A recent seminar was held in Uppsala, co-hosted by the Sweden-based Nordic Africa Institute, the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, and the Dakar-based Trust Africa. The meeting assessed Africa’s efforts to address military and human security challenges in the post-Cold War era.
The lack of urgent response to Africa’s humanitarian and climate-induced disasters was criticised. Global humanitarian assistance needs rose from 81-million people in 2014 to today’s 339-million. But there has often been a lack of a common humanity in reactions to the 3-million conflict-related deaths in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, 400,000 in South Sudan, and at least 350,000 in Somalia.
The recent scourge of military coups in Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and Sudan was examined within the context of the failures of democratic rule to deliver socioeconomic development to African populations. Some elected governments were criticised for closing off political systems through illegitimate means. The role of civil society activists in strengthening democratic governance and reintegrating former combatants back into local communities was highlighted.
Also discussed was the phenomenon of militant groups such as Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and al-Shabab. The various motives of these jihadist groups were examined: fighting local and global injustice; creating a network of ideologically committed fighters; reacting to structural issues of mass unemployment, marginalisation and poverty; and pursuing profit and greed. The most plausible explanations appeared to revolve on genuine grievances and a reaction to heavy-handed state repression.
Africa was praised for pioneering ideas around the responsibility to protect (R2P) populations at risk in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. R2P was enshrined as an evolving doctrine by the UN in 2005. South Sudanese scholar-diplomat Francis Deng’s 1996 concept of “sovereignty as responsibility” was foundational in this regard.
Article 4(h) of the AUs 2000 Constitutive Act was also innovative in permitting regional interventions in cases of instability, human rights abuses and unconstitutional changes of government. However, AU leaders refused to deploy a 5,000-strong protection force to Burundi in 2016. The Nato intervention in Libya in 2011 — launched using humanitarian justifications but leaving the country conflict-racked for two decades and spreading instability across the Sahel — was said to have discredited the concept of R2P.
Africa was also seen as having played an important role in the “women, peace and security” agenda on the UN security council, with Namibia having introduced the key resolution 1325 in 2000. Ethiopia, Kenya and Niger have more recently worked with Sweden, Germany, Norway, Mexico and Ireland to promote issues around the protection of women in conflicts and to ensure their participation in peace processes. The challenge of child soldiers was also highlighted, with Africa accounting for 40% of the 250,000 such soldiers operating globally.
Key pillars
The three key UN pillars — peace, development and human rights — are in urgent need of strengthening, with only 12% of the global body’s sustainable development goals achieved so far. “Climate apartheid” has seen Africa — accounting for just 3.8% of global climate emissions — suffering disproportionately from drought, desertification, floods and cyclones, along with small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Climate reparations were therefore demanded to correct this anomaly, with the rich world failing to deliver on its annual promise of $100bn to tackle climate change in the Global South.
Finally, the role of civilian police in peacekeeping missions in Africa was examined. About 4,471 civilian police are deployed to peace operations in Central African Republic, DRC, South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia and Western Sahara.
These peacekeepers have faced challenges of ambiguous mandates, poor co-ordination and limited funding. However, they have provided an invaluable medium for local communities to report crimes, while the increase in female civilian police has strengthened the reporting of sex-related crimes.
• Adebajo is professor and senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.
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