From Africa Recovery, Vol.13#2-3 (September 1999), page 8
UN promotes African peace efforts
Secretary-General Kofi Annan brings message of hope to OAU summit
By Amma Ogan
Addressing the annual summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Algiers on 12 July, after nearly a week touring five countries in West Africa, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan struck a hopeful note. He stressed the considerable progress the continent has been making in recent years: impressive economic growth, improvements in democratization and governance, determined moves toward peace in a number of war-torn countries, and reforms that have created an attractive policy environment for foreign investment (see article "Africa's untapped investment potential"). In short, he said, "the overall picture in Africa today is nowhere near as gloomy as it seems to those elsewhere."
Yet there also are many areas of concern, Mr. Annan observed. Conflicts persist in Angola, the Congo Republic and between Ethiopia and Eritrea, while the cease-fire agreement in the Democratic Republic of Congo, negotiated just before the OAU summit, had yet to be signed by all parties. Economic and social development has lagged. The AIDS plague kills 5,500 Africans every day, and is also "devastating our economic prospects."
"We Africans have to fight back," the Secretary-General told the continent's assembled heads of state. "We have to face unpleasant facts and confront them head on." Most Africans, he noted, already are confronting their problems "with courage and imagination. These are people who deserve help, and have shown they know how to use help when it comes."
Difficult path toward peace
Echoing the broader discussions at the OAU summit over how Africans themselves can help prevent or resolve armed conflicts on the continent, Mr. Annan devoted a significant portion of his speech to recent and on-going peace efforts. This emphasis was because war, he said, "destroys the development already achieved. It blights the prospect of whole nations, indeed the whole continent. Conflict in some countries jeopardizes the development of all the others, even the best governed."
During three of his prior stops in West Africa -- in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- Mr. Annan focused on the difficult process of post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. Noting the recent peace agreement in Sierra Leone, following the end of Liberia's civil war in 1997, he urged his audiences to look beyond the simple absence of war and work towards establishing an environment of human security in which the rule of law could take hold.
Reconstruction
Mr. Annan emphasized that Sierra Leone and Liberia both face a formidable task of national and economic reconstruction. In Sierra Leone, the most immediate issue is implementation of the agreement on disarmament and ensuring that a new peacekeeping operation is established, involving the UN, the international community, and components of ECOMOG, the multinational peacekeeping force set up by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). At the OAU summit, this was a matter of some concern to President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, which had spearheaded the ECOMOG forces in both Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone, like Liberia, urgently needs humanitarian aid, Mr. Annan asserted. So does Guinea, which today hosts some 700,000 refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone -- equivalent to 10 per cent of Guinea's entire population. These refugees are unlikely to return home until their safety and security are assured, and they receive some essential assistance.
Such international assistance, however, has not reached the levels that these countries require, and throughout his tour Mr. Annan was often asked, "Has the rest of the world forgotten we are here?" At the Algiers summit, he criticized the overall decline in international aid to Africa, observing that donor governments, "driven by short-term publicity," often fail to realize that "healthy development is the best long-term conflict prevention we know."
While welcoming the cease-fire accord in Sierra Leone, the Secretary-General also noted the UN's objection to the amnesty clause in the agreement, thereby stressing that crimes against humanity, such as the murder and mutilation of civilians, should not go unpunished.
As Mr. Annan was travelling in West Africa, he also remained directly engaged with efforts to resolve the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, conducting frequent consultations with Zambian President Frederick Chiluba and OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim. This culminated in the signing on 10 July of a cease-fire agreement by six governments involved in the conflict. Mr. Annan urged all major parties, including rebel forces, to sign the agreement and begin implementing it.
Spotlight on arms trafficking
In the context of its peace efforts, the OAU summit also took up the increasing proliferation of small arms in Africa, which has facilitated both war and crime. The African heads of state mandated OAU Secretary-General Salim to convene a regional conference on the issue, to make recommendations for inter-African cooperation to limit the use, transfer and illegal manufacture of small arms. It also welcomed the moratorium on small arms transfers declared by ECOWAS and the programmes to collect and destroy illegal small arms initiated by South Africa and Mozambique.
Senegal, another of the countries visited by the UN Secretary-General, expressed particular concern about illegal arms trafficking, especially since it has been an element in the long-standing armed conflict in its southern region of Casamance.
In Algiers, Mr. Annan lauded the bonfire to be lit later that month of weapons decommissioned from Liberia's civil war, a "symbolic display that bodes well for the consolidation of peace in that country." But he also urged countries that are major manufacturers and exporters of arms to do more. "To stem the flow, particularly of illegal weapons," he said, "we need cooperation and decisive action from the countries that produce them."
Democratic change, not coups
Among the more hopeful trends in Africa, Mr. Annan observed, has been continuation of the continent's democratization process. Two milestones this year were South Africa's second set of democratic elections and the return to civilian rule in Nigeria "through a fair, free and democratic process," he said. Having also stopped in Nigeria on his West African tour, Mr. Annan praised former President Abdulsalami Abubakar for his "real statesmanship" in steering Africa's most populous nation in a democratic direction, and current President Obasanjo for providing Nigeria with "dynamic and visionary leadership."
At the same time, Africa has suffered some setbacks, Mr. Annan added, as exemplified by the military coups in the Comoros, Guinea-Bissau and Niger over the past year. These marked "new deviations" from the principle agreed at the OAU summit in Harare two years ago that duly elected governments should not be overthrown by force. The OAU summit in Algiers passed a resolution calling on all military regimes that had emerged since the Harare meeting to democratize within a year or face sanctions.
Africa not alone
The political picture across Africa, therefore, remains mixed. The UN Secretary-General commented that in some countries the people "are struggling against their government" or are struggling "in places where government hardly exists. But government is not always the villain. More and more African governments are showing that they know the problems they are up against, and taking difficult, brave decisions to deal with them."
Those countries making determined moves toward peace, good governance, and development "will not be alone," Mr. Annan assured the OAU summit participants. "The United Nations and its funds and programmes are working alongside you."
That message was, in fact, one of the main purposes of his African tour. At each of his stops, Mr. Annan sought to demonstrate the UN's continued commitment to Africa. By highlighting the progress that Africa's people and leaders are making, he also sought to convince the rest of the international community to devote greater attention and resources to the continent's most pressing needs.
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