Wisdom for the Globe

by

Opinion

By Titilayo Omotayo Alade

The meeting between Chinese President and his North Korean Counterpart came as a surprise to the world. On March 25, the media reported that a mystery guest visited Beijing by train. Two days later, that mystery guest received by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, was unveiled as the North Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un.  It was Kim’s first publicized foreign trip since he assumed power in 2011. It took the world by surprise, especially, since major attention was focused on an expected meeting between the North Korean leader and the President of the United States. There is some wisdom here for the highly publicized Trump-Kim nuclear talk. The more your enemies know about your plans, the easier it is for them to frustrate your goal. Conversely, discreet diplomacy will increase focus e.g. on a de-nuclearized Korea. It will also raise the possibility of a successful outcome.

The China/North-Korean meeting is an indication of at least two things: That the Chinese President, Jinping, still has the ears of the North Korean Leader not minding the pressure hipped on the younger leader to disarm. Second, Kim Jong-un is doing his due diligence ahead of the anticipated meeting he requested with his American counterpart, Donald Trump. So, who else has Kim’s attention aside Jinping, Trump and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in? The answer to this question will present a list of the people President Trump should pay attention to and very quietly engage, not by aggression but as partners, if any good must come out of the proposed Trump/Kim meeting. Indeed, in international relations, there are no permanent friends nor enemies! 

Elsewhere, global reactions to the March 4 attempted murder on British soil, of former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, have been astounding. The use of Novichok, a military graded nerve poisoning, linked with Russia, has drawn global spotlight to the Kremlin’s dossier under Vladimir Putin, making the latter the Prime suspect. Although Putin denied involvement in the Salisbury poisoning which happened on the eve of the last Russian presidential election, Russia has accused Britain of flouting international law, by accusing the UK of denying Russian officials’ access to victims of the chemical attack. 

Meanwhile, an unprecedented diplomatic row has been sparked. Consequently, in a unanimous move triggered by the British expulsion of twenty-three Russian diplomats from the UK, more than twenty countries from the EU, NATO and other allies around the globe have since March 26, announced the expulsion of over a hundred diplomats in a solidarity stand with the UK. Expectedly, Russia reciprocated the British move, but with a record setting ripple-effect by friends of the UK across the world, Russia will have to pay closer attention to the current move intended to nudge Putin, towards being a more responsible global leader.

In the last seventeen years, Putin has justified the words of the renowned historian and moralist Lord Emmerich Acton, who said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” The world needs Putin’s good side to show up more in his fourth term, to promote peace, respect for the sanctity of life and the rule of law internationally. Indeed, Putin and other leaders have great power which carries with it the burden of immense responsibility, both at home and abroad.

There is another silent threat to global peace, and some of it was discovered right at the door step of the United Kingdom. It is the reckless manipulation of data analytics across the globe to present falsehood as fact. How then will the United Kingdom and other nations handle this evolving trend which allegedly has influenced elections across the globe? The Cambridge Analytica – a UK registered firm has been accused of this. Indications are that Facebook and other social engineering platforms have become “frenemies” (friends and enemies) to their users, sometimes, selling and using private data for non-altruistic purposes. Now is the time to ask: How sovereign are modern States in the 21st century?

In Africa, two significant things happened on March 21. News broke that while over one hundred abducted school girls from Government Girls Science and Technical College in Dapchi, North-East Nigeria were released by their abductors, the Boko Haram terrorists, held back one of them “Leah (a.k.a. Liya) Sharibu” because she rejected the option of converting to Islam. Second, the largest free trade deal in the world: The African Continental Free Trade Area was signed by forty-four African Union Member States to promote a single liberalized market in the continent.

When news about the release of the abducted Dapchi school girls first broke, everyone jubilated! Almost immediately, there were doubts about its authenticity, because there had been “fake news” in the past. Worse still, after confirming the news, the exact figure of the released victims remained un-certain. Later, information flew that although some of the girls died while in captivity, “Liya”, was still being held back by her captors. The girls were taken on February 19, almost four years after a similar abduction of 276 Chibok school girls in neighboring Borno State, and almost five years after the slaughter of 42 students and school staff by armed men at a government school in the same Yobe State. While we must rejoice over the return of the remaining abducted schoolgirls, it is highly important for the Nigerian government to set precedence that the life of just one of her citizens matters too. This goes not only for Liya, but the still missing Chibok girls. Their lives matter too!  Presently, it is imperative to ask: “Why, have terrorists made children a major target in our time?” And, “What are we doing to stop this ugly trend?”

