The year 2021 is coming to an end and, like the one that preceded it, it leaves the world on its knees.
If 2020 has been considered the "worst year in history", 2021 could for sure grab second place in the rankings, with a Covid-19 pandemic still virulent and conflicts and humanitarian crises that will not cease however with the arrival of 2022.
France 24 offers you a look back on ten events that have marked international news over the past twelve months.
In Washington, the Capitol stormed by supporters of Donald Trump before the inauguration of Joe Biden
In the early days of 2021, the United States is experiencing a dark day for its democracy.
While Joe Biden won the presidential election two months earlier, incumbent President Donald Trump continues to reject the results, saying the victory was stolen from him.
On January 6, at the end of a meeting of their favorite candidate, thousands of supporters of Donald Trump forced their way into the Capitol, seat of the United States Congress, where senators and members of the House of Representatives met to validate the victory for Joe Biden.
Four people have died and at least 90 people have been arrested in the violence perpetrated today in Washington, the federal capital of the United States.
>> To read - Attack on the Capitol: the extreme escalation of the American right
Supporters of Donald Trump clash with police and security forces as they attempt to storm the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington.
© Brent Stirton, AFP
In a particularly virulent speech, Donald Trump had earlier called on his supporters to go to Congress to pressure elected Republican officials to oppose the certification of Joe Biden's presidential victory.
Following the assault on the Capitol, many voices were raised to denounce the attitude of the former American president, accused of having blown on the embers by refusing to recognize his defeat and relaying for weeks conspiracy theories on alleged electoral fraud.
On January 20, Joe Biden is indeed invested 46th President of the United States, and the investigation into the insurgency on Capitol Hill continues.
On December 9, the Court of Appeal paved the way for the transfer of hundreds of pages of documents to the parliamentary committee investigating the attack on the United States Congress and the role played by Donald Trump.
The latter asked the Supreme Court to block the transfer of these documents, which notably include the lists of people who visited or called him on January 6.
Coup in Burma
On February 1, military tanks take over the roads around the Parliament.
Led by General Min Aung Hlaing, the Burmese army arrested the President of the Republic, Win Myint, and his special state advisor, Aung San Suu Kyi, in Naypyidaw.
Between 300 and 400 people - elected officials, activists or political figures unfavorable to the military regime - were also arrested.
The military forces are deployed throughout the country, the military seize the town hall of Rangoon and close access to the international airport.
Public television interrupts its programs and communications are disrupted.
>> To read - In Burma, resistance to the junta foolproof
Arrested on February 1, Aung San Suu Kyi, since under house arrest in her official accommodation in Naypyidaw, was sentenced to two years in prison for inciting public unrest and the same penalty for violating health rules related to Covid-19 , for a total of four years.
A sentence subsequently reduced to two years.
In the wake of the coup, the former leader and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner called for civil disobedience and urged her supporters to "not accept" the coup.
An appeal widely followed by the Burmese who have multiplied the demonstrations, despite the violent repression put in place by the Burmese junta.
Protesters hold up placards bearing the image of detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a demonstration against the military coup, in Yangon on February 7, 2021. © STR, AFP
The conflict in Tigray is getting bogged down
It is a major military conflict and one of the greatest humanitarian disasters.
In Tigray province (in northern Ethiopia), the civil war between pro-government forces and the Tigray People's Liberation Front since November 4, 2020, has stalled.
The people are the first victims of this conflict: at least 400,000 people are threatened by famine in the north, and more than 2 million Ethiopians have been forced to leave their homes.
Executions, torture and rape are also committed by both parties, who do not hesitate to bomb civilians.
While the conflict escalated in 2021, taking, according to several observers, airs of "ethnic cleansing", the announcement by the rebels in November of their withdrawal from Tigray in order to facilitate access to aid Humanitarian aid has rekindled hopes for the opening of peace negotiations in Ethiopia, after more than a year of conflict.
But, while federal forces view the withdrawal of the Tigrayans as proof of their military failures, a ceasefire remains uncertain.
Amhara militiamen stand guard in Dabat, 70 kilometers northeast of Ethiopia's Gondar city, September 14, 2021. © Amanuel Sileshi, AFP
War erupted in November 2020 after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent the federal army to the northern region of Tigray to remove local authorities from the TPLF who challenged his authority and accused him of attacking military bases.
Airliner hijacked by Belarus to arrest power opponent
A Boeing 737-800 operating Ryanair flight 4978 between Athens (Greece) and Vilnius (Lithuania) was intercepted on May 23 and diverted to Minsk on the orders of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, citing a bomb threat - a assertion which however has never been substantiated.
