African Affairs, 113/451, 254–278
doi: 10.1093/afraf/adu021
© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved
PARTNERSHIP PEACEKEEPING:
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN
THE UNITED NATIONS–AFRICAN UNION
RELATIONSHIP
PAUL D. WILLIAMS AND ARTHUR BOUTELLIS*
ABSTRACT
The relationship between the United Nations (UN) and the African
Union (AU) has at times been characterized by considerable conflict, mistrust, and tension, often hindering the predictability and conduct of effective peace operations. This article analyses the challenges facing UN–AU
cooperation on peace and security issues and examines their partnerships
in various peace operations. Specific attention is paid to the crucial cases
of Somalia and Mali, which exemplify some of the positive and negative
aspects of this relationship. We argue that while great power politics and
the international normative context have played important roles in structuring debates about peace operations in contemporary Africa, so too have
two more bottom-up factors: the specific operational and financial challenges generated by the AU’s big missions in Darfur, Somalia, and Mali,
and the organizational cultures and bureaucratic constraints within which
both institutions have had to work. Greater focus on these bottom-up
factors could bring significant improvements to the decision-making processes in Addis Ababa and New York, to operational responses, and to the
conduct of peace operations.
OVER A DECADE AFTER THE ESTABLISHMENT of the African Union (AU),
international efforts to build a new African Peace and Security Architecture
(APSA) have stimulated considerable debate over its effectiveness.1
*Paul D. Williams ([email protected]) is Associate Professor in the Elliott School of
International Affairs at the George Washington University, Washington DC. Arthur Boutellis
([email protected]) is a non-resident adviser at the International Peace Institute, New York.
For comments on earlier versions of this article we would like to thank the participants at the
IPI roundtable on 28 February 2013, Cedric de Coning, Linnéa Gelot, and this journal’s anonymous reviewers. Williams also acknowledges financial support from the Elliott School’s
SOAR Awards.
1. The APSA denotes a complex set of interrelated institutions and mechanisms that function at the continental, regional, and national levels. The principal institutions are the Peace
and Security Council of the African Union, the Continental Early Warning System, the
African Standby Force, the Military Staff Committee, the Panel of the Wise, and the African
Peace Fund. See, for example, Benedikt Franke, Security Cooperation in Africa (Lynne Rienner,
Boulder, CO, 2009); Ulf Engel and J. Gomes Porto (eds), Africa’s New Peace and Security
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AU-UN PARTNERSHIP PEACEKEEPING
255
Although key elements of the APSA remain work-in-progress, it has facilitated a huge increase in the AU’s conflict management activities compared
to its predecessor the Organization of African Unity. Arguably the most
visible dimension of the AU’s activity has been the nine peace operations it
has undertaken since 2003 in Burundi, the Central African Republic, the
Comoros, Mali, Somalia, and Sudan.2 Despite the AU’s increased presence across the continent, however, the sheer number and scale of Africa’s
peace and security challenges are too great for any single organization to
bear. Consequently, it became widely accepted that a range of international
institutions needed to work in partnership with the African Union to tackle
the continent’s many armed conflicts effectively, particularly Africa’s regional economic communities (RECs), the United Nations (UN), the
European Union (EU), and the G-8 states.3
This article focuses on attempts by the UN and the AU to engage in partnership peacekeeping, and analyses the principal challenges to this endeavour as well as sources of conflict and cooperation between the two
institutions. This relationship must work well if peace operations are to be
effective. On the one hand, significant progress has been made: the 2002
protocol creating the Peace and Security Council of the African Union
(PSC) mandated it to ‘cooperate and work closely with the United Nations
Security Council, which has the primary responsibility for the maintenance
of international peace and security’ and there now exist a range of peace
and security coordination mechanisms to support the implementation of
the AU’s principle of ‘non-indifference’ (see Figure 1).4 The UN and the
Architecture (Ashgate, Farnham, 2010); African Union, ‘Moving Africa Forward: African
Peace and Security Architecture 2010 assessment study’, 2010, <http://www.security
councilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/RO%20
African%20Peace%20and%20Security%20Architecture.pdf> (24 January 2014); Paul
D. Williams, War and Conflict in Africa (Polity, Cambridge, 2011); Paul D. Williams, ‘The
African Union’s Conflict Management Capabilities’ (New York, Council on Foreign Relations
Working Paper, October 2011); Ulf Engel and J. Gomes Porto (eds), Towards an African Peace
and Security Regime (Ashgate, Farnham, 2013); Alex Vines, ‘A decade of the African Peace and
Security Architecture’, International Affairs 89, 1 (2013), pp. 89–109; Tim Murithi and
Halleluya Lulie (eds), The African Union Peace and Security Council: A five year appraisal
(Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, ISS Monograph No. 187, 2013).
2. For an overview see Paul D. Williams, ‘Peace Operations in Africa: Lessons learned since
2000’ (National Defense University, Washington DC, Africa Security Brief No. 25, July
2013). We use ‘peace operations’ as a generic term for UN and AU field missions. The UN
generally uses the terms ‘peacekeeping operations’ and ‘special political missions’, while the
AU refers to its missions as ‘peace support operations’.
3. See, for example, Frederick Soderbaum and Rodrigo Tavares (eds), Regional
Organizations in African Security (Routledge, London, 2011); Linnéa Gelot, Ludwig Gelot,
and Cedric de Coning (eds), Supporting African Peace Operations (Policy Dialogue No. 8,
Nordic African Institute, 2012); Jane Boulden (ed.), Responding to Conflict in Africa (Palgrave,
New York, NY, 2nd edition, 2013); Linnéa Bergholm, Legitimacy, Peace Operations, and
Regional-Global Security (Routledge, London, 2012).
