The Vatican will not participate in US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” initiative, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s top diplomatic official, said on Tuesday, adding that efforts to handle crisis situations should be managed by the UN.
Pope Leo, the first US pope and a critic of some of Trump’s policies, was invited to join the board last month.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan that led to a fragile ceasefire in October last year, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said the board, with him as chair, would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.
Photo: AP
The board is today to hold its first meeting in Washington to discuss Gaza’s reconstruction.
Italy and the EU have said their representatives plan to attend as observers as they have not joined the board.
The Holy See “will not participate in the Board of Peace because of its particular nature, which is evidently not that of other States,” Parolin said.
“One concern is that at the international level it should above all be the UN that manages these crisis situations. This is one of the points on which we have insisted,” he said.
Many rights experts say that Trump overseeing a board to supervise a foreign territory’s affairs resembled a colonial structure. The board has also faced criticism for not including a Palestinian representative.
Countries have reacted cautiously to Trump’s invitation, with experts concerned that the board could undermine the UN. Some of Washington’s Middle Eastern allies have joined, but its Western allies have so far stayed away.
The Gaza truce has been repeatedly violated with hundreds of Palestinians and four Israeli soldiers reported killed since it began.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 72,000 people, caused a hunger crisis and internally displaced Gaza’s entire population.
Multiple rights experts, academics and a UN inquiry say it amounts to genocide. Israel calls its actions self-defense after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages in a late 2023 attack.
Leo has repeatedly decried conditions in Gaza. The pope, leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, rarely joins international boards. The Vatican has an extensive diplomatic service and is a permanent observer at the UN.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS