SECRETARY-GENERAL STRESSES HISTORY OF COOPERATION BETWEEN UN, OAU IN MESSAGE TO LONDON 'AFRICA DAY' CONFERENCE
Press Release
SG/SM/7005
AFR/145
SECRETARY-GENERAL STRESSES HISTORY OF COOPERATION BETWEEN UN, OAU IN MESSAGE TO LONDON 'AFRICA DAY' CONFERENCE
19990526 Following is the text of the message of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the Organization of African Unity (OAU) "Africa Day" Conference, delivered on his behalf by Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast in London on 26 May:It gives me great pleasure to convey my best wishes to all who have gathered in London for this important event, which aims to infuse the cause of African peace and development with new energy and new promise.
The United Nations and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) have a long and productive history of joint endeavour: as champions of African rights and self-sufficiency; as partners in the struggle for decolonization and against apartheid; and as supporters of Africa's efforts to improve both its economic prospects and its political fortunes.
Today, our work is being carried out in a climate that is simultaneously new and old. New, because of rapid technological change and the globalization of trade, investment and financial markets. This is not to imply that the experience with globalization has been universally positive; we need only to look at the consequences of the crisis in Asia to know how quickly opportunity can turn to disaster. But, dramatic progress continues to be achieved as a result of globalization, and Africa can and must be an even greater part of this phenomenon.
Our era is also new because of Africa itself. Throughout the 1990s, political systems in all regions have opened up. Civil society groups are becoming increasingly numerous and robust, helping people participate more deeply in the decisions that affect their lives. Democracy, good governance, transparency, accountability and the rule of law are recognized as the basis for functioning societies -- and, not least, as the way to attract investment, domestic and foreign.
African economies are undergoing a similar transformation, with a majority beginning to reverse the years of stagnation and decline. Many nations are privatizing moribund State industries. They are strengthening financial markets,
reforming institutional frameworks, beefing up communications infrastructures, and developing the business sector. Much of this, it should be stressed, is being done at considerable hardship and sacrifice, at least in the short-term, for the average African man and woman.
If these are the new and unprecedented challenges of our times, it is also true that at the close of the twentieth century, Africa remains plagued by a range of old and all-too-familiar problems.
Poverty and underdevelopment continue to work in vicious tandem, with absolute poverty the lot of nearly five of every 10 Africans. In recent years, even though economic growth out-paced population growth, and occurred amid declining momentum in global growth, it was not enough to have a significant impact on poverty. The HIV/AIDS epidemic kills more than 5,000 people each and every day. And basic needs for food, education and health lose out to debt payments and undue military spending.
Conflicts have only exacerbated these problems and placed many of Africa's gains in jeopardy. One despairs when Africa is portrayed, wrongly, as a continent of perpetual conflict and instability. But one despairs even more to see the fighting and instability going on today in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Angola, Somalia and the Sudan, in the Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone, between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and in Congo-Brazzaville, a conflict that has gone almost unnoticed by the world.
This is a painful litany. Africa needs peace. Most of all, Africa's poor need peace. In the report I submitted to the Security Council last year on "the causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa", I underlined the reality that efforts to secure peace must be combined with steps towards ending Africa's poverty.
Towards that end, I called for the promotion of investment and economic growth; for opening international markets to Africa's products; and for debt relief, relief that is not at the expense of official development assistance (ODA). Let there be no doubt: the decline in ODA must be reversed. In fact, it must also be increased significantly. We must reward those countries which are on the verge of reaping the fruits of painful adjustment. Moreover, we must find ways of ensuring that ODA complements private investment, foreign and domestic.
At the same time, we all know that private investors -- not the most far-sighted multinational corporation, nor the most patriotic African -- are not going to risk their hard-won capital in insecure neighbourhoods. So the challenge is great indeed. But it can be met successfully, if it is met
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comprehensively. It requires the political will, specifically, to solve conflicts by political and not military means; to take good governance seriously; and to promote economic growth, social justice and human rights.
The United Nations and the OAU are working closely together in pursuit of each of these goals.
Our cooperation has been broadened and strengthened following the creation, in 1993, of the OAU Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution. Two years ago, Secretary-General Salim Salim and I agreed to meet twice a year, along with our senior advisers, to discuss priority issues of common concern and to coordinate initiatives. Such meetings have been taking place immediately following the OAU Summits and during the General Assembly. A number of concrete follow-up steps have already been taken. In May 1998, a United Nations Liaison Office with the OAU was established in Addis Ababa. The appointment of a joint United Nations/OAU Special Representative for the Great Lakes Region during 1997 was another innovation. I look forward to building on these and other steps.
The OAU and the United Nations are also partners on the economic and humanitarian fronts. The New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s, and its implementing arms, the United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa, launched three years ago, are essential ingredients in our efforts to take advantage of the significant economic progress made in recent years by many African countries.
Other initiatives -- such as the Second Tokyo International Conference for African Development, the Swedish Partnership with Africa, the Cologne debt proposal and other G-7 proposals on debt, the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act currently before the United States Congress, and the United Kingdom's new development cooperation policy -- all of these demonstrate the ongoing international solidarity with Africa.
In Africa, as everywhere, it is the peoples and leaders themselves who must make the critical choices.
Just three days from now, one African nation will celebrate a series of choices -- for democracy and the rule of law -- that have made its prospects brighter than they have been for many years. I am speaking, of course, about Nigeria, where the elected President, Olusegun Obasanjo, will succeed General Abubakar. I was privileged to assist Nigeria in this process, and the United Nations will remain actively engaged in assisting its successful consolidation. What Nigeria's most recent history shows -- and what South Africa has been showing us since the end of apartheid -- is that sound and sober leadership can transform a nation's prospects. It shows that Africa can turn over a new leaf.
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In an era of fundamental change in Africa and the world, it is time to seize the moment and bring about the Africa that Africans deserve. It is time to transform not only Africa's image, but also its reality. It is time for Africans to begin to reap the benefits of their sacrifice, and to move from the fragile recovery of today to a more solid foundation for tomorrow. The OAU and the United Nations can work even closer on the double challenge of peace and development, and I look forward to exploring what more we can do. In that spirit, please accept my best wishes for the success of this important conference.
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