Side-event “The African Peace Mis­sion and Ukraine Peace For­mu­la: Strate­gic Engage­ments on Region­al Secu­ri­ty, Nuclear Safe­ty, and Human Rights” before the upcom­ing AU Mid-Year Coor­di­na­tion Meet­ing 

Date: 18 July 2024

Place: Accra, Ghana 

A group of Ghana­ian, South African, and Ukrain­ian civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions is call­ing on the African Union and del­e­gates of African states to lead the way for safer nuclear ener­gy devel­op­ment, bet­ter pro­tec­tion of chil­dren, and few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for nuclear-armed states to threat­en dis­armed nations, through the reform of the Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

Experts from var­i­ous insti­tu­tions col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly devel­oped three pol­i­cy briefs in sup­port of the African Peace Mis­sion and Ukraine Peace For­mu­la. These briefs address UN reform, the safe­ty of nuclear pow­er sta­tions, and the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren dur­ing armed con­flicts. The rec­om­men­da­tions were pre­sent­ed at the sem­i­nar “The African Peace Mis­sion and Ukraine Peace For­mu­la: Strate­gic Engage­ments on Region­al Secu­ri­ty, Nuclear Safe­ty, and Human Rights” ahead of the African Union Mid-Year Coor­di­na­tion Meet­ing tak­ing place on 18–21 July in Accra.

The experts specif­i­cal­ly, call on the AU and African states to:

1. Ini­ti­ate UN reform that reduces the pow­er of the veto-right.

This means empow­er­ing the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly to over­rule a veto with a 2/3 major­i­ty. 

Ukraine’s expe­ri­ence showed that while the major­i­ty of coun­tries con­demned the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine (over 141 states), Rus­sia could block any UN action to defend Ukraine by using its veto at the UNSC. Chang­ing the veto pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion would help ensure glob­al peace if any veto-hold­ing coun­try starts mil­i­tary aggres­sion against anoth­er state.

The mech­a­nism for a pro­vi­sion­al review and amend­ment of the UN Char­ter is also built in Arti­cle 109, which enables a spe­cial “Char­ter Review Con­fer­ence” to be con­vened by a two-thirds major­i­ty of the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly and a sin­gle vote from the nine-mem­ber Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

Such a vote can­not be vetoed by the per­ma­nent mem­bers and would be rel­a­tive­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic, since Arti­cle 109 states that “each mem­ber of the Unit­ed Nations shall have one vote”.

2. Act imme­di­ate­ly to uphold inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions on non-pro­lif­er­a­tion and stop the aggres­sion of nuclear-armed states against denu­clearised nations. 

In 1994, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arse­nal, the third largest in the world at the time, in exchange for secu­ri­ty assur­ances from the USA, the UK, and Rus­sia. Russ­ian aggres­sion against Ukraine endan­gers the core of inter­na­tion­al non-pro­lif­er­a­tion, increas­ing the risk of non-nuclear nations pur­su­ing their own weapons of mass destruc­tion. In 2023, glob­al mil­i­tary spend­ing increased by 7%, which means less funds for socio-eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment around the world. 

3. Pro­tect peace­ful nuclear pow­er plants by approv­ing new bind­ing inter­na­tion­al leg­is­la­tion that pro­hibits mil­i­tary attacks on nuclear facil­i­ties. Nuclear tech­nol­o­gy is a poten­tial option to sup­port African eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. 

The occu­pa­tion of the largest oper­a­tional nuclear pow­er plant in Europe by Russ­ian mil­i­tary forces, in vio­la­tion of all nuclear safe­ty prin­ci­ples, must be stopped and nev­er repeat­ed. 

Many African coun­tries recent­ly vot­ed for a UN res­o­lu­tion call­ing on Rus­sia to remove its mil­i­tary forces from the Ukrain­ian nuclear pow­er sta­tion.

4. Recog­nise that chil­dren are the first vic­tims of mil­i­tary con­flict. As of June 2024, Rus­sia has unlaw­ful­ly and forcibly deport­ed 19,546 Ukrain­ian chil­dren.

Post 2022, Rus­sia has approved a new leg­is­la­tion allow­ing the change of cit­i­zen­ship, name, sur­name, and date of birth of Ukrain­ian chil­dren with­out parental con­sent. Ukrain­ian chil­dren have been sent to 57 regions of Rus­sia, with some already adopt­ed into Russ­ian fam­i­lies. Despite sup­port from UN insti­tu­tions, the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross, reli­gious lead­ers such as the Vat­i­can, and indi­vid­ual states like Qatar, only 388 chil­dren have been returned in near­ly three years. There is a lack of effec­tive mech­a­nisms for their return [https://childrenofwar.gov.ua/en/]. 

5. We call on the Africa Peace Mis­sion to con­tin­ue work­ing on the points list­ed in this state­ment and to act on imple­ment­ing the above

Rus­sia mil­i­tar­i­ly invad­ed Ukraine in 2014, and with the lack of inter­na­tion­al response to its aggres­sion, it esca­lat­ed its mil­i­tary inva­sion to a full-scale war in 2022. The col­lab­o­ra­tive plat­forms for experts have been ini­ti­at­ed by the Insti­tute of Jus­tice and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Lega­cy Foun­da­tion, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Insti­tute Foun­da­tion (DIF), and the Ukrain­ian Asso­ci­a­tion of South Africa (UAZA). More than twen­ty experts from dif­fer­ent fields are part­ner­ing for a bet­ter future for the African con­ti­nent.  

For more infor­ma­tion about the state­ment or the ini­tia­tive please con­tact Dzvin­ka Kachur [email protected]

South African and Ukrain­ian experts sug­gest next steps for the Africa Peace Mis­sion: Region­al Secu­ri­ty, Nuclear Safe­ty and Depor­ta­tion of chil­dren­Planned events 11–15 March 2024:

11 March (Mon­day): 14h00 — 16h00, Sem­i­nar “South African Insights on Ukraine’s Path to Peace: Region­al Secu­ri­ty, Nuclear Safe­ty, and Human Rights Per­spec­tives”, Stel­len­bosch Uni­ver­si­ty;

12 March (Tues­day): 9h30 — 12h30, Sem­i­nar “South African Insights on Ukraine’s Path to Peace: Region­al Secu­ri­ty, Nuclear Safe­ty, and Human Rights Per­spec­tives”, Depart­ment of Polit­i­cal Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cape Town;

15 Mach (Fri­day): 09h00 — 10h30, Sem­i­nar “AU Pol­i­cy Brief on Ukrain­ian chil­dren under Russ­ian con­trol: address­ing depor­ta­tions, repa­tri­a­tion and jus­tice”, Cen­tre for Human Rights, Uni­ver­si­ty of Pre­to­ria.

15 March (Fri­day): 12h00 — 13h30, Sem­i­nar “Lessons from the Ukraine war and African gov­ern­ments’ role in resolv­ing the con­flict”, Insti­tute for Secu­ri­ty Stud­ies, Pre­to­ria.