On board, Roman Protassevich, journalist and opposition activist, was arrested when he landed in the Belarusian capital.
The plane finally took off again at the end of the afternoon after a strong reaction from European leaders who demanded the immediate release of the opponent.
An extraordinary European Council bringing together the Twenty-Seven is being held in Brussels on May 24 and 25.
Among the measures decided, economic sanctions, the updating of the black list on which Alexander Lukashenko already appeared, and the ban on access to European airspace for Belarusian aircraft.
European planes are also recommended to avoid overflight of Belarus.
A woman stands with a poster asking 'Where is Roman (Protassevich)?
! '
in the arrival area as passengers disembark from a Ryanair airliner from Athens, Greece, intercepted and diverted to Minsk the same day by Belarusian authorities.
© Petras Malukas, AFP
After his arrest, and several interviews which his supporters claim were carried out "under duress", the journalist and opponent Roman Protassevich was transferred from a detention center to a house arrest in Minsk.
His partner, Sofia Sapega, was also transferred to a rented apartment.
The latter are accused of having coordinated, on social networks, the historic protest movement that erupted in 2020 in Belarus after the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko to a fifth term - a vote denounced as fraudulent.
The regime of Alexander Lukashenko had severely repressed this movement, arresting or forcing into exile all the leaders of the protest, several of whom are currently on trial.
Western troops withdraw from Afghanistan, back in Taliban hands
Kabul has fallen.
After a meteoric advance, the Taliban captured the Afghan capital on August 15, while President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.
The next day, chaos reigned in the streets and evacuations of foreign nationals increased.
Driven from power at the end of 2001 by an international coalition led by the United States, the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan almost twenty years later, while American troops began to withdraw.
>> To read - The defeat of the United States in Afghanistan: a disaster foretold
The images of those Afghans trying to cling to a US Army plane, in the hope of fleeing, will remain one of the biggest heartbreaks of this year 2021.
At Kabul's Hamid-Karzai Airport, scenes of panic and despair, which followed one after the other throughout the evacuations, resulted in the deaths of several civilians.
Kabul,
Airport.
He's an infant
(Photo reuters) pic.twitter.com/g8V2Yj6xsQ
- fx menage (@fxmenage) August 20, 2021
On August 26, a suicide attack claimed by the Islamic State organization left more than 180 dead near Kabul airport, including thirteen American soldiers.
On August 30, the last US Army aircraft left Kabul, completing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Since then, unemployment, misery, threat of famine… Afghanistan is in ruins.
Many NGOs and foreign companies have fled the country, condemning thousands of local employees to unemployment.
The central bank's assets have been frozen by the Americans, the national currency is depreciating and inflation is accelerating.
At an extraordinary summit in Pakistan in mid-December, representatives of 57 Muslim countries agreed to work with the UN to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in Afghan assets and create a donation fund to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.
Global warming
: "red code" for humanity, warns the IPCC
A new shocking finding on the state of our planet. On August 9, shortly before the COP26 in Glasgow, the UN climate experts (IPCC) published a report sounding like a commotion. Humans are "indisputably" responsible for climate change and have no choice but to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions if they want to limit the damage, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. climate change.
Adopted by 195 countries, this first assessment report in seven years reviews five scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions, from the most optimistic to the worst case scenario.
In any case, the planet should reach the threshold of + 1.5 ° C compared to the pre-industrial era around 2030. Ten years earlier than the previous estimate of the IPCC in 2018.
"There is no time to wait and no room for apologies", then insisted the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, calling this report a "red alert for humanity".
>> To read - COP26: coal, "losses and damages", deforestation ... What does the Glasgow pact contain?
According to the report, some consequences of global warming are "irreversible" anyway.
Under the influence of the melting polar ice, the level of the oceans will continue to rise for "centuries, even millennia".
The sea, which has already gained 20 cm since 1900, could still rise by about 50 cm by 2100, even at + 2 ° C.
In mid-November, the COP26 ended after two weeks of bitter negotiations with a half-hearted agreement, widely criticized, whose weaknesses Antonio Guterres himself admitted.
UK COP26 President Alok Sharma applauded after delivering his final remarks at COP26 on November 13, 2021 © Paul Ellis, AFP
Beginning of the trial of the Paris attacks
Almost six years after the horror, the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015 opened on September 8 in Paris.
