Rotimi Sanko
31 July 2008
opinion
1. AU MEMBER STATES MUST STRENGTHEN CAPACITY OF THE AU COMMISSION AND ASSEMBLY OF HEADS OF STATES TO COPE SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH LONG-TERM DEVELOPMENT GOALS, AND 'EMERGENCY' ISSUES SUCH AS ZIMBABWE:
The dominance of Zimbabwe's governance and human rights challenges at the recently concluded 2008 African Union midyear summit in Egypt highlights that AU member states urgently need to strengthen their capacity to follow through on details of, and implementation of commitments to key African development issues - alongside other equally important issues that are not summit themes.
Specifically the Commission of the African Union needs to be provided with more resources and capacity to ensure AU ability to maintain 100% focus on long-term key development goals while simultaneously coping with emergencies on governance, human security, and peace and security issues. In addition, the Assembly of Heads of State themselves need to build their own capacity to cope with these 'emergencies' at summit level, alongside producing clear decisions and outcomes on summit themes. Issues like Zimbabwe, Darfur or the food crisis could hardly be described as a surprise to any of our Heads of State. They also need to provide the crucial resources for in country summit preparation, and implementation of outcomes between summits by a strengthened AU Commission, the AU Executive Council, relevant line Ministers and the Ambassadors on the Permanent Representatives Council.
Having had the foresight to make meeting the MDGs of "Water and Sanitation" the theme of the 2008 mid year AU Summit, and even earlier establishing the African Ministerial Conference on Water, member states did not visibly deliver on any significant outcomes that African citizens - of the 33 countries where less than 50% of citizens have access to improved sanitation - or the 35 where not up to 80% of citizens have access to improved water sources - can embrace with hope for a better future.
As stated at pre summit briefings by AU Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture Rhoda Peace Tumusiime "Africa is endowed with abundant water resources with over 60 Transboundary River Basins, 17 major rivers and 16 large lakes but these resources are highly underutilized as only 3.8% is developed for water supply, irrigation and hydropower generation, 6% of the cultivated land is irrigated and only about 3% of our hydro potential is developed."
Based on this glaring underutilisation of water resources, and despite the summits unavoidable attention to events in Zimbabwe, there should have been: pre-summit packs indicating the best performing and least performing countries for the summit themes; tracking of performance trends over the last few years; identification of what gaps need to be bridged continentally - and a summit theme communiqué from the Assembly of Heads of State outlining regional cooperation on transborder water resources, industrial waste and sanitation, also stating financial resources necessary for this; what member states have now committed to do and by when; especially to maximise use of water resources in a sustainable way.
This would not be mere symbolism or an empty naming and shaming game. Access to safe water and [domestic and industrial] sanitation is a prerequisite for good health and sustainable development. Their absence promotes squalor and disease, and disease knows no borders. In its publication on the "Water for Life Decade, 2005-2015", the UN cited "Lack of safe water and adequate sanitation" as "the world's single largest cause of illness," emphasizing that both can facilitate or "spread such diseases as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis, polio, trachoma... malaria and filariasis." There are also clear linkages between sustainable management of water resources, environment issues and food production. And with reference to the joint theme of sanitation - between domestic and industrial waste management, environmental protection and public health.
It is also little appreciated that the struggle for water, land and other resources is an underlying cause of conflicts including the genocide in Darfur, or that similar conflicts could break out in the future due to lack foresight on sustainable management of water and other resources within or across countries. But more on this later.
For the record [1], the top ten African countries providing best access to improved drinking water are: Mauritius 100%; Egypt 98%; Botswana 96%; Tunisia 94%; Namibia and South Africa jointly at 93%; Djibouti 92%; Gabon and Seychelles jointly at 87%; Gambia 86%; Algeria and Comoros jointly at 85%; and Morocco 83%.
And the bottom ten being: Gabon and Kenya jointly at 57%; Tanzania 55%; Sierra Leone at 53%; Angola 51%; Chad 48%; Madagascar and Nigeria jointly at 47%; DRC 46%; Equatorial Guinea 43%; Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Niger jointly 42; and Somalia 29%.
For Sanitation, the top 10 are: Seychelles 100%; Libya 97%; Algeria 94%; Mauritius 94%; Tunisia 85%; Morocco 72%; Djibouti 67%; Egypt 60%; Malawi 60% and South Africa 59%.
And the bottom 10: Benin and Nigeria jointly at 30%; Cote D'Ivore 24%; Senegal 28%; Rwanda and Somalia jointly 23%; Congo 20%; Guinea 19%; Burkina Faso 13%; Madagascar and Togo jointly at 12%; Ethiopia and Sierra Leone jointly at 11%; Ghana 10%; Chad 9%; Niger 7%; and Eritrea 5%. [These overall figures do not reflect disparities between urban and rural areas].
It is crucial that we note these. Not just because they were not widely provided as summit official information, but also because both African governments and civil society need a global picture to make the linkages between issues, and to note how much work needs to be done on summit themes and related issues - which claim millions of African lives annually.
Unless AU member states provide the recently renewed leadership of the AU Commission with crucial resources and capacity to ensure it can play its catalytic role for wide spread continental awareness and development - and governments provide clear summit outcomes and the resources for implementing them - then AU member states risk reducing the Commission to a conference organising unit instead of being the engine for African development on a rights based basis.
2. AFRICA AT RISK OF WAR, CONFLICT AND FURTHER INSTABILITY OVER 'WATER SECURITY':
The apparent lack of AU Summit outcomes or targets on transborder agreements and financial commitments for improved and sustainable utilisation of water resources throws into sharp relief the fact that Africa still has no collective continental response to environmental sustainability issues that can rapidly undermine stability and development. These include the impact of climate change: on water, environmental resources and on health; or the more immediate food crisis that also impacts on social stability, and on health through malnutrition.
As can be seen by recent food riots in several countries, famine in others, and conflict in Darfur that has resulted in genocide - the management and sustainable use of water, land and other environmental resources is both a human security, and peace and security issue.
An examination of the demographics of the impact of climate change on water resources, indicates that It is easy to see a hundred 'Darfur's' exploding across Africa in the next 4 to 5 decades - if there is no continental forward planning to ensure water security for all.
As climate and environmental change impact on rivers, it is also very possible that within our generation - cross border conflicts or civil wars could erupt over the damming of rivers for electricity - between up stream and down stream countries - over control of water resources.
AU member states must note, and act on the fact that - the biggest social and economic development lesson of all history is that allowing, or creating a situation that reduces any society or community to a state of conflict over any kind of resources brings out the worst forms of bestiality in human kind - by creating a pack mentality based on the lowest common denominator whether language, ethnicity, religion, race or criminal interests - and which hyenas would be ashamed off. The shameful events in Sierra Leone and Darfur are arguably in the same reprehensible category of human behaviour, though different in scale, organisation and motivation from the genocides in Nazi Germany, Cambodia, the Balkans or Rwanda that had a more 'refined' and codified basis.
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