From Africa Recovery, Vol.12#1 (August 1998), page 17

Annan in Africa says justice necessary to heal wounds

By Peter Mwaura

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan carried his message of peace, healing and reconciliation to the heart of Africa from 28 April to 10 May. During this visit to eastern and central Africa, he underscored the importance of homegrown solutions to Africa's problems and cited the indispensible role of regional cooperation in solving conflicts and the role national and multilateral juridical systems must play in bringing about reconciliations.

Mr. Annan pledged UN support for the efforts of the leaders in the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in facilitating peace talks to end the deadly conflicts in Sudan and Somalia.

"The UN is supporting the efforts of IGAD and, at the same time, will be prepared to provide any assistance that IGAD deems necessary," Mr. Annan told a press conference in Nairobi. "And I have encouraged all the governments in the region to work with IGAD."

During the eight-nation trip, which took him to Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Eritrea, he emphasized a key message in his report The Causes of Conflict and the Promotion of Durable Peace and Sustainable Development in Africa: only Africa can determine solutions to its current conflicts.

In the Great Lakes region he highlighted questions of peace and security. In Rwanda, the scene of the horrendous genocide in 1994 in which between 500,000 and one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were butchered, Mr. Annan addressed the country's National Assembly. "Our commitment to your future begins with the pursuit of justice," he said, referring to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, which he had just visited. "Justice must serve a larger purpose, that of closing wounds, of coexistence and of trust between the Hutu and Tutsi communities of Rwanda."

"But to be complete," he said, "justice must be carried out with due process and above reproach, so that it can promote the process of healing that is so vital to Rwanda's future."

In an address to the parliament in Burundi, Mr. Annan called for national reconciliation and an end to impunity for those accused of atrocities, and urged the warring parties to end nearly five years of violence. Violence and inter-ethnic fighting in Burundi have killed more than 200,000 people and produced nearly a million refugees and internally displaced persons since 1993.

The culture of impunity, Mr. Annan said, must stop. "And for it to stop, you need an effective and impartial judicial system that renders justice -- not in a spirit of revenge, but with respect for the law and international norms."

In Uganda the Secretary-General also spoke out on the issues of refugees and security. He raised with President Yoweri Museveni the issue of what he called "armies of losers" -- defeated soldiers who crossed borders with their weapons after losing a war, creating havoc wherever they went. He also called for the establishment of a multinational intervention mechanism to separate combatants from refugees, as the meeting noted that in some cases, refugees are the cause of conflict rather than the result -- a fact which has led to increased instability in the Great Lakes.

Another issue that Mr. Annan discussed with African leaders was peacekeeping operations. He told diplomats in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that the UN and the OAU planned to enhance Africa's peacekeeping capacity -- a subject that he had discussed earlier with the OAU Secretary-General. Mr. Annan said this called for closer working relations with African governments to determine what was needed to put in place the envisaged peacekeeping forces.

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