Nigeria is not alone. According to a CNN report by  Saeed Ahmed and  Christina Walker (March 20), there has been on average at least one school shooting every week this year in the U.S. Insecurity at schools has become a great threat to education and peace in the 21st century. We’ve seen this from Northern Kenya to Peshawar in Pakistan, to Florida in the United States, and Maiduguri and Yobe in Nigeria. Complacency is dangerous! If today, kids are being killed and we do nothing to stop this; tomorrow, they may become the killers! It is time societies across the world pay attention to this time bomb! It is time for the U.N. to take action.

From 17-21 March, all roads in Africa led to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, a country that has appreciably recovered from the infamous 1994 genocide.  For years, Africa unsatisfactorily pursued free trade under lopsided economic relations within the European Economic Partnership Agreement with Africa, Caribbean and Pacific; and the American Growth and Opportunity Act, among others. After series of permutations to either unite politically or economically over the last few decades, Africa has finally made a strong move.

Although 22 signatories were needed as minimum requirement, double that figure [forty-four African nations] signed the framework for establishing the largest free trade deal in the world: The African Continental Free Trade Area, which aims to promote a single liberalized market in the continent. Nigeria – currently Africa’s single largest market abstained from signing this agreement and this calls for consideration.  Why would the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari bow to local pressure on the eve of the occasion to give further thought to this agreement, when just a few days earlier, Nigeria was aiming to host the headquarters of the ACFTA?

The Lesson: Under Foreign Trade Agreements, Africans were like beggars who had no choice. The ACFTA provides a platform to synchronize the best practices gleaned from various other similar platforms with an objective of growing intra-African economies. To be fruitful however, the African Union must pay due attention to avert or conquer the glitches faced by their counterparts elsewhere.

Still in Africa, after fifteen years of monitoring the ceasefire agreement, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) held a historic ceremony to end its operations on March 22. Liberia survived two civil wars, but at a huge cost. About 250,000 lives were lost, countless people were maimed and children were inhumanely reformatted to become killers by rebels. More than 100,000 combatants were disarmed and re-integrated back into the society, while 15,000 troops were deployed by the U.N. (See: Tim Cocks, Thomson Reuters: U.N. Closes up Liberia Peace Keeping Mission After 15 Years; A world report, U.S. News).

As this West African nation begins a new chapter of life under a new leader, George Weah, it is imperative the world learns from Liberia’s painful mistakes. Nations must find ways to resist ethnic division, abuse of power, corruption of the political system and economic disparity which were identified as the root causes of Liberia’s civil war (See: PeacebuildingData.Org; Root causes of the civil war: Liberia). The U.N. must increasingly focus on highlighting the actual root causes of crises it has intervened in across the world, in order to deter recurrence elsewhere. The Myanmar Rohingya genocide described by the U.N as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” is currently the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis. Possibly under-reported, the genocide perpetuated by herdsmen in Nigeria and other parts of Africa is also a brewing humanitarian disaster. Similarly, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan have almost gone unnoticed. It is time to shift attention to finding and promoting effective solutions to societal and global problems.

It is time to encourage world leaders to work as partners and not adversaries. Has anyone ever imagined what the benefits of ending hostilities borne out of the twentieth century cold war would be like in affected nation-states? Can you imagine the cost of running the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea from 1953 till date? Do we know how many lives have been lost to this senseless ideological and egotistic war? Can we ever truly evaluate the cost of this divide? Can we imagine the benefits of genuine reconciliation and peace, cooperation and development among nations? We can look to Germany for some answers, since it was similarly divided until 1989. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel was in East Germany ruled by the Communist during the cold war. How has unification helped to make Germany a leading light in Europe today?  If world leaders can unite to resist the exuberance of one of their own, then they can work together to solve more global threats to peace.