Hon Dr Vicent BIRUTA Talk About Congo Landscep
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00:00 causes of these conflicts.
00:02 Why has it become so difficult for us to do that?
00:06 Because we have insurgencies that have lasted two decades, even more.
00:10 Within us as Africans, and if one may use this slogan that we love to use,
00:16 "African solutions to Africa's problems,"
00:19 we have set up standby brigades,
00:21 we have set up the Africa Peace and Security Architecture,
00:25 and all these things, they don't seem to work.
00:28 As somebody who sits in those meetings where these things get discussed,
00:32 why do we Africans usually seem to be paralyzed
00:36 when it comes to solving our own security issues?
00:39 Some of these issues are related to leadership, to governance issues,
00:45 and if we need to address them, we just need to, first of all, acknowledge them,
00:50 to agree that those are the root causes, to agree to defend them,
00:56 and then we sit and we address them by just having a dialogue.
01:01 And if we ourselves, I mean, whether concerned countries or concerned government,
01:11 don't have the leadership which is able to agree on the root causes of a certain situation,
01:21 then it will become very difficult for us to address them.
01:26 So we could not blame external actors who are trying to give us solutions,
01:33 but sometimes are just dealing with the consequences of the situation,
01:39 when we know very well the root causes.
01:42 So it comes back to the leadership, it comes back to the governance,
01:46 it comes back to the responsibilities of our governments
01:50 to be really in charge of the security of our people,
01:55 and our countries.
01:57 So once again, we need responsible governments,
02:03 we need responsible leaders who are able to look at those root causes,
02:10 because they are known if we, for example, if we look at our own region,
02:16 the situation in eastern DRC, the root causes are known,
02:20 and we don't even disagree on that issue.
02:24 But the political will to address those root causes is the problem.
02:30 And it is where issues of leadership come in,
02:35 it is where governance issues come in,
02:38 because sometimes there are invested interests
02:42 for some of the very people who are responsible to address those issues.
02:50 We talked about mining, about access to resources, and so on and so forth.
02:57 If those leaders who should address those root causes
03:03 are involved in illegal mining,
03:05 or are the ones who are running these various armed groups,
03:11 how do you expect them to just invest efforts
03:18 in ending that very situation which is benefiting them?
03:24 So it is all these, I think we need to own our own problems,
03:30 and to just take the leadership in addressing them.
03:37 Otherwise, if we understand them,
03:40 that we don't have the courage, the political will to deal with them,
03:44 and we outsource the solutions to others,
03:48 those others will probably bring wrong solutions to us.
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