A Pan-African View of a New Agenda for Peace

Abstract

What positions would African governments take if a proposal for a new agenda for were tabled at the United Nations for discussion and possible adoption in 2012? This article posits that most African states would work collectively through African Union (AU) channels for the inclusion of a number of new and security ideas. Their demands would revolve around four and security pillars: an ubuntu understanding of sovereignty; an acceptance of elements of the responsibility protect (R2P); a shift towards a human-security-oriented view of peace; and, finally, a new set of doctrines on postwar reconstruction. These suggestions are within the realm of possibility in part because they form the basis of shared African Union members' understanding of and security in Africa and because, since the turn of the century, African governments have handled major UNrelated subjects through the institutional mechanism of the AU. The four peacebuilding innovations that have emerged at the interstate level in Africa since the publication of An agenda for peace in 1992 are the backbone of a new continental African and security architecture.In this essay I will examine the ubuntu view of sovereignty and the institutional and legal changes AU members have made as a result of the adoption of the ubuntu concept. I then unpack R2P ideas AU member states have legalized and institutionalized in the African international system. In the third section, I explore the evolution of AU members' view of security, suggesting that it has shifted from state-centric and military security towards human security. I use the last section examine the postwar reconstruction ideas that have emerged in Africa since the publication of An agenda for peace in 1992. Each section suggests specific positions and possible requests African governments might advance if a new agenda for were discussed in 2012.THE UBUNTU UNDERSTANDING OF SOVEREIGNTYOne of the things African states as a collective might put forward in any negotiation of new UN doctrines on and security will be a new definition of sovereignty replace the state-centric and conservative way sovereignty is conceptualized in the Agenda for peace. The original document was absolutely clear that the foundation-stone of this work is and must remain the State.1 It urged the international community to respect the sovereignty of the State in situations of internal crisis. In a new document, however, African governments may introduce a new understanding of sovereignty and intervention that seeks protect African states from military intervention by non-African states while leaving room for African states intervene collectively in each others' internal affairs with or without the consent of the target country. The intervention can take different forms, including mediation, as in the case of Kenya in 2008; suspension from participation in activities of African international organizations, as in the case of Mauritania in 2009; rebuke and suspension of AU membership, as in the case of Cote d'Ivoire in 2011; and, as a last resort, military intervention, as in the case of Comoros Island in 2008. Conditions for military intervention are detailed in article 4(h) of the constitutive act of the AU. It gives the AU the right intervene in the affairs of a member- state in order prevent war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. These threshold conditions provided by the AU, as Maxi Schoeman pointed out, go 'beyond' the provision made for intervention in the internal affairs of a country in the UN Charter.2 Indeed, Thomas G. Weiss has suggested that the AU has set thresholds for intervention lower than those outlined in any other international legal code.3The acceptance of conditional sovereignty in Africa's international subsystem is predicated on ubuntu's view of persons, states, and sovereignty.4 Ubuntu, defined as a world view or philosophy that sees entities in relational terms, is considered the connecting thread of the people of the Bantu language group, one of the four main linguistic groups in Africa. …