Dina Mahmoud (London)
The days of 2023 did not want to pass quietly without noise, as most of them were filled with stormy developments, dramatic events, and changes and changes at various levels. In addition to the natural disasters, political and economic turmoil, and armed conflicts that struck the earth during our approaching year, as well as remarkable developments on the technical level, 2023 will be remembered as the year in which the world turned, or nearly turned, the page of an epidemic that claimed the lives of millions of its people, to welcome an era. Climate change threatens the lives of billions of them. But the days of the calendar were not without a glimmer of hope that shone in the last month of the year, with the historic agreement, which the UAE led the efforts to reach, by hosting the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), which constituted a landmark step on the path to protecting humanity from dangers. The deadly phenomenon of climate change.
COP28UAE.. Saving the Earth
There is a consensus that the “UAE Agreement”, which was announced on December 13, as a result of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28), will remain the most prominent title of 2023 for billions of people in the East. The world and its West.
The historic agreement, which brought the curtain down on the conference hosted by the UAE between late November and mid-December, consolidated the success of the UAE presidency of this high-level international forum, in mobilizing the efforts of about two hundred countries of the world, to develop a consensus that had not been achieved before in terms of confronting climate change. This puts our planet on the right track for climate action, in order to save the Earth and ensure a sustainable future for humanity.
The era of boiling
Perhaps the success that concluded the year in confronting the climate crisis, thanks to the wise Emirati leadership of the “COP 28” ship, can alleviate, even a little, the terror that gripped humanity throughout the months of 2023, as a result of the successive climate shocks that struck our planet during it, the most dangerous of which was the record high. temperatures in vast parts of the world, which represented the beginning of an alarming transformation in the history of humanity as a whole.
This unprecedented rise prompted the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, to announce on July 27, 2023, that the “terrifying” heat waves that afflict millions around the world mark the end of the era of global warming, and the entry of humanity into what he described as “an era of global boiling.” ».
The extremely pessimistic nature of Guterres’s statements did not seem exaggerated in the eyes of experts, who considered that the summer of 2023 was historic, as three months were successive, the hottest in recorded history, which caused human and material losses, which were often heavy.
On May 17, scientists warned that the Earth was likely on its way to exceeding the threshold of one and a half degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, less than two months before they announced that the Fourth of July witnessed an average temperature recorded at the same level. In the world, it reached 17.18 degrees Celsius, a record high level, in an unprecedented manner.
The matter was not limited to land. On August 4, 2023, the oceans recorded a surface temperature of nearly twenty-one degrees Celsius, a world record observed for the first time. The surface temperature in the Mediterranean also reached a record high, reaching 28.7 degrees Celsius in July 2023.
The era of boiling
The tumultuous transformations of 2023 included changes in the features and topography of various parts of the Earth, as a result of earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, in addition to droughts and forest fires, that swept different regions of the world, for almost all months of the year.
On February 6, Syria and Turkey woke up to two devastating earthquakes, among the strongest in their history. Their intensity reached 7.8 and 7.5 on the Richter scale, claiming the lives of more than fifty thousand people in the two countries, and causing huge material losses in them.
On September 8, Morocco was facing the same nightmare, after it was struck by an earthquake measuring seven on the Richter scale, which claimed the lives of nearly three thousand people, in addition to thousands of wounded. The earthquake, the largest in terms of the number of casualties in Morocco since 1960, also destroyed tens of thousands of homes, completely or partially, in rugged mountainous areas and remote villages.
Only one month later, on October 7, three almost simultaneous earthquakes struck the city of Herat in western Afghanistan, with a magnitude approaching 6.3 on the Richter scale. The earthquakes, the deadliest in Afghanistan for a quarter of a century, left nearly 2,500 dead and more than two thousand injured, in addition to material losses, from which the Afghans are still trying to recover.
Natural disasters in 2023 also affected Libya, when the storm “Daniel” struck its eastern coast, accompanied by very heavy rains. As for the countries of the Horn of Africa, during 2023, they were the scene of a unique scenario, in which waves of drought and floods occurred successively with a time interval of no more than few months.
