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AFRICAN REGIONAL ORGANISATION' PEACE OPERATIONS
Abstract
This paper reviews recent developments among African regional organisations in undertaking peacekeeping operations, as well as in preparing for future missions. It focuses on those that have been the most active: the Organisation of African Unity/African Union, the Economic Community of West African States and the Southern African Development Community. The paper goes on to briefly describe and analyse the activities of the French, UK, and US capacity-building programmes designed to develop African peacekeeping capacities. The author then identifies some specific concerns and recommends actions to help meet today's challenges. The paper concludes with a short analysis of African organisations' capacities and proclivities to provide a peacekeeping force for Sudan.
... Para el éxito de una política europea de prevención de conflictos, la colaboración con esos actores próximos al contexto de crisis es de gran importancia. Los actores regionales han adquirido un papel muy destacado en el campo de la paz y la seguridad en las últimas tres décadas (Berman, 2002;Francis, 2006;Moller, 2009). Este proceso revela una 'regionalización' de la gestión de las crisis y conflictos, la cual ofrece ventajas para fomentar la prevención. ...
La prevención de conflictos se ha posicionado, desde los años noventa, como una doctrina clave en la gestión de crisis. La Unión Europea (UE) la incorporó a su agenda de acción exterior en aquel momento y, desde entonces, ha pasado por diferentes etapas, tratando de adaptarse al contexto internacional de seguridad, cada vez más complejo y cambiante. Esa evolución que ha experimentado la política europea de prevención de conflictos es el objeto de estudio de este artículo, con el propósito de conocer los cambios en la doctrina y cómo estos han repercutido en un elemento fundamental para el éxito de la prevención: la cooperación con los actores locales y regionales del contexto conflictual en el que se interviene. Con la finalidad de conocer mejor el potencial de esa relación, se ha seleccionado el caso de la Comunidad Económica de los Estados de África Occidental (CEDEAO), debido a las importantes relaciones que mantiene con la UE, a su experiencia en el campo de la prevención y por la relevancia estratégica que esa zona tiene para Europa.
... The regionalization of security, a trend that has gained importance in the last three decades (Berman, 2002;Francis, 2006;Moller, 2009), could help to encourage conflict prevention. It is increasingly common for regional bodies, as ECOWAS, to assume the management of their peace and security problems, through the development of new policies and mechanisms (Tavares, 2009). ...
... La implicación de las organizaciones regionales en temas securitarios (Berman, 2002;Moller, 2009) tiene importantes ventajas, entre las que se encuentra un mejor conocimiento del contexto y, por lo tanto, de las raíces de los conflictos. Esto hace que en materia de prevención y alerta temprana los actores regionales y locales jueguen un papel protagonista, respaldados por la comunidad internacional. ...
The current international security context is characterised by an array of globalised risks that has led the United Nations (UN) to adapt its policies to try to manage the complex challenges that are emerging. Within this context, the present article highlights the role played by conflict prevention -a trend that has gained more weight in the international community's agenda over the last years, as well as the potential of one of the tools integrated into conflict prevention policies: the early warning systems, the application of which has not been sufficiently explored-. Aimed at demonstrating the importance of this instrument in managing the security challenges the international community faces, this article analyses the experience of the Economic Community of the West African States (ECOWAS) in this field, since its early warning model is used as an example within the international sphere. Besides, the article shows the possibilities the partnership ECOWAS-UN offers in the field of early warning.
... Till 1999 South Africa had contributed only a few missions with small numbers; it sent four observers to Bosnia for two periods of six months each and nine engineering experts took part in the the United Nations Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA) operation in Angola until December 1998 (Nhlapo, 1999, 128). In fact prior to 1997, South Africa's participation in peace operations was largely limited to sending troops to Korea in the 1950s and assisting the UN peacekeeping in Rwanda and Mozambique (Berman, 2002). Pretoria therefore engaged in a process to overcome this background; in October 1998, the cabinet approved the White Paper on South African Participation in International Peace Missions whose main agenda was to establish a coherent policy approach to future peacekeeping operations (Williams, 2000). ...
South Africa joined the international community after its transformation from apartheid to democracy in 1994. The transformation created its own reverbera-tions both regionally and globally as democratic South Africa aroused high hopes that it would assume leadership on the continent. With the help of Pretoria, it was hoped, Africa could solve its own problems. However, South Africa did not fully assume this expected role until 2003. Its low level participation, especially in peacekeeping in Africa—the theme of this article—should be attributed to its own domestic consolidation preoccupations, lack of training and incoherency in its foreign policy until roughly the early twenty-first century.
... What measures do the international community, and in particular the G8 countries, need to take to ensure transparency and democratic control over the legal arms trade? 61 E. Berman, 2002, "African regional organisations' peace operations" in African Security Review,Vol. 11,No. ...
