Thank you.
Good evening. It's a pleasure to be here before the committee. Thank you for continuing to bring focus to the situation in South Sudan, Somalia and the DRC.
My name is Susan Stigant and I am currently the director for Africa programs at the United States Institute of Peace.
For those of you who don't know USIP, USIP is an independent, non-partisan institute that was established by the U.S. Congress over 30 years ago with a mission to prevent, manage and resolve violent conflict globally. Given that it's an independent, non-partisan institute, the views that I express here are my own and do not represent those of USIP.
In preparation for today's meeting I've had the opportunity to read the transcripts and the briefs from the other witnesses, and I think they have very clearly documented the fragility in the three countries that are under study. They have underlined the depth of the humanitarian crisis and truly some of the worst things that humans do to other humans around the world.
They have highlighted the critical role of both Canadian and national civil society in designing and delivering development assistance. They have underscored the need for political solutions to conflicts, and they have identified clear opportunities for Canadian engagement around Canadian policy objectives.
Rather than talking about the specific dynamics in each country I thought I would draw out three themes that I think resonate across the three countries.
The first, for me, is that it's helpful to look beyond the horizon, both forwards and backwards. So often we are focused on the emergency and the urgent matter at hand—and we should be. These are serious human rights and humanitarian situations. But it gives us little time to reflect on where we have come from and where we are going.
For example, in the DRC the focus today is on getting the elections done by December 23, or maybe with a slight delay. This is an awesome task, with 100,000 polling stations, new voting machines, logistics, very little logistics capacity, the opposition efforts to come together falling apart and civil society struggling. The priority has been very much to hold the elections and to ensure that President Kabila does not run again.
The history of elections in the DRC tells us that the international community needs to be prepared for post-election disputes. We know that it's very likely the opposition will reject the results. We know it's very likely that there will be an outcry over disenfranchisement because of violence and armed group action. We know that there will likely be confusion and chaos around tabulation and transmission and counting.
Consistently in DRC we've seen that this has led to people going to the streets to protest and often to heavy-handed response by the government.
Ultimately then we will have a new government that inherits all of the challenges of the past and ends up, in fact, further behind in trying to establish the healthy state-society relationship that we know is needed.
Today what's needed are preparations to know what happens in the immediate post-election period, and then what next. This means sustained engagement and inclusion with civil society as well as with political parties. These transitions that take place very quickly are often the culmination of a very long period of development that we don't always see because we're so focused on what's immediately ahead of us.
Similarly in South Sudan there has been considerable focus on making the revitalized peace agreement work. The narrative that I continually hear is that this is all that we have and it's the best chance for the South Sudanese.
I spent six years living and working in South Sudan during what people call the “good days” after the signing of the comprehensive peace agreement. I will tell you that South Sudanese people hoped for much more than what they're experiencing today.
It's a challenging balance to strike. You clearly hear the hope and determination of the South Sudanese to make the most of the space. The door is open, wedge your foot in, hold it and get as much as you can out of it. But we also see an agreement that does not fundamentally change the underlying logic that puts together a power-sharing arrangement that has failed not once, but twice, and really, the odds seem to be stacked against it.
The guarantors are an unlikely pair of countries—Uganda and Sudan—that have never agreed on very much in the last while, but now have come together towards this. This isn't to say that the international community shouldn't do its best to take advantage of where things are and to make the most of the situation, but it also means that there needs to be a clear plan B.
For example, the end of the peace agreement is premised on an electoral transition in a three-year period. I would recall that this civil war started because of the political competition leading into the anticipated 2015 elections. What is our strategy to get things changed so that the game is played differently and that the result will be different this time?
I also find that there is less attention to some of the dynamics of the political economy of the conflict. The conflict isn't the parallel to the economy. The conflict is the economy. It's important that we understand how assistance and other engagements play into those dynamics.
On the economic front, there has also been little conversation about the massive infusion of funding that will be needed to stabilize the economy. In a workshop that we did recently, we asked people to calculate on the back of a napkin what it would cost to stabilize, and the numbers were around $400 million for the first year. This is just to back the pounds that are currently in circulation. There's a disturbing article in The Washington Post today that says an associate professor at the University of Juba would have to save for more than two months to be able to buy a chicken to feed his family. This is how far inflation has gone in the country.
My second theme is about calibrating regional and transregional dynamics. So often we tend to look at policies and approaches focused on a single country. In the DRC, however, we know that the relationship with Uganda, Rwanda and the other Great Lakes countries is critical, and that the role of South Africa in advancing a political solution will be absolutely critical going forward.
