Gambari Outlines Peace Path For Africa

Former special representative of the secretary-general and head of the United Nations Mission in Darfur, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, has recommended reforming the African Union Peace and Security Council to achieve sustainable peace on the African continent.

The chief of staff to immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari, former Joint Special Representative of UN, African Union, and chief mediator in Darfur, also strongly believes that making all UN peace operations in Africa hybrid missions jointly mandated and conducted by the world body and the AU will elevate peace processes in the region equally.

Speaking at the side event organised by Chatham House and UNDP at the 38th Ordinary Session, Assembly of African Union, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Professor Gambari argued that a re-examination of the African Peace and Security Architecture was overdue, adding that a bottom-up approach that recognises and involves local authorities, sub-national groups as well as the private sector and professional group were essential.

Speaking on the theme, “African Peace Progress: prospects for Durable Agreement to End Conflicts”, the “recent UN Security Council Resolution 2719(2023) and the implementation of the plan of Action of the African Standby Force for achieving full operational capacity without further delay would be hugely helpful.”

He states, “Effective collaboration and astute coordination are required to address and end violent conflicts in Africa and indeed across the world and deepen the prospects for durable peace agreements.
These would not be possible without urgent assessment and enhancement of national, regional, and global mechanisms for conflict prevention, peace management, and conflict resolution.

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“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 the office of special adviser on Africa dealing with the 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.”

“First, critical importance but unfortunate relegation of conflict prevention. In 2015, the combined annual budgets of the UN Missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur were estimated at $ 2.3 billion. Currently, the AU Mission in Somalia, which has been deployed for almost a decade, budgets $ 900 million annually. In contrast, the estimated budget to set up a secretariat to support mediation efforts in Burundi was $ 50 million, 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 favoured the promotion of hard security through the use of force over ‘soft’ security approaches. There are several reasons attributable to 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.

“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 the International Criminal Court (ICC) was hugely important. However, African countries are the major state parties to the convention establishing it. Until recently, however, the court has so far concentrated 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.”