Vasu Gounden, ACCORD's Chief, addresses high level expert group on climate and migration.

By Vasu Gounden
DURBAN, Dec 22 2015 (IPS)

On 21 November 2015, during ACCORD’s 2015 Africa Peace Award celebration, I made a call for the United Nations to convene the first ever UN Global Conference on Peace.

The call was made during the presentation of the Africa Peace Award to the African Union Commission (AUC), in recognition of its central role in contributing to peace and promoting development in Africa. The award was made at a gala dinner by the Chairperson of ACCORD, Madame Graca Machel, and received on behalf of the AUC by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Chairperson of the AUC.

Over the past few months, our television screens and social media have again exposed us to the graphic nightmares currently plaguing humanity. Terrorism, violent uprisings, and devastating conflicts now afflict several parts of the world, with no corner of our planet immune to either these challenges or their consequences.

Conflicts throughout the world have multiplied in complexity and intensity. The previous paradigm of warfare, where two nations fight one another across borders, is no longer the norm. Today internal conflicts around a number of grievances dominate, and are complicated by the rapid expansion of amorphous groups of radicalised and militant individuals.

As evidenced by the current challenges in Syria and Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Yemen and Ukraine, the consequences of the violence are devastating and will scar these societies for generations to come. Our global community can no longer afford to pursue exclusively military-oriented responses, nor can states afford to remain indifferent to situations that are beyond their immediate concerns or borders. We need a new paradigm for peace.

With an exponentially growing population, unprecedented urbanisation often into unplanned cities, destabilising climate change, a shaky global financial system, growing unemployment, mass migration, and expanding wealth inequality, our planet is in a race against time to create a sustainable future and prevent these global challenges from accelerating and entrenching global instability.

As our work on climate change has shown, challenges such as these can trigger conflict and so even adaptation measures need to be conflict sensitive. While humanity is equipped with unprecedented technological advancements and incredible demographic opportunities to build a better future, we must channel the collective expertise of our global community to find sustainable and transformative pathways forward. The need for sustainable global peace is urgent and the stakes are rising as the challenges deepen. The choice of inaction could close the door on the future for which many strive. We must act quickly!

Collective political dialogue is the only true pathway to begin addressing inter-connected challenges in a sustainable and holistic manner. Over our 23-year history and through engagements with governments, armed groups, civil society, and regional, continental, and multi-lateral bodies, ACCORD has found this maxim to be true.

Our global systems for peace have grown more fragile and stressed just as our conflicts and challenges have evolved with ever increasing complexity. Our dialogue must focus on strategies to resolve current crises, prevent future deterioration, and ensure that peace and prosperity finally take root equitably and sustainably. Further, an urgent need exists to promote critical reflection, earnest debate and mutual solidarity amongst all people. We must underpin these efforts by shepherding a collective shift from an exclusive focus on ‘national interest’ to a collective focus on ‘global responsibility’. There are no easy answers, and no nation on its own has the solution for the challenges of today and more importantly the challenges of tomorrow.

Since its inception the United Nations has convened a number of World Conferences. However, to this day there has not been a UN-sponsored World Conference focused explicitly on peace. Bringing the entire community of humanity under one forum to deliberate earnestly has in the past contributed to tangible landmark global commitments from governments, the private sector and non-state actors alike. Our institutions and processes often limit discussion but a global conference creates a space where all are placed on an equal footing. Many of the current achievements on human rights, social development, climate change, and gender were built on the fresh foundations created by global conferences and dialogue. Such foundations create paradigm shifts, which then lead to practical outcomes.

It is our hope therefore that the Republic of South Africa, in collaboration with other African nations and under the auspices of the African Union, can propose to the UN General Assembly to host the first ever UN Global Conference on Peace in 2019 in Durban, on the 25th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy.

In advance of such a UN Global Conference on Peace and to support a global debate on peace we intend to assemble a multi-disciplinary gathering of experts from around the world in 2017, two years prior to the UN gathering.

As we face our future together we remember that South Africa’s peaceful transition was the result of collective global action and the struggle and outcome gave inspiration and courage to many. Unanimous and collective opposition to apartheid, from Africa and beyond, were critical in supporting the emergence of a peaceful and democratic South Africa against expectations and great odds. We therefore call the entire world to join once more in a free and peaceful South Africa, in the same spirit of collective unity, to begin charting a way forward to deliver global peace.

