, economic and cultural cooperation among its 93-member countries. Tesla's Gamble on MAGA Customers Won't Work The Real Reason Trump Is Pushing 'Buy American' The Future of Higher Ed Is in Austin A US Drone Maker Tries to Take Back the Country's Skies How TD Became America's Most Convenient Bank for Money Launderers ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso Quit Organization to Promote French
The military-led West African nations of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have announced their withdrawal from the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, which brings together French-speaking countries. The juntas, which have broken ties with France, their former colonial master, said the organization no longer supports their national goals.
Russia Today
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
African state quits French union
Niger has withdrawn from the global French-speaking group the International Organization of Francophone Nations (OIF), amid continuing efforts to sever ties with its former colonial power, France. The West African country's foreign ministry announced the decision on Monday. 'The Nigerien government has independently decided to withdraw Niger from the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie,' the ministry said in a statement posted on X. While rationale for the decision was provided, the move comes more than a year after the military authorities in Niamey suspended all cooperation with the Paris-based organization, accusing it of being a political tool for defending French interests. The Permanent Council of the 88-member OIF suspended Niger in December 2023 months after a July coup which ousted former President Mohamed Bazoum, to pressure the country's new leadership to restore constitutional order. The group had said it would continue cooperation on projects that directly benefit civilian populations and contribute to the restoration of democracy in the former French colony. The OIF's proclaimed mission is to promote the French language, support peace and democracy, and foster education and development in Francophone countries worldwide, many of which were French colonies. Since taking control of Niamey, the Nigerian military government, known as the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland, has taken several measures to cut ties with Paris, including expelling French troops who had partnered in fighting an Islamic insurgency in the Sahel. Just weeks prior to the coup, Niger adopted a new national anthem, 'The Honor of the Fatherland,' replacing 'La Nigerienne,' written by French composers Maurice Albert Thiriet, Robert Jacquet, and Nicolas Abel Francois Frionnet in 1961, a year after the country's independence. Niger's regional allies, Burkina Faso and Mali, also former French colonies, have all terminated defense cooperation with France over military failures and allegations of meddling. Bamako and Ouagadougou have amended their constitutions to replace French with local dialects as official languages. The three Sahel nations officially withdrew from ECOWAS in January after claiming the regional organization poses a threat to their sovereignty by serving as a tool for foreign powers, particularly France. The bloc had threatened to send a French-backed military force into Niger to restore democratic order in the aftermath of Bazoum's ouster.
