Between reactive and proactive interventionism: The African Union Peace and Security Council's engagement in the Horn of Africa

This article will assess the interventionism which the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) has fostered in the Horn of Africa region with particular reference to the Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, and Kenya. Ten years after the establishment of the AU and eight years after the operationalisation of the PSC, the Union has adopted a stance that can be defined as ‘interventionist’ as far as peace and security issues in Africa are concerned. This article will assess whether this interventionism has been predicated on a coherent AU policy towards crisis situations, or whether it can be best described as ‘reactive interventionism’. This article will thus elaborate on the notion of reactive interventionism. With the onset of more pronounced intra-state conflicts between the period of the 1990s and the present, it has become evident that a policy of intervention is necessary to stem the proliferation of complex emergencies. This is particularly evident in the Horn of Africa. Concomitantly, the PSC has been considerably more engaged with situations in the Horn than in other parts of Africa. This article will argue that while the PSC’s interventionism is laudable, the cases of Somalia and Sudan reveal that it has not been backed up by a genuine commitment by AU member states to ensure and conduct robust peace operations. This reveals that the PSC is beset by a ‘reactive’ form of interventionism which in many respects is a function of the absence of a proactive and preventive culture of crisis prevention within the AU system and its member states. This article will argue that the PSC needs to make the transition from reactive interventionism towards more proactive interventionism. The article will identify some of the obstacles and challenges that need to be overcome at the strategic level of AU decision making and at the tactical and operational level of implementation in order to ensure that proactive interventionism becomes entrenched in the modus operandi of the PSC and other organs of the AU system.African Journal On Conflict Resolution, 12(2) 201

Regional Reconciliation in Africa : The Elusive Dimension of Peace and Security

Africa has endured the debilitating effects of cyclical violent conflict for several decades. Despite the existence of well-intentioned policy frameworks and the use of significant resources to stabilise countries, conflicts in the region have remained resistant to resolution. Africa’s crises demonstrate that conflicts have a tendency to spill across borders, affecting communities in more than one country. These cases challenge reductionist understandings of traditional interstate and intra-state wars across the continent. The regional nature of conflicts means that the notion of ‘civil war’ is anachronistic, with increasingly limited descriptive utility.This paper argues that unless concrete efforts are geared towards dealing with the past and promoting regional reconciliation in Africa, the consolidation of peace and security will remain an elusive quest. More specifically, if state resources were deployed in equal measure to lay the foundations for regional reconciliation, this would ultimately be a more effective way to stabilise countries and improve relations with their neighbours. In fact, the pursuit of regional reconciliation could contribute towards the fulfilment of the incomplete project of decolonisation across Africa

Ensuring Peace and Reconciliation while Holding Leaders Accountable: The Politics of ICC Cases in Kenya and Sudan

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established as a permanent independent institution to prosecute individuals who have committed or are implicated in the most serious crimes of international concern including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. This study assesses the challenge of ensuring peace and reconciliation while holding leaders accountable, with specific reference to the politics of the ICC cases in Sudan (Darfur) and Kenya. In particular, this article argues that the issue of prosecuting alleged perpetrators is problematic with respect to the cases that the ICC is currently engaged in. The study argues that since the ICC has become involved in peace, reconciliation and political processes, it thus has the potential to disrupt such initiatives if its interventions are not appropriately sequenced. The study further argues that both President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, and subsequently President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, managed to politicize the ICC interventions in their countries. The article concludes that this process of politicization of the Court’s interventions in Sudan and Kenya, eventually led the ICC into a political stand-off with the African Union (AU), with the United Nations Security Council being an unresponsive but implicated secondary actor. The study also concludes that since neither the ICC nor the AU have managed to find a way out of the impasse, there is a need to develop some innovative strategies. This article therefore offers some insights into a prospective way forward

The failure of the United Nations Security Council in creating the framework conditions for mediation in the Russia-Ukraine crisis

This article argues that during the 2022 Russian Federation invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) failed to create the framework conditions to facilitate the mediation of the crisis due to the systemic constraints created by the veto powers of the Permanent Five (P5) members of the Council. Specifically, the institutional gap created by a dysfunctional UNSC, efforts to mediate ongoing and future crises in which one or more members of the P5 are involved are confronted by the same systemic failure. Given the reality of the UNSC’s paralysis and the indefinite postponement of UN reform, this article argues for the need for radical transformation of the international system and the articulation of a new global democratic architecture, which includes a new global infrastructure for mediation. The article concludes with a discussion of how a UN Charter review process can lay the foundation for the establishment of this new global democratic dispensation, which includes a new global infrastructure for mediation.https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/strategic_reviewam2023Political Science

Peace negotiations and agreements in Africa : why they fail and how to improve them

Peace is not just the absence of conflict. The self-interest lying behind external ‘support’ can take many shapes. The pursuit of justice can sometimes thwart peace efforts. And, last but not least, simply adding more women to peace negotiations will not break male-centric norms

Post-2011 scenarios in Sudan: What role for the EU?

In a forward-looking perspective, this report elaborates on four scenarios for Sudan’s future preliminarily identified by other studies: (i) forced unity; (ii) forced secession; (iii) agreed unity; (iv) agreed secession. It looks specifically at the key variables to be taken into account to anticipate the most probable scenarios and to see which options would bring more benefits than costs to the Sudanese people and their leadership. The report presents the views of a group of Sudan experts which, overall, are strikingly convergent and are summarised below. It also identifies long-term, mid-term and short-term recommendations for the EU and for all stakeholders concerned by Sudan’s future