EU seeks to rethink policy on Africa aid

Date: 28/03/1996

By Elizabeth Wise

IT is nearly two years since more than two million Rwandans fled their country, causing refugee camps in Zaire to swell like rivers in spring. It seems it has taken the Union as long to come out of shock and form a policy.

After the 6 April 1994 murder of Rwanda's president sparked off a massacre and an exodus of unprecedented scale, the EU reacted with statements of regret and aid shipments which continued for a year.

Through the European Commission's humanitarian office (ECHO), the Union spent 252 million ecu on the Great Lakes countries - Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire - in 1994. Just helping to ease the plight of Burundi and Rwandan refugees cost the EU 168.5 million ecu in 1994 and 107 million ecu last year.

That outflow has caused the Union to sit up and think about its aid policy.

The Commission recently proposed a conflict prevention strategy designed to target its assistance more effectively rather than merely mopping up after disasters.

“Development aid should more consistently address the root causes of conflicts,” said Commissioner João de Deus Pinheiro, introducing the new policy earlier this month. “The targeted reinforcement of those factors that enable peaceful change should be adopted as the ultimate policy goal.”

The EU's aid distributors share that opinion. Summing up five years of work in this field, Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Emma Bonino also said this month that while EU aid was popular and more publicly visible, it was “still important to underline that it addresses the symptoms, not the causes, of conflict”.

Bonino blames that flaw on the still-undeveloped ability of the Union to make joint foreign policy and has called on the Intergovernmental Conference, which opens this weekend, to address the problem. Conflict prevention lies, she argues, “in the political, diplomatic or sometimes military spheres and requires formal instruments and policies which the Union does not yet have”.

EU governments have now agreed to become politically involved in Africa's Great Lakes region by sending a Union mediator to the area.

For the past year, the EU has repeatedly pledged to help the regional conference find and fund solutions to the large-scale displacement of people and in February, foreign ministers appointed Aldo Ajello as the EU's special envoy to the region for six months.

While it is not yet clear whether Ajello's tasks will include encouraging the two million Rwandan refugees scattered across the region to return home, he is being dispatched to negotiate with area governments with the aim of bringing their positions on ethnic conflict and refugees closer together.

Ajello is to report to EU governments every three months on his progress in mediating between the countries.

The EU will not, however, be seen as an impartial observer by all the region's parties.

Rwanda's government, and even the European Parliament, accuse France of being a bad influence and of shipping arms to Hutus in exile, although Paris has repeatedly denied such accusations. Kigali also accuses Belgium, Rwanda's former colonial power, of having fostered the ethnic cleavages between the Hutu and Tutsi populations.

French and Belgian diplomats, who pushed hard for the appointment of an EU envoy, point to Ajello's nomination as a sign of their desire to sow peace, not power plays, in the region.

Ajello's first task was to join in regional efforts, sponsored by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), to assist refugees and displaced Rwandans and Burundians. He is to lead the OAU steering committee for the area.

The EU was not the only institution shocked into promoting preventative medicine by Rwanda's 1994 massacre and ensuing exodus. Ten days ago, the United Nations launched a new 20-billion-ecu development programme, designed in part to enable the OAU to work towards conflict prevention.

The UN, accused of inaction in Rwanda, has been widely criticised for its slow-moving, myopic aid policy.

Even Pinheiro criticised the institution this month, saying: “The ad-hoc employment of UN peacekeeping operations and humanitarian aid has proved costly, sometimes ineffective or even counter-productive.”

Bonino will attempt to bring the Commission's new conflict prevention strategy to East Africa next week when she travels to Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania for what aides describe as “an evaluation mission”.

The Commissioner will travel with America's top aid official, USAid Director Brian Atwood.

The US shares the Union's determination to make aid more efficient with preventive as well as curative donations. Atwood and Bonino agreed to collaborate long before US President Bill Clinton and Commission President Jacques Santer signed the Transatlantic Agenda last December, but the tandem trip is the first joint action to be taken in its name.

“We are very happy and willing to have this synergy,” said Bonino's spokesman Filippo di Robilant.

Before she goes, Bonino is to meet Rwandan Prime Minister Pierre Célestin Rwigema in Brussels today (28 March) after he has addressed a European Parliament committee.

But whether these fine words and initiatives work remains to be seen. A presidential troika visit to Burundi just a year ago has not caused ethnic violence there to subside, and EU-sponsored efforts to encourage refugees to return have not brought the Rwandans still camped in Burundi, Tanzania, and Zaire home. Much more remains to be done.