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.