The Southern Africa People’s Solidarity Network (SAPSN), Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) and the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition have convened a virtual Extraordinary People’s Summit to shadow the Extraordinary Heads of State Summit scheduled for Maputo, Mozambique on the 23rd of June 2021.
The Extraordinary Peoples Summit will be a moment to strengthen people to people solidarity across the SADC region in the face of the increased theft, loss, human rights abuses, and deaths being suffered by many communities because of the natural resources under their feet. Civic leaders and community representatives from across the Region will address the Extraordinary Peoples Summit and focus attention on the impact of Extractivism on democracy, human rights and peace in the SADC region.
This People’s Summit will be happening parallel to the Extraordinary Summit of SADC Heads of State and Government. As such it will present an opportunity to review the progress made by SADC leaders and contribute people-centred alternatives to end natural resource conflicts in Cabo Delgado Province and throughout the SADC Region.
Our Demands
WE urge SADC to limit any military intervention to a neutral SADC standby force with a clear legal mandate restricted to the purposes of peacekeeping and humanitarian facilitation.
WE demand ACCOUNTABILTY for the theft, loss and deaths caused by the Cabo Delgado conflict, and the institution of a locally-led National Dialogue process under SADC and AU supervision – but with regionally-respected senior figures of integrity at the helm – to resolve legitimate grievances without resort to armed force.
WE implore SADC leaders to reconsider and strengthen frameworks for political and security cooperation, to enable robust coordinated responses to regional collective challenges. In particular, we ask for credible guarantees of safe passage, humanitarian protection and refugee status for people fleeing the conflict from Mozambique into other SADC countries.
We call upon SADC Leaders to do more to address the xenophobic violence that periodically rears up in various SADC countries, as refugees and internally displaced people from the region’s many sites of suffering – due to local repressive, geopolitical, extractivist and climate-related factors – cross borders in desperation.
We call upon Total, ExxonMobil, ENI, China National Petroleum Corporation, SASOL and all other transnational corporations, suppliers, purchasers and investors to divest from conflict-ridden gas extraction Projects in Cabo Delgado. The just and acceptable resolution of the legitimate grievances of affected communities including the payment of a climate debt to the citizenry of Mozambique must also be addressed by these firms and their governments.