Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Question 41: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the progress made on the implementation of the UN report on resource based conflicts in Africa. [31727/09]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The United Nations Office of the Special Advisor on Africa convened an Expert Group Meeting on Natural Resources and Conflict in Africa in Cairo in June 2006. A number of cross-cutting recommendations were made to seek to harness Africa's natural resources for peace and development. The recommendations focused on the areas of knowledge generation, capacity-building, monitoring and enforcement and international cooperation, targeting the relevant actors at the local, national, sub-regional, regional and international levels.

The UN continues to emphasise the importance of strengthening the capacity of the African Union and sub-regional organisations to address the causes of conflict in Africa while underlining the need to address the negative implication of the illegal exploitation of natural resources in all its aspects for peace, security and development. In this respect, it welcomes the progress made to date in a number of areas, such as the progress made in the prevention, management and resolution of conflict and in post-conflict peace-building in a number of African countries. Much more needs to be done in a number of other key areas and a recent resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in August (Resolution 63/304 of 11 August 2009) calls on the international community to continue to support such initiatives.

A further Expert Group Meeting is due to be held in Arusha, Tanzania, later this year to follow up on the issues and recommendations made at the 2006 Conference. As with the Cairo Conference, this meeting will be attended by key experts in the area of resource-based conflict and will not be open to States. The UN Secretary General is expected to carry out a comprehensive review of the outcome of the Experts meeting and present it at the 65th session of UNGA. Ireland will follow the events and outcomes of this conference with keen interest and support.

Ireland is doing its part to assist the African people to achieve sustainable development through its bilateral assistance in Country Programmes and multilateral assistance to the UN, International and Regional partners through the Government's Overseas Development Aid programme. Governance which is seen as key to the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa is also a key cross cutting theme in the Irish Aid programme. In this respect, Ireland has welcomed and supported the establishment of the African Peer Review Mechanism under the auspices of the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development. This locally owned initiative enables Africans to review the quality of good governance in their own countries and has the potential to make a very real contribution to improving good governance in Africa.