The African Union

Abstract

This chapter examines the African Union (AU) peace and security institutions. It shows that they are among the most ambitious and novel continent-wide security governance mechanisms to emerge in the world since the end of the Cold War. They are drawn from collectivist security ideas, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework and the human security paradigm. Some of them are informed by lessons learned from the practice of vertical postwar reconstruction exercises. The AU peace and security ideas are codified in the Constitutive Act of the AU, and outlined in detail in the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC protocol) of the AU, in the African Non-Aggression and Common Defence and Security Pact, and in the Post Conflict Reconstruction and Development Policy (postwar reconstruction policy).1 They are managed by a fifteen-member PSC, which has turned the AU into a major peace and security decision maker. Indeed, the work of the PSC has placed the AU in a position where it increasingly shares with the United Nations (UN) the responsibility of maintaining peace and security in Africa. The power- and burden-sharing arrangement between the AU and the UN goes beyond the UN Charter’s paternalistic attitude to regional organizations. The absence of a legal cover in the UN Charter for the role that the AU is playing in the arena of peace and security is creating a number of frictions between the pan-African organization and the UN Security Council (UNSC).