CONSOLIDATING PEACE AND SECURITY IN AFRICA

Abstract

Africa is faced with a range of security challenges, all of which require a long-term capacity-building approach. There are no quick solutions to instability and insecurity in Africa and the UK government should champion Africa at every meeting of the G8 and commit itself to the global reforms and initiatives required for an improvement in the continent’s current situation – a long-haul process. Since there is an abundance of literature on the inequalities in the global system that inhibit African development, the rest of this paper engages narrowly on matters relating to peace and security. Recent years have seen unprecedented levels of African engagement and leadership in conflict management, including support provided to the African Standby Force (ASF) and other components of the Peace and Security Council (PSC). Currently the most serious gaps in Africa as far as peace and security issues are concerned are twofold. The first is the tentative nature of African commitment to operationalise the linkage between conflict prevention and governance – despite the stated intent of the NEPAD APRM to undertake studies on governance standards and capacity. Moving from a focus on conflict intervention and mediation to conflict prevention and its associated focus on human rights, democracy, good governance and the strengthening of civil society institutions demands that the UK and others should not focus only on the ASF (conflict intervention), but retain a focus on conflict prevention. Africa may suffer unintended long-term damage if the current focus on conflict intervention and the potential diversion of development assistance to emergency response and peacekeeping replaces approaches that address the root causes of conflict and deprivation. The second relates to post-conflict reconstruction. In an environment characterised by extreme poverty, Africa’s conflicts are recognised to reflect strong economic incentives. By implication, many current peacemaking approaches, predicated on the achievement of a political agreement between warring elites, ignore the developmental and economic nature of conflict, and therefore its long-term resolution. In response, the international community needs to move beyond the concept of integrated peace missions. Consolidating peace from war requires not only greater coherence and coordination among the various UN departments and agencies and a more integrated crisis management system, but also a clear command and control structure for all UN entities on the ground and coherence in the approaches between agencies as diverse as the World Bank and the UNDPKO. When applied to existing concepts of peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction, implementation of the concept CONSOLIDATING PEACE AND SECURITY IN AFRICA Recommendations to the Commission for Africa