Ministry of Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary Chalwe Lombe has revealed that the region has made significant strides in championing peace, from the time President Lungu assumed Chairmanship of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) organ on Politics, Defense and Security, in August, 2018.
Mr Lombe says the region has enjoyed peace and stability, which is evident in the recent past elections held in countries such as Eswatini, Madagascar, South Africa, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The Permanent Secretary said this during the SADC Senior Officials meeting in Lusaka today.
He stated that despite making significant strides, the region is still faced with unprecedented threats and challenges to peace and security, which include transnational crimes, extremism, terrorism and climate change.
Mr Lombe said the threats posed are alarming and their complexity calls for collective resources and expertise, with stronger coordination among member states.
He added that government is confident that as the region boldly faces various challenges, the region will forge ahead with a resolve to link the various economies, strengthen the region’s performance and enhance political stability.
Zambia, is the current Chair on the SADC organ on Politics, Defense and Security, and it is in this regard that the country is hosting the 21st meeting of the Ministerial Committee of the organ from July 14-19th, 2019 at the Mulungushi International Conference Centre.
The high level meeting has attracted participation from various countries in the SADC region and beyond.
The worst threat being faced by SADC is incompetent leaders.
Zambia has even sent its military for peace-keeping missions under the UN. In fact as I write this some of our people in uniform are in the Central African Republic. I hope the officer corps do discuss in the officers’ mess how the countries to which they’re sent lost their peace. It ddnt just occur suddenly. It started slowly such as linguistic marginalization like we have in Zambia. Then the marginalization spreads to other areas of life as we are beginning to see. After that this question begins to get asked: “How did we reach this stage?”
It’s the work of social science to inquire into such questions and advise appropriately. Canadian social scientist Will Kymlicka specialises in this type of work, that is, how to make diverse societies (characterised by different religions,
languages, races etc) function harmoniously.