Organisation internationale de la Francophonie
The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF; sometimes shortened to the Francophonie, French: La Francophonie [la fʁɑ̃kɔfɔni],[3][note 3] sometimes also called International Organisation of La Francophonie in English[4]) is an international organization representing countries and regions where French is a lingua franca or customary language, where a significant proportion of the population are francophones (French speakers), or where there is a notable affiliation with French culture.
"Francosphere" redirects here. For the geography of francophones, see Geographical distribution of French speakers.
Organisation internationale
de la Francophonie
de la Francophonie
Paris, France
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Albania
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Andorra
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Armenia
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Belgium
∟
French Community of Belgium[note 1]
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Benin
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Bulgaria
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Burkina Faso (suspended)
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Burundi
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Cambodia
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Cameroon
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Canada
∟
New Brunswick[note 2]
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Quebec[note 2]
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Cape Verde
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Central African Republic
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Chad
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Comoros
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Congo
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DR Congo
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Djibouti
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Dominica
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Equatorial Guinea
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Egypt
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France
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Gabon (suspended)
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Greece
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Guinea (suspended)
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Guinea-Bissau
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Haiti
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Ivory Coast
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Laos
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Lebanon
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Luxembourg
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Madagascar
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Mali (suspended)
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Mauritania
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Mauritius
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Moldova
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Monaco
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Morocco
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North Macedonia
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Niger (suspended)
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Romania
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Rwanda
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Saint Lucia
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São Tomé and Príncipe
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Senegal
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Seychelles
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Switzerland
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Togo
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Tunisia
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Vanuatu
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Vietnam
20 March 1970
(as ACCT)
14–16 November 1997
(as La Francophonie)
28,223,185 km2 (10,897,033 sq mi)
1 billion
36/km2 (93.2/sq mi)
2023 estimate
$18.28 trillions
The organization comprises 88 member states and governments; of these, 54 states and governments are full members, 7 are associate members and 27 are observers. The term francophonie (with a lowercase "f"), or francosphere (often capitalized in English), also refers to the global community of French-speaking peoples,[5] comprising a network of private and public organizations promoting equal ties among countries where French or Belgian people or France or Belgium played a significant historical role, culturally, militarily, or politically.
The modern organisation was created in 1970. Its motto is égalité, complémentarité, solidarité ("equality, complementarity, and solidarity"),[1] a deliberate allusion to France's motto liberté, égalité, fraternité. Starting as a small group of French-speaking countries, the Francophonie has since evolved into a global organization whose numerous branches cooperate with its member states in the fields of culture, science, economy, justice, and peace.
History[edit]
The convention which created the Agency for Cultural and Technical Co-operation (Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique) was signed on 20 March 1970 by the representatives of the 21 states and governments under the influence of African Heads of State, Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, Hamani Diori of Niger and Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.
Based on the sharing of the French language, the missions of this new intergovernmental organization are the promotion of the cultures of its members and the intensification of the cultural and technical cooperation between them, as well as the solidarity and the connection between them through dialogue.
The Francophonie project ceaselessly evolved since the creation of the Agency for Cultural and Technical Co-operation, it became the intergovernmental Agency of the Francophonie (Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie) in 1998 to remind its intergovernmental status. Finally in 2005, the adoption of a new Charter of the Francophonie (la Charte de la Francophonie) gives the name to the Agency of international Organisation of the Francophonie (Organisation internationale de la Francophonie).[6]
Structure[edit]
Executive Secretariat (Secretaries-General)[edit]
The position of Secretary-General was created in 1997 at the seventh leaders' summit held in Hanoi. Canadian Jean-Louis Roy was secretary of the Agence de coopération culturelle et technique from 1989 until the formal creation of the Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie in 1997 with former Secretary-General of the United Nations Boutros Boutros-Ghali as the first secretary-general of La Francophonie. Abdou Diouf, the former president of the Republic of Senegal, became Secretary General on January 1, 2003. He was reelected on 29 September 2006, for a second mandate during the Summit of the Francophonie of Bucharest, and elected again in 2010 at the Summit of the Francophonie of Montreux for another mandate which ran until 31 December 2014. At the 2014 summit in Dakar, former Governor General of Canada Michaëlle Jean was chosen to lead the organization starting in January 2015.[7][8]
