S/PV.5065 Security Council

In accordance with the understanding reached in the Council’s prior consultations, I shall take it that the Security Council agrees to extend an invitation under rule 39 of its provisional rules of procedure to Mr. Ibrahima Fall, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the Great Lakes Region. It is so decided. I invite Mr. Fall to take a seat at the Council table. The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. The Council is meeting in accordance with the understanding reached in its prior consultations. I now call on Mr. Ibrahima Fall, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the Great Lakes Region.

On 20 November 2003, the Security Council held a meeting (see S/PV.4865) to consider the report of the Secretary- General on preparations for an international conference on the Great Lakes region (S/2003/1099). There have been many developments since that meeting took place. A fact sheet in that regard has been sent to members of the Council, and I will therefore not describe the various events in detail. The fact sheet is helpful, in that I believe that the Council has allotted me 15 minutes to brief it on the current situation. I shall confine my comments to those 15 minutes. It is just less than a month until the first meeting of heads of State or Government in the context of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region. The summit is to be held at Dar es Salaam on 19 and 20 November. By fortunate coincidence, the Security Council will be holding a particularly important meeting in Africa at the same time, on the subject of the Sudan. Thus, in the course of that one week, Africa will be given very special attention. The Dar es Salaam summit will be followed in 2005 by a second and final summit in the context of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region. After the second summit, an agreement on security, stability and development in the Great Lakes region will be adopted. The agreement will have two constituent parts. The first will be the Dar es Salaam declaration, which is expected to be adopted at the first summit, describing the general framework, the political options and the guidelines and directives offered by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region. The second part will contain protocols and programmes of action, which will be prepared between the two summits by a ministerial committee at the request of the Dar es Salaam summit. We are now at the stage of preparing the declaration. Since the Security Council’s last meeting on this issue, we have been holding preparatory meetings at the regional level, in three different settings. First of all, the Regional Preparatory Committee, made up of representatives of national preparatory committees, met at Bujumbura and at Kinshasa, and it will meet from 8 to 10 November in Kampala. Afterward, special regional meetings have been held to enable three specific categories of society to offer their particular input to the preparatory process. These were the women’s regional meeting in Kigali, the young people’s regional meeting in Kampala and the non-governmental organization regional meeting in Arusha. Finally, other special meetings, organized by religious organizations, trade unions and parliamentarians, have enabled sectoral input to the preparatory process, which is designed to be an inclusive one. That entire process has given rise to ideas and suggestions for the regional preparatory meeting. It is on the basis of those ideas and suggestions that an initial draft text of the Dar es Salaam declaration was considered in Kinshasa and will be finalized in Kampala before being submitted to a meeting of foreign ministers to be held on 16 and 17 November in Dar es Salaam, just before the summit. This inclusive regional preparatory process has yielded some results, the first of which is of a political nature. There has been a geographical broadening among countries participating in the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region. We moved from six to seven at the time of the 20 November 2003 Security Council meeting, and now there are 11, with the addition of Angola, the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and the Sudan. This enlargement is very important in ensuring the consistency and unity of the Conference, because our goal from the start was to bring together everybody, whether they affected or were affected by the situation in the Great Lakes region. The second result has been the trend towards common positions on the part of all of the countries. At the beginning of the regional process, there were some questions that were particularly delicate, not to say the object of confrontation. Now, two regional meetings have been held, and we are moving towards consensus, even on the most delicate issues. The third result has been the emergence of a number of priority areas. The Conference itself is built on four priority areas: peace and security; governance and democracy; economic development and regional integration; and social and humanitarian issues. However, we can identify several priority areas that transcend these four categories. The first is education for peace, tolerance, multiculturalism and democratic values. This is along the lines of the preamble to the constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which reminds us that “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed”. Education for peace is thus crucial to a region that has suffered such upheaval because of war. Secondly, on the social level, there is the fight against endemic and pandemic diseases. AIDS affects all of Africa, but more specifically the Great Lakes region. This is true also of malaria and tuberculosis. Epidemic and pandemic diseases require a multidimensional approach taking into account not just health issues, but also the social, political and security dimensions. The third is the centralization of women’s rights and their role in peace and security of course, but also in governance and democracy and in promoting economic development. The fourth area is the promotion of joint strategies and policies in the priority sector of the Conference’s four themes. Finally, the fifth area is that of returning to the borders in the Great Lakes region their natural purpose. This goes beyond providing administrative and political separation lines between two States. Borders must become a framework for political, economic and social cooperation in order to lay the foundations for peace. I have mentioned just a few points that have emerged from the preparatory process, but let me also mention the dynamic of the preparatory process. It is one of inclusion, in which the United Nations is involved through all its relevant departments, programmes and specialized agencies. The African Union, the subregional organizations and development partners — through the Group of Friends of the Great Lakes, headed by Canada and the Netherlands — are also involved, as is civil society in the various countries. Finally, as concerns the various sectors — peace and security; governance and democracy; economic development and regional integration; and humanitarian and social issues — in the light of the two Regional Preparatory Committee meetings that have been held, we see a number of sectors to which I would like to refer. Under peace and security, there are a number of sectors: education for peace; a joint management strategy for border issues; the involvement of social actors in the prevention, management and settlement of conflicts and reconstruction; common strategies to combat crime; regional mechanisms for non-aggression and for the implementation of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes; and political mechanisms for combating sexual violence and for combating crime in general. Turning to the issues of democracy and governance, the priority sectors for democracy appear to be, first, the promotion and protection of human rights in the three main areas of education, monitoring and sanctions; secondly, multicultural education; and, thirdly, the institutionalization of rights and of the role of women in government. Priority areas in the area of governance include the rule of law and the criminalization of divisive and corrupt policies and practices. In the domain of economic development and regional integration, the main issue is, first and foremost, that the Great Lakes region needs to be considered as an economically integrated region with clearly developed strategies for transport, telecommunications, agriculture and electrical power supply. There is also a need to promote food self- sufficiency. Finally, the Great Lakes region should be designated as a special reconstruction zone so that the international community can establish an economic and social development fund for the region; this is reminiscent of what was done in Europe following the Second World War. Turning to social and humanitarian matters, the main areas of concern are: demining; refugees; natural disasters; pandemic and epidemic AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis; and education for peace and tolerance. The Dar es Salaam summit is to conclude with the adoption of a declaration which will also incorporate a follow-up mechanism. An inter- ministerial committee will be set up tasked — in the interim between summits — with creating a programme of action and a protocol to implement the Dar es Salaam declaration. Finally, in the light of that protocol and programme of action the stage will be set for the Nairobi summit to be held in 2005.

I thank the Special Representative for his briefing. In accordance with the understanding reached in the Council’s prior consultations, I should like to invite Council members to informal consultations to continue our discussion on the subject.