Address to the 2nd Ministerial meeting of the Nairobi Secretariat on Small Arms in the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa Nairobi, 21 April 2004

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Abdel-Rahman Ghandour, Special Assistant of the Special Representative of the United Nations for the Great Lakes region (SRSG/GLR)

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Let me first apologise on behalf of Mr. Fall, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for the Great Lakes region (SRSG/GLR), who could not be here with you today, as he had to go on mission in the region. He nevertheless attended yesterdays’ proceedings and is very encouraged by the significant strides the members of the region and the Nairobi Secretariat on Small Arms have made in their efforts to set tools for the prevention, control and reduction of the use of illegal weapons in the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa. The signing of this Nairobi Protocol on the “Prevention, Control and Reduction of Small Arms and Light Weapons in the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa” is indeed a significant landmark in the promotion of Peace, Security and Development in these two regions.

Our thanks go to the government of Kenya and to the Nairobi Secretariat for organising this Conference and inviting the Office of the SRSG for the GLR to address the participants.

The Office of the SRSG/GLR is particularly pleased to attend this important Conference as it has important links with he International Conference on Peace, Security, Democracy and Development for the Great Lakes region it is preparing, in conjunction with the African Union. Indeed, the issue of Illicit Small Arms and the negative impact their use and proliferation have in the Great Lakes region could well be one of the main sub-themes of the peace and Security cluster of the IC/GLR.

Background and objectives of the International Conference on Peace, Security, Democracy and Development for the Great Lakes region

The organisation of an international conference on the Great Lakes Region has been a recurrent idea since at least the early 1990s, and particularly since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1291 of 24 February 2000 and 1304 of 16 June 2000 both determined that the security situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) constituted a threat to international peace and security. The Security Council further affirmed, in the two above-mentioned resolutions as well as in all relevant subsequent ones, the need for an international conference on peace, security, democracy and development in the Great Lakes region to be organised at the appropriate time under the auspices of the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity (now African Union), with the participation of all governments of the region and all others concerned.

The call for an international conference implies the recognition of three crucial issues regarding the situation in the region. First is the recognition that the current conflict in the DRC has regional dimensions; second is the fact that the people of the Great Lakes Region are so interlinked ethnically, culturally and linguistically that the instability initially generated by purely internal causes in each country quickly spreads to generate and maintain the dynamic of conflict in the entire region; and third is the need to seek, within a regional framework, solutions to the conflict and instability endemic to the constituent states. The call for an international conference on the Great Lakes, as directed in Resolutions 1291 and 1304, thus constitutes a significant progress in the appreciation of the region's problems by the international community and a consolidated attempt to support the region to initiate a process for a peaceful resolution of the challenges raised by these three issues.

The purpose of the International Conference is to initiate a process that will bring together the leaders of the countries of the Great Lakes Region to reach an agreement on a set of principles, and articulate and launch programmes of action with a view to ending the cycle of crises, and ensure durable peace, security, democracy and development in the region, through a Peace, Stability and Development Pact. The process will be designed to be as inclusive as possible and efforts will be made to involve other stakeholders, including civil society and international partners. The Conference will be organized in a way that would reflect a consolidated support from the international community in the regional search for peace, stability and development.

The themes

The broad themes of the Conference are: Peace and Security; Democracy and Good Governance; Development and Economic Integration. To those, a fourth cluster has been added at the request of the governments of the region: Social and Humanitarian Issues. Each of these themes is coordinated by a lead UN agency: the Office of the SRSG/GLR for Peace and Security; the UN Development programme for Democracy and Good Governance; the UN Economic Council for Africa for Economic Development and Regional Integration and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Social and Humanitarian issues.

Ownership and partnership : the two pillars of the IC/GLR

The Conference is based on two pillars: ownership and partnership. Ownership by the region, who is the sole decision-maker of the process. The coordination role of the African Union, in partnership with the United Nations, should therefore be underlined; partnership with the international community, who will play an active role in providing support to the process. For that purpose, a Group of Friends of the Great Lakes region, co-chaired by Canada and the Netherlands, was established to provide this political, financial and technical support to the Conference.

Membership

The original core members of the International Conference were: Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda. Zambia has lately been added to the core countries n recognition of the important diplomatic role it has had in promoting peace in the region. It is worth noting that other countries are now knocking at the door for full membership in the Conference, namely: Angola, The Republic of Congo, The Central African Republic and Sudan. This issue remains unresolved and diplomatic efforts are currently underway to find a solution to the question of new members.

The Process and timetable

The International Conference, which is a process, not an event, has three phases: the preparatory phase; the Summits; the post-summit implementation phase.

The preparatory phase started in June 2004 with the first meeting of the National Coordinators of the 6 core countries of the Conference. It will go on until the first Summit of November 2004 in Tanzania. The purpose of the preparatory phase is for the core countries of the region to establish National Preparatory Committees and prepare and articulate at national, then regional level, the priority themes of the Conference.

In addition to the three regional preparatory meetings of the NPCs, there will be regional meetings of other important stakeholders in the region; women, youth, “Civil Society”, faith-based organisations, parliamentarians, Trade Unions… each of these “interest groups” will identify their own priorities for the Conference and pass on a series of recommendations, through position papers, to be addressed in the Summits.

This preparatory expert phase will be followed by the political preparatory phase, during which inter- ministerial committees, upon instructions from the first summit of heads of State to be held in November 2004 in Tanzania, will translate the experts’ ideas and proposals into targets in the areas of policy, strategies, programmes and projects. The second summit of Heads of State, planned to be held in Kenya in June 2005, could adopt a Security, Stability and Regional Development pact, comprising the declaration of principle and programmes of action.

The third phase, perhaps the most important, will look at transforming the decisions of the second summit into policy and actions that will restore lasting peace and bring back sustainable development in the Great Lakes region.

Commitment

As you can see, the IC/GLR is an ambitious process which aims to analyse the root causes of conflict in the Great Lakes region and tackle all the endemic problems of the region to try to restore Peace and Development the area. It is therefore essential that all the countries of the region, which you represent, bar Zambia, who is not yet a member of your organisation, support this important process wholeheartedly. It is also essential that the international community throw its full weight in the process to render it a success. It is only with the determined support of both the region and the international community that we will be able to succeed.

Cooperation

Indeed, tackling such critical issues as the illicit use and proliferation of Small Arms in the Great Lakes region is essential to transforming the mentality of the region from one of conflict and confrontation to one of peace and cooperation. We are looking forward to working closely in the next few months with the Nairobi Secretariat on Small Arms in order to articulate and integrate this important theme in the Peace and Security cluster of the IC/GLR Let me conclude by congratulating you once again, on behalf of SRSG Ibrahima Fall, for your strong commitment to bring back Peace and Security in the region and for the signing of this important protocol. Its substance will serve greatly in addressing, in the framework of the International Conference, the sensitive and problematic issue of light weapons in the Great Lakes region.

Thank you