COMMENTARY

It was certainly not by chance that the nation, Cameroon chose as its motto, “Peace, Work, Fatherland.” The three words of guidance carefully reflected upon and selected by those who built the foundation of this nation, have been the rock layer for the survival of the country. Peace incidentally is a word that is cherished by all nations of the world. As indicated by President Paul Biya in his statement at the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, “peace is the sine qua non for the survival of humanity and for sustainable development.” Peace some experts say, is among others, the absence of war, but the absence of war is not necessarily the presence of peace. In effect, peace is an occurrence of harmony characterized by the lack of violence, conflict behaviours and the freedom from fear of violence. World peace which President Biya in his statement rightly qualifies as “seriously under threat” is an ideal state of freedom and happiness among and within all nations and those who provide a basis for peoples and nations to willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that prevents warfare. The resurgence of terrorism, conflicts, poverty and climate disruptions are among the biggest threats to world peace today. To President Paul Biya, such persistent threats are of utmost concern to all. “Today, no continent, no country is spared by the scourge of terrorism, the atrocities of which unfortunately have become part and parcel of daily life”, he said. This observation coming from the President of one of the nations (Cameroon) that constitutes Lake Chad basin is quite obvious. It would have been very abnormal for the President to ignore the fact considering that an estimated population of 2,000 people have lost their lives in this region to the inhuman activities of the extremist Boko Haram terrorist group. This state of affairs has paralysed human activity in some parts of countries of the Lake Chad basin. The situation is no different in some other parts of the World. President Biya quotes examples of attacks in Barcelona and Ouagadougou, bombing of Baghdad leading to 292 lives lost, crash of Russian Airbus in the Sinai with 224 dead, attack of Mosques in Sana’a with 142 dead and attack in Paris and Saint Denis killing 130 people. The multiplicity of factors hanging over the existence of peace tells of the fact that peace, as a factor of human development, is not obtained in a plate of gold. For this reason, nations must work in unison to pull down those parasitic elements eating deep into their peace plants. Terrorism is just one of them and the danger is that it might derail the attention towards other factors which President Biya raised in his speech. These include poverty which the poor implementation of United Nations resolutions has allowed it to persist, climate change which the Paris conference underscored and streamlined as a serious issue to be tackled and several other conflicts existing between nations. President Biya is particularly worried about the fact that poverty continues to exist in spite of measures taken by the UN Security Council. “The Security Council has most appropriately reiterated that poverty is a serious threat. How then can one understand that we have difficulties tackling it accordingly?” Irrespective of the different approaches nations as individuals and as groups have opted to achieve peace, some of which have failed and some succeeded, it is important to re-echo the fact that peace remains supreme as trigger to human development.