t j ~emoire on proposed Seminar on African Security Concepts and New Practice (provisional title!) Background This note sets out the preliminary views of African Security Dialogue and Research (IDYW.,a:frigm,s~.QJJ:itY- .. Q1:g ASDR) on the proposed seminar scheduled for the end of January 2002 in Abuja, Nigeria, to be organized jointly by ASDR and the Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues. In broad outline, the idea of the seminar is to stage a knowledge-based, information -sharing and action oriented seminar to coincide with an important ECOW AS meeting; to help disseminate the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (hJjp.:lLW.~R,g£: ... gill!y-,~.gJJiigi.s.SI.~S.~gh!) which is expected to have been presented by then; and to help in the process of developing an Africa-centric perspective on the broadening parameters of security in the present world condition, for instance, importantly, in the idea of Human Security. This is a working brieffor our own internal consultations continue and we are also consulting with related, third parties. The purpose is to provide a rough basis for intellectual and other negotiation of this exciting prospect It would be recalled that the idea of the Abuja seminar was an important result of the meeting in Vancouver on Thursday, October, 4, 2001. I had proposed, under the research project The New Regionalism and Security in West Africa: A Comparative Perspective, one of three lines of collaborative research proposed, that: "The niche that we intend to develop is to connect the peacemaking apparatus and processes ofECOW AS to the outcomes of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty and to deploy a comparative posture on ECOW AS in relation to other African and extra-continental intergovernmental integration organizations." The most important collaborative effort we presented to the Liu Centre was for a conference in Accra on African Concepts of Security. The idea was to work up ideas of the parameters of security, especially in non traditional contexts, which may be implicit in existing African official and other stances and also to present extant perspectives on the changing meaning of security in scholarship and statecraft to the consultation. We have had advanced discussions with other partners, the most important being the Nordic African Institute (http://www.naiuu.se/indexeng.html). on this Africa-centric conference. The proposed Abuja meeting can be seen, from the point of view of ASDR's original proposal, as a cross between the two ideas sketched above. There are many important aspects of the new proposal for Abuja, It is obvious that the seminar would now be at a much higher profile, in respect of official participation especially. This implies that we have to carefully craft the "multi track" aspect, especially as it concerns participation beyond state officials, of the consultation. The report ofICISS is likely to be controversial, most especially in Africa. While we accept the great importance of making the report as widely known as possible, we also appreciate the need to be careful about the sensibilities it may arouse and to avoid unnecessary aggro. To tamper the happy moral language of the Human Security family of nations, we must balance the understandings of " coalitions of the willing" with old negotiation of diplomatic agreement Finally, we see the conference as part of a process. An important key in our entire collaboration with the Liu Centre in particular and the development of our knowledge and action programmes in Human Security in general. Strategic Stance In order to achieve the practical purposes sketched above, and also to provide a grid for possible themes at the Abuja seminar, we need a careful strategic stance. This would shape the public presentation and negotiation of the seminar process as well. The following elements may be considered in the development of such a stance. The first element maybe to "dilute" the impact of the expected, understandable ICISS push for rolling back state sovereignty and fuming up the bases for intervention. Our stratagem can b e to posit that the erosion of state sovereignty has been going on for a long time and that in certain respects recognition of this given can offer Africa some advantages. We may start from a simple presentation of Stephen Krasner's arresting argument that the historical reality of state sovereignty has been greatly exaggerated. Even imp erial, western countries have suffered significant erosion of sovereignty. i We may assure that the structures of African politics ensures that in significant ways states are often resilient and are able to press sovereignty against their citizens, subjects and captives even in conditions of general adversity. ii At a practical policy level we may say that there have been important examples of military intervention in the recent African experience. We may gloss the ECOWAS/ECOMOG experience as a good example of homemade intervention. We may invoke the important, fast-developing New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEP AD, formerly the New African Initiative) and the founding documents of the African Union as very clearly establishing the norm of intervention in pursuit of human rights across borders as a cardinal African norm. In line with the populist streak of our times, we can suggest that in the post September 11 world condition and the war against individuals, the connections between individual, state and international security appear very strong. Finally, a stick argument It can be argued that the potential erosion of state sovereignty is simply the price that has to be paid for international development assistance today. NEP AD clearly implies this, generally in its framework of a norm-based compact and specifically in the idea of African countries' peer review of development strategies. The • related, enlarged conceptions of security can be shown to carry the potential of providing the bases for firm Southern international development assistance claims, even to the extent of firming up rights-based approaches to development on the policy agenda. Human Security, for example, has been exploited as a basis for a firm claim for Human