Representative Governments Ease Global Conflicts, Sununu Says
CONFLICTS
Union Leader
Matt Negrin
Boston University Washington News Service
6 March 2008
WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. John Sununu said Thursday that future global conflicts like the violence in the Middle East, Sudan and Rwanda can be prevented by setting up representative governments that are accountable and transparent.
Sununu, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, said countries with democratic governments — be they representative ones like that of the United States or parliamentary ones like that of England — “tend not to engage in armed conflict with one another.”
His remarks served as the keynote address of a Johns Hopkins University conference on mediating and preventing global violence hosted by Concordis International, a British nonprofit organization that works to resolve such conflicts.
More than 2 million children have died as a result of the 87 ongoing armed conflicts in the world, and more than 1 million children have lost their families, according to Concordis.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Darfur since rebel attacks began in 2003, and millions have fled their homes in what the United States and human rights groups have defined as genocide. Nearly 800,000 people died in the 100-day Rwandan genocide in 1994, when the ethnic group Hutu slaughtered many rival Tutsis.
But the effects of wide-scale violence extend beyond the numbers of victims, Sununu said. “The toll is difficult, if not impossible, to calculate,” he said.
Many human rights activists have sought to raise awareness of the Darfur conflict since it began five years ago. They also have urged support of a United Nations peacekeeping force to help quell the bloodshed. But in Sudan, there has been a reluctance to accept a mediator — which must be the first step to resolving conflict, Sununu said.
“There absolutely must be on the outset … a willingness to accept that mediator,” he said.
Though he said seeking peace in global conflicts is not his area of expertise, Sununu said the “key ingredients” for resolving and preventing the violent clashes are having representative governments, encouraging economic development and forging global ties with other nations.
The senator’s advice became more personal when he was asked by one of the conference attendees how to rid Afghanistan of its corruption. Abdul Ali Seraj, an Afghan prince forced to flee the country in 1978, described Afghan officials trying to help the country as “salmon swimming up river” because there is little economic development, poor security and distrust between the government and the people.
Seraj, who returned to his home country six years ago and is now the president of a coalition seeking to reconcile tribal differences, met with Sununu five years ago before Afghanistan held its first democratic elections.
Sununu commended the country for having a representative government for the past few years and said it now has a level of stability never before seen there. He noted that until 2001, Afghanistan was one of the poorest countries in the world; improving education is the best way to fight poverty, he said.
“The problem won’t be resolved simply by the United States or any other country saying, ‘Stop the corruption,’” he said, also calling the Taliban’s presence “the greatest national security threat that the United States faces right now.”
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