KAIPTC launches forum on peace, security in Africa

The Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) has launched a forum to engage political leaders and diplomats to deliberate on deepening peace and security in Africa.

Dubbed the “Kofi Annan Peace and Security (KAPS) Forum”, the programme will bring together about 200 participants, including former African Heads of State, government officials, regional economic bloc secretariats and security chiefs across the continent.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is expected to address the forum, which will be chaired by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s Special Representative and Head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), Dr Mohammed Ibn Chambas, in Accra on September 4, 2019.

It will be on the theme: “Peace operation in the context of violence extremism in Africa”.

Rationale

The Coordinator of the KAPS Forum, Mr Ernest Ansah Larry, said at the media launch of the event in Accra yesterday that the initiative was to honour the memory of the late former Secretary General of the UN, Mr Kofi Annan, who dedicated the best part of his life to the cause of global peace and security.

He said the forum would also help deepen the ties between KAIPTC, on the one hand, and the UN, the African Union (AU) regional economic communities (RECS), governments, development partners, as well as the private sector, on the other, in finding solutions to security threats in Africa.

Topics to be discussed at the forum will include roles and implications of unmanned technologies in countering violent extremism, human rights and justice implications in robust peace enforcement and counter-insurgency missions and dynamics in peace operations.

Challenges

The Commandant of the KAIPTC, Air Vice-Marshal Griffiths Santrofi Evans, said the maintenance of peace and security in Africa remained a critical challenge, adding that although the magnitude of the challenge varied from country to country, many African states still grappled with extraordinary sources of threats that undermined peace and security at the level of the individual.

He said the situation was further complicated by poverty and limited economic opportunities, including environmental strains, health pandemics, gender-based inequalities as a result of civil wars, violent extremism, organised and cyber crime, farmer-herder conflicts and forced displacement.

Bad governance, corruption

The Deputy German Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Hans-Helge Sander, observed that bad governance and endemic corruption remained the major causes of insecurity in Africa.

He said there was the need for increased synergies among political-diplomatic discussions, scholarly discourses and civil society interventions in order to enhance the relevance, ownership and legitimacy of principles and policies on peace and security in Africa.

According to him, violent extremism in Africa had extended to and taken deep roots in the Lake Chad Basin and the Sahel Region.

"After the Arab Spring in 2011 and the eruption of conflicts in Mali in 2012, the international community is witnessing increased proliferation of extremist groups that are largely inspired by local grievances in the Sahel Region," Mr Sander added.