Post-Cold War Interventions in Africa and the Origin of the AU–ECOWAS Regional Military Intervention Legal Regimes

  • John-Mark Iyi
Chapter
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Abstract

The end of the Cold War ushered in a new opportunity for East-west cooperation, especially within the UN Security Council to build a truly global organisation capable of meeting the aspirations of the founding fathers of the UN. This “new” UN Security Council would be able to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century. This enthusiasm was particularly so in the case of Africa which had had more than its fair share of armed conflicts as a theatre of Super Power proxy wars for the most part of its post-colonial history. The legacies bequeathed to Africa by that era—weak and fragile states, proliferation of small arms and light weapons across the continent, declining revenue, and heightened ethnic rivalry, were to exacerbate conflicts in the continent in subsequent decades. The consequence was a sharp increase in the number of intra-state conflicts in Africa. At the beginning of the 1989–1998 decade there were 14 armed conflicts in Africa. By the end of the 1990s, the number of armed conflicts in Africa rose to 16.

Keywords

Security Council Armed Conflict Secretary General Military Intervention International Peace 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • John-Mark Iyi
    • 1
  1. 1.Faculty of LawUniversity of JohannesburgJohannesburgSouth Africa

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