The United States on Wednesday, 21 August, 2024, said it is working with Nigeria and the rest of the countries in Africa to address the drivers of instability on the continent and ensure that the situation does not degenerate.
Addressing the press on the purpose of her visit to Nigeria, the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability (ADS) at the U. S. Department of State, Mallory Stewart said:
‘I’ve heard a lot, and I’ve seen through the news the banditry challenge and the experiences, and so we have been trying to appreciate and understand how to affect those things we call drivers of instability, drivers of a security environment that lends itself to these challenges.
‘“And we are working with partners in Nigeria to try to get ahead of some of those challenges, or trying to figure out how we can manage some of those challenges. And for example, the confidence building measures, or the capacity to show greater compliance with international treaties that could help domestically provide for legislation that prevents some of the insecurity that results when there isn’t an ability to implement that, the international legal regime.
‘We are trying to prevent greater instability and trying to address the drivers right now. You know, one of the interesting conversations we’ve had in other African countries have been talking about the challenges of resources, the herders versus farmers conversation, on how we manage confidence building measures to ensure access is allowed for the important resources, such as water in some of these communities, and it’s been really helpful to work on communication capacities, to work on, even sometimes, information exchanges that provide greater understanding and prevent some of the tensions that lead to that instability.
“So you know, to give you more specifics, coming here has been really helpful to understand how many challenges these communities are facing across the board. Just as the global community is facing inflation challenges after COVID-19 , right? This is something that’s very real, and so appreciating how we can really incorporate, hopefully, some confidence security building measures, some mechanisms to hear more information and to allow greater exchange of information to hopefully get ahead of that tension”.
Stewart who disclosed that she had met with some operators in the Nigerian security sector and the civil society movement, said: “Our bureau really is here to focus on hearing the Nigerian voice, hearing the concerns and the elements that we can work together on to support stability and security across the board. Our bureau utilizes the toolkits of confidence building measures, but also security mechanisms together to try to achieve greater stability. And we do this with our partners around the world.
“And so some of the important conversations we were able to talk about was how we can work to hear the Nigerian interest in a political declaration that the US government has been working with right now 55 other countries, hopefully more, including some African nations, to agree upon the responsible uses of AI in the military context, right to sort of make sure we can get these 10 principles using AI in a manner consistent with international law, recognizing inherent human bias, recognizing that AI systems upon AI systems can lead sometimes to greater risks. And so it really is a good encapsulation of what we do in our Bureau, which is maximizing the advantages of stability and security mechanisms and minimizing some of the risks that can sometimes be inherent in emerging technologies or in challenges in implementing even treaties.
“One of the other conversations we had was our upcoming partnership with the Nigerian government to lead a conversation for the region on implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and understanding the challenges in that context, so that you know the Nigerian voice in explaining sometimes the concerns with respect to non state actors with respect to chemical security, how they can be important in the region, and how as a region, if ECOWAS member states, can also work towards implementing some of these international conventions, it can be more stabilizing, so that was another conversation we had.
“We also talked about where we can contribute to what is already a very complicated and sophisticated group of participants in the Yaounde architecture and understanding, if we can provide any additional capacities in communication, enabling or better standard operating procedures for all the diverse players, working through an appreciation for Nigeria’s role in that working through an appreciation for the maritime centers that are based here to see if we can facilitate a better appreciation of more effective teamwork, in a sense, on all of the issues that everyone is coming at from different perspectives. So these were some of the conversations we had.”
