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hold a ministerial-level Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation. 7 This shows the continuation of the ideas from the first conference in 1991 with the process to create the AU. The next step in the creation of the AU was negotiating the Constitutive Act. The Draft Treaty Establishing the African Union and Draft Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community relating to the Pan-African parliament were prepared by the OAU General Secretariat. The drafts were examined and discussed by legal experts and parliamentarians at
adoption of the 2002 Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union (PSC Protocol). In 2004, the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government passed the Common African Defense and Security Policy that added another core component to APSA. 17 The APSA is still very much being constructed and refined. Dr Solomon Dersso likens implementing the APSA to building a house while living in it. He states, “You are constantly finding things that need to be adjusted. Because of this the goal posts have been shifting, and there has been
African regional organizations have played leading roles in constructing collective conflict management rules for the continent, but these rules or norms have not been static. Currently, the African Union (AU) deploys monitors, authorizes peace support operations, and actively engages in internal conflicts in member states. Just a few decades ago these actions would have been deeply controversial under the Organization of African Unity (OAU). What changed to allow for this transformation in the way the African regional organization approaches peace and security? Drawing extensively on primary source documents from the AU Commission archives, this book examines why the OAU chose norms that prioritized state security in 1963 leading to a policy of strict non-interference and why the AU chose very different norms leading to a disparate conflict management policy of non-indifference in the early 2000s. Even if the AU’s capacity to respond to conflict is still developing, this new policy has made the region more willing and capable of responding to violent conflict. The author argues that norm creation largely happened within the African context, and international pressure was not a determinant factor. The role of regional organizations in the international order, particularly those in the African region, has been under-theorized and under-acknowledged, and this book adds to an emerging literature that explores the role of regional organizations in the Global South in creating and promoting norms based on their own experiences and for their own purposes.
This book explores the evolving African security paradigm in light of the multitude of diverse threats facing the continent and the international community today and in the decades ahead. It challenges current thinking and traditional security constructs as woefully inadequate to meet the real security concerns and needs of African governments in a globalized world. The continent has becoming increasingly integrated into an international security architecture, whereby Africans are just as vulnerable to threats emanating from outside the continent as they are from home-grown ones. Thus, Africa and what happens there, matters more than ever. Through an in-depth examination and analysis of the continent’s most pressing traditional and non-traditional security challenges—from failing states and identity and resource conflict to terrorism, health, and the environment—it provides a solid intellectual foundation, as well as practical examples of the complexities of the modern African security environment. Not only does it assess current progress at the local, regional, and international level in meeting these challenges, it also explores new strategies and tools for more effectively engaging Africans and the global community through the human security approach.
(the EU government); the Court of Justice (competent in cases between Member States, between Member States and citizens, between Member States/citizens and the EU, and between EU bodies). 95 The African Union The AU was established in 2002 and has its seat in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The AU consists of 53 Member
chief architect, the drafting of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in 2001 and the birth of the African Union (AU) in 2002 were clearly attempts to add policy flesh to the skeletal bones of his Renaissance vision. There was certainly some truth to the criticism that the Renaissance was devoid of substantive policy content. Seventeen African Renaissance festivals were held each May between 1999 and 2015 in different South African cities. They focused on such themes as conflict resolution, poverty, NEPAD, the Freedom Charter, the role of intellectuals
This chapter discusses the role of the UK in supporting African Union (AU) peace and security structures, particularly the AU’s Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), since 2010. The 1997–2010 Labour Government, unlike its immediate predecessors (Conservative governments led by Margaret Thatcher and John Major), gave Africa policy a high profile, and showed enthusiasm for grand initiatives like the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, a programme for African regeneration. The Labour Government’s African policy style was marked, on
clearly acknowledge past shortcomings of the modern African state and its limitations by seeking to cultivate a cooperative security culture through the African Union (AU), NGOs, and civil society to fashion an African security architecture for the twenty-first century. Without doubt many obstacles and challenges still remain, but these efforts are already proving useful in recasting the continent’s security priorities and, moreover, in establishing a direction for future engagement by Africans and non-Africans alike. The failure of the state-centric approach The modern
possibility for victims of corporate wrongdoing to bring their case to national courts or host States and home States of investors. However, other international mechanisms can be triggered when a State fails to guarantee that the harm suffered by victims because of investors is properly addressed. On the one hand, the human rights system of the African Union has the capacity to ensure
system is complicit in such a charade (see Taylor and Williams, 2001). Malgovernance is aided, even perpetuated, on the continent by the doctrines of sovereignty and non-interference, and it is no coincidence that Africa’s elites are among the most enthusiastic defenders of these principles. This remains the case, despite the African Union’s ostensible claim to provide an increased scope for intervention. The persistence of bad leadership has often been explained through the argument that ‘dependent’ elites in Africa are agents or compradors working for ‘the West