A "historic" event in a courthouse transformed into a bunker and protected by a large police force.
It is the largest criminal hearing ever organized in France, scheduled to last nine months.
On the first day of the trial, Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the attack commandos, introduced himself as "an Islamic State fighter".
For five weeks, more than 300 victims of the Paris attacks also testified before the special assize court in Paris.
Sketch of audience representing Salah Abdeslam during the first day of the trial of the November 13 attacks, at the Paris courthouse on September 8, 2021. © Benoît Peyrucq, AFP
The submarine crisis torpedoed relations between France and its Australian, American and British partners
Diplomatic crisis between France, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, after what the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, described as "blow in the back".
Five years after the signing of a contract between France and Australia for 12 Barracuda-type propulsion submarines, Canberra confirms, on the night of September 15 to 16, the cancellation of the "contract of the century" (to 56 billion euros), preferring to conclude with the United States as part of a partnership called AUKUS (also involving the United Kingdom) which will provide it with nuclear-powered submarines.
The divorce has begun, and the French ambassadors in Washington and Canberra are recalled to France.
For France, it is a question of "showing our former partner countries that we have very strong dissatisfaction, that there is really a serious crisis between us", explained Jean-Yves Le Drian.
The ambassador to the United Kingdom has not been recalled, to mark France's contempt for its historic partner with whom the rag is also burning on post-Brexit issues.
"We know their permanent opportunism, and in this case they are only the fifth wheel of the coach," coldly declared the head of French diplomacy.
The Australian and US flags during a meeting between Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon September 22, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia.
© Drew Angerer, AFP
>> To read - The case of the Australian submarines torpedoing relations between Paris and Washington
Faced with this crisis, Australia claims to have had "deep and serious reservations" concerning the submarines provided by Paris.
Emmanuel Macron renewed contact with Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the end of October, stressing that "it was now up to the Australian government to propose concrete actions which would embody the will of the highest Australian authorities to redefine the bases of our bilateral relationship and to pursue joint action in the Indo-Pacific ”.
For their part, the ambassadors have resumed their functions in Washington and Canberra.
But France remains suspicious.
The way out of the crisis will take "time", warned Jean-Yves Le Drian.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Angela Merkel pass the torch
Israel and Germany have opened a new page in their political history this year with the departure of iconic leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Angela Merkel.
In the Hebrew state, the Knesset vote on June 13 endorsing a "change coalition" led by radical right leader Naftali Bennett ended 12 years of Benjamin Netanyahu's rule.
As soon as the result was announced, a crowd of Israelis celebrated the departure from power of "Bibi" in Jerusalem, on the outskirts of the Knesset, but also by the thousands on the iconic Rabin Square, Israeli flags flying.
Bitter, Benjamin Netanyahu nevertheless retorted that he hoped to return to the head of the Israeli government soon.
"If it is our destiny to be in the opposition, we will do it with our heads held high, we will bring down this bad government and we will be back to run the country our way (...) We will be back soon, "he told the Knesset.
>> To read - With the Bennett government, "Israel entered uncharted territory, politically"
Naftali Bennett and Benjamin Netanyahu at a meeting of the Israeli right-wing bloc in the Knesset on March 4, 2020 in Jerusalem.
© Menahem Kahana, AFP
In Germany, the most powerful woman in the world has also bowed out.
After four terms, ie 16 years, at the head of the country, the German Chancellor left her place, on December 8, to the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, victorious in the legislative elections in September.
"Take possession of this house and work for the good of our country," said his successor, the ex-chancellor.
>> To see - Angela Merkel: the key moments of her 16 years in power
A second year marked by Covid-19 and the appearance of its Delta and Omicron variants
With the intensification of vaccination, the stranglehold of the Covid-19 pandemic has gradually loosened around the planet, including in France.
End of the curfew, reopening of sports halls, cinemas, bars and restaurants, and even nightclubs ... The restrictions have been eased and the implementation of the health pass, from June 9, allowed access more flexible to places previously closed, to people justifying a complete vaccination schedule, or who may present a negative test for Covid-19.
But that was without counting on the appearance of the Delta variants, and more recently Omicron, which pose more risks, and encourage the authorities to tighten the screw again.
In France, a third dose of vaccine is now necessary to maintain the health pass which will become, from January 15, a vaccination pass.
>> To read - Covid-19: robot portrait of the Omicron variant, one month after its appearance
A few days after Christmas Eve, the number of positive cases for Covid-19 exploded, reaching more than 208,000 contaminations in 24 hours, on December 29.
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