PARTNER STATES’ EXPERTS MEETING TO CONSIDER AN EAC DRAFT CONFLICT PREVENTION, MANAGEMENT AND RESOLUTION (CPMR) FRAMEWORK

19th – 20th February, 2010

MPERIAL ROYALE HOTEL,KAMPALA,UGANDA

OPENING REMARKS BY HON. BEATRICE KIRASO,EAC DEPUTY SECRETARY GENERAL INCHARGE OF POLITICAL FEDERATION

Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to this very important meeting and to Kampala in general.  Thank you for accepting our invitation

As the integration process moves to implementation of the EAC Common Market on 1st July 2010. The Citizenery of East Africa have high expectations from its implementation and these which will free movement of persons; free movement of labour; the right of establishment; the right of residence; free movement of services; free movement of capital and protection of cross border investment. The other two pillars of the EAC roadmap towards full economic and political integration are the Monetary Union expected to be achieved in 2012 and ultimately the Political Federation.

The drive towards the achievment of these objectives of the EAC integration is not without challenges and therfore needs to be thought though with great caution, considering all key issues at stake.

The vision of Eac is to have a peaceful, stable and politically united East Africa.  Article 124 of the Treaty establishing the EAC articulates that peace and security are the pre-requisites to social and economic development within the Community and vital to the achievment of the objectives of the Community. Without peace and stability all our remarkable achievements in terms of regional integration will fall like a castel built on sand. Trade and development can only thrive in a secure and peaceful environment.

The larger East African region has been the theater of the worst conflict on the continent and continues to be plagued by social and political instability and conflict that has led to civil strife and war. Violent conflicts constitute one of the greatest challenges facing the region. Issues of governance, identity, extreme poverty, access to political power, use and allocation of resources have resulted in the displacement of thousands of people from their homes, loss of life, destruction of property and environmental degradation if not checked, tjhese would greatly undermined the progress of the EAC.

International and regional bodies have in the past decades been reactive rather than proactive in their approaches to escalating conflicts, holding discussions after the erruption of violence, and sending peacekeeping forces after much of the damage has been done.  Conflict management and resolution rather than conflict prevention. Large amounts of resources have been used for post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding and yet far fewer resources would have been required if early action had been taken.

The move towards conflict prevention has now become a key concept in diplomacy and international relations, as efforts are being made to improve conflict prevention mechanisms in order to avoid the persitence of violent and long-term conflicts. Together with local actors and governments, regional organizations and the UN are embracing preventive action as a viable path  toward sustainable peace.
The former Secretary Generals of the United Nations, both Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan repeatedly noted the centrality of conflict prevention in today’s security environment. And the former OAU SG, Salim Ahmed Salim, noted that the prime role of regional organizations is to divise regional solutions to regional problems, to take primary ownership of their own problems.

It has been argued that the first responsibility for mitigating conflicts in Africa lies with the Africans themselves and their collective organizations.

EAC as a regional organization, needs a distinct conflict prevention, management and resolution mechanism, to avoid responding to conflicts in an ad hoc manner, usualy only after conflicts have already erupted and on an individual approach basis. A case in point is the recent post-electoral violence in Kenya and the crisis around the Migingo Island between Kenya and Uganda, where EAC was not able to intervene as a regional organization because it didn’t have a legal and institutional framework enabling it to engage in those conflicts.

EAC needs a mechanism for conflict prevention, management and resolution, focusing on the region specific needs in terms of mediation and negotiation and on its comparative advantage of being close to the sources of conflict and sharing similar culture backgrounds.

Both the EAC Strategy for Peace and Security as well as the protocol requires us to establish mechanisms that will enable it to address violent conflicts in its region. This requires a more practical understanding of conflict prevention, a better understanding of root causes of conflicts and practical ways of addressing them. We need to put in place an EAC capacity to anticipate conflicts; we need to have a robust early warning mechanism to collect and analyze information as well as formulate anticipative actions. We need to have in place a mediation and negotiation capacity to forestall and diffuse conflicts before they become violent. Where we fail to prevent conflicts from escalating into open violence, we need to have the capacity to manage and resolve them, we need to have a force ready to intervene to mitigate the destruction effect of conflicts, to facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance, but also to create an environment for the normalization of the situation, the reconciliation, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction.  

What we are giving you is a working document to facilitate you, with your renowned knowledge and experience to come up with a draft mechanism that will give the EAC the tools for engaging in preventive diplomacy, conflict management and resolution as well as post-conflict reconstruction. The Framework will operationalize Goal 14 of the Regional Strategy on Peace and Security and Article 8 of the Protocol on Peace and Security.

We are aware of the responsibilty of the UN Security Council and that of the African Union but as a REC, which is part of the building blocs of the AU towards the achievement of the African Union, we have a duty towards the realization of peace, stability and prosperity on the continent. We also need to cooperate, coordinate and harmonize with other regional organizations and international for coherence and to avoid duplication.

The CPMR mechanism we want to establish is meant to have as its epicenter human security in the EAC region. As we shape strategies towards political federation, human security must be at the centre of our priorities. We must strive to make EAC region attractive to investment and a safe place for people to live in.

Looking at the high level of expertise in this workshop, I have no doubt that the result of this gathering would be an excellent product for the EAC.

I wish to underline that 2010 has been declared by AU Summit (July 2009 in Syrte), the Year of Peace and Security on the African Continent. Let us contribute to this noble objective by providing EAC with instruments and tools that will allow peace and stability to prevail in EAC region.

I wish you fruitfull deliberations.

Thank you.