Abstract
Since 1999 there has been a proliferation in the number of peace operations deployed to Africa. The majority of these peace operations have been deployed into situations where there is little peace to keep and to situations where belligerents are actively targeting civilians. The changing security environment and the changing expectations regarding the capacities and roles of peace operations in securing a lasting peace have catalyzed a substantial overhaul of peace and security architectures in the African continent.
The African Union (AU) and its sub-regional counterpart, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) shifted its normative perspective and operational directives away from the principle of non-interference towards a doctrine of non-indifference that includes the Protection of Civilians (POC), and the Responsibility to Protect (Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun). Accordingly, the AU and ECOWAS undertook initiatives to reform their peace and security architectures to: (1) transition conflicts and governments to stability and peace, and (2) to prevent and respond to violence against civilians. However, questions remain as to whether or not these ambitious reforms have led to improvements in either the deployment process or the effectiveness of these operations in preventing and responding to atrocity crimes against civilians.
The AU may have incorporated the POC norm into its legal manifestations but this chapter argues that the AU has not effectively galvanized protection at the operational level. If not resolved, the AU will continue to rely on external assistance from the United Nations (UN) or coalitions of states—a troubling trend for African regional peacekeeping that could have serious implications for the realization of “African solutions to African problems.”
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Megy, S.J. (2015). The Protection of Civilians in African Regional and Sub-regional Peace Operations. In: Curran, D., Fraser, T., Roeder, L., Zuber, R. (eds) Perspectives on Peacekeeping and Atrocity Prevention. Humanitarian Solutions in the 21st Century. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16372-7_9
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