Berlin celebrates, Saturday, November 9, the historic moment that saw the wall erected between West Germany and East Germany collapse as the Cold War seemed to be coming to an end. "We can change things for good, this is the message of the fall of the Wall," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2014.
But it is clear that separations remain or have emerged in the four corners of the world in recent years. There are currently between 10 and 70 "walls" on Earth, according to various estimates recalled by Le Monde in 2018. In the form of militarized borders, antimigratory barricades or simply walls, these boundaries are aimed at different political objectives. Here are some of the most memorable ones.
Between the two Koreas, the oldest separation of the world
Legacy of the Korean War, which ended in 1953, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North Korea and South Korea remains to this day the oldest fracture line in the world and one of the last remnants of the Cold War.
This demilitarized zone, 248 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide, is paradoxically "one of the most militarized in the world", explains Pascal Dayez-Burgeon, a former diplomat in Seoul and CNRS researcher. "Full of military posts, watchtowers and gun batteries, it is guarded by more than a million men and would be entirely mined."
Millions of people were separated from their family members with the establishment of the DMZ in 1953. But a phase of relaxation has settled in the peninsula since 2018, symbolized by many examples. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in have agreed on denuclearization measures. The two Koreas also want to work on a common dictionary. Finally, a few dozen families separated for decades by the DMZ were able to meet for three days.
In Western Sahara, the "wall of Sands"
Built between 1980 and 1987, the "Sands Wall" stretches from the south-west of the Algerian-Moroccan border north-west of the border with Mauritania. Mainly located in the territory of Western Sahara, in southern Morocco, on the border with Mauritania and Algeria, this separation is composed of sandy embankments, anti-tank ditches, barbed wire or hundreds of thousands of antipersonnel mines.
The "Wall of Sands", guarded by at least 100,000 Moroccan soldiers, is the result of a regional rivalry: Western Sahara, considered by the UN as a non-autonomous territory since 1963, has indeed become the object of desires after the departure of the Spanish settlers in 1975.
Morocco considers this territory as a province over which it exercises full sovereignty, while the Polisario Front, a political movement supported by Algeria and Libya, militates for the independence of Western Sahara. Discussions about the status of this territory took place at the UN between the various protagonists in 2018, but without illusions. Pending a settlement of this situation, 100,000 to 200,000 Sahrawi refugees live in precarious conditions in camps in southwestern Algeria.
The separation wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank
"Anti-Terrorist Closing" for Israel, "Apartheid Wall" for Palestinians, Israel's separation wall from Palestinian territories in the West Bank has been creating controversy ever since its construction was approved by the Israeli government in 2002 .
The "security fence" was originally intended to be temporary and its construction, begun during the second intifada (2000-2006), was to follow the "green line" of armistice signed in 1949 and recognized by the UN. The latter was also supposed to eventually become the frontier of a future Palestinian state.
This wall was deemed contrary to international law in 2004 by the highest court of the United Nations. In 2014, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that "(s) implications go far beyond the rule of law," this wall "gravely restricts the movements of Palestinians and the access to the entire West Bank, cutting off land and undermining access to resources for the development of Palestinians. " At this stage, the construction of nearly 500 kilometers of this separation wall has been completed, almost entirely within the West Bank.
Technological fence between Crimea and Ukraine
The last "wall" born, finalized at the beginning of 2019, was built by Russia to establish a separation between Ukraine and Crimea. This high-tech fence, 66 kilometers long and equipped with several hundred sensors, testifies to the renewed tension between Moscow and Kiev in recent years.
This new separation is the culmination of the dispute between the two countries concerning the Black Sea Peninsula: in 2014, after the Russian tankers were sent to Crimea, the population of the peninsula voted massively by referendum for a " connection "in Moscow. A vote not recognized by Ukraine and the international community denouncing an "annexation". This does not prevent Vladimir Putin and Crimean leaders from signing the treaty on this connection.
For five years, Russia has maintained its grip on Crimea - it even inaugurated in 2018 a bridge to reduce the isolation of the peninsula. Finally, to celebrate the five years of this "reunification", the spokesperson of the Russian diplomacy Maria Zakharova stressed that "for us (Russia, Ed), the question of Crimea is settled once and for all".
Anti-migrant barricades around the world, including the US-Mexico border
There are separations that follow a political objective to take possession of a territory, others are being put in place in recent years to contain the arrival of migrants. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in Europe, where several countries are erecting antimigration barricades: Bulgaria in 2014, Macedonia and Hungary in 2015 ... France has built, for its part, a wall "anti-intrusions" in Calais in 2016 to to prevent migrants from smuggling on trucks to Britain.
Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump also intends to contain immigration to the United States by building a wall along the border with Mexico. Building a "beautiful and big wall" was one of the key promises of the US presidential candidate in 2016.
>> To see, our webdoc: "America at the foot of the wall"
Since then, Donald Trump's anti-migrant ambition has been thwarted many times before the US Supreme Court finally allowed it to build part of the wall last July. The following month, the US administration started building border gates with Mexico in Organ Pipe Park, Arizona. But opponents of the US President's plan do not intend to stop there. And as Janet Napolitano, a former Barack Obama adviser, said: "You can build a wall 15 meters high if you want, there will always be someone to find a 16-meter ladder!"