Date: 10/09/2010
Source: The Office of Thabo Mbeki
Title: SA: Mbeki: Address by former President of South Africa, at the Global Policy Forum, on Africa and regional security, Yaroslvl, Russia

I believe that it is a matter of common cause that security is a public good. Thus it is a peremptory obligation of the state to ensure the safety and security of the citizen.

It should therefore follow that international peace and security is equally a global public good.

The Charter of the United Nations confirmed this proposition when it said "we, the peoples of the United Nations are determined...to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security..."

International law devolves the obligation to the United Nations Security Council to act on behalf of all states to secure this public good by assuming the "primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security" to use the words of the UN Charter.

However, and in addition, Chapter VIII of the Charter permits of "regional arrangements or agencies (to deal) with such matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security...provided that such arrangements or agencies and their actions are consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations."

It may be that in the past the assumption was made that the provisions contained in the Charter provided an adequate body of international law to enable the timely and appropriate provision of the global public good of international peace and security.

I would like to argue that to the contrary, African experience since 1994 has shown in a way that has been very costly in terms of human lives that there is an urgent need seriously to examine the efficacy of extant international law as it relates to the provision of the public good of international peace and security.

That African experience includes the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994 when the Security Council, the principal legal guarantor of international peace and security, failed to intervene to stop a criminal slaughter which ended up claiming a million lives in ninety days.

It includes a similar failure to intervene in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo later in the 1990s, which resulted in an estimated three to five million lives lost directly from and as a consequence of the conflict.

Currently, beyond supporting the AU Mission to Somalia, the United Nations is refusing to intervene to end the anarchy that reigns in Somalia, which derives from the fact that here we have an example of a failed state, which, among other things, has led to piracy in the high seas and the establishment of a jihadist base which further escalates the threat of international terrorism.

Again in 2003 the United Nations declined from deploying UN forces to support the Burundi peace process. This process might very well have collapsed, leading to the further loss of lives, if the African Union had not intervened and assumed this responsibility, with no UN support whatsoever.

Given this history, which demonstrates the repeated failure of the Security Council to discharge its responsibility to maintain or restore international peace and security, the conclusion must follow that we lack sufficiently strong provisions in international law obliging the Security Council to respect the directives contained in the UN Charter.

Alternatively, the proposition should be considered whether the composition and functioning of the Security Council do not lend themselves to the abuse of power, militating against the disinterested implementation of legal international obligations by the Council members, in favour of a decision-making process that is informed by the pursuit of the perceived national interests of the member states of the Council.

The argument could be advanced that given the provisions of the UN Charter to which we have referred, regional agencies, such as the African Union, could intervene to counter-balance the inactivity of the Security Council.

The reality, however, is that this is by and large only of theoretical validity, essentially because of the problem of resource constraints. This is certainly the challenge that faces the African Union, as it might confront other regions of the South if they had to deal with equivalent situations of conflict.

The 2008 "Report of the African Union - United Nations Panel on Modalities for Support to African Union Peacekeeping Operations", which was chaired by Romano Prodi, made important observations in this regard, including the fact that Africa absorbed nearly 75 percent of UN peacekeepers worldwide.

It said: "There is a need to reaffirm the collective responsibility for global peace and security in order to reflect changes that have taken place in recent years...There is a growing anomalous and undesirable trend in which organisations lacking the necessary capabilities have been left to bear the brunt in terms of providing the international community's initial response, while others more capable have not engaged. This inversion of responsibility is generating a trend of benign neglect in which interests rather than capabilities prevail."

It went further to say: "The complexity (of recent and ongoing conflicts in which Africa has intervened to resolve)...creates demands that are out of all proportion to the availability of resources to address them."

The Report also made the additional and correct point that, "the dependence on external support for deployment and sustainment put(s) the African Union in the position of having the potential responsibility for missions over which it has little institutional or managerial capacity or control."
The United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur, UNAMID, is the only existing joint UN-AU peacekeeping operation. I am certain that the experience of this joint deployment will have to be studied carefully, to help evolve the required regulations among other things to create the space for better reliance on the political capacities of the regional organisation, in this case the AU.

In sum what I am saying is that certainly for Africa the achievement of peace and security remains a central challenge. And yet, whereas Africa has the will but lacks the means fully to address this challenge on its own, while the international community, as represented by the UN Security Council, is capable of mobilising the necessary means, it has repeatedly failed to show the will to assume its legal responsibility as the principal guarantor of international peace and security.

This may be a reflection of serious fault lines in the system of international governance, which need to be addressed. What cannot be gainsaid is that urgent action should be taken to ensure that international law and procedures relating to the prevention and resolution of armed conflict are revisited to ensure that the objective stated in the UN Charter, that "armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest", is realised.

Thank you.