United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-04-16

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From: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Thursday, 16 April, 1998

HEADLINES

• Conflict in Africa is neither inevitable nor intractable, Secretary- General tells Security Council as he proposes measures to reduce violence on the continent.
• New report of Secretary-General explores causes, potential cures of conflict in Africa.
• In era of declining aid, Secretary-General says partnerships with private sector are needed to boost Africa's economies.
• Secretary-General says earch for truth will continue about alleged human rights abuses in Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"Conflict in Africa, as everywhere, is caused by human action, and can be ended by human action," the Secretary-General observed. "This is the reality that shames us for every conflict that we allow to persist, and emboldens us to believe that we can address and resolve every conflict that we choose to confront."

Addressing a standing-room-only Council chamber this morning, the Secretary- General noted that since 1970, more than 30 wars have been fought in Africa, most of them within countries. In 1996 alone, 14 African countries were in conflict, resulting in more than 8 million refugees, returnees and displaced persons. "No one -- not the United Nations, not the international community, not Africa's leaders -- can escape responsibility for the persistence of these conflicts," he said.

Mr. Annan said he hoped that his report to the Council -- requested by a ministerial meeting of that body held last September -- would add momentum to Africa's renewed quest for peace and greater prosperity. The report, he said, aimed to summon the political will of Africans and non- Africans alike to act -- "the will without which no level of assistance and no degree of hope can make the difference between war and peace in Africa."

Political will, a central theme of the Secretary-Generalūs address to the Council, was one of three critical factors he identified, along with a clear understanding of the challenge and the resources needed to provide an adequate response. "What we have learned over the last decades is that with political will, rhetoric can truly be transformed into reality," he said.

The Secretary-General emphasized that Africans must demonstrate the political will to rely upon political rather than military responses to problems. Africa must summon the political will to take good governance seriously -- ensuring respect for human rights and the rule of law, strengthening democratization, and promoting transparency and capability in public administration. In addition, he said that long-term success could only be achieved if African governments had the political will to enact and implement sound economic policies.

Calling attention to the persistence of poverty in Africa, the Secretary- General told the Security Council that poverty alleviation must be "the first aim of all our efforts." Only when prosperity and opportunity became real would every African citizen have a genuine and lasting stake in a peaceful future for Africa, he noted.

Mr. Annan said the time was long past when one could claim ignorance about what was happening in Africa, or what was needed to achieve progress. Nor could responsibility for producing change be avoided. "It is a responsibility that we all must face," he said, adding that the United Nations not only sought but welcomed that responsibility. "For we wish, above all, that this report will mark a new beginning in the relations between the United Nations and Africa," he concluded.

At the suggestion of the Council President, Hisashi Owada of Japan, it was decided that Council members and other interested States would study the report and then meet to discuss it on 24 April.

(For the of Secretary-General's address to the Security Council, see Press Release SC/0365.)

The Secretary-General's recommendations derive strength in significant part from the candour with which his report analyses causes -- and responsibility -- for conflict in Africa.

"By not averting these colossal human tragedies [as in Rwanda, Somalia and Liberia]", says the Secretary-General, "African leaders have failed the peoples of Africa; the international community has failed them; the United Nations has failed them." Repeatedly, the Secretary-General calls on all concerned to "summon the political will" to produce positive change in Africa.

Africa today must more than ever look at itself, the Secretary-General asserts, given the renewed momentum in the continent's quest for peace and greater prosperity. However, he adds, African efforts need stronger international support politically, as well as in the economic area, where greater debt relief and market access for more diversified African exports are crucial to ensuring the higher living standards that promote stability.

Even in this post-cold-war period, foreign interests continue to play a large role in sustaining some conflicts in the competition for oil and other African resources, the Secretary-General points out. While he pays tribute to African States for their growing peacekeeping and mediation efforts, the Secretary-General calls for candidly acknowledging the role some of them play in supporting and sometimes even in instigating conflicts in neighbouring countries.

Mr. Annan strongly criticizes international arms merchants as being among those "who profit from conflict in Africa". He recommends that Member States pass legislation making the violation of Security Council arms embargoes by individuals or corporations a criminal offence under their national laws. Although public identification of arms merchants has been difficult, the Secretary-General asserts that possibly no other single initiative would do more to help combat the flow of illicit arms to Africa. The report asks the Security Council to address this issue as a matter of urgency, including how the United Nations might support the compiling, tracking and publicizing of such information.

