Africa Union Also Talks in Two Tongues!

One legacy that the African Union has taken over from OAU and has difficulty disowning, is the habit of paying lip-service to politically correct declarations, conventions, treaties, protocols and the like. The AU also talks in two tongues! At its recent summit in Addis, the AU agreed to join the World Bank to promote innovative approaches to achieving long lasting peace, economic development, and security in conflict-affected countries through the African Year of Peace and Security and the World Development Report 2011 on conflict, security and development.

At a joint panel discussion during the 14^th  AU Summit in Addis Ababa on ‘Securing Development – Regional Initiatives in the 21st Century’, World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick and Jean Ping, Chairperson of the African Union Commission, were joined on February 2, 2010 by Surin Pitsuwan (Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and Donald Kaberuka (President of the African Development Bank) to discuss past lessons and future opportunities for regional initiatives to address conflict. A second event on today focuses on the World Development Report’s main themes.

Chairperson Ping declared that “addressing the challenges of peace and security in the continent requires African leadership, because without such leadership, there will be no ownership and sustainability; because we understand the problems far better than those who come from far away; because we know which solutions will work, and how we can get there; and because, fundamentally, these problems are ours, and we will live with their consequences”.

“We recognise the pioneering role African regional organisations have played in managing conflict across the continent and we can learn from them. Events like these are unique opportunities to exchange experience and ideas on practical ways in which economic initiatives can better support regional peace and security,” says World Bank President B. Robert Zoellick.

AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ramtane Lamamra, participated in the meeting of the Advisory Council of the World Development Report, which took place at the AU Headquarters on February 3^rd, addressing himself to a number of themes of the WDR, including the interrelated issues of managing difficult reforms in transitions and cross-border and regional initiatives.

The AU’s and World Bank’s initiatives have the common goal of building momentum for peace and security efforts in Africa and around the world. While the World Development Report 2011 is an in-depth research project, it also hopes to make practical suggestions for improved peace-building. The African Year of Peace and Security aims at putting together a broad range of policy and outreach initiatives that will kick off new peace efforts and could generate effective results and an enabling political and social environment beyond 2010.

The African Heads of State and Government of the African Union, at their special session held in Tripoli, Libya, on 31st August 2009, declared 2010 to be the Year of Peace and Security in Africa. Through a variety of continent-wide activities the AU hopes to increase visibility of African initiatives that will promote capacity for peace-building. The overarching message for all the activities that will be carried out and the advocacy programme is, “Make Peace Happen”, a message that highlights the need to mobilize all stakeholders for them to take ownership of this initiative and commit to actions that will make possible the achievement of peace.

But the declaration made by 14^th AU Summit asking for amendment of the Rome Statute on the role and powers of the International Criminal Court, ICC, suggests that African leaders do not want to take the bull by the horns. They do not want leaders responsible for most of Africa’s conflicts and their genocide consequences to be made to pay for it. That declaration proposes that the ICC puts on hold its attempt to get Sudanese president, el-Bashir to the docks for various crimes committed in the South Western province of Darfur. This makes us take it, like its predecessor organization the Organization of African Unity, OAU, the AU commission, authority, or whatever one chooses to call it, is basically an old-boy network of heads of African states and government seeking to perpetuate themselves in power in their respective countries. Last year’s decision to arrest and put on trial in The Hague, the first for a sitting leader, has sent terrible shudders down the spine of most African leaders. Of the fifty-three member states of the AU only 23 have yet to ratify the Rome Statutes on the ICC, and that number is unlikely to increase soon. Many of the states already in must be biting fingers in regret and watching out for the exit gate.

What they fear is a system of universal justice that strips them of that mania of impunity that is endemic to African despotism. Even South Africa, a country only recently emerging from decades of racist rule, appears to be forgetting the plight of millions of Black African civilians being killed, raped and robbed of their properties by Arab-supremacist gangs. The protestations of the Kenyan Foreign Minister, whose anti-ICC sentiments were well published at the end of the summit, can well be understood by all given the threat faced by a whole generation of Kenyan politicians who, just to maintain their grip on power, turned the December 2007 elections into a civil war between communities, ethnic groups and militias. But the old-boy solidarity with the African ruling classes know no borders, they transcend them. It is perhaps such a sentiment that spurred Ghanaian president, Mr. Mills, into accepting the settlement package worked out for him and Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh over the killing of scores of Ghanaians in The Gambia in July 2005. So we cannot but take, AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ramtane Lamamra’s talk of peace with a pinch of salt. The Kenyan minister said that the ICC has only being running after Africans and not others. He added that the situation in Sudan can be handled by Africans themselves and that there was no need for what he called outside interference. Let him go tell that to the thousands of victims of the December 2007 killings cheered on by the Kenyan ruling elite. We applaud Friday’s decision to add up the charges against the fugitive Sudanese leader with that of genocide. And again we say long live the ICC.