Abstract
Ensuring peace, safety and security in the EAC Partner States, has remained elusive, notwithstanding efforts put in place to see that this promise is fulfilled. East Africans under Article 124 of the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community (EAC) agree that ‘peace and security are pre-requisites to social and economic development within the Community’. The problem at hand, however, is how to ensure that appropriate parameters are set for this to happen. The EAC Treaty derives its mandate from the general principles of international law, and other higher legal norms including those at the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN) levels. Guns, especially in the hands of non-state actors, escalate insecurity and avert the peace processes in the EAC. Within the continental framework, EAC Partner States’ aspirations for ‘silencing the guns and owning the future’ tallies with those of the African Union (AU) Agenda 2063. Achievement of the milestones set in AU Agenda 2063 is a gradual process, with noticeable success stories on the ground. This argument is, however, made cautiously because guns have not been silenced in each and every EAC Partner State. The continued armed conflicts in some EAC Partner States, and the illicit proliferation of weapons in the EAC region, can be attributed to non-adherence to the tenets of rule of law, which broadly embody good governance principles agreed upon by all members of the civilised community of the world. The chapter recommends that EAC Partner States adhere to their domestic, regional and international obligations regarding ensuring peace, safety and security in the EAC Partner States.
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Busingye, G. (2022). Building Peace in East Africa. In: Kuwali, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Sustainable Peace and Security in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82020-6_6
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