MOSCOW, March 28. /TASS/. Russia’s efforts in combating terrorism in Africa are producing results, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for West Africa and the Sahel Leonardo Santos Simao said in an interview with TASS.
The region of West Africa and the Sahel is undergoing big challenges with a lot of suffering in the population, he said. "And our role as UNOWAS (the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel - TASS), which is the name of our office, is to try to promote peace and stability in the region. And to reach this objective, we need to upgrade the capacity of the region to fight terrorism, which is the principal challenge of the region," the diplomat said.
"And to fight terrorism, it's important to bring all the efforts to help the most affected countries, and these are in central Sahel, particularly Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council so it is a country with special responsibilities for that reason. But also Russia is a country which is cooperating with many countries in Africa, but particularly these one in the Sahel. So the purpose of our visit is to commend the efforts Russia is doing to combat terrorism in the region. That cooperation with the countries of the region is very much valued because it's producing results," he stressed.
Moreover, the UN envoy noted the necessity to tackle the other two issues. "One is humanitarian assistance which is necessary. Russia is providing that assistance, but the magnitude, the size of the problem is such that more effort is necessary to alleviate the suffering of that population. And the second aspect is to look into long-term perspective, because terrorism is bred on poverty so it's necessary to tackle development. So what we are doing is to encourage Russia to help these countries in the way to development," he said.
Simao noted that the development of agriculture could be one of the solutions to the food problem. "So that's taking advantage of the natural conditions these countries have, particularly starting with agriculture, which will bring food security and also create jobs among the youth. Because the youth also is another challenge for the region," he said.
The youth are now more than half of the population of each of these countries, the diplomat noted. "And there is no job, both for educated and non-educated youth," he emphasized.
Simao added that he had had a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin. "This is the agenda we came to discuss with the Russian authorities. I had a meeting with the vice [foreign] minister [Sergey] Vershinin on that and we agreed that this is the way to work together. We also agreed that we have to continue to support these countries so that there is more dialogue among the countries of the region but also with the regional sub-regional organization, which is the ECOWAS. That dialogue is necessary to bring more stability among the countries concerned, so then they can concentrate joint efforts to fight the terrorists, but also for development," he concluded.