{"id":16846,"date":"2022-02-17T13:42:14","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T13:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.paulkagame.com\/?p=16846"},"modified":"2022-02-23T16:39:12","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T16:39:12","slug":"6th-european-union-african-union-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/?p=16846","title":{"rendered":"6TH EUROPEAN UNION-AFRICAN UNION SUMMIT"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Brussels, 17 February 2022<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Excellency, Nana Akufo-Addo, President of the Republic of Ghana<br \/>\n\u2022 Excellency, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Spain<br \/>\n\u2022 Excellency, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, President of the Republic of Mauritania<br \/>\n\u2022 Excellency, President Charles Michel<br \/>\n\u2022 Excellencies, Heads of State and Government<br \/>\n\u2022 Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen<br \/>\nThe African Union and the European Union have had a long-standing collaboration on peace and security. Good progress has been made.<br \/>\nI commend the European Union for the continued support for the African Peace and Security Architecture.<br \/>\nBut security landscape is changing. Terrorism and violent extremism are spreading at an alarming rate.<br \/>\nHowever, these trends must be put into the right context.<br \/>\nThat is why this roundtable considers peace and security alongside governance.<br \/>\nPermit me to give a medical analogy. Good politics and governance are like a healthy human body.<br \/>\nWhere governance is compromised, it is like having a weak immune system, which is vulnerable to all kinds of opportunistic infections or attacks.<br \/>\nThe symptoms of poor governance include terrorism, divisive nationalism and ethnic politics, or even the lack of trust in public health systems.<br \/>\nThere is no way to build sustainable peace and security, both within and between our continents, without putting governance at the centre. Country specific governance, or even global, all affect what we want to achieve.<br \/>\nEconomic integration and the training of security forces are important initiatives, but there needs to be a system to hold the gains together.<br \/>\nAccordingly, we need new thinking and new templates for joint action on counterterrorism and peace support operations.<br \/>\nI appreciate President Macron\u2019s recent remarks along these lines. Things need to change.<br \/>\nThe need to extend the African Union\u2019s \u201cSilencing the Guns\u201d initiative, to 2030, proves the point.<br \/>\nWe cannot afford to stand aside and watch, when the lives of innocent civilians are at risk.<br \/>\nEurope\u2019s stability is also at stake. We are neighbours, and the threats are transnational and cross-border.<br \/>\nA blended bilateral and multilateral approach is a flexible formula that is well-suited to our present challenges.<br \/>\nEach conflict has its own context, but there are tangible results to point to. Examples sre there, in Central African Republic or Mozambique, to both reinforce state capacity, and improve the prospects for success of multilateral efforts.<br \/>\nBilateral interventions provide a faster response, and can set the stage for credible multilateral forces to partner or take over.<br \/>\nTo ensure political gains are consolidated, nevertheless, forces remain engaged on the ground to support.<br \/>\nThis requires adequate resources.<br \/>\nA more predictable and sustainable international financing system for bilateral and regional military interventions, is needed.<br \/>\nHowever, no amount of troops or funding can create sustainable peace.<br \/>\nWe must simultaneously address the shortfalls in governance, which are the root cause of insecurity.<br \/>\nAs we renew our partnership on peace and security, I hope we will agree on some new directions and approaches.<br \/>\nWe want a relationship between the European Union and the African Union that is meaningful and produces concrete results.<br \/>\nWe need each other, and that means working as full partners.<br \/>\nI thank you for your kind attention, and I look forward to this productive discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels, 17 February 2022 \u2022 Excellency, Nana Akufo-Addo, President of the Republic of Ghana \u2022 Excellency, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Spain \u2022 Excellency, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, President of the Republic of Mauritania \u2022 Excellency, President Charles Michel \u2022 Excellencies, Heads of State and Government \u2022 Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen The African Union and the European Union have had a long-standing collaboration on peace and security. Good progress has been made. I commend the European Union for&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speech","post-has-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16848,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16846\/revisions\/16848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}