The Globe and Mail, Oct. 7, 2003

Give them the tools
By Mohamed Sahnoun
Special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
on developments in the Horn of Africa region

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has witnessed a significant increase in internal conflicts in Africa, and elsewhere. It's crucial to understand their fundamental causes, and to see how regional organizations and local civil society can play significant parts in conflict-management and peace building.

Most analysts agree on the causes of conflict. Simple insecurity is the single most common one - when individuals and communities sense they are about to be excluded, from power, from jobs, from resources, and feel threatened by starvation and total annihilation. These feelings of exclusion are often triggered by environmental degradation (drought, famine, crop failure, soil exhaustion); systemic underdevelopment; and a history of bad governance - by which I'm speaking not only of corrupt regimes currently in power, but also the legacies of colonial divide-and-rule practices and the Cold War superpowers' support of loyal dictatorships.

Effective humanitarian intervention starts with making the right diagnosis through adequate early warning systems, and determining in which direction such intervention must be concentrated. Preventing crises from deepening before they cost more lives and leave more bitter memories, would make the follow-up phases of peacekeeping, peace building and reconstruction much easier. And in this, it's crucial that the local population understand what's being done and why.

In the past, the sacrosanct principle of sovereignty was often used to oppose any attempt from multilateral and regional institutions to deal with internal crises - recall the West's foot-dragging in the early days of the Rwanda massacres - even when these crises could threaten peace and security in a whole region.

The Cold War protagonists were particularly unhelpful. Convinced by the domino theory that if one country slipped from their influence, others would soon topple, they covered for incompetent dictators who served their cold-war strategy and showed no interest in promoting the role of the regional organizations. Indeed, civil society - by which I mean everything from social justice faith communities to tribal councils - made them suspicious.

The end of the Cold War brought changes and new challenges in the field of global governance, regional co-operation and civil society activity. We entered a new era in mediation, peace making, peacekeeping deployment, peace building and reconstruction. Yet we are now in danger of losing sight of these achievements in multilateralism, while the United States' attempts at nation building in Iraq have raised fresh debates about the proper conditions for humanitarian intervention.

Canada has played a special role in supporting research and discussion on these important issues. One of its many contributions has been its support of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which attempted to outline those instances in which an incipient humanitarian crisis, such as an outbreak of ethnic cleansing, might require intervention from the UN or other multilateral institutions such as NATO. In its concluding report this summer, the commission underlined that the process of checking humanitarian tragedies should be reframed not as an argument about the "right to intervene" but about the "responsibility to protect."

I submit that the best institutions to assume such a "responsibility to protect" when governments themselves fail to do so, are those institutions closest to the affected areas. They are the ones best able to understand the people and cultures involved. Ideally, the UN and multilateral organizations should seek out these regional and sub-regional organizations, as well as the local civil society groups, to co-operate with. Decentralizing and empowering should become the accepted principles for a new dynamic approach to conflict prevention, conflict resolution and peace building. The idea is to bring the conflict management process as close to the people as possible.

In recent years, African leaders have shown a new determination to contribute to the peaceful and speedy resolution of internal conflicts. They've established various commissions and mechanisms on conflict prevention and management; they are working with civil society groups on such issues as governance, human rights, and HIV/AIDS. The African Union and sub-regional organizations in several African countries are also showing a new effectiveness. The relative stabilization of the situation in Liberia, for example, is largely the result of intervention by Ecowas (the Economic Community of West African States), a regional organization. Ecowas could have done even more had it been given the necessary mandate and support from members of the international community.

Civil society is often a crucial element of the resolution of these conflicts, yet little is known about its role. Having dealt myself with conflicts in the African Great Lakes region, Somalia, the Ethiopian-Eritrean dispute and now in Sudan, I can testify how helpful it is to be able to rely on local non-governmental organizations, and on traditional mechanisms such as community elders. Yet little is being done to enhance these institutions in terms of their resources and management capacity.

Those that are dependent on international funding for both equipment and operation need more resources if they are to play a more useful role as an early warning system for famines, droughts and looming civil wars. They'll need more expertise and training if they are to analyze early warning signals and plan timely responses.

A close co-operation between the UN, multilateral agencies, regional organizations and civil society groups, with support from the donor countries, would mean a better performance in checking humanitarian tragedies, in making and keeping peace in Africa and other developing countries, as well as giving root to good governance. In the end, both politically and financially, it would cost all of us a lot less.

Mohamed Sahnoun is a former Algerian diplomat. Mr. Sahnoun served as Ambassador to France, Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, Deputy Secretary-General of the Arab League for Arab-African dialogue and Deputy Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity in charge of political affairs. Mr. Sahnoun is special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and Member of the UPEACE (University for Peace) Council.

University for Peace: http://www.upeace.org/