June 18, 2015 By Regina Pratt
Sierra Leone’s High commissioner to the United Kingdom, H.E. Edward Turay, has urged the European Union to do more to deepen world peace.
The top Sierra Leonean diplomat in the United Kingdom was speaking on 6 June while presenting a paper before members of the Oxford Union at Oxford University.
He told his audience that the European Union could play a vital role in promoting and sustaining world peace, and that Britain, being head of the Commonwealth, can be a key stakeholder in ensuring that world peace is secured.
“We are aware that peace is not only about the conclusion of conflict but there are causal factors which could trigger conflict,” he noted, adding that the too little too late response of the EU to the outbreak of Ebola in the republics of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia underpins some of the lapses of the EU project.
He said it was an open secret that the EU is perceived around the world as a body which barks but cannot bite, and had failed in the articulation of its major remit.
“Due to the fact that the EU has deteriorated to the level of an organization with all the trappings of a weak vessel, it is incumbent on the key stakeholders to ensure that its credibility is restored for the benefit of the great good,” he urged.
H.E. Turay further said that “the causal analysis of conflicts in Africa cites disaffections by the poor, hungry, angry communities which trigger armed conflicts of violent and revengeful proportion”, adding that where there is economic crisis, social disaffections loom large.
He said bureaucrats and their paymasters, the politicians at their Brussels head office could not afford to live in denial and continue to wallow in business as usual.
“Reflecting once more on the enormous challenges as well as the opportunities of the world as a global village, it is incumbent on all and sundry in the EU as well as their partners, to put their shoulders to the wheel and work in the interest of world peace,” the lawyer-cum-diplomat told his esteemed audience.