SADC 2012 Launch of the Revised SIPO II: New Hopes, old challenges
The debate on democracy and governance in Southern Africa took centre stage in Arusha, Tanzania this week
Dimpho Motsamai, Researcher, Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis Division, ISS Pretoria
The launch of the Southern African Development
Community’s (SADC) revised Strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ on Politics,
Defence and Security Co-operation (SIPO II) in Arusha, Tanzania has rekindled
debates on the question of democracy and governance in Southern Africa. The
SIPO, a five-year strategic document that establishes SADC’s institutional
framework for policy coordination and implementation in politics, defence and
security, was first developed in 2003. The revised SIPO, signed by the SADC
Summit in 2010 and launched at a multi-stakeholder conference this week (19-24
November 2012) in Arusha, is envisaged to promote democracy, the observation of
universal human rights and conflict prevention, among others, in the next five
years. The revised SIPO is a voluntary political agreement with no legally
binding obligations on member states who, through institutions such as SADC
National Committees, SADC National Contact Points and the respective Sector
Ministries, are expected to implement SIPO-specific priorities. The SIPO II is
divided into five sectors: political, defence, state security, public security
and the police sector. The document underlines the interdependence of the
different sectors and how they support each other’s work as an important facet
in the SIPO’s implementation.
While SADC is by nature an inter-state and state-centric
organisation reputed not to be civil society friendly, the SADC Secretariat’s
invitation to both non-state and government actors to the Arusha launch could
be symbolic of some of the languid changes within the organisation in providing
spaces for public participation. Speaking on the first day of the official launch,
SADC Executive Secretary Dr Tomaz Salomão underlined the
imperative for SADC to improve public participation in its processes and national
responses. Salomão stressed the relevance of past SIPO evaluations in
the development and formulation of the new revised strategy, specifically the
2007 and 2009 evaluations. The 2007 and 2009 evaluations focused on the capacities
of the SADC Organ in the SIPO’s implementation and disclosed, among others, a
wide range of human resources and financial deficiencies in the office of the Organ
Directorate; insufficient and undefined collaboration with regional civil
society organisations; covert public diplomacy on the SIPO from the
Directorate; weak interface between the Organ Directorate and member states on
SIPO domestication, and inadequate institutions and structures for policy
coordination between the SADC Secretariat and member states. Implicit in Salomão’s address was that the new document is both
introspective and retrospective in proposing how future cooperation and
contributions to peace and security in southern Africa should be better
implemented.
Listening to the region’s stakeholders represented at
the Arusha launch, there is indeed hope that the revised SIPO reflects some
introspection on SADC Organ capacity for its implementation, and some
commitment to the sustainability of its implementation with governments and
civil society. The revised document even highlights the need for ‘strict’ monitoring and evaluation mechanisms
through a ‘review of the implementation of planned activities; and a provision
of information on a regular basis to stakeholders’. Another beacon of hope,
although preceding the Arusha meeting, lies in the European Union’s (EU) €36
million grant to the SADC Secretariat, of which €18 million is earmarked for regional
political co-operation. In particular, it is aimed at improving the capacity
and performance of SADC in terms of politics, governance and regional peace and
security. There is also a technical cooperation facility component of €6
million granted to improve the coordination, harmonisation and development of
national-regional linkages.
The hope for a renewed and more effective SIPO is,
however, outweighed by concerns over the Secretariat’s political will to change
its institutional culture. A considerable portion of the revised SIPO document,
which substantively mirrors its predecessor, compounds this. Some
implementation shortcomings – especially those highlighted in the 2007 and 2009
evaluations – remain impediments. Principal among these is that the SIPO is not
a binding policy and even less a legal framework for collective decision-making.
While it remains a guide for the collective behaviour of member states and for
shaping the institutional framework of the Organ, the mechanisms for enforcing,
tracking and monitoring member states’ compliance on its implementation are minimal.
With different political, economic and governance backgrounds, the SIPO’s
implementation is invariably varied among member states. The depth and even
comprehension of the provisions of the SIPO II, given its non-binding nature,
cannot be assumed to be common. SADC National Committees – which exist in only
a few member states – were conceptualised for this very purpose, including
providing an interface between citizens and the Organ in the implementation of
SIPO programmes. Arguably, however, not much member state evaluation has been
done by the Secretariat to fully appreciate the circumstances pertaining to the
SIPO’s implementation. National committees function unevenly throughout the
region and the insufficient attention by the Organ to the effective functioning
of these committees presumably also makes the continuous assessment of SIPO
implementation complex.
There is also no established relationship between SADC
and non-state actors in SIPO implementation. The revised SIPO maintains the
centrality of civil society contribution to conflict prevention, management and
resolution, yet the procedures for civil society interaction with SADC
structures remain undefined. This is a historical problem dating back to 2006
that has seen the SADC–civil society programme of action remain in flux. The initial Maputo SADC/Civil Society meeting
in 2006, which was followed by another one in 2009, briefly dallied with the
idea of developing plans of action and Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) to
define SADC–civil society interaction. There has, however, been limited success
in this. In giving life to these agreements, there is a need for new ways of
formalising civil society engagement with the Organ Directorate beyond the
scope of this week’s Arusha meeting.
Another old challenge is the understated and lack of
push for the operationalisation of the Regional Early Warning Centre (REWC),
ostensibly launched by SADC in 2010. The Regional Early Warning System (REWS)
remains veiled in secrecy and there are unanswered questions from various civil
society actors over the standards used by the SADC Organ to identify conflicts,
and the nature and sources of inputs to the REWS. As it stands, the measurement
or assessment of factors that have the potential to lead to conflict are not
well understood beyond the Organ Directorate offices and the member states it
works with. Alerting SADC to emerging concerns is a critical part of preventing
and managing violent conflicts, humanitarian crises, natural disasters and
other situations of potential instability, as highlighted by the revised SIPO.
Observably,
human rights violations are often among some of the root causes of volatility
in the SADC region. The unresponsiveness of the REWS, coupled with the
momentous decision by the SADC Summit in August 2012 to remove human rights
adjudications from the jurisdiction of the SADC Tribunal, undermines the quest
for human rights promotion in the revised strategy. For now, the region does
not have a regional human rights court. The first SIPO did call for the
establishment of a regional Human Rights Commission, but its full approval is
yet to be completed. Although the revised SIPO does mention the need to
encourage member states to produce periodic reports on human rights issues to
relevant SADC bodies, this is unlikely to take root. A case for creating
stronger institutional links with complementary structures, like the
Parliamentary Forum, makes sense in this context, as it will likely open up
channels of communication between civil society and the Organ on links between
human rights and political early warning. In the final analysis, aside from the
technical and administrative capacity of the SADC Organ in SIPO implementation
discussed at the Arusha launch, the SADC Secretariat’s political will and
authority in championing SADC political and security programmes and policies
will keep the SIPO momentum up. This is a fundamental aspect of SIPO agenda-setting
that, if undertaken by both the Executive Secretary and the Organ Directorate
of SADC, will inform part of the sustainability mechanisms envisaged to make
the revised SIPO a living document.
