Feed Africa’s people and you will silence the guns
Vasu Gounden, executive director of Accord, this week briefed the UN Security Council open debate on Silencing the Guns in Africa, along with under-secretary general for political and peacebuilding affairs Rosemary Dicarlo and AU high representative Ramta
OVER the plast two-and-a-half decades Africa has made huge progress in evolving a peace and security architecture, which started with a fledgling conflict management centre at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and which has today evolved into the African Peace and Security Architecture (Apsa).
Accord worked with the OAU from 1993, under the guidance of the then OAU secretary-general, Salim Ahmed Salim, and has consistently worked with and contributed to every incarnation of the conflict management mechanism up to its current form.
All involved have learnt a lot, but unfortunately conflicts do not remain static. Consequently, we have been, and continue to be, on a steep learning curve. I shall point out shortly why this meeting is so timely and Africa’s time is fast running out.
Over the past two decades, many conflicts were resolved in Africa. Starting with South Africa, and its negotiated settlement which culminated in its first democratic elections in 1994, we have since seen a wave of conflicts resolved through negotiations in, for example, Angola, Mozambique, Sudan and South Sudan, Madagascar, Liberia, Sierra Leone and recently Ethiopia and Eritrea as well as the Central African Republic.
These were all seemingly intractable conflicts.
There is no doubt much progress has been made in the field of peace and security over the last quarter of a century in Africa, both in creating institutions and in developing knowledge, skills and the expertise to resolve conflicts. Our specialised conflict management institution has trained more than 20000 people in Africa, many of whom now occupy high office as presidents, ministers, senior government officials, military generals and civil society leaders.
We have just been ranked by Pennsylvania University’s annual think tank rankings as one of the top 100 think tanks in the world and number one in Africa. We are still learning, but we don’t lack structures, skills or expertise in Africa.
If this is a case of success in Africa, then you might legitimately ask why we still see the persistence of conflict in parts of Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the emergence of a South Sudan and a Libyan civil war, an increasingly ungoverned Sahel region and violent street protests across many relatively stable countries in Africa.
In this context, of emerging new conflicts, the question then arises as to whether we can effectively Silence the Guns by 2020?
The answer is a resounding no. Was the aspiration and vision correct? The answer must be a resounding yes.
On explaining this deadline of 2020, AU high representative Ramtane Lamamra, during the October 2018 High Level Workshop on Silencing the Guns, made the point that, “in deciding the deadline there was a need to balance seriousness and realism”.
However, it is not important now to debate the deadline; what’s more important is to debate the modalities for silencing the guns.
This debate, a year before the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, can only be meaningful if it recognises that an initiative like Silencing the Guns is merely a mitigation tool which, in the absence of good governance and the urgent transformation of the structural drivers of conflicts, will be meaningless.
Many parts of Africa are reaching a dangerous tipping point and we are in a race against time. Transformation to deal with the root causes and the deep structural challenges will take between 20 and 40 years to address.
Meanwhile, protracted conflict, ranging from violent street protests to civil war, and from radicalised terror insurgencies to criminal insurgencies, will characterise large parts of the continent.
Robust mitigation, including silencing the guns, has to be an immediate priority if we are to arrest the violence and conflict and allow socio-economic transformation to take place.
Anything short of that will result in the gradual collapse of law and order and a deterioration into civil war that will push Africa’s transformation even further back.
The deep structural challenges I speak of are not new. We are all aware that the vast majority of countries in Africa have not sufficiently dealt with poverty, unemployment and inequality.
The main reason is that skills development and employment creation have not been successful because there has not been a fundamental transformation in the structure of Africa’s economies for decades. Most African countries remain largely subsistence agricultural economies that have made little or no progress in moving towards an industrial or services economy.
This is occurring amid an exponentially growing population that is rapidly urbanising into unplanned cities that offer no prospect of proper housing, health care, education, sanitation, water and so on.
This is the main challenge in Africa today. Introduce guns into this equation and you light the proverbial “time bomb” that is waiting to explode.
That is why we must silence the guns today – which is why we said by 2020. The challenge of terrorism, criminal syndicates, and separatist movements will continue to challenge our collective expertise as some of our governments fail to exercise sovereign control over their entire territories.
However, most governments will be even more challenged in urban areas, where they generally exercise sovereign control but are failing to deliver the essential social goods because of a failure to transform their economies, as a result of of poor or non-existent leadership and governance, because of corruption, and because they are sometimes just overwhelmed by the challenges.
Our prognosis five years ago was that the theatre of conflict would shift to urban areas over the next two decades. Urban conflicts that are badly managed will result in higher levels of civilian casualties and make governments that lose control become more authoritarian. This cycle will have a negative effect on development, creating a new wave of internally displaced people and political refugees. This is today’s reality, which is not just Africa’s responsibility to deal with but also a global responsibility.
I know you will pass a resolution today, but what will you do beyond that? Will you summon the political will of your member states to stem the flow of illicit weapons, almost all of which are not produced in Africa?
Will you provide more resources for conflict prevention and peacebuilding, to contribute to building local and national capacities for conflict prevention and management so that women, young people, government leaders, religious leaders, business people and others can be trained to manage conflicts at their source and prevent the escalation of these conflicts and consequently silence the guns?
Will you ensure that your member states encourage their private sector to turn Africa’s extractive industries into Africa’s productive industries, ensuring that competitive beneficiation benefits local employment and eliminates poverty and inequality, consequently dealing with the deep structural drivers of Africa’s conflicts?
Will you take measures to ensure that the people of the DRC, who will again contribute their muscle and their minerals to power another industrial revolution, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, will also this time benefit their minds and their mouths?
Unless you take these actions collectively, so that each of you representing your countries here exercises your national interests through the global responsibility this august room demands, you will not have silenced the guns; you will only have silenced your powerful voices.
Most governments will be even more challenged in urban areas... where they are failing to deliver Vasu Gounden Accord executive director