Seven years ago, amid extravagant celebrations marking the African Union’s (AU) 50th anniversary, the continent’s heads of state said that they would “end all wars in Africa by 2020.”
However, as leaders travel to Addis Ababa this weekend for the latest summit of the 55-member bloc — organized under the theme “Silencing the Guns” — there is little question they are doomed to fall well short of their goal.
Some success has been achieved in Central African Republic and Sudan, but long-running conflicts in places like Libya and South Sudan have been joined by new crises from the fringe of the Sahara to Mozambique.
In remarks on Thursday to AU foreign ministers, AU Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat painted a bleak picture of the continent’s security situation, citing threats stretching from the Sahel to Somalia.
The “missed deadline” to silence the guns “reveals the complexity of the security situation in Africa,” Mahamat said.
In an op-ed this week in South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper, Solomon Dersso, head of the AU’s human rights body, was blunter, saying the current level of insecurity “seems to make a mockery of the theme of the year.”
Two days of talks are to begin tomorrow.
As they grapple with their failure to foster peace, African leaders have struggled to convince world bodies such as the UN to take them seriously — for example as they seek a more prominent role in Libya.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is to take over from Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi as AU chair on Monday, appears well aware of these challenges.
In a speech to South Africa-based diplomats last week, Ramaphosa warned that conflict “continues to hamper” development.
South Africa’s goals of advancing economic integration and curbing violence against women “must be underpinned by the promotion of a peaceful and secure Africa,” he said.
Diplomats say that Ramaphosa would do best to tackle the economic and political root causes of violence.
“Silencing the guns of course is the mother of all themes,” Egyptian Ambassador to the AU Osama Abdelkhalek told reporters. “If you want to address it, you’re speaking about the grass-roots socioeconomic challenges, about political challenges, in addition to security challenges.”
Ramaphosa has said Libya — mired in chaos since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that killed former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi — will be a key focus during his time in the chair.
Ahead of a peace conference in Berlin last month, a spokeswoman for Faki said that the AU “has consistently been ignored” in Libya-related peace processes, led primarily by the UN.
However, the AU’s attempts to assert itself have also been undermined by internal divisions.
These date back to 2011, when African members of the UN Security Council endorsed military intervention, even as the AU’s Peace and Security Council opposed it.
A Nigerien source said that the AU remains divided on Libya, claiming that Egypt, for example, does not want the AU to get involved.
Abdelkhalek disputed this, saying that Egypt above all wanted “a Libyan-led political process,” but stressing that “the international community must fulfill its mandate.”
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