Monrovia — Six African countries including Liberia are participating in a three-day capacity building workshop on how to prevent atrocity at the state level. The workshop commenced Wednesday, May 18, 2022, in Monrovia with a call for governments in Africa to invest in preventing atrocity.
The workshop is being organized by the Kofi Anan center of Peacekeeping Training Center and the Government of Ghana in collaboration with the Liberia peacebuilding office. The aim of the workshop is to develop regional capacity for improving atrocity prevention in the six countries in West Africa.
Mr. Edward Mulbah who heads Liberia Peacebuilding Office said, the workshop is intended to cultivate the avenue that would take steps in eliminating the crimes of atrocities and ensure collaborative engagement that will make leaders move beyond state actions.
The workshop will also draft policy implementation that will ensure atrocities crimes are limited. Participants at the workshop will also discuss gains made in the fight against atrocities and the need to put in place an early warning system and the political will to prosecute by stakeholders should be a priority.
The workshop is also intended to make stakeholders more transparent, accountable, and timely in responding to crimes of atrocities, and to strengthen the legal policies by protecting them. Participants at the workshop also want civil society organizations to see themselves as significant partners in the fight against crimes of atrocities.
Conflict prevention remains a core focus of the UN. Within Africa this includes maintaining peacekeeping and peace-building missions, assisting countries that have recently experienced conflict with reconciliation and reform efforts, and the 2002 creation of the UN Ad-hoc Working Group on Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa.
The Human Rights Council has also instituted mechanisms for technical support to many African countries and, in addition to ongoing visits by Special Procedures with thematic mandates, in West Africa, there are also country-specific independent experts for Côte d’Ivoire and Mali. In terms of operational prevention, the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations has had an extensive presence in the West Africa region over the past two decades.
Several ECOWAS and AU-led peacekeeping missions were later converted into substantial UN peacekeeping operations, including in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Mali. These missions typically maintain an active presence within the country long after the formal end of a conflict in order to avoid a recurrence of violence and often participate in security sector reform, disarmament campaigns, and election observation.
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While peacekeeping operations often make the most visible contribution to preventing or ending the conflict, other UN agencies also assist states with structural prevention.
Atrocity crimes – systematic violence perpetrated against civilians – continue to have devastating impacts on populations in Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR), Iraq, Yemen, and beyond.
The failure to act promptly in the face of these growing crimes, despite strong international norms and national legislation, reflects the limitations of the international system to prevent and stop these killings. More robust peacekeeping and rapid interventions have shown some promise, but they are reactive and attempt to stop mass violence once it is already underway.