Somalia is particularly interesting in this regard. We've always looked at Somalia and understood its strategic positioning because of maritime security and piracy. There's been less attention to what flows across the Red Sea region. Many times we think of the Red Sea as the border between Africa on the one hand, and the gulf and the Middle East on the other, but increasingly we see that transregional security, economic and political dynamics are impacting peace and security in the Horn of Africa.
For example, over the last year, the division in the gulf between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on one side and Qatar on the other, is beginning, it seems, to be reflected in engagement in the Horn of Africa. The federal government of Somalia took a formal position that they would remain neutral in this division in the gulf. However, there was a perception that the Prime Minister received funding from Qatar, and that maybe Qatar was being favoured. Shortly thereafter, negotiations started between the United Arab Emirates and some of the federal member states in Somalia to build ports, a strategic economic and security interest for the UAE in the war in Yemen. This further undermined the delicate balance that is trying to be built between the federal government in Mogadishu and the federal member states outside.
This is a classic multilateral problem that requires a multilateral solution, but at this point there aren't any forums that are fit for purpose. The European Union Council has called for a new Red Sea forum. The African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development are thinking about how to take this forward, but a way forward still very much needs to be identified.
My third theme is the opportunity to link the domestic to the international. I know that many of you in this room have significant populations that come from South Sudan, Somalia or the DRC. We know that conflict and violence are no longer spatially contained. Because of technology and the movement of people, if there is conflict in a country in Africa, it very much affects the populations. We also understand the reverse is possible, where the tensions and dangerous speech that are taking place in the social media space can, in fact, impact the violence in the country.
There are important opportunities to engage diaspora populations and understand that the deep divisions we see in a community are also reflected in the communities in Canada. I would commend to you a recent initiative by the Australian government to try to facilitate dialogue among the South Sudanese diaspora.
In thinking forward, in how Canada could prioritize engagement, I would first encourage a widening of the aperture. So often we are focused on countries, but a regional strategy is really needed. The European Union and the United Nations have envoys who cover the Horn of Africa and look at a broader regional perspective. This allows calibration of priorities across different countries. It allows a single ambassador to travel around and get access to heads of state. This is more than any one, even amazing, ambassador could take on himself or herself. I know that Canada has a past experience of having a special envoy, with Senator Jaffer to Sudan, and then South Sudan, between 2002 and 2006, and that there is the ongoing experience with Bob Rae in Myanmar.
My second recommendation is around Canada's catalytic capacity. I'm struck by the degree of cohesion, and the emergence of a narrative around women's participation and around the Vancouver principles on peacekeeping. I've been struck by the success story I've seen of Canada's engagement in South Sudan. I witnessed that Canada brought together a working group focused on child soldiers and helped to provoke a very important conversation that was not taking place to the degree that it needed to. I witnessed that Canada saw a priority to engage women in the peace process and reached out and worked together with UN women to do that.
But as important as those specific activities are, I was struck at the public diplomacy initiatives that took place where the embassy took visits to the development assistance projects around the country and made them highly visible. Primarily they were around maternal and child health initiatives, so that in communities people were seeing women not just as victims but as survivors.
It also made the point that South Sudan isn't just Juba. It's also about the people who are living outside. It made a clear point that the international community was watching and seeing what was happening outside the capital.
My third recommendation is around Canadian experience and expertise. Canada has unique experiences in managing conflict, diversity and promoting pluralism. This type of approach would be resonant as Somalia continues to figure out their federal system and how to put that into practice. South Sudan is contemplating whether they will keep 32 states or shift to 10 states, but ultimately, this is a question about the relationships between the centre and the state governments.
The role of the Parliament in a federal system is an incredibly difficult and important question, where Canada can play a role.
I will end on something that I think is perhaps the most important, so I saved it for last: a recognition that in these three countries, the population is incredibly young. Africa is going to be the youngest continent. In some countries, more than 70% of the population are youth. In our engagement, we need to think about how we work with that next generation. How do we buffer them from the challenges and the systemic corruption and conflict issues that have plagued the countries, and how can we start to forge relationships with them at an early stage?
I will end on a personal note of thanks. I started my career with the international youth internship program that then-DFAIT ran, where I worked with the parliamentary centre in South Africa. I think that youth engagement very much applies to Canada as well as to our partners in Africa.
Thank you.
