Accra, May 13, GNA – The African Union High Representative for Somalia, former president Jerry John Rawlings, says the lack of proper implementation plans have in the past hindered the success of peace agreements made on the Somalia crisis.
He said such plans also lacked the necessary resources, arbitration and monitoring mechanism to ensure that the accord was fully implemented.
A statement issued in Accra by the Office of the former president said he was speaking at the 10th meeting of the African Union Panel of the Wise in Addis Ababa on Thursday on the theme, 93Building Peace in Somalia: Lessons Learned, Constraints and Challenges.”
President Rawlings said: 93The reconciliation conferences were often hijacked by individuals who had no real connection on the ground and who were bent on keeping the real actors out of the process.”
As a result, the reconciliation conferences were turned into power-sharing conferences and political wrangling among the top leaders in the successive Transitional Governments became the norm. Former President Rawlings said “as Africans, we must speak with one voice and redouble our efforts to bring the Transitional Federal Institutions to agree on actions to prepare for the elections, ensure that the transitional tasks will be implemented in the new transition and that the TFIs (Transitional Federal Institutions) adopt an overall road map to end the transition that started in 2004”.
The AU High Representative called on the United Nations and other organisations assisting with the peace process to double their efforts.
He expressed regret that though Somalia was facing huge humanitarian crises brought about by a prolonged drought the support coming in was not significant enough to avoid a major human catastrophe.
Source: GhanaWeb