This wave, which is described as the most severe in nearly four decades, did not prevent the Horn of Africa from also witnessing, in the first half of November, massive floods linked to the El Nino climate phenomenon, which in Somalia alone led to dozens of deaths and the displacement of more than a million people. .
Heavy rain was also a heavy guest on the residents of the Chinese capital, Beijing, on August 2, when it rained at the highest level in 140 years, as a result of Hurricane “Duksuri,” which destroyed large areas in East Asia in countries such as the Philippines, coinciding with Hurricane “Khanun.” Which did not go unnoticed by other Asian and European countries such as Japan and Russia. About three months before that, Cyclone Moka swept through Myanmar, leaving about 500 dead, in addition to material damage estimated at approximately $1.5 billion.
While the Scandinavian countries in northern Europe were not spared from the extensive losses inflicted on them by Storm Hans on August 8, that is, less than two weeks before Mexico was affected by the first tropical storm to sweep it in 84 years, forest fires appeared to have become a moving danger, spreading… Its strikes east and west, affecting Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Algeria, Greece, and Canada during the summer, in addition to several American states, before it rages in Australia in November.
Gaza.. a prey to war and crises
Since October 7, the Gaza Strip has become the focus of attention of the entire world, after a fierce war broke out in it, making its residents prey to a humanitarian crisis, perhaps the worst of its kind ever in its territory.
In addition to more than 20,000 Gazans whose lives were lost as a result of the war, and more than fifty thousand who were injured as a result of bombing, air strikes, and ground operations, the threat of hunger threatens about half a million people, or nearly a quarter of the population of the Strip, at a time when it is feared that this threat will extend. Within a few weeks from now, to the entire population, approximately 2.4 million people.
In addition to these, nearly a million displaced people fled from their homes in the northern Gaza Strip to its south, escaping for their lives in light of the continuation of the Israeli war, which caused massive destruction to the infrastructure in the Strip and undermined vital services in its various parts, amid great difficulties surrounding the process of delivering relief aid. For those who need it most. From the first moment of the outbreak of this war, which occupies a high position on the list of the most prominent events of the year 2023, the UAE committed itself to making every diplomatic and relief effort possible, to stop the blood of innocent people on the one hand, and to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from. , On the other hand.
In the first weeks of the war, the UAE launched the “Gallant Knight 3” humanitarian operation to relieve the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, by operating an air bridge. The state also established an integrated field hospital inside the Gaza Strip. In addition, the UAE witnessed the “Compassion for Gaza” community relief campaign in solidarity with Palestinian children, and it continues to receive wounded Palestinian children and those suffering from cancer coming from the Gaza Strip.
Through its position as a representative of the Arab group in the UN Security Council, the UAE succeeded on December 22 in mobilizing support within the Council to issue a resolution aimed at pushing for urgent steps to immediately allow safe, unhindered and widespread access of humanitarian aid to Gaza, in addition to Creating conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities there.
BRICS expansion
On the twenty-fourth of August 2023, the UAE welcomed joining the BRICS group, after the invitation extended to it and five other countries, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to join this group, which was established in 2009, by Russia, China, India and Brazil, before it was completed. Its founders convened the following year, with South Africa included in its membership.
During the BRICS summit, which concluded on the same day in Johannesburg, the leaders of the five countries ratified the official inclusion of the UAE into the membership of this economic alliance, whose share of the global gross domestic product constitutes 23%, and its countries include 42% of the world’s population, and On up to 16% of global trade volume.
Goodbye “Corona”
On May 4, 2023, the World Health Organization issued a long-awaited announcement that the “Covid-19” epidemic no longer represents a global health emergency, more than three years after it was classified as such. This announcement was issued after the organization monitored what it described as a “downward curve” that continued for more than a year for the pandemic, in which more than 765 million confirmed infections were recorded, and claimed the lives of at least seven million people, whose number may reach, according to some estimates, twenty. One million.
ChatGPT mutation
Although the now very popular generative AI model, ChatGPT, was officially launched about one month before the start of this year, its star only rose in January 2023, when the number of its users reached more than 100. million, making it the fastest growing app among consumers.
