The two-day EU-AU Summit kicked off on Thursday 17th February 2022.
On the first day of the summit, Rwanda’s Presidency has revealed, President Kagame attended the roundtable discussion on peace, security and governance where leaders discussed the need for a new approach towards addressing security challenges and achieving sustainable peace.
The Head of State said that bad governance is the root cause of conflicts that fuel insecurity and stressed the need for special attention to uphold peace and security.
“There is no way to build sustainable peace and security, both within and between our continents, without putting governance at the centre. We need new thinking and new templates for joint action on counterterrorism and peace support operations,” he noted.
“Good politics and governance are like a healthy human body. Where governance is compromised, it is like having a weak immune system which is vulnerable to all kinds of opportunistic infections or attacks,” Kagame added.
In consideration of the fact that threats are transnational, the President stressed the need for joint action.
“We cannot afford to stand aside and watch when the lives of innocent civilians are at risk. Europe’s stability is also at stake. We are neighbours and the threats are transnational and cross-border,” he said.
Kagame underscored that a blended bilateral and multilateral approach is a flexible formula that is well-suited ‘to our present challenges’ noting that a more predictable and sustainable international financing system for bilateral and regional military interventions is needed.
He however observed that no amount of troops or funding can create sustainable peace.
“We must simultaneously address the shortfalls in governance, which are the root cause of insecurity,” Kagame said.
“We want a relationship between the European Union and the African Union that is meaningful and produces concrete results. We need each other, and that means working as full partners,” he added.
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