Four
countries in Africa – Burundi, the Central African Republic (CAR), Sierra Leone
and South Sudan – were selected by the UN in 2005 to be guinea pigs for its
Peacebuilding Architecture that was supposed to usher these war-ravaged nations
into a period of peace and stability that would, hopefully, aid development.
But
Burundi, CAR and South Sudan have over the years fallen back into violent
conflict while in Sierra Leone the underlying tensions that led to its conflict
in the first place appear to still be in the air. There is no gainsaying that
since the end of the Cold War, Africa has become a huge laboratory for
peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations.
It
has not been an easy exercise, despite the upbeat messages that emanate now and
again from UN headquarters in New York. The major question that the UN’s peace
operations has to answer is: on whose say so are peace agreements in Africa
formulated?
When
the UN itself commissioned a review of its Peacebuilding Architecture in 2014,
the seven members of the review committee in their 2015 report told the world
body in no uncertain terms that “sustaining peace is, in essence, about
individuals and different groups learning to live together without resorting to
violence to resolve conflicts and disputes”. The report added: “It must be
people-centred and provide a vision of a common future to domestic
stakeholders, public and private “External actors, including the UN, can
accompany and facilitate, but they cannot impose peace.
“To
this end, the UN’s approach to sustaining peace, in all phases, must be
underpinned by a deep commitment to broadening inclusion and ownership on the
part of all stakeholders across the society where it works. Neither peace
agreements nor the implementation processes that follow them will likely
prosper unless they look beyond the narrow interests of belligerents to a
framework that can engage a society’s broad and emergent vision of itself,” the
report added."
As
we can see from the failure of peacebuilding in Burundi, CAR and South Sudan,
it was because the belligerents took centre stage in trying to resolve the
conflicts that these countries were allowed to backslide. In the case of Sierra
Leone, although the country has not descended into violence since the peace
agreement that ended the country’s civil war in 2002, there is still a sense of
mistrust between the two major political parties: the ruling All Peoples Congress
(APC) and the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP).
The
underlying tensions are being ratcheted up by two parties that have
traditionally been viscerally opposed to each other as the country prepares for
presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for early 2018. The issue of
peacebuilding in Africa is being revisited by institutions such as Wilton Park,
the UK government agency that provides a global forum for strategic discussion.
It
has convened two conferences on the matter in the UK and Addis Ababa where
experts focused on dealing with the dramatic shift in response to conflict in
Africa. Wilton Park rightly pointed out that the new conflicts that are
erupting in Africa today have “thrown up challenges that exceed the initial scope
of provisions of existing peacebuilding norms and frameworks”.
It
added: “These changes have exacerbated the peacebuilding dilemma in a context
where post-war peace tends to unravel within the first decade of the signing of
a peace agreement/cessation of hostilities and conflict. The overarching
message from these gathering was that in Africa, although socio-economic
systems were changing, elite thinking has not changed.
In
short, while populations have been organising for change, the continent’s
leaders appear to be retreating from the democratic process that the continent
witnessed in the 1990s and entrenching themselves in power. In South Sudan, the
cause of the instability has been placed squarely on the shoulders of the
country’s protagonists. For instance, the warring parties agree on 10 out of 12
issues and to meet in a few weeks to resolve the outstanding two issues. But
when they meet again, they discover they have already reneged on eight of the
12 points that had been initially agreed. In the meantime, while they haggle
again innocent civilians are getting killed.
South
Sudan’s dramatic collapse can be linked to the way in which the country’s
leaders have been focusing on issues that are not relevant to the people who
just want peace, stability and development. “The struggle [for South Sudan’s
independence] was elite-based and ignoring the wishes of the people,” one
delegate told the Wilton Park conference in Addis Ababa.
Relapse
into conflict and how to deal with this is now a major problem for Africa –
something that was highlighted at the 5thTana High-Level Forum on
Security in Africa in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia in April. The focus of the gathering
was on the continent’s role within the global security agenda and the need for
Africa to now take charge of dealing with its peace and security problems.
The
Forum’s Concept Paper noted: “While Africa is seeking to reposition itself in
the global security arena, several legitimate questions linger: for instance,
in relation to who legitimately represents the continent; but also on
ownership, authenticity and sustainability of the concept of African solutions
to African problems in its peace and security affairs.”
The
problem is that those who are supposed to keep watch on the continent’s peace
architecture occasionally take their eyes off the ball and when things explode
they are not ready to deal with the aftershocks. For example, it was clear that
South Sudan was fractured when it gained its independence from Sudan in 2011
but nothing was done to rectify this until it was too late.
In
Liberia, the UN has withdrawn the bulk of its 15,000 peacekeepers but many
Liberians are wondering whether peace and security will hold in the run-up to
presidential and legislative elections. The continent has come a long way since
the end of the Cold War and it is now part and parcel of the global security
network.
In
this regard it would make sense for more commitment from the continent’s
leaders to take the lead in fashioning a peacebuilding architecture that will
make Africa less prone to relapse into conflict.
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