EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Published in Monograph No 119, May 2005

The African Union's Emerging Peace and Security Regime
Opportunities and Challenges for Delivering on the Responsibility to Protect

Kristiana Powell

• The transition from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU) ushered in far-reaching changes to the pan-African peace and security agenda, particularly with respect to the parameters of sovereignty and intervention for human protection purposes. The principles underpinning the AU’s emerging peace and security regime resonate with elements of the prevention-reaction-rebuilding continuum articulated in The Responsibility to Protect framework.
  
  

• The AU’s emerging security architecture places the continental organisation within a robust security system consisting of African regional arrangements and mechanisms, the United Nations (UN), and other key members of the international community. Yet there are a number of challenges confronting African regional organisations and their efforts to fulfil a peace and security mandate. These include questionable legitimacy, resource and capacity constraints, and conflicting political agendas. Donor initiatives may further exacerbate these broad differences inasmuch as they focus on certain regions over others and support regional organisations with overlapping membership.
  
  

• The UN will also provide a central building block in the AU’s emerging peace and security system. However, recent practice reveals tensions between the AU and the UN. On the one hand, the AU and African leaders recognise that there is a need to develop African capacities to respond to crises when the UN is unwilling or unable to do so. On the other hand, the UN must be held accountable for its responsibilities in Africa. The lessons from “re-hatting” in Burundi suggest that successful transitions from AU to UN command may require a more formalised relationship between these two organisations that draws on comparative advantages and common understandings of particular conflicts, clarifies respective roles in conflict management and resolution, and minimises troop reductions and demotions.
  
  

• Key external actors like the European Union (EU) and the G8 – including Canada – have helped shape Africa ’s evolving peace and security regime. The EU’s African Peace Facility is providing critical support to the AU, but funds for the Peace Facility are drawn from envelopes already earmarked for development. This raises important questions about how best to negotiate trade-offs between spending for stability and security with the allocation of resources to structural conflict prevention and longer-term development assistance. G8 initiatives in Africa may also make an important contribution to peace and security through regional organisations and the AU. However, the G8’s increasingly narrow focus on developing military capability over conflict prevention and resolution capacities in Africa risks contributing to the construction of a security architecture that is only capable of mounting military responses to crises. There is a need for the G8 and other donors to also focus on helping the AU develop a range of operational and structural conflict prevention capacities.
  
  

• Canada has been a central player in placing and keeping Africa on the G8’s agenda and in developing a set of initiatives that respond to New Partnership for Africa ’s Development’s (NEPAD) broad peace, security and development priorities. Canada is also one of the first donors to provide genuinely flexible funding to the AU. However, Canadian contributions to peace and security capacity building for the AU and regional organisations are minimal in comparison to resources provided to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the UN over the past five years. In addition, existing Canadian support for Africa ’s peace and security regime tends to favour developing West African capacities over funding for the AU. Furthermore, Canada – like other G8 nations – faces critical questions about how to reconcile the urgent need to build peace support operations (PSO) capacity and support crisis response in Africa with the equally pressing need to develop a range of conflict prevention, management and resolution capacities in Africa.
  
  

• An examination of the African Mission in Burundi (AMIB) and the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS) reveals that – at leas t in these cases – the AU possesses the political will to implement its normative commitments to peace and security, including the protection of vulnerable populations. These cases also demonstrate that the AU is filling critical gaps in Africa ’s peace and security agenda and architecture.
  
  

• The AU has had some success in implementing its commitments to peace and security in Burundi and Darfur. In Burundi, AMIB helped stabilise parts of the country and create conditions conducive to UN deployment. In Darfur, AMIS has served to deter ceasefire violations and provide some security to civilians where it is present.
  
  

• Yet the AU faces major obstacles to meeting its peace and security objectives, including its commitment to the protection of civilians. AMIB was tasked with a mandate it could not possibly fulfil and its resources were not aligned with its requirements. The mission also lacked the training and expertise to fulfil its mandate and to provide meaningful protection to civilians. AMIS does not have the planning capacity to deploy on schedule and faces command and control, and logistical constraints. It also has too few troops on the ground and a weak mandate. As a result it is not able to effectively monitor the ceasefire or provide meaningful protection to the most vulnerable civilians.

The experiences of AMIB and AMIS demonstrate that the AU requires extensive financial, logistical and political support from the international community in order to fulfil its commitments to peace and security, including to the protection of civilians. Ultimately, however, the AU and the rest of the international community will need to use a range of tools to deliver on the new peace and security agenda in Africa. Political initiatives to prevent, manage and resolve conflict need to be matched with strategies on the part of national, regional and international actors to address the social and political vulnerabilities at the root of conflict. Yet an examination of donor commitments to development in Burundi and donor contributions to Sudan also raises critical questions of how to appropriately sequence immediate relief and recovery activities, and longer-term strategies to reduce poverty and build a sustainable peace. It also underscores the need for donors to devise strategies for effective engagement in conflict contexts or where the state is unwilling or unable to devise a viable development strategy.