(From Left) Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, William Ruto of Kenya and other leaders at the Malabo Summit in Equatorial Guinea yesterday, June 26, 2014.
President Yoweri Museveni and his counterparts from the eastern Africa region yesterday signed a protocol for the establishment of a joint standby force to deal with emergencies.
The leaders signed a protocol for the establishment of the East African Standby Force (EASF) on the sidelines of the 23rd extraordinary African Union summit Malabo in Equatorial Guinea.
Presidents Paul Kagame (Rwanda), Pierre Nkurunziza (Burundi), Hailemariam Desalegn (Ethiopian Prime Minister), Dr. Ikililou Dhoinine (Union of Comoro) and Somalia’s Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed are the other leaders who approved the agreement for the establishment of the standby force.
The Minister of foreign affairs of Djibouti Mahmoud Youssouf, Seychelles’ Jean-Paul Adam and Gen Bakry Hassan Sakih, the First Vice-President of Sudan and Kenya’s deputy President William Ruto represented their leaders at the meeting.
The EASF, which is under the auspices of the African Union, will be used in peacekeeping missions and rapid response to emergencies. It is also intended for the region to resolve conflicts rather than depending on external forces.
EASF will include 12 countries namely: Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, Rwanda, Mauritius, Madagascar, Eritrea, Djibouti, Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania.
“We shall pay our assessed contribution. The money we lose through insecurity in the region is much more than that when we have peace. If you are to compute the money in trade losses because of the instability in Congo, you will find that it is huge,” Museveni remarked
“Therefore, it is not a question of pledging. It is understanding the comparison between gains and losses,” he said shortly after the leaders endorsed the standby force in a meeting of the heads of state and Government of the Eastern Africa Standby Force that was chaired by Kagame.
Sarah Kagingo, the presidential assistant for communication, said heads of state of countries contributing resources to the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises (ACIRC), where Uganda is a member, also held a meeting yesterday and pledged resources for the ACIRC effort.
ACIRC contributing members, included Uganda, Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Niger, Mauritania and Senegal.
South Africa, Sudan and Tanzania are the other countries that have pledged to contribute forces.
Speaking on the occasion to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Peace and Security Council on Wednesday in Malabo, President Museveni said: “Where the national army and security forces fail to guarantee peace, the region, supported by the international community, should come in.”
“I call this packaging, the trinity — meaning: the internal stakeholders, the region and the international community,” he said
He said the unjust conflicts waged in Africa, which form the majority of the conflicts, “are based on the pseudo-ideology of sectarianism based on ethnicity or religious divides and impregnated with gender chauvinism”.
Museveni said the starting point in defeating insecurity in Africa, is banishing the ideology of sectarianism and gender — chauvinism.
He warned against tribalised armies, saying it is an ideological mistake.
“A de-sectarianised national army has made big contribution to Uganda and the region,” he told his counterparts.
According to reports from Malabo, the opening of the AU summit yesterday was dominated by concern about the growing threat of terrorism. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in his inaugural address at the opening of the summit warned that Africa was facing a “plague” of cross-border terrorist groups.
“Africa is threatened by cross-border terrorism,” Sisi said, calling on leaders gathered in the capital of Equatorial Guinea to “firmly face up to this plague to preserve the dignity of our people and economies”.
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