Now is the time!

(End)

Excerpt:

A video ad is being screened before every match at the Africa Cup of Nations currently under way in Equatorial Guinea. Part of African Football Against Hunger, a joint initiative by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Confederation of African Football (CAF), it shows a player dribbling a football, taking a shot and scoring – the winning kick is a metaphor for ending hunger in Africa by 2025.

“Football, like no other game, brings people together, within nations and across country lines. It’s exactly this type of coming together we need to reach the goal of zero hunger in Africa,” FAO Director of Communications Mario Lubetkin told IPS in an online interview.

As part of the African Football Against Hunger campaign, a video ad is being featured at matches throughout the 2015 African Cup of Nations tournament in Equatorial Guinea. Credit: FAO

“Our aim is to harness the popularity of football to raise awareness of the ongoing fight against hunger on the continent, and to rally support for home-grown initiatives that harness Africa’s economic successes to fund projects that help communities in areas struggling with food insecurity and build resilient livelihoods,” he explained.

Last year, African governments came together and undertook to wipe out chronic hunger among their peoples by 2025, in line with the United Nations’ Zero Hunger campaign.

Hunger in Africa is pervasive.  In 2014, some 227 million people across the continent suffered from hunger. According to FAO’s 2014 ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World’ report, one in four people across sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished.“Football, like no other game, brings people together, within nations and across country lines. It’s exactly this type of coming together we need to reach the goal of zero hunger in Africa” – Mario Lubetkin, FAO Director of Communications

And despite its vast fertile lands and a youth bulge, Africa continuous to spend over 40 billion dollars every year on food imports, according to Tumusiime Rhoda Peace, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture for the African Union Commission (AUC).

“The fact that the continent’s population is growing means that while Africa has made progress in hunger eradication over the last decade, the total number of hungry people on the continent has risen. This brings additional urgency to fund home-grown solutions that allow families and communities to strengthen food security and build resilient livelihoods,” Lubetkin told IPS.

Placing a more direct link between football and the fight against hunger, he said adequate nutrition is essential to both cognitive and physical development and to achieving one’s goals – none of the players in the cup would be able to perform at the level they do without adequate nutrition.

“The human potential that is lost by persistent hunger is still immense. It is in the interest of everybody to join forces to make hunger history. Fighting hunger is a team sport – we need everybody to get involved,” he explained.

It is estimated that over 650 million people worldwide will be watching the African Cup of Nations, which this year sees teams from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, D.R. Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia and Zambia competing for the trophy from Jan. 17 to Feb. 8.

The initiators of the African Football Against Hunger campaign hope that with the enormous number of people exposed to the campaign, more citizens will become engaged in the struggle against hunger.

“History shows that when citizens are engaged governments are encouraged to allocate funding to hunger eradication,” Lubetkin said. “Citizen engagement also often leads communities to come together to find innovative solutions for shared problems.”

He went on to explain that football events are also being used to spread the message about the work of the Africa Solidarity Trust Fund for Food Security, which was set up by African leaders in 2013, and to encourage countries to become involved in the Fund as donors, project partners and sources of local knowledge.

“The on-the-ground work is done through the Fund, through projects that increase youth employment, improve resource management, make livelihoods more resilient and eradicate hunger by building sustainable food production.”

So far the Fund has leveraged 40 million dollars from African countries to empower communities in 30 countries by building job opportunities for young people, help them use their available resources better and bounce back quicker in situations of crisis.

FAO and the Fund are complementing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAAADP), a continent-wide initiative to boost agricultural productivity in Africa. Launched by governments 10 years ago, CAADP has been instrumental in bringing agriculture back to the discussion table as a priority sector, according to Komla Bissi, Senior CAADP Advisor at the AUC.

“Our governments are recommitting resources, and it’s time to bring the private sector on board,” he told IPS. He said 43 of Africa’s 54 countries have so far committed to the process; 40 have signed the CAADP compact and 30 of them have developed agriculture sector investment plans.

“The job of eradicating hunger and making food production sustainable is a long-haul game and these ongoing projects – along with future ones – are the seeds of progress in the fight against hunger,” Lubetkin concluded.

Edited by Phil Harris