Protocols
In order to address and end violent conflicts in Africa, and indeed across the world, and deepen the prospects for durable peace agreements, effective collaboration and astute coordination are required. These would not be possible without urgent assessment and enhancement of national, regional and global mechanisms for conflict prevention, peace management and conflict resolution. In this regard, and based on my own experience as the Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and African Union and Chief Mediator in Darfur and as Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of UN Mission in Darfur and Head of Office of Special Adviser on Africa dealing with promotion and coordinating international support for NEPAD, I wish to raise the following six (6) issues which are of critical importance to the theme of our discussion today.
2. First, critical importance but unfortunate relegation of conflict prevention. In 2015, the combined annual budgets of the UN Missions in Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur, was estimated at $2.3billion. Currently, the AU Mission in Somalia, which has been deployed for almost a decade, budget at $900million annually. In contrast, the estimated budget to set up a secretariat to support mediation efforts in Burundi was $50million and yet there were difficulties in generating this fund. It is clear that regional organisations and the wider international community, despite the rhetoric about the necessity for prevention, have favored the promotion of hard security through the use of force, over ‘soft’ security approaches. There are several reasons attributable for this trend, which is linked to donor priorities, interests and those of the international community as a whole as well as the tendency to go for “quick fixes” for complex conflict situations.
3. Second, justice is an imperative on the pathway to making peace. Any group or individual denied justice has no interest in peace. As a major instrument for promoting justice, the establishment of International Criminal Court (ICC) was hugely important. Although, African countries are the major state parties to the convention establishing it. Until recently, however, the court has so far tended to concentrate on indicting sitting African leaders. Nonetheless, the Court – as a new invention – is a good one because it addresses the issue of impunity. You cannot have peace if there is no justice, and if people do not feel a sense of closure, a feeling that those who are guilty of or accused of egregious violations of human rights are brought to justice. So you have the ICC pursuing that track. At the same time, if you are going to resolve a conflict, and one of the parties to the conflict may be, as in the case of Darfur, an indictee of the ICC, how do you engage with an indictee of the ICC who is part of the solution to the conflict, and also part of the peace process? It is extremely difficult to strike the right balance.
4. My own experience and position is that you do not have to choose between peace and justice; rather you can sequence them. You can phase them. For example, you can say, ‘At this point, what is the most important emphasis that will bring us closer to peace?’ In Liberia, for example, and on the case of Charles Taylor, if he had not been taken out of Liberia by prior arrangement involving the African Union, ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] and Nigeria, if that aspect of his past had not been sequenced to follow rather than to precede peace process, there may have been no peace, no election, and Liberia would not be where it is today. Nonetheless, the peace and justice debate is bound to continue.
5. Third, there is the challenge of addressing the root causes of conflict. Take Darfur again. It’s fundamentally about water in a sense; you have environmental degradation, rapid urbanization and increasing population going on all at once. The most important resource in Darfur is water, and there is not enough of it and it is poorly distributed. This has bred tension between nomads and farmers, who tend to belong to different ethnic groups. Specifically, the nomadic peoples are primarily Arabs, and sedentary and farming peoples are non-Arabs, Africans. They are competing for the same scarce resources, and therefore prone to be in conflict over them. If you want to address the issue of peace, and if you want to bring peace closer, you have to address root causes such as these. I have also argued that we cannot wait till peace has broken out all over Darfur before we pursue reconstruction and development issues, because you want to demonstrate to those communities and areas where fighting has stopped that there is a peace dividend, and this may have positive spill-over effects in other areas where conflict continues.
6. I do recognise that differences of opinion exist, particularly with some Western countries, to the effect that you should not embark on reconstruction and development while violent conflict and war is still going on. However, my position based on experience in the field is that contemporary security challenges do not permit the graduated sequencing of peace initiatives from peace-making, peace-keeping and peacebuilding. Indeed, in security environment where parties to conflict are unwilling to negotiate, regional actors (especially the AU) tend to undertake limited offensive operations that place stability over positive change.
7. Fourth, is the role of ‘spoilers’, which has become a lot more significant in many peace processes. There are different types of ‘spoilers’. You have those with limited objectives, some with broader national and international objectives, and those who really do not want any peace at all. How do you deal with them? What are the sticks and carrots that you might use to reduce the potential influence of ‘spoilers’? I feel sad that, in the case of Darfur again, which was my last experience in peace making and peacekeeping, there were many important actors who played the role of ‘spoilers’ who were not compelled to join the peace process in a meaningful way.
8. Fifth, mediation and mediator. I have observed that in peace negotiations and conflict resolution, the parties are able to stand their respective grounds more strongly while also developing a common ground. It is in this context that mediators can make their most valuable contribution by identifying, widening and consolidating the common ground. In so doing, they must build relationships of trust and confidence with the parties. Mediators must also be impartial, tough, humble but very patient. However, while there may be a multiplicity of mediators in a conflict situation, there is need for a Chief Mediator. The Chief Mediator and team should recognize his/her limitations and know when to give way for others to try if a) the peace process comes to a dead end; b) the trust and confidence of the parties and key interested outside actors have evaporated; and c) the mediator becomes the issue rather than the focal point for moving forward the substance of the conflict.
9. Sixth and finally, regarding the need for re-assessment and enhancement of national, continental and global mechanisms for durable peace agreements, conflict prevention, peace management and conflict resolution, I would make the following recommendations:
Making all UN Peace Operations in Africa hybrid missions – jointly mandated and conducted by the world body and the African Union. In this regard, recent UN Security Council Resolution 2719 (2023) and the implementation of the Plan of Action of the African Standby Force (ASF) for achieving full operational capacity without further delay would be hugely helpful.
Reform of the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) to make it more effective is essential. A coalition of the willing and committed to the implementation of the Council’s decisions would provide leadership which is presently absent.
A re-examination of the African Peace and Security Architecture is over-due. In this regard, a bottom-up approach that recognises and involves local authorities, sub national groups as well as the private sector and professional groups are
essential.
10. I thank you all for listening
NB: Being text of an Address delivered by Prof. Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, Scholar-Diplomat, former Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister, former United Nations Under-Secretary General, and erstwhile Chief of Staff to former President Muhammadu Buhari, amongst others, at the Side Event Organized by Chatham House and UNDP at the 38th Ordinary Session, Assembly of the African Union(AU), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Friday 14th February, 2025.
