SECRETARY-GENERAL REPORTS TO SECURITY COUNCIL MINISTERIAL MEETING ON FOLLOW UP ACTION ON SITUATION IN AFRICA
Press Release
SG/SM/6716
SC/6579
SECRETARY-GENERAL REPORTS TO SECURITY COUNCIL MINISTERIAL MEETING ON FOLLOW UP ACTION ON SITUATION IN AFRICA
19980924 Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's address to the Second Security Council Ministerial Meeting on the Situation in Africa:It is with great pleasure that I join you for this Second Ministerial Meeting of the Security Council on the situation in Africa. Our meeting is the fruit of your determination to make a difference for peace and for prosperity in Africa. It is an expression of the political will that I called for in my report last April -- the political will which is the condition for any success that our endeavours may meet in Africa, as everywhere.
Throughout the last six months, and most recently at the Non-Aligned Movement Summit, African leaders have pledged to help implement the report's recommendations. Just as important, ordinary men and women in every part of Africa heard their United Nations speak in a voice that recognized the realities they face, day in and day out. Let us never forget that it is for them -- the peoples of Africa -- that our ideas must matter, and make a difference.
The report aimed to contribute to Africa's progress in two distinct, but related ways: first, by paying the peoples of Africa the tribute of truth -- by honestly and candidly reporting to the world their challenges and their aspirations; second, from here on, by proposing realistic and achievable recommendations for how those challenges may be met.
I am therefore very pleased to witness the serious and constructive manner in which the Council, through its Ad hoc Working Group -- has begun to address the report's recommendations. We have had a good start.
Following the submission of the report in April, you asked the Secretariat to provide ideas for practical actions that could be taken by the Secretariat and by United Nations agencies.
I can report today that the United Nations Secretariat is vigorously working on follow-up activities to the report, and that I have asked the Deputy Secretary-General to monitor its implementation. Even before this plan is finalized, however, we have begun our work.
In July, we convened two international conferences -- one on Guinea and the other on Sierra Leone -- to focus international attention on the efforts of those two countries to restore and strengthen peace and stability, and to help them do so. We have also provided the Council with specific proposals for the establishment of an international mechanism to assist host governments in maintaining the security and neutrality of refugee camps. And we have begun discussions on the need to stem illicit arms flows to and in Africa.
The Council, for its part, has showed its commitment to the aims of the report -- and to lasting peace in Africa. First, by setting up active working groups and adopting very important resolutions on recommendations of the report. Second, by authorizing new peacekeeping operations, in the Central African Republic and in Sierra Leone.
I am also pleased to note that the General Assembly will be considering my report in October, and look forward to the conclusions of Administrative Committee on Coordination's (ACC) fall session devoted mainly to the inter-agency aspects of the report.
In the report, I emphasized that any and all efforts at securing peace had to be combined with steps towards ending Africa's poverty. Specifically, I called for the promotion of investments and economic growth, of ensuring adequate levels of international aid, of reducing debt burdens and opening international markets to Africa's products. These are aims on which we all can agree; we can also all agree that they are far from being met.
Yesterday, I convened an informal meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Development Assistance Committee countries to highlight five priority areas in meeting Africa's economic challenges. Those are, first, the need to increase the volume and improve the quality of official development assistance (ODA); second, to consider converting all remaining official bilateral debt owed by the poorest African countries into grants; third, to liberalize access to the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative; fourth, to ease access conditions for African exports; and fifth, to encourage investments in Africa, which has largely been marginalized in the process of globalization.
I am pleased to say that all the governments represented reaffirmed their support for the recommendations in the report, and, in particular, for the five priority areas I have just indicated.
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At the same time, they stressed the need, on the part of African states, to create an enabling environment for investment and economic growth. There must be reciprocity. No one can be expected to invest in unstable or insecure neighbourhoods.
If we now recognize that peace and prosperity must be sought as one, with equal priority and equal persistence, then we must also understand the broader nature of human security we seek. That is why the United Nations increasingly is taking a comprehensive, holistic approach to all our peace-keeping and peace-building activities. We have learned that electoral assistance must be part of democracy-building; that securing human rights will ensure genuine political liberty; that political development must be integral to economic development; and we are applying these lessons everyday.
There have recently been positive developments in a number of African countries seeking to escape conflict or to make the transition from dictatorship to democracy. In this regard, I would like to express my hope that the leadership of Nigeria will continue on the path to good governance and the rule of law -- strengthening democratic institutions and organizing free and fair elections in February leading to the handover to civilian rule by the end of May 1999.
Regrettably, however, this move away from the rule of the gun has seemed the exception rather than the rule in recent months. Indeed, in the six months that have passed since I presented the report, we have witnessed fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Guinea-Bissau, in Angola and in Sierra Leone, while humanitarian crises in Somalia and the Sudan seem only to grow with every passing day.
The United Nations, in partnership with the Organization of African Unity (OAU), is actively involved in seeking an end to every one of these crises and to alleviate the suffering borne by innocent civilians. But, in a larger sense, we can only appeal to the wisdom and the responsibility of leaders to put the interests of their own people first.
Without the determination of the parties themselves to reach political accommodation, there is little we can do except offer the band-aid of humanitarian assistance, often with great difficulties and with great risks. We are in no position to impose peace that the peoples so fervently desire and so richly deserve.
What will it take for Africa's leaders finally to reject military solutions to political challenges? When will the realization arrive that not one -- not a single one -- of these conflicts can end in the absence of compromise, tolerance and the peaceful solution of disputes? When will the
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time come when we all can say that we did our best for Africa -- that its leaders came together and resolved peacefully their differences, and that we in the international community finally did our part to help secure durable peace and ensure lasting development?
Allow me to suggest that they -- and we -- look to Nelson Mandela; that they -- and we -- listen to the final words of the final United Nations address of his Presidency; and that they -- and we -- show ourselves worthy of his great hope for the continent of Africa:
"We hope that there [will] emerge a cadre of leaders ... which will not allow that any should be denied their freedom -- as we were; that any should be turned into refugees -- as we were; that any should be condemned to go hungry -- as we were; that any should be stripped of their human dignity -- as we were."
Against all odds, President Mandela achieved his aim for his nation and for his people. Let that achievement be a source of inspiration for all of us.
Thank you very much.
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