Paul Williams

Paying for AMISOM: Are Politics and Bureaucracy Undermining the AU’s Largest Peace Operation?

Amisom Uganda 33Btn 23
Courtesy of AMISOM Public Information/Flickr.

This article was originally published by IPI Global Observatory on 11 January 2017.

How a peace operation is financed is always an important issue. But money matters for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have recently become highly politicized. This is in large part because of the complicated set of arrangements and mechanisms that are required to fund AMISOM. Particularly since mid-2015, some of these arrangements have come under pressure to change owing to a variety of factors, including the longevity of the mission, circumstances in the global economy, and other international crises on the African continent and beyond. The changes have had the predictable knock-on effect of causing political arguments between the African Union, the AMISOM troop-contributing countries (TCCs), and some of the mission’s key partners, most notably the European Union.

This report answers six key questions to explain how AMISOM is financed and how some recent decisions taken by the EU have generated considerable conflict within the mission and among some of its contributing states.

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Key Questions for South Sudan’s New Protection Force

Generals of South Sudan's army
Courtesy Steve Evans / Flickr

This article was originally published by the IPI Global Observatory on 12 September 2016.

A regional protection force has been authorized to deploy as part of the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS) in order to provide a secure environment in and around the capital city, Juba, and protect civilians. But without a viable political strategy to resolve the underlying causes of the civil war, the force will struggle to do anything more than reduce some of the most negative symptoms of the conflict and could spark direct confrontation with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) or any rebel forces that might threaten Juba.

In July 2016, nearly a year after it had been signed, the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan collapsed. This meant that the former Transitional Government of National Unity also collapsed and was replaced by a governing regime led by President Salva Kiir and those collaborators who he had coopted into service. The final straw was a period of intense fighting between government and rebel forces that had been deployed in Juba as part of the peace deal. The fighting and subsequent rampaging of soldiers saw hundreds killed, numerous crimes committed against the civilian population, and led the remaining rebel forces and their leader to flee the city. There followed a flurry of calls for an intervention force to protect civilians, especially in Juba.

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Autocrats United? Electing the African Union’s Peace and Security Council

Grafitti of Snipers, courtesy Am AMISOM Public Information/flickr

This article was originally published by IPI Global Observatory on 5 April 2016.

The Peace and Security Council of the African Union (PSC) is the most important African institution for the day-to-day management of peace and security issues facing the continent. It is the PSC, for example, that coordinates the AU’s conflict management strategies, decides when to authorize peace operations, rules on how to interpret “unconstitutional changes of government,” and determines when to impose sanctions against recalcitrant AU states.

Yet, at the last AU summit, under the headline banner: “2016: African Year of Human Rights,” African states elected arguably the most authoritarian cohort of countries ever to sit on the PSC. What consequences this will have for peace and security on the continent, as well as the AU’s relations with its principal external partners, remains to be seen.

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Categories
Regional Stability

The AU’s Less Coercive Diplomacy in Burundi

East African soldiers from Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Sudan practice counter-IED movement

This article was originally published by IPI Global Observatory on 16 February 2016.

Burundi’s political crisis continues, but it has entered a new phase with the conclusion of the 26th African Union summit on January 31st in Addis Ababa. In a December 2015 Global Observatory article, I analyzed the AU’s novel use of coercive diplomacy in Burundi. This approach came under scrutiny at the January summit, to the point that many consider it a failure. The truth is more complicated.

Before the AU summit, the last decision on Burundi taken by the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) was set out in its communiqué of December 17th last year. Among other things, this seven-page document authorized the deployment of a 5,000-strong African Protection and Prevention Mission in Burundi (MAPROBU). It gave President Pierre Nkurunziza’s government 96-hours to consent to MAPROBU’s deployment, called for the relaunch of the inter-Burundi dialogue between the government and opposition, and for the complete deployment of the 100 human rights and military observers that the AU had authorized in May 2015. The principal goals of the PSC in taking this decision had been to facilitate a political settlement to Burundi’s ongoing crisis and reduce the threat of armed conflict and violence against civilians.

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The African Union’s Coercive Diplomacy in Burundi

Burundi-Child

This article was originally published by the IPI Global Observatory on 18 December, 2015.

The African Union Peace and Security Council (PSC) broke new ground yesterday by adopting a communiqué that threatened to launch a 5,000 strong force to protect civilians in Burundi. The communiqué gave the Burundian government 96 hours to consent to the operation or face the scenario of the AU deploying the force anyway. Although Burundi was a member of the PSC—and was actually its designated chair for December 2015—the council utilized Article 8(9) of the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the PSC (2002) to ask the Burundian delegation to remove themselves from the chamber during the substantive deliberations on this issue.

If the Burundian government consents to its deployment, the force, dubbed the African Prevention and Protection Mission in Burundi (MAPROBU), will still confront many practical challenges, not least how to stabilize the country and help facilitate a political settlement of the crisis there, which is thought to have killed hundreds of people, mainly civilians, in the past few months. However, if the Burundian government calls the AU’s bluff and refuses to invite MAPROBU onto its territory, this raises an even more fundamental set of challenges for the AU. Whatever happens, this communiqué is a novel form of coercive diplomacy exercised by the AU that raises many important questions for African governments, regional organizations, the United Nations, and other stakeholders in Burundi’s ongoing crisis, not least the country’s citizens. This report briefly discusses five of those questions.

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