The development of this model, which is a pre-trained conversational robot that can be used on computers and smartphones alike, represented an exceptional transformation in the world of artificial intelligence, thanks to its versatility and diversity of uses, starting from answering regular, stereotypical questions, all the way to writing and debugging computer programs. Through writing novels, plays, poems, musical compositions, etc.
The tremendous success achieved by “GBT Chat” sparked a fierce race between giant companies working in the field of technology, to launch competing artificial intelligence models, some of which have already appeared in 2023, and others are still in the development stage, amid concerns expressed by experts and activists, There is a possibility that this race will get out of control, and that the expansion of the use of such highly advanced technologies will lead to a negative impact on the future of humanity, to the extent that it may threaten it with extinction one day.
Egyptian presidential elections
Had it not been for the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip, the vote in the Egyptian presidential elections, held earlier in December, would have been the highest ever in the country, during 2023.
However, the Egyptians’ interest in what was happening on the eastern borders of their homeland and its possible consequences for them did not prevent them from turning out massively at the ballot boxes, with an unprecedented percentage of 66.8%, in an electoral process that took place outside their country in early December and inside it during the second week of the same month, without witnessing… Submit any appeals or complaints.
After competing with three other candidates, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi was re-elected for a new term of six years, after winning 89.6% of the total valid votes, which numbered more than 44 million votes, which establishes the foundations of the transition phase that Egypt has been experiencing for more than a decade. For a period of time, towards achieving greater stability and completing the development process, in light of a very complex internal and regional scene.
Charles III is crowned
On May 6, 2023, King Charles III was crowned to the throne of Britain, in a variety of ceremonies that lasted for three days, in an atmosphere the United Kingdom had never witnessed in nearly seven decades.
The coronation ceremony, which was held in the historic Westminster Abbey Church in the heart of London, was attended by about 2,300 invitees from 203 countries around the world, including a number of leaders and heads of countries and governments, along with representatives of different religions, charitable societies, and Nobel Prize winners.
The return of Syria
If the spiral of the Lebanese “leadership vacuum” seemed to expand during 2023, the same year witnessed the ending of the vacancy of its neighbor Syria’s seat at the Arab League meeting table, with the Arab foreign ministers adopting, on May 7th, a decision for it to return to occupy its seat, which it had been absent from. He died for nearly 12 years, as one of the consequences of the crisis that struck him in the spring of 2011.
Syria’s return to the Arab House opened the door to President Bashar al-Assad’s participation in the regular Arab summit in its thirty-second session, which was held on May 19 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This presence was repeated in the extraordinary joint Arab Islamic summit, which was hosted by Riyadh, on November 11. To discuss the war in the Gaza Strip.
Lebanon.. a patch of “vacancy”
In the first quarter of 2023, it seemed that the “leadership vacuum” crisis that began in Lebanon about a year earlier due to the failure to form a government with full powers and the inability to elect a new president of the republic, had turned into a spiral, threatening to sweep away many sovereign and vital institutions.
On March 2, the head of the Lebanese General Security Service, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, stepped down from his position, after attempts to extend his term failed. On July 31, the crisis of vacancy in major positions reached a more serious level, with the end of the term of the Governor of the Bank of Lebanon, Riad Salameh, without appointing a successor, due to political divisions and institutional paralysis in the country. However, on December 15, the Lebanese Parliament succeeded in approving a law according to which the term of the Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun, was extended for another year. This step spared Lebanon from facing a new vacuum at the top of the military establishment this time, with the expectation that Aoun will reach retirement age in mid-January, at a time when the position of Chief of Staff is vacant.
Defuse “Safer”
In August, the Yemenis afflicted by a conflict sparked by the Houthi group more than nine years ago were on a date with a rare positive development of its kind, in the midst of an ongoing humanitarian crisis that had previously been described as the worst in the entire world. On the 11th of that month, the United Nations announced the end of the process of withdrawing the cargo of the dilapidated oil tanker “Safer”, which had remained anchored off the strategic port of Hodeidah overlooking the Red Sea, without undergoing any maintenance since 2015, due to the Houthis’ stubborn positions in this regard.
#year #extraordinary #transformations
2023-12-30 21:28:09
