By Ikugbadi Oluwasegun
Vice President Kashim Shettima has implored the African Union (AU) to reinvigorate diplomacy as the primary and most effective means of conflict resolution on the African continent.
He acknowledged the role played by the AU’s Peace Support Operations (PSOs), a unit designed to maintain, monitor, and build peace in Africa through peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions, observing, however, that the operation comes at a huge financial cost.
The Vice President, representing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, made the call during a meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council at the level of Heads of State and Government held on the margins of the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, United States.
Addressing the Council on behalf of President Tinubu, VP Shettima noted that with the current UN administration and growing interest by traditional partners in conflicts outside the African continent, it was becoming increasingly difficult for countries to shoulder the total cost of peace support operations on the continent.
The Vice President said this is the only way the continent’s peace support operations can leave behind resilient and self-sustaining peace infrastructure wherever they find themselves.
VP Shettima warned that external interference in crises on the African continent, including the presence of foreign military forces, mercenaries and defence contractors in some member states of the AU, negates the spirit of African common defence and security policy.
Maintaining that meddling in crises on the continent is contrary to the African Conflict Prevention and Resolution Initiatives, the Vice President called on the Council to consider adopting a communique to address the loopholes in conflict resolution.
Accordingly, VP Shettima urged the council to consider the call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of foreign forces from member countries.
He also told the Council, “To expeditiously address obstacles to the operationalisation of the African Standby Force as well as adopt a strategy for the deployment of the African Standby Force in situations of conflict on the continent, while noting that the council would be more successful if it regularly coordinates, consults and strategically engages similar structures or mechanisms of regional economic communities.
Earlier, Mr Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the African Union and Head of the United Nations Office to the African Union, who decried the surge in armed conflicts and dwindling funding for peace interventions on the continent, urged member countries to establish their own national peace-building and conflict prevention mechanisms.
