Andrea Riccardi is the founder of the community of Sant’Egidio, an anti-poverty institution, close to the Vatican, very active in Africa, known for its mediation efforts, as in South Sudan or the Central African Republic. The community is also involved in setting up humanitarian corridors to bring Syrian refugees directly from Lebanon to Italy or France. Historian, former Italian Minister for Cooperation from 2011 to 2013, Andrea Riccardi notably wrote The Unarmed Peace Force and The Professor and the Patriarch (respectively 2018 and 2020, Editions du Cerf).
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Faced with the complexity of the situations and the multiplication of actors in today's conflicts, are the mediation tools at the heart of Sant’Egidio diplomacy sufficient?
The diplomacy of Sant’Egidio is a diplomacy of meetings, to make people think and find a common interest, as we are doing in the Central African Republic and South Sudan. But in this world where everything is privatized, we need state diplomacy.
In Mozambique we made peace (in 1992) after two years of negotiations. It was one of the poorest countries in the world, a Marxist country that has become a democrat. The north has recently experienced jihadist attacks. Both extremes must be avoided. Radical Islamist ideology became what revolutionary Marxism was at one time. It is a successful franchise that recovers from old fights, between Peuls and Touareg for example.
One day in Guinea, I met a young man who was wearing a T-shirt and a watch bearing the image of Bin Laden. I asked him : " Who is it ? " He answered me : "Someone is fighting for us, the excluded", but he did not know his name.
What role can you play?
We believe that interreligious dialogue is essential around the Mediterranean. In October, a major meeting of religious leaders and civil societies is to take place in Rome, in the spirit of the Assisi meetings, with the participation of Pope Francis at the closing. This is very important because religion can be just as much water as petrol poured into the fire of war.
The problem is that we are witnessing an "emotionalization" of religion at the expense of culture. Historically, religions have produced cultures. Faced with capitalism and Marxism, the Catholic Church has developed social doctrine, its culture. But currently everything is emotion. On this ground, the evangelicals excel. And it’s a very comfortable situation for political power. When, in the 1980s, General Jaruzelski faced the Polish episcopate guided by the primate Wyszynski and supported by Pope John Paul II, he was faced with a wall. Today, having fifteen sects in front of you in search of money and recognition is a boon for political power.
A peace agreement has been reached in South Sudan, as well as in the Central African Republic, two countries where you are mediating. Do you think we are headed for peace?
I hope so. We are engaged in the peace process in South Sudan. We were in Juba for the inauguration of the new union government, end of February. The climate was positive. And we are going to continue negotiations between non-signatories and the government in order to involve everyone.
We came into this mediation process at a time when it seemed exhausted. Some international tiredness wanted South Sudan to be a cause lost. The past two months have shown that it is possible to rebuild the foundations of this country, whose independence the international community supported in 2011.
The primary concern of Sant’Egidio is the suffering of the people. More than 1 million South Sudanese are internally displaced; more than 2 million are refugees in Ethiopia. The priority, and our goal, is for the fighting to stop. Same thing in the Central African Republic. The country's institutional construction is still under way, the rebels remain difficult to pin down, but the important thing is to obtain a permanent ceasefire allowing the delivery of humanitarian aid.
It should be remembered that these are countries without a State – South Sudan since its creation in 2011, the Central African Republic since the 1990s. However, the State in Africa is the resource of the weakest, the poorest. It is the state that should be the source of control over violence. In its absence, and in the context of the circulation of arms, a country "sinks". The international community can get used to the "somalization" of entire areas of the world, as long as it is done at low intensity. For us, this is unacceptable, because it means that people are suffering.
What areas are you talking about?
We can cite Yemen or the Sahel. The best current example is that of Libya, except that this time the country concerned is only a few kilometers from Europe. Everywhere, the same scenario is repeated: we start wars, we see that it does not work, but we let it drag. At Sant’Egidio, on the contrary, we think that we must know how to stop wars because a conflict that is not over can always resume.
Is the situation in Libya one of your main concerns?
I have always been hostile to the use of Libya’s good offices to block the migratory wave from the Berlusconi era. Today we have evidence from the Italian judiciary of the appalling conditions of refugees in Libya. Justice prosecuted and convicted torturers, warlords. These are trafficking, torture, rape. One day we will be asked: where were you when people were murdered in this way? This is not only the responsibility of Europe, but also that of the Libyans and Africans. We left the Libyan problem to rot. Including the question of weapons leaving the country from the south.
Was the intervention in Libya to drive out Gaddafi a mistake?
Yes. In any case as it was conducted. France, Italy, the United States were in a position of strength (in 2011) to force the Libyans to negotiate among themselves. Now we have lost control: there are too many sponsors – Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, etc. What could Ghassan Salamé do (former UN Special Envoy, who resigned on March 2) without real Western support?
How do you judge the attitude of the European Union to the recent migration crisis on the Greek-Turkish border?
What is happening in Lesbos and on the border between Greece and Turkey is the consequence of the absence of Europeans. Paying Turkey for hosting the refugees was the only role for this absent Europe. It’s very sad because the Mediterranean is the sea of a communion of peoples, religions and cultures. We must keep this plural character. In Italy we spent months – I'm referring to the previous government (dominated by far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini) – to discuss the risk of invasion by southern countries, Africans or Syrians. We left hundreds of people stranded on a boat, and we didn't notice that the Mediterranean was changing, with the Russians, present as ever, and the Turks who were settling in. In geopolitics, the void just needs to be filled. To conduct a policy, we cannot wait for the desperate people, who pay the price for the lack of European diplomacy, to crowd the borders en masse.
Today, all of Europe refuses to see migrants crossing the Greek border …
Refugees must not be brutally rejected, and they must be distributed among European countries. But we must also have a clear discourse with Turkey. We at Sant’Egidio, we have set up humanitarian corridors to welcome refugees in Lebanon. The capabilities of this country are not without limits. Since 2016, 4,000 refugees in Lebanon have come to Italy. We have similar programs in France, Belgium, and even Andorra. Through these humanitarian corridors, we show that it is possible to welcome Syrians in Europe, and we display a message of support for Lebanon in crisis.
But we must also go back to the source, in 2011, of these ten years of war for nothing. There should be a peaceful and secure Syria for all of its people. The Syrian families with whom we are in contact are not very happy with the idea of staying in Europe. Many dream of returning. But what guarantees can they obtain? At the moment, in Idlib, almost 1 million refugees are living in hell. The Russians and the Turks are not able to bring peace. The game must be widened, with a more active policy, so that the countries on the north shore of the Mediterranean are able to mobilize the other European states. In this absurd Syrian war, France had a reduced role, Italy was nonexistent and the Americans abandoned the Kurds who were fighting not only for them, but for everyone.
Today, the national interest depends not only on border security, but on what goes beyond it. Syria is close to our borders, like the Sahara and the Sahel. Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali are not distant countries. If the Europeans lock themselves into a policy of withdrawal, we may be reassured at first, but we will lose our power to influence. It will be another fall of Constantinople. It is necessary to have the courage of an all-round presence in the Mediterranean, and to have as a horizon the organization of a conference to define a pact of the Mediterranean. It cannot become a new cold war place. The Mediterranean does not accept hegemonies. It is the sea of complexity, where the solution is cohabitation.
