Beating African swords into ploughshares

A recent seminar was held in the Swedish town of Uppsala, co-hosted by the Sweden-based Nordic Africa Institute (NAI), the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS) in South Africa, 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 in the Sahel the Horn of Africa, and Southern Africa, was criticised.

Global humanitarian assistance needs rose from 81 million people in 2014 to today’s 339 million, with funding increasing from $2 billion in 2000 to $25 billion today: half of the required $54 billion, amidst an ever-widening gulf between funding and needs.

There has often been a lack of recognition of common humanity in international reactions to the three million conflict-related deaths in the eastern Congo, 400,000 in South Sudan, and at least 350,000 in Somalia.

Between 1960 and 1990, 72 military coup d’état occurred in Africa. With the end of the Cold War, multi-party democracy of varying quality flourished for the next three decades.

The recent scourge of military coup d’état in Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, and Sudan was examined within the context of the failures of democratic rule to deliver socio-economic development to African populations. Some elected governments were criticised for closing off political systems through illegitimate means.

The role of civil society – human rights, women and religious groups – in strengthening democratic governance was highlighted. Such actors have often played critical peace building roles in reintegrating former combatants back into local communities in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Civil society though is not a panacea, lacking the capacity and resources of national governments and international actors.

Also discussed was the phenomenon of militant groups such as Boko Haram, Al-Qaida, Islamic State, and Al-Shabab. The various motives for the violence 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, poverty; pursuing profit and greed.

The most plausible explanations appear to centre around genuine grievances and a reaction to heavy-handed state repression, though it was noted that some of the leadership of these groups were middle-class, and if poverty were the main cause of such militancy, then more of such groups would have been expected to have mushroomed in South Sudan, Chad, and Central African Republic (CAR).

Africa was praised for pioneering ideas around a ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) populations at risk in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. R2P was enshrined as an evolving doctrine by the United Nations (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 African Union’s (AU) 2000 Constitutive Act was also innovative in permitting regional interventions in cases of instability, human rights abuses, and unconstitutional changes of government.

No other region of the globe has developed such an extensive intervention regime.

Though promising in entrenching regional norms, the AU’s article 4(h) has sometimes been politicised.  A commonly cited example was the refusal of African leaders, in 2016, to endorse the deployment of a 5,000-strong protection force in Burundi against the wishes of the government in Bujumbura.

Fledgling AU institutions such as its court of justice, its parliament, its peer review mechanism, and its civil society-led Economic, Social, and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) therefore, need to be strengthened to enable the continental body play a more proactive role.

Subregional organisations such as ECOWAS, SADC, and IGAD further need to be empowered to play an implementing role alongside the AU, based on the principle of subsidiarity. The NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 – which was launched using humanitarian justifications, but left the country conflict-wracked for two decades and spread 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 – as two-year elected members of the Security Council – to promote issues around the protection of women in armed 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.

The three key UN pillars – peace, development, and human rights – are in urgent need of strengthening, with only 12 per cent of the global body’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) so far having been achieved half way through its implementation.

The profound mistrust within Western democracies – fuelled by social media – as well as deep distrust among great powers, were also identified as a source of grave concern. Gaza and Ukraine were said to have led to the neglect of other conflicts such as Sudan, Mali, and CAR.

In what was described as ‘climate apartheid’, Africa was said to account for only 3.8 per cent of climate emissions, but yet suffered disproportionately from drought, desertification, cyclones, floods, 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 $100 billion to tackle climate change in the Global South. The need to consult local communities and indigenous knowledge frameworks was further highlighted.

Finally, the role of civilian police in peacekeeping missions in Africa was examined. Since the first civilian police were deployed to the UN mission to the Congo (1960-1964), 4,471 Civpol are currently deployed to peace operations in CAR, the Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia and Western Sahara.

These peacekeepers have faced challenges of ambiguous mandates, poor coordination, limited funding, and language barriers. They have, however, provided an invaluable medium for local communities to report crimes, while the increase in female UN Civpol has strengthened the reporting of sexually-related crimes.

Professor Adebajo is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship in South Africa.