Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-04-Speech-4-248"
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"en.20030904.11.4-248"2
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"Mr President, West Africa provides examples of the extent to which this region is rent asunder. On the one hand, it is where there are the best opportunities for a regional market to grow and develop, and some states have done well by African standards in making progress in recent years. On the other hand, there are states – of which Sierra Leone is one example, and Liberia is another – where not only is the state in crisis, but where every vestige of the rule of law threatens to disappear. We have to consider how we are going to respond in the face of this situation. We have to be clear in our own minds that Liberia started out with a congenital defect, as the descendants of black African returnees from America were in violent conflict with the indigenous inhabitants from the word go and the state has never been internally united.
Today there are also violent conflicts, organised criminality, powerful raw materials interests, and the danger, despite all current efforts and even though some period of time without war can be achieved, that the real problem, the establishment of a constitutional state that functions to some degree, will not actually be tackled. Important though troops are, they cannot do it on their own. What the country needs is the establishment of a state, the building of institutions, and the truth that a state does not come into being automatically is demonstrated in Somalia, where there has been no rule of law whatever for the past ten years.
It is a characteristically European conception that well-ordered states must always and everywhere be in place, even though, in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, it took us decades to re-establish a functioning state order. For a start, then, we should not take an arrogant approach to these matters; secondly, we need to apply a certain healthy realism. We must first put a stop to the violence and must alleviate the direst need; then, though, will begin a process, which will last decades, of re-establishing political institutions that work to at least some degree. That will not happen without massive help from us, but nor can it be successful unless the people want to help themselves. It cannot happen without support from the country’s neighbours, without regional cooperation, without the establishment of a regional community in West Africa. There are however two sides to this, as the state borders and ethnic boundaries do not coincide, resulting in the danger of aid to neighbourhoods being misused – as it was in the Congo – in order to strengthen the hand of related peoples in internal politics on the other side of the border and to upset the balance of nationalities.
A healthy combination of external help, help aimed at enabling people to help themselves, and regional cooperation offers the only chance for this region, racked by crises, to get back on its feet, at least in the medium term."@en1
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