Peace keepingTime to rethink the peace operations partnership in Africa
About 75 percent of all personnel in multilateral peace operations are now deployed on the African continent. Currently, the global partnership with African actors on peace operations is not sufficiently equitable and balanced. The underlying assumptions of the relationship between African and external actors need to be reconsidered, according to a new report, if peace operations are going to counteract current and future challenges to security (for example, terrorism, criminality and insurgency) and respond to the needs of local citizens and communities.
A few weeks ago, the annual session of the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (C34) opened in New York. Ahead of the meeting, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) publishes the final report of the New Geopolitics of Peace Operations II initiative, titled African Directions: Towards an Equitable Partnership in Peace Operations.
The future of peace operations is in Africa
SIPRI data shows that 75 percent of all personnel in multilateral peace operations are now deployed on the continent. Currently, the SIPRI report argues, the global partnership with African actors on peace operations is not sufficiently equitable and balanced. The findings outline pathways to improve future collaboration between African and external actors (the UN Security Council, other international organizations, donor countries, and non-African troop-contributing countries), and to strengthen their mutual understanding. These are based on dialogue meetings in five African sub-regions, in addition to a global dialogue meeting organized in Brussels.
Reconsider the underlying assumptions of the peace operations partnership
The underlying assumptions of the relationship between African and external actors need to be reconsidered, according to the report, if peace operations are going to counteract current and future challenges to security (for example, terrorism, criminality and insurgency) and respond to the needs of local citizens and communities — the end users of peace. “We need to get out of the unhealthy dynamic in which the ambiguity of the concept of African ownership can be used for political purposes by African and external actors alike,” says Xenia Avezov, Researcher in the SIPRI Peace Operations and Conflict Management Program. This means that external actors should not hide behind African ownership to avoid contributing to peace operations in Africa, while African actors should not use the concept to avoid their responsibilities in terms of, for example, accountability.
“The challenges that peace operations in Africa have to address in the future may play out on the continent, but they are essentially global in character,” says Dr. Jaïr van der Lijn, Program Manager of the SIPRI Peace Operations and Conflict Management Program. Globalization and the interconnectivity of current security challenges mean that peace operations require shared responses. Successful peace operations in Africa require more African influence in the decision-making process about them, but as part of a global partnership. At the same time, external actors have an obligation and interest to play their part financially and militarily, the report explains.
The current division of labor is unsustainable
SIPRI notes thatAfrican countries are increasingly providing the personnel for peace operations in Africa, while external actors generally pay for them. This needs to be considered alongside the discrepancy in military spending when compared with, for example, their European counterparts. African countries do not generally have the same level of military capabilities and capacities as many external actors, and the imbalance between the African nations is significant as well. The lack of adequate military equipment is often mentioned as one of the reasons why African contingents in peace operations suffer relatively high numbers of fatalities.
True Partnership: decide together, pay together, bring peace together
Despite improvements in African capabilities and capacities for peace operations, the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) has still not reached full operational capability. At the same time, the continent will not be able to take on all the military, development-related and civilian requirements of multidimensional peace operations, at least not in the short to medium term.
The report, therefore, concludes that the global-regional partnership, as suggested by the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations and taken up by the UN Security Council, has to be deepened further to improve the success of peace operations in Africa. “We have to move away from referring only to African ownership and towards a truly balanced and equitable global-regional partnership to make peace operations in Africa fit for the future,” says van der Lijn. “This is really the only option,’ he continues, ‘we need joint responsibility for and ownership of decision making, and financial and personnel contributions to peace operations in Africa to make the existing conflict management structures sustainable.”
— Read more in Xenia Avezov et al., African Directions: Towards an Equitable Partnership in Peace Operations (SIPRI, February 2017)
