Growing non-Francophone states in OIF 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. 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 organization. Despite calls for a moratorium on the admission of new members, 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 recognize Kosovo as a country. The "endless enlargement" 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. The motivation of small and mid-size countries in joining the organization appears to be a desire to increase their international visibility. In October 2018, the Irish Department for Foreign Affairs explained that Ireland's accession with observer status would "Develop and deepen Ireland’s institutional linkages with Africa" and allow the country to "play a more influential role in locations including the Sahel... and to engage on the challenges facing countries in French-speaking West Africa." A departmental review in May 2023 added that "new Embassies in Senegal and Morocco represent Ireland’s first missions in francophone Africa and complement our recent accession as an observer member". 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". Many actors of the francophone sphere interested in the future of the organization, 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.
Human rights in member states While promoting human rights is stated as a core mission of the OIF, many of its member countries governments have or have had poor human rights records. At the 1999 Francophonie Summit in
Moncton, Canadian Prime Minister
Jean Chrétien and former French President
Jacques Chirac announced at the close of the summit that a human rights observatory would be established to further promote human rights within the OIF. The French newspaper
Le Monde noted in 1999 that if respect for fundamental freedoms were made a strict criterion for membership, the organization might effectively cease to exist given the number of member governments with poor human rights records at the time. In 2000, the OIF adopted the Déclaration de
Bamako concerning democracy and human rights. In May 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his government would support the nomination of
Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda’s longtime foreign minister, as the next Secretary General of the OIF. Critics, including human rights organizations, viewed this as a setback for the OIF’s role in defending and promoting human rights, citing Mushikiwabo’s close relationship with Rwandan President
Paul Kagame, whose government has faced significant criticism from human rights advocates. == Support for the organization ==