The Secretary-General notes the "long-term distortions" in Africa's political economy and the authoritarian legacies of colonialism which helped produce the "winner-takes-all" and highly personalized forms of governance seen in parts of the continent. With the frequent lack of peaceful means to change or replace leadership and the "often violent politicization of ethnicity", Mr. Annan says conflict becomes virtually inevitable.

The Secretary-General urges Member States to provide renewed and better coordinated support for early and decisive action to prevent or resolve conflict in Africa. He says United Nations peacekeeping could achieve much if "deployed with a credible deterrent capacity, equipped with appropriate resources and backed by sufficient political will." Mr. Annan strongly encourages Member States to contribute to the United Nations and Organization of African Unity (OAU) Trust Funds for conflict prevention and peacekeeping. He stresses that "wherever possible the international community should strive to complement rather than supplant African efforts to resolve Africa's problems."

On arms and arms trafficking, the report calls on Member States to pass laws enabling prosecution in national courts of violations of Security Council arms embargoes. It also recommends that the Council should urgently consider how the United Nations might help compile, track and publicize information on arms trafficking. African governments should reduce purchases of arms and munitions to 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), and maintain zero-growth on defence budgets for the next decade.

Another recommendation calls for holding combatants financially liable to their victims. The Secretary-General recommends that international legal machinery be developed to help find and seize the assets of the transgressors. An international mechanism should also be established to help host governments maintain the security and neutrality of refugee camps.

The report contains a number of proposals for dealing with the problems of debt, including that all creditors should convert into grants all remaining official bilateral debt of the poorest African countries. Creditors should consider clearing the entire debt stock of the poorest African countries, as requested by the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

(For a detailed summary of the report, see Press Release SG/2045.)

Addressing reporters on Thursday after presenting his new report on preventing conflicts in Africa to the United Nations Security Council, Mr. Annan called for looking beyond official development assistance (ODA) for reviving the economies of Africa. "ODA has diminished and is diminishing, and we cannot keep chasing diminishing donor's assistance whilst in today's world, it is the private sector that creates wealth -- it is the private sector that has the money, the technology and the management," he observed.

The Secretary-General noted that working with the private sector had become "part of the UN's_modus operandi_" in a number of the developing countries. "That is one of the reasons that we are working with governments to strengthen their institutions, to come up with the right legal framework, to come up with their own regulations for privatization, to ensure that they create the enabling environment that will foster investments," he added.

During his news conference, the Secretary-General also called for stemming the flow of arms both to and within Africa. "We need to find a means of not selling so many weapons to the Africans, and the Africans themselves need to avoid this trend toward the accumulation of weapons, because there are two sides to this situation."

The Secretary-General also had praise for regional initiatives to deal with conflict on the continent, including those of the Monitoring Group of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOMOG), which had worked to restore the legitimate government in Sierra Leone. "I think what happened in Sierra Leone is particularly important. We sent a powerful message around the continent that juntas will not be allowed to dislodge democratically elected governments and be comfortable in office."

Mr. Annan was optimistic about the potential for change, citing a new mood prevailing in Africa. "There are lots of leaders in Africa today who are determined to take charge, who are working to improve economic conditions for their people and their nation, who are seeking to introduce democratic practices and rule based on the rule of law." More and more African governments were beginning to accept that the only legitimate source of authority was one based on the will of the people, he noted. "With that mood, with the Africans engaging themselves, we can work with them in partnership to foster positive developments," he said, adding, "In this climate, if we can work in partnership, we can make real progress."

In a related development, it was announced on Thursday that the Secretary- General would travel on an official visit to Africa from 29 April to 10 May. He is scheduled to go to Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, the United Republic of Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Eritrea.

Mr. Annan made his remarks at a press briefing on Thursday. Asked to assess the team's work, Mr. Annan said, "We've done the most we could, we've been extremely patient, we've done everything possible in order to find the truth." It was right to do everything possible to try to verify who had killed whom and for what reasons, he emphasized, noting that the team's efforts had not been wasted. "We've gone an extra mile in search of the truth, and one should never apologize for making an extra effort to get to the truth." The fact that the country had not cooperated -- and in some cases obstructed what the United Nations had to do -- did not negate the efforts of the team, he stated.

The experience of the team underscored how difficult it was to get to the facts, and how difficult it was to get governments to cooperate when human rights abuses are at stake, the Secretary-General said. "We will probably have to think of other sorts of creative means in getting to the truth, in addition to insisting on having people on the ground." The fact that the United Nations had gotten people on the ground and had focused attention on the issue and went the extra mile showed the determination of the Organization to get to the bottom of the matter, he noted.

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