The United Nation’s Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Mr. Tayé-Brooke Zerihoun, paid a courtesy call on the Executive Secretary of SADC, Dr. Stergomena Lawrence Tax, at the SADC Secretariat Head Office in Gaborone, Botswana on the 19th October 2018. The objective of the visit was to discuss the strengthening of cooperation and strategic partnerships between the UN and the SADC.
Mr. Zerihoun expressed his appreciation for the cordial relations between the United Nations and SADC, pointing out that the two organisations’ partnership has stood the test of time. Among others, Mr. Zerihoun underscored the possibility of deepened collaboration between the UN and the region, including in the context of the Report of the High Level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations (also referred to as the HIPPO Report), which provided a comprehensive assessment of the state of UN peace operations and special political missions, identified challenges faced by these UN missions and recommended ways to address them, among others, through UN and regional cooperation arrangements.
On her part, Dr. Tax thanked Mr. Zerihoun for the courtesy call and the support rendered by the United Nations Agencies to the SADC Region, its Member States, including by collaboration with SADC. She reiterated the United Nations’ role in supporting and funding critical activities related to the Lesotho National Dialogue Stabilization Project as well as collaborative undertakings by the SADC, AU and UN Special Envoys in relation to supporting the Republic of Madagascar to achieve substantial progress in its political stabilisation. Dr. Tax also expressed appreciation on the collaboration with the UN through the United Nations Organization Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), where the SADC-deployed Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) under MONUSCO, and for the continued support to the Government of the DRC in this regard, aimed at both stabilisation and peace consolidation.
The parties resolved to continue interacting and collaborating on issues of mutual interest including enhanced UN-SADC cooperation.