The world of international politics, social inequality and political instability in Africa and around the globe has had various effects to developing countries in Africa. A general approach of regionalism is signifying how countries are building partnerships and engaging in business within a diverse system around the world, which is characterised by regional blocs. A main question however is: how can the SADC member states implement its statutes in a way that benefits members. According to Madyo (2008), despite the present international climate on regionalism, there are still contrasting opinions in the economic attraction and viability of a free trade area within the borders of the SADC. Integration prioritised by the SADC should be established in a manner that would assist member states equally and abolish any barriers that presently exists among the SADC countries.
The study examines the questions that concern regional integration in Southern Africa in order to see whether the goals that were outlined by the SADC protocols have been met and what results have such goals produced to Southern African countries in promoting regional integration.
This chapter examines the African Union (AU) peace and security institutions. It shows that they are among the most ambitious and novel continent-wide security governance mechanisms to emerge in the world since the end of the Cold War. They are drawn from collectivist security ideas, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework and the human security paradigm. Some of them are informed by lessons learned from the practice of vertical postwar reconstruction exercises. The AU peace and security ideas are codified in the Constitutive Act of the AU, and outlined in detail in the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC protocol) of the AU, in the African Non-Aggression and Common Defence and Security Pact, and in the Post Conflict Reconstruction and Development Policy (postwar reconstruction policy).1 They are managed by a fifteen-member PSC, which has turned the AU into a major peace and security decision maker. Indeed, the work of the PSC has placed the AU in a position where it increasingly shares with the United Nations (UN) the responsibility of maintaining peace and security in Africa. The power- and burden-sharing arrangement between the AU and the UN goes beyond the UN Charter’s paternalistic attitude to regional organizations. The absence of a legal cover in the UN Charter for the role that the AU is playing in the arena of peace and security is creating a number of frictions between the pan-African organization and the UN Security Council (UNSC).
This article discusses the increasing use of private military companies (PMCs) in United States’ security policy in Africa, and examines this phenomenon in relation to the US’ various military training programmes on the continent. We argue that the increasing use of PMCs in US security policy has evolved due to two critical and mutually dependent developments; African state weakness and resource stringency on the one hand, and the US's overwhelming security commitments around the world, combined with military downsizing, on the other. The article further argues that the involvement of PMCs is to a large extent informed by US concerns about access to African resources, especially oil, in the face of stiff competition from China. We conclude that the increasing US engagement in Africa is highly militaristic and state-centric, and that it is primarily conditioned by US strategic interests and does not necessarily reflect African security concerns: human security for development.
This paper explores the contribution of the African Union (AU) to human security promotion in Africa. It contends that human security concerns informed the formation of the AU. Through the efforts of the AU Commission, the African ruling elite and policy-makers have become aware of human security doctrines. Human security ideas have been integrated into AU binding agreements, declarations, decisions and policies. The commission is now in the difficult, yet most important, phase of trying to persuade significant numbers of the African ruling elite and civil society to accept human security as a guiding principle and the desirable norm. Through the African Citizens' Directorate (CIDO), the commission is using indigenous African civil society groups to institutionalise human security doctrines in Africa. The commission faces serious challenges in its efforts to make human security the only security norm. While member states of the AU that have never been comfortable with the introduction of human security doctrines into the continental integration project are tacitly undermining the CIDO's ability to work with civil society groups to institutionalise the doctrines in Africa, the leaders who enthusiastically supported the integration of human security doctrines into the documents and work of the AU have seemed in recent times to be less resolute in their support of AU Commission's human security work.
The recently established African Union mandates the creation of an African Standby Force. This policy paper reviews the current engagement by other Western nations with the new African Union and its Peace and Security Council to address challenges to security in Africa through the African Standby Force, its accompanying early warning system, and civil society engagement. Building on Canada's long‐standing expertise in peacekeeping and peace building, the report presents foreign and defence policy options that can put Canada in a better position to help build the indigenous capacity of Africa to address security issues, as well as to carve out a distinctly Canadian approach to peace and security on the continent. This paper makes a total of 35 specific recommendations to the Government of Canada with specific reference to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the Department of National Defence and Canadian Forces on the roles Canada can play in supporting the AU's African Standby Force.
External support is essential to the development of the African Standby Force (ASF), an African-led mechanism for crisis management and peace consolidation in Africa. This research paper examines external support to the ASF by several bilateral and multinational contributors, assessing its strengths and limits, and attempts to measure the significance of the support to the aspired outcome.
