Cristina Duarte, the UN secretary-general’s special adviser on Africa says greater investment in state institutions is critical to countering peace and security challenges in Africa.

Ms Duarte said this while briefing the Security Council on Monday at the UN headquarters in New York. She briefed ambassadors during a debate to examine capacity building for sustaining peace on the continent, and to explore the way forward.

She highlighted how African countries’ efforts to both prevent and address violence are being undermined by external factors such as competition over natural resources, which fuels conflict, to the increasing presence of global terrorist networks that are gaining footholds in some regions.

Ms Duarte underscored that policy and financing are the main challenges to capacity building, and she offered recommendations on the way forward.

“Investing in institutional infrastructure is essential in order to build the capacities to tackle the internal causes of violence. Institutions have the power to catalyze holistic solutions. Institutional capacity building should, therefore, be the cornerstone of efforts to achieve sustainable peace,” she said.

Meanwhile, technical cooperation to create policy and institutional capacity needs to be a priority in all conflict situations.

According to Ms Duarte, this requires increasing cooperation and coordination among the UN’s different areas of work. The UN special adviser also called for action by peacekeeping missions, which reach areas where state presence is absent.

“Closer cooperation with national and local authorities, not only from a security perspective but also from the perspective of institution-building could create opportunities for increasing the presence of the State and enhancing the delivery of services, preventing gaps that can be leveraged by terrorist groups and non-state actors,” she said.

She pointed to the power of school feeding programmes, describing them as an example of a public service with a great potential to contribute to long-term peace and stability.

“School-feeding is, all in all, a cost-effective way of strengthening trust in public institutions through the delivery of basic services,” she said.

In addition, she explained that the UN had launched an initiative called ‘A pen for a gun’ to showcase the role these programmes play in promoting social cohesion and peace in Africa.

The UN and the African Union (AU) are partners on the continent. Their collaboration must be stepped up, the AU’s commissioner for political affairs, peace and security, Bankole Adeoye said in his remarks.

Mr Adeoye noted that partnership on peacekeeping and peacebuilding is “well-articulated and appreciated,” but it must move forward to develop capacity in peace enforcement in order to defeat terrorism and violent extremism.

“For Africa, the focus will be on building integrated capacity for peace enforcement operations from both the military and the whole of society approach,” he said. “It is also equally important that we work towards unlocking the financial challenges that are associated with peace operations.”  

(NAN)