UN Special Envoy to HoA: UN Promotes African Solutions for African Problems
The United nations (UN) is working with member states of the African Union and key regional organizations to realize the aspiration of “African solutions for African Problems,” UN Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, Hanna Tetteh said.
In an exclusive interview with ENA, the special envoy, who participated at the 37th AU summit held in Addis Ababa over the past week, said the UN doesn’t operate in an African nation without the involvement African Union indicating the existing joint partnership on peace and security between the two sides.
The partnership is a formal agreement signed in 2017 that defines ways in which the UN and AU work together. According to the agreement, the UN and AU conduct a joint consultations, assessments, plan and implement together.
“As the secretary general very much believes that it is important for the United Nations to work with all of its member states and also with key regional organizations, and especially on this continent, because there is the great emphasis on finding “African solutions for African problems,” the special envoy explained stressing the importance of strong partnership.
The special envoy commended the AU summit for it creates an opportunity for the UN to get together not only just with the African Union Commission, which is our partner on a day to day basis, but also with other partners vital to our operations.
She also discussed about current security challenges in the continent citing the current situation in Sudan and stressed the need to take measures with a view to preventing conflict and avert humanitarian crisis.
“The Africa we want should be a peaceful Africa. And I think that’s a common aspiration,” the UN Special envoy elaborated.
“Let’s face it when you have peace and security challenges, it means you have different groups of actors who are hostile to each other. The only way that you resolve those things, is to try to get the access to come to the table to negotiate peace. After negotiation is completed, to make sure that the necessary support is given in order to maintain the peace.”
The special envoy pointed out that this is the reason why the UN deploys peacekeeping missions. Moreover, she elaborated that “Once you are able to have an agreement, and therefore you have some understanding on how the country wants to move forward, there can be an intervening force between the belligerence to make sure that there isn’t a resumption of conflict.”
The special envoy said negotiation among the parties in dispute is the most important issue to resolve the situation, bring stability and provide relief to the affected populations.
“While we talk about this in very broad terms, when it gets down to the details of it, it’s about facilitating negotiations between people who normally are at odds with each other, to try to resolve the situation, bring stability and then also be able to bring some relief to the affected populations.”
In this regard, the UN works with member states of African Union and key regional organizations with the frame work of “African solutions for African Problems.”
For so long, the Somaliland case has been an African problem deserving of attention and an African solution. Therefore, an illustration of the envoy’s stance is the Memorandum of Understanding between Somaliland and Ethiopia.