PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL ADVISER FOR UN SPECIAL INITIATIVE ON AFRICA

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL ADVISER FOR UN SPECIAL INITIATIVE ON AFRICA

Accountability, transparency and measures against corruption were the focus of the Second Africa Governance Forum, the Special Adviser for the United Nations Special Initiative on Africa, Trevor Gordon-Sommers, said this afternoon at a briefing to announce the holding of the Forum next week on 25 and 26 June in Accra, Ghana.

The Africa Forum Series brought together African Governments, civil society organizations, the United Nations system and the donor community, Mr. Gordon-Sommers said. The purpose of bringing those entities together is for consultations on how to develop good and effective governments in Africa. The series was spawned last year by the United Nations Special Initiative on Africa (UNSIA), which had mandated the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Economic Commission on Africa (ECA), to lead the process of governance.

The Forum series was to be an annual event, Mr. Gordon-Sommers said. It was a culmination of year-long processes within African countries, where consultations within a wide group of stake-holders examined various issues and reported annually. The rationale was that by creating better coordination and building better partnerships among Africans and with their external partners, the capacity for governance within African governments would be advanced. Many African governments made pronouncements about what they wanted to do, but many lacked the capacity to fulfil their intentions.

The meeting in Accra on 25 and 26 June will focus on accountability and transparency, he said. The theme was selected because the last meeting had shown the Forum to need a more focused agenda and because the issue of corruption was of uppermost concern for many African countries. Ten countries would be participating in the Forum. Many of those had undertaken integrity surveys and national accountability surveys to determine how the Governments performed in service delivery to the provinces and the districts, and how they interacted with civil society.

Ten civil society organizations will also participate in the meetings, he said, half of them gender focused. In addition, there will be 20 participants from the donor community and the United Nations system. The two- day meeting would have two parts. During the first day, the governments would make presentations and on the second day, the focus would be on how governance was advanced through a look at institutions, processes, and how civil society addressed the issues.

There is much optimism that the series on African governance will improve the understanding between Africa and its external partners, within African countries and with civil societies, he said. The series would also advance overall understanding about the goals and objectives of good governance. The series brought issues of human rights, democratization, civil society improvement, elections, economic management and a host of other activities into focus. This particular Forum will allow governments to look at their judiciary and parliamentary processes, and at their media, to see how all those processes contributed to holding governments responsible and creating better governments by holding them more accountable.

The particular form of government participation was an interesting feature of the Forum, Mr. Gordon-Sommers said. The United Republic of Tanzania, for example, which had appointed a Minister for Governance, will attend and participate by looking at its own processes and sharing its experiences. Uganda will be looking at its own integrity survey, Ghana at its accountability survey undertaken in some 20 districts, and Senegal will be looking at how it had used parliamentary and judiciary processes to enhance accountability.

At the end of the meeting, the Forum expected to begin consideration of the third Forum, to be held in 1999, which will have the theme of conflict, conflict management and governance, Mr. Gordon-Sommers said. The lead for that issue was derived to a great extent from the Secretary-General's recent report to the Security Council, which had examined the antecedents and the reasons for conflict (A/52/871-S/1998/318).

At the conclusion of Mr. Gordon-Sommers' announcement of the Forum, the United Nations Spokesman asked for the name of a Secretariat liaison who could answer emerging questions from members of the press. Mr. Gordon-Sommers said he would provide a Secretariat contact name. Information was also available from those on the UNDP media advisory note. In addition, all the associated literature would become available on the UNDP and the UNSIA home page within a month, including the concept paper, the country reports and the proceedings of the meeting.

One journalist asked why representation of African countries was so minimal at the Forum, with just 10 countries out of 54 participating. Mr. Gordon-Sommers said there was a practical consideration in that an effective meeting yielding positive discussion and results could not be managed with too great a number of countries. For the first forum, 14 countries were invited. For the second, 16 were invited. Only 10 countries who agreed to participate could verify that they had gone through a national consultation process and were willing to present a national paper. The organization was guided by what the African governments themselves wanted to do.

UNSIA Briefing - 3 - 19 June 1998

Another correspondent said that stamping out corruption would be a big objective of the meeting. Had the participating governments indicated what they would do to stamp out corruption in their governments and countries?

The meeting would contribute to addressing the issues of corruption, Mr. Gordon-Sommers said. It was not expected that a single meeting would necessarily stamp out corruption. Most countries that had come forward and undertaken accountability and integrity surveys were focusing on the issue of corruption. For example, the Ministry for governance in the United Republic of Tanzania worked through permanent commissions of inquiry, ethics and leadership commissions and anti-corruption commissions. All those were, in one way or other, addressing the issue.

For example, Mr. Gordon-Sommers said, he had attended a meeting in Maputo last year, organized by the Global Coalition for Africa, which was very much in the lead for addressing those issues. From the podium one of the co- chairs congratulated African governments for the efforts they were making to address the corruption issue. At the same time, it was recognized that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) had recently adopted an agreed policy, yet to be translated into legislation, to hold their nationals responsible if they were involved in corruption in other countries. So there was an increasing culture that recognized the fact that in the absence of openness and transparency, development was unlikely to yield the expected results.

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