2024 is the year in which more than half of the world’s population is called to vote in 76 countries and will also host a great multiplicity of conflicts. “It will be a year of ballot boxes and weapons,” said the director of Cidob (Barcelona Center for International Affairs), Pol Morillas, in presenting his forecast on issues that will mark the international agenda in the coming months. Thus, elections and wars, the two main elements that define the world order, will have a very notable impact, with the electoral events of the United States, the European Union, Russia, India and Taiwan being the most notable; while the dragged out wars of 2022 and 2023, such as those in Ukraine or Gaza, far from a ceasefire, will once again demonstrate the prevailing impunity.
Conflict in the world, which in 2023 reached unprecedented levels since World War II, in which 1 in 6 people was exposed to a conflict, will grow next year, as will an increase in impunity due to the “deregularization of force” that has occurred as a result of the loss of weight of international organizations, said the document’s coordinator and Cidob researcher, Carme Colomina.
The erosion of international legislation has been demonstrated by the “fight between Israeli Prime Minister Beniamin Netanyahu and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in their attempt to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza,” added Colomina. Given the diplomatic impotence of the United Nations, the organization has dedicated its efforts to humanitarian aid in the strip in an attempt to alleviate the catastrophic effects of the war, according to the document. The expert has also highlighted that there is a double standard on the part of the West, positioned in conflicts like Ukraine and not in others like Sudan, “where a genocide is being carried out.”
“The risk of escalation in Gaza is very high,” warned Cidob researcher specialized in the Middle East, Moussa Bourekba. In this conflict, the continuity of three trends will be seen: the increasing isolation of Israel, the intensification of international pressure for a permanent ceasefire, by Washington, London, Berlin and Paris; and US calls for Israel to carry out a more surgical campaign.
Bourekba has also warned that Israel will continue to take advantage of the conflict to escalate violence in the West Bank, where it has accelerated its colonization policy, given weapons to settlers and intensified Israeli army raids and institutional violence against Palestinians (with more than 300 dead).
Linked to the feeling of impunity in Israel that leaves the balance of the two and a half months of war in Gaza. Bourekba has stated that “only Washington has the capacity to stop” Netanyahu, because the United States is Israel’s weapons supplier and has tools of pressure, after which he has indicated that the US elections will also mark the position of its president, Joe Biden, in the conflict, which is why he considers that the role of US public opinion will be decisive in stopping Israel.
He has also highlighted that the conflict in Gaza has been “regionalized”, although he has not predicted that the confrontation with Hizbullah in southern Lebanon will escalate because neither Iran nor Israel are interested. On the other hand, it is worth highlighting the new focus of tensions in the Red Sea, with the attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on ships, which has already caused economic consequences. In this sense, Bourekba stressed that it will be interesting to see the role that China and Saudi Arabia play in this conflict, which has put Riyadh at a crossroads because it was about to sign a peace agreement with Yemen, but the US asks you to join the international alliance to defend the Red Sea and therefore against this country.
The impact of a foreseeable economic slowdown in China in 2024 will be notable in the raw material producing countries that are most dependent on the Asian giant, such as Australia and those in the so-called ‘Global South’, such as Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, while At the Western level, the impact will be indirect, through large companies and producers, such as Apple and Volkswagen, Cidob researcher Inés Arco has detailed.
Regarding the confrontation between Taiwan and China, the expert recalled that the results of the presidential and parliamentary elections, which will be held on January 13, will be decisive in the future relationship of both rivals. They will be elections in which “for the first time there is no bipartisan confrontation”, but rather there are three outstanding candidates with minimal margins in the polls, the researcher has assured. Some are committed to continuing the confrontation and others to collaboration with the continent, while ordinary people are tired of politicians not taking care of the real problems of the people, she has detailed.