The starting point of the study is an analysis of the fast-evolving ASF project, which has gone through many phases of definition and redefinition since it was conceived in the late 1990s. The ASF, it is argued, is a ‘moving target’, due to the inability of African stakeholders to settle on a clear concept, setting themselves ever more ambitious goals at every stage. Partners simultaneously suffer from, and contribute to this state of affairs. Whilst coordination efforts are undertaken, partners' support too often still responds to national (for bilateral donors) or institutional interests (for multilateral ones), each partner using the leeway created by the conceptual ambiguities of the ASF to press its own priorities. Given the overwhelming role of partners in the conceptual maturation of the ASF, and the impact of their funding decisions, this is turn exacerbates the confusion about the true direction of its development. Said differently, the ASF is burdened by the lack of political, conceptual, and financial ownership on the side of the recipients, who are also its main stakeholders. The result is at best an ambiguous partnership, and at worst a waste of human resources, financial means and political capital.
Attempting to differentiate between degrees of ‘ownership’, the study concludes that it is only if AU member states make a conscious effort to increase their political, conceptual and especially, financial, stake in the ASF that they will credibly demonstrate that it is not an entirely foreign-mastered project, but a real ‘African solution to African problems’.
This article examines the basis for humanitarian intervention (HI) in the United Nations Charter, the African Union (AU) Charter and in a number of African sub-regional institutions. It traces the historical development of HI and argues that, while the right to HI emerged more than 100 years ago, that right also emerges from the Genocide Convention. The article argues that this treaty connects HI to the developing norm of the responsibility to protect (R2P) and examines the extent to which R2P is garnering wider support around the world. It focuses on the UN, and the various AU and sub-regional institutions and instruments that sanction HI. It assesses whether intervention can be authorized even in the absence of a UN Security Council mandate and examines the principles, application and interrelationship of R2P and HI in the African context. It traces the use of these norms in Africa, including in the various sub-regional structures, and evaluates the AU's political will and capability to deal with conflict and human rights abuse.
This article reviews western donor support for building African peace and security architecture, specifically in relation to G8 efforts to engage in the capacity-building process in line with commitments made in the Joint Africa/G8 Plan to Enhance African Capabilities to Undertake Peace Operations (the Joint Plan)—agreed between G8 and key African leaders at the G8 Summit in Evian in 2003. It describes a project by the New Security Issues Programme at Chatham House, carried out jointly with the Peace and Security Programme at the United Nations Association-UK and the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, to provide strategic input into implementing the Joint Plan. The article outlines the background to western involvement in peace and security capacity-building in Africa, the nature and current status of the African peace and security architecture and some key challenges to the G8/Africa capacitybuilding process—particularly African institutional human resource capacity and coordination among the various players involved. Finally, it maps out potential priorities for future progress in taking the capacity-building process forward.
This paper assesses the various peace and security mechanisms that African regional organisations are establishing and other measures that they are taking to enhance their preparedness. In the mid-1990s, the United Nations (UN) Security Council responded to the widely perceived failures of several UN peacekeeping operations by encouraging regional arrangements and agencies to assume a greater role in the promotion of peace and security. As of December 2001, four African organisations had authorised 17 peacekeeping missions. Most of them have been beset by serious and sustained operational and political shortcomings. Recognising their limitations and the vacuum created by Security Council inaction, these and other organisations have undertaken various initiatives to improve on past performance and to prepare for future engagements. A review of their decision-making processes, staffing, mission planning and support, peacekeeping training and financial resources suggests that, while they have made some progress, most organisations are still far from being able to take on the responsibilities that the international community would like them to assume.
African countries that contributed troops included Cape Verde
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for example, is believed to have used some of its ACRI equipment in the DRC
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Peacekeeping in Africa: Capabilities and culpabilities Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. For information on the various non-P-3 capacity-building programmes, see
- E G Berman
- K E Sams
UK, and US policies to support peacekeeping in Africa: Current status and future prospects
- E G Berman
- French
Festus Aboagye, Senior Military Expert, OAU Secretariat
- Interview
Synopsis of a study on strengthening the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre21 May An independent report prepared for the UK Department for International Development
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- E G Berman
Peacekeeping in Africa: Capabilities and culpabilities193–209 This is a representative and not a comprehensive list. Some of their structures are undeveloped or dormant. For additional information on
- Sams Berman
Executive Director, Institute for Security Studies
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Peacekeeping in Africa: Capabilities and culpabilities65–66 The peacekeeping capacities of African regional organisations This figure was subsequently changed to six per cent. The annual OAU budget in recent years was roughly $30 million
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London has expressed its intent to establish a similar BMATT elsewhere in Southern Africa
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United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. For information on the various non-P-3 capacity-building programmes, see
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- K E Sams
An independent report prepared for the UK Department for International Development
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Out of the 5,000 troops ECOWAS believed were needed for that operation, fewer than 800 were deployed. Moreover, this small force was dependent on France
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