By James Amoh Junior
Accra, Dec. 31, GNA – The United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) have strengthened partnership in Peace support Operations towards bolstering international and regional peace and security.
It is to enhance the effectiveness of joint efforts in addressing conflicts and promising stability across the African continent and beyond.
The partnership was reinforced at a high-level meeting hosted by Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Accra, Ghana.
The meeting was attended by top diplomats, UN and AU officials, Civil Society Organisations, and Peace Institutions, among others.
Over the last two decades, the character of conflicts has changed, which has necessitated African states, the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UN PKOs), Africa Union
Peace Support Operations (AU PSOs), and Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms (RECs/RMs) to adapt and collaborate more effectively to deal with emerging and existing threats.
This has resulted in new international interventions being deployed or authorised by the UN and the AU to protect displaced and often persecuted populations, and the state against aggressors.
Mr. David Haeri, Director, UN Division of Policy, Evaluation and Training Department of Peace Operation, speaking to the Ghana News Agency on how the AU, RECs, RMs and the UN could move towards a more holistic, effective and impactful partnership said, there was a great deal of important collaboration between the AU and the UN already particularly in joint operations in which the UN supports the AU.
He expressed hope of a more systematic partnership in the coming months and years.
Mr Haeri stated that there were discussions underway at New York to try to secure predictable sustainable financing from the UN Member States for AU Peace Support operations.
“Also, it is a reminder from those negotiations that the level of assessment and analysis of conflict, planning for what should happen, training of personnel, ensuring that human rights and other concerns, are well addressed.”
The Director at the UN Division of Policy, Evaluation and Training Department of Peace Operation assured that, “there is a lot of work that the two organisations and the secretariates continue to do together.”
“I believe that there is a strong basis; we’ve certainly had lessons sometimes it works better and sometimes it doesn’t,” he added.
He said,there was a strong basis of cooperation between the AU and UN with compatible normative framework, with experiences in building trainings together, and operations.
“It is an exciting time for UN and AU collaboration,” Mr Haeri said.
According to him, the question of how to help countries from conflict to peace was unique in each situation, the nature of the conflict and who was supporting the parties were key.
One of the challenges, he said was to ensure that at the international level, at the UN security Council level, and at the AU level, there was a clear common political consensus on where to go and how to go forward.
“If you don’t have that, success is quite difficult,” he emphasised.
He said there were some important lessons learnt from past operations in terms of how to do joint planning, comparative advantage like the AU had on how to act fast, and the UN with a built-up comparative advantage, bringing its development system to help with longer term peacebuilding.
“The main questions are, do we have a common political consensus to move forward with the two organisations taking the lead in what would inevitably be a difficult situation as success is not guaranteed,” he noted.
Prof. Mpho Gregory Molomo, Special Representative to the Chairperson of the The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and Head of SADC Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM), said as a mission, it strived to have a strong relationship with the AU, leading to resource support from the AU under the Africa Peace Facility’s Early Response Mechanism (ERM) of about 2.1 million dollars for capacity building and skills development.
He said there was the need to build synergies with the AU and other agencies to develop a robust system to ensure peace and security on the African continent.
Dr. Festus Aubyn, Regional Coordinator, Research and Capacity building, West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), said the trilateral relation between the UN, AU and the RECs had grown over the years despite some gaps in terms of how they had collaborated in the past in various conflict situations.
He said one of the key successes included the Lake Chad Basis, and that the multidimensional approach taken to deal with the Lake Chad Basins between the various UN agencies, the AU and the Lake Chad countries had led to considerable improvement to the situation especially with the implementation of the Regional Strategy for the Stabilisation Recovery and Resilience within the Lak Chad Basin.
GNA