The Secretary General of the Francophonie is elected during the Summit, and serves as the spokesperson and the official representative internationally of the political actions of the Francophonie. The Secretary General is responsible for proposing priority areas for multilateral Francophonie actions. Their job is to facilitate Francophone multilateral cooperation and to ensure that programs and activities of all operating agencies work in harmony. The Secretary General carries out their four-year mandate under the authority of the three main institutions of the Francophonie: the Summits, the Ministerial Conference and the Permanent Council.[9]
Criticism of the organisation[edit]
Proliferation of non-Francophone member states and missions[edit]
The membership of the OIF has climbed from 21 in 1970 to 88 member states and territories in 2018. This sharp increase in the number of member states, many of whom have little to no connection with the French language and culture, has been a matter of growing concern. In their 1996 study on the Francophone space, linguists Daniel Baggioni and Roland Breton pointed out, alluding to the applications of Bulgaria and Angola to join the OIF, that only politico-diplomatic criteria could explain these odd extensions of the OIF.[49] Xavier Deniau, founder of the Association des parlementaires de langue française (now the Parliamentary assembly) and author of La Francophonie, expressed concern that the enlargement of the OIF to countries where French is practically nonexistent risks diluting the effectiveness of the organisation.[50] Despite calls for a moratorium on the admission of new members,[51][52] each new Sommet de la Francophonie has witnessed the admission of batches of new members that have little, if anything, to do with the French language: Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Dominican Republic, the United Arab Emirates, Estonia and Montenegro in 2010; Qatar and Uruguay in 2012; Mexico, Costa Rica and Kosovo in 2014. On that occasion, the Montreal daily Le Devoir, which reports extensively on the OIF and its summits, remarked that several members of this "merry madhouse" that the OIF had become did not even recognise Kosovo as a country.[53] The “endless enlargement”[54] of the Organisation accelerated following the arrival at the head of the OIF of former UN Secretary General Boutros-Ghali who declared early in his term in 1998 that French being in his opinion the language of solidarity, tolerance, respect for the individual, cultural diversity, universality and openness, the OIF needed to open itself to non francophones.[55] The motivation of small and mid-size countries in joining the organisation appears to be a desire to increase their international visibility. In October 2018, the Irish Minister of State for European Affairs explained that Ireland's accession to the OIF with observer status was one of the steps set out in 'Global Ireland', the Government's initiative to double the scope and impact of Ireland's global footprint in the period to 2025.[56]
Following the arrival of Boutros-Ghali, the OIF had also seen a steady increase in the number of its missions and priority action areas — peace and conflict prevention, human rights, democracy, international cooperation, sustainable development, cultural and linguistic diversity, education and training, youth, gender equality, civil society — bringing a fundamental shift from the cultural to the political sphere. Jacques Legendre, the French senate's rapporteur on the Francophonie, expressed his concern that the OIF was becoming "a second-rate duplicate of the General Assembly of the UN".[57] Many actors of the francophone sphere interested in the future of the organisation, including Former French ministers or secretaries of state for the Francophonie such as Pierre-André Wiltzer and Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, have been calling on the OIF to refocus on its fundamentals: language and culture.[58]
Disregard for human rights and fundamental freedoms[edit]
Human rights and fundamental freedoms, despite having been declared "categorical imperatives" by Secretary General Boutros-Ghali in 1998, are routinely abused by many members states of the OIF. The deplorable track record of many OIF member states regarding human rights came to the fore during the 1999 Francophonie Summit in Moncton, Canada, when Canadian dailies loudly denounced the organisation's silence regarding widespread human rights abuses by member states ruled by "tyrants". It was pointed out that no less than 35 member states of the OIF had been accused of human rights violations by Amnesty International, while 15 member states were among the countries listed by Reporters Without Borders as systematically violating freedom of the press. Prime Minister Chrétien and President Chirac felt compelled to declare at the close of the summit that a human rights observatory would be established to tackle the problem.[59][60] Given that during his 12-year tenure, President Chirac, dubbed Papa Afrique or Chirac l'Africain, had confided more than once that Africa was not ready for multipartism (l'Afrique n'est pas mûre pour le multipartisme) and was known for his close relationship with many entrenched African strongmen, calling Omar Bongo of Gabon, Gnassingbé Eyadéma of Togo, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of the Congo and Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso "personal friends",[61][62] nothing came out of this declaration. The French daily Le Monde noted at the time that if respect for fundamental freedoms was to become a criterion for membership in the OIF, the organisation would simply cease to exist.[63]
French President Macron's surprise announcement in May 2018 that France officially backed the nomination of Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda's longtime foreign minister, as the next secretary general of the OIF was seen by many as a setback for the defense and promotion of human rights. An open letter signed by four former French ministers for international cooperation condemned this move, on one hand because it was taken unilaterally by the French president without consultation with the other member states of the organisation and on the other because it disregarded President Kagame's lamentable track record on human rights.[17] "How will the Francophonie be able to promote freedom of the press, as part of its mission of advocating for human rights, if it's headed by one of the key leaders of a country that's trampled on media freedom and repressed journalists for 18 years?" asked Christophe Deloire, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders.[64]