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P. Vusi: Address to Peace Summit 2023, Session VII-C
Written by Hon. Petros Vusi Mavimbela, speaker of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Eswatini
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Address to Peace Summit 2023
May 2-5, 2023
What do we mean by ‘global order’? It emphasizes the international system for the maintenance of peace and security, due to its centrality in pursuing and sustaining global order.
Power politics and the failure to maintain global order, and political realism, have stepped in to fill in the ideological gap exposed in the perceived limitations of idealism. It conceptualizes international relations as a realm in which power politics is fundamental, if not all encompassing.
Corruption and nepotism, patriarchal societies, pandemics, violence, and political arrests exacerbated and infringed on the culture of global peace.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, Africa has seen such spin offs with increase and spanning of anger, especially amongst the youth and families. There have been high cases of unemployment, retrenchments, poverty, high crime rate, and health/mental issues. Loyalty to all governance systems has been affected thus leading to high political unrest, protests and more.
We are seeing the culture of peace deteriorating more and more.
Insurgencies in Mozambique
Insurgencies in Mozambique where politics and power play issues have resulted in excessive killings and mutilations of female children, gender based violence is rife.
Nigeria
With the Boko Haram sect, we have seen painful incidences of abuse on female children, including deprivation of education, sexual assault, gender based violence, forced early motherhood, (and more), while the perpetrators are still on the loose.
The Rwandan Genocide
The most compelling failure of the UN Security Council to prevent and manage a crisis was the Rwandan genocide of April 1994. The UNSC was in a position to intervene through a range of instruments to prevent the crisis from escalating to a genocide, given the fact that the governments of the P5 were informed, on 12 January 1994, by General Romeo Dallaire, the Force Commander of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), of the plans that were underway in registering Tutsi for their extermination across Rwanda.
There is also the continued conflict which has caused displacement and insurity in Sudan.
Conclusion
Regional organizations such as the European Union (EU), African Union (AU), the Organization of American States (OAS), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) also have an important role to play in pursuing global order. Specifically, Article 52 of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter states that ‘the Security Council shall encourage the development of pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies either on the initiative of the states concerned or by reference from the Security Council’ AFRICA AND THE REMAKING OF GLOBAL ORDER 6 (United Nations 1945).
However, when the conditions on the ground are not conducive to the operationalization of peace and security, for example, in situations where armed militia are still projecting violence, then regional organizations generally defer to the UNSC, which has the power to authorize robust engagement with armed groups if necessary.
God bless. I thank you all.
To go to the Peace Summit 2023 Schedule page, click here.