Annan urges international community to do more for Africa
Highlighting the incidence of armed conflict and other scourge in Africa, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan
today urged the international community to do more to build peace and help ease the suffering of millions living on the
continent.
In a message to a ministerial conference on African development, held in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, Mr. Annan
said that too many countries lapsed back into violence when efforts to consolidate peace were not sustained, adding that
the new UN Peacebuilding Commission was an effort to remedy this problem.
“In recent years, the international community has come to recognize that conflict resolution calls for a comprehensive
approach in which parties emerging from conflict require assistance not only in negotiating peace agreements, but also
in building and consolidating peace,” the Secretary-General said.
“I urge all participants in this important conference to recognize the urgent need for the international community to do
even more – from high-level political attention to contributions on the ground – to support post-conflict peacebuilding
and reconstruction in Africa.”
The high-level meeting, known as the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), is organized jointly
by the Japanese Government, the UN and other international agencies.
This gathering is the latest in a series of meetings called under the auspices of TICAD, which was launched in 1993 with
the aim of promoting high-level policy dialogue between African leaders and their partners and mobilizing support for
Africa's own development efforts.