Abuja — A two-day meeting of experts on humanitarian issues in West Africa has been charged to come up with proposals to facilitate the speedy ratification and implementation of the African Union (AU) Convention on humanitarian assistance and internal displacement, known as the Kampala Convention.
The meeting which kicked off Tuesday, 5th July 2011 at the ECOWAS Parliament, Abuja, and organized by the ECOWAS Commission in conjunction with the UN refugee agency (UNHRC), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and AU with support from the Government of Finland, is to prepare the first ministerial meeting on Thursday, 7th July on the same agenda. Making a strong case for the ratification and implementation of the Convention, which was adopted by African leaders in 2009, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Human Development and Gender, Dr. Adrienne Diop, noted that the challenges arising from forced displacement encumbered integration and development efforts in the region. She said the objective of the experts' meeting was to create awareness about the convention and highlight its relevance "to our responsibility to provide humanitarian assistance while guaranteeing the human rights of internally displaced persons." The Commissioner commended the AU for producing the Convention, and urged the experts to formulate concrete proposals that would usher in a regime for its wide spread adoption in West Africa.
Speaking in the same vein, the chairman of the opening ceremony Mr. Tajudeen Adeniyi, an official of Nigeria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, urged the experts to make recommendations that recognized the very thin line between the status of refugees and that of internally displaced persons. Mr. Steven Corliss, Deputy Director, Regional Bureau for Africa, UNHCR, said the Kampala convention "calls on States to prevent and mitigate displacement by addressing its root causes", adding that the document also prohibits arbitrary displacements, provides a comprehensive legal framework for protecting and assisting internally displaced people and promotes regional and international solidarity and cooperation. "Just as the African Union is leading the way globally through the adoption of the Kampala Convention, the ECOWAS region is in the vanguard on the African continent, accounting for nearly half of the African Union Member States to have ratified the Convention so far," he said. Corliss, who spoke on behalf of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said the problem of internal displacement had become a significant focus of the work of the UNHCR and partners, especially in Africa where the phenomenon was growing while the number of refugees was declining. He expressed the hope that the experts and ministerial meetings would create the momentum and additional ratifications needed to bring the Kampala Convention into force this year.
Ambassador Cheick Camara, Chair of the AU Sub-commute on Refugees and Displaced Persons, said the Kampala Convention was the Organization's response to the challenges of internal displacement facing the continent. In her remarks, Ms. Satu Lassila, a senior adviser on humanitarian affairs in the Finnish Foreign Ministry, said: "with increasing resources devoted to humanitarian assistance, the international humanitarian system also has to strengthen its accountability". "Accountability," she explained, "should be mostly towards the affected country governments and beneficiaries, not only towards donors." "In addition, all countries should keep in mind that humanitarian assistance should never be used as a political instrument. It must always remain distinct from the foreign policy and crises management agenda," she added. Professor Omar Ndongo, General Secretary of the West African Civil Society Forum (WASCOF), urged governments in the region to play their part in addressing the root causes of internal displacement by upholding the principles of democracy, good governance and respect for human rights.