4. African Union, Article 17(1), Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security
Council of the African Union (African Union, 2002), hereafter, PSC Protocol. For a discussion of
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Figure 1. Coordination mechanisms in the UN-AU relationship
AU thus enjoy a deep, multi-dimensional and maturing relationship based
on the comparative advantages of each institution and cooperation in
several operational theatres, notably in Darfur and later in Somalia.
Yet, on the other hand, sources of conflict remain. In 2011, members of
the UN Security Council and the AU PSC were deeply divided over how to
respond to the crises in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire and over the financing of
the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). In January 2012, the AU lamented that ‘while consultations [between the two councils] represent a significant step in the right direction, they are yet to translate into a common
understanding of the foundation of the cooperation between these two
organs’.5 The following year, tensions re-emerged after the UN Security
Council passed resolution 2100 authorizing a UN force for Mali
(MINUSMA). The AU deemed this resolution ‘not in consonance with
the spirit of partnership that the AU and the United Nations have been
striving to promote for many years, on the basis of the provisions of
this principle see Paul D. Williams, ‘From non-intervention to non-indifference: the origins
and development of the African Union’s security culture’, African Affairs 106, 423 (2007),
pp. 253–79.
5. Report of the Chairperson of the Commission on the Partnership between the AU and the
UN on Peace and Security, ‘Towards greater strategic and political coherence’ (PSC/PR/2
(CCCVII), 9 January 2012), para. 44.
AU-UN PARTNERSHIP PEACEKEEPING
257
Chapter VIII of the UN Charter’.6 The relationship has also been tested by
the institutions’ different organizational cultures and the AU’s still limited
bureaucratic, logistical, and financial capabilities. This has produced a
highly unequal partnership in which the AU’s major peace operations
remain dependent on the UN and other partners for support.
In this article, we build on previous studies of peace operations in Africa
that have stressed the importance of either great power politics or changing
international norms related to legitimacy.7 While we acknowledge that both
factors are significant, they are too static to explain the frequently changing
patterns of conflict and cooperation that have characterized UN and AU
attempts to conduct partnership peacekeeping. Thus while great power politics and the international normative context have both played important
roles in structuring debates about peace operations in contemporary Africa,
so too have two more bottom-up factors: the specific operational and financial challenges generated by the AU’s big missions, and the organizational
cultures and bureaucratic constraints within which both institutions have
had to work. After analysing the major challenges facing UN-AU attempts
at effective partnership peacekeeping, we use Somalia and Mali as illustrative case studies to highlight these additional dynamics at work. We conclude that the main driver of the UN–AU relationship in this area has been
the practical requirements of the three big missions in Darfur, Somalia, and
Mali. But these large and complex missions must be understood in the
context of a turbulent international normative context characterized by legitimacy struggles over whether the UN or the AU should call the shots in
deciding how to respond to Africa’s peace and security crises. In order to
understand the relationship between the UN and the AU it is also important to recognize the ways in which these missions were complicated by a
series of bureaucratic challenges that hindered the conduct of predictable
and effective peace operations in the field.
UN–AU collaboration on peace and security
UN–AU collaboration on peace and security has a long history dating back
to at least 1965.8 The basis for such collaboration is mutual recognition of
several important facts. First, over the last decade, the majority of the UN
6. African Union, AU doc. PSC/PR/COMM(CCCLXXI), 25 April 2013, para. 10.
7. For the former, see Adekeye Adebajo, UN Peacekeeping in Africa (Lynne Rienner,
Boulder, CO, 2012). For the latter, see Katharina Coleman, International Organizations and
Peace Enforcement (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007) and Bergholm, Legitimacy.
8. The Organization of African Unity signed a cooperation agreement with the UN on 15
November 1965, which was updated on 9 October 1990 by the two Secretaries-General of the
organizations. Further UN-OAU cooperation with regard to peacekeeping was called for in a
variety of UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, perhaps most notably
Security Council resolution 1197 (18 September 1998). This trend continued with the new
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Security Council’s agenda has been occupied by peace and security challenges in Africa. Second, both institutions recognize that the UN Security
Council has the primary – but not exclusive – responsibility for maintaining
international peace and security, including in Africa.9 But, third, both institutions acknowledge that, alone, neither can cope with the multitude of
peace and security challenges on the continent. Both institutions now also
recognize that while the AU is an important source of political authority for
conflict management in Africa, on its own it lacks the necessary material
and financial capabilities to take decisive action to resolve these problems,
as was highlighted once again by the ongoing crisis in Mali.10
On the basis of these shared insights, pragmatic and context-specific forms
of collaboration between the UN and the AU have evolved as part of the creation of the new African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). For its
part, the UN established a ten-year capacity-building programme to assist in
this endeavour. Individual members of the UN Security Council also helped
develop the APSA through various mechanisms, perhaps most notably the G8
Action Plan for Expanding Global Capability for Peace Support Operations
and the EU’s African Peace Facility, both of which started in 2004.
Since 2007, annual meetings between members of the UN Security
Council and the AU’s PSC have discussed a variety of thematic and
country-specific items. Tensions have arisen when discussing the strategic
relationship between the two councils.11 Meetings have generally been
more cordial when discussing specific policy questions, with the notable
exceptions of the early period of AMISOM and the Libyan crisis of 2011.
These meetings placed the African non-permanent members of the UN
Security Council in a particularly important position, especially when they
were simultaneously members of the AU PSC (see Table 1).
The UN has also provided a variety of capacity-building programmes to
the AU designed to improve the performance of the AU Commission (i.e.
bureaucracy) and facilitate more effective collaboration between the two
councils. The partnership has been enhanced at the working level since
AU, and is in evidence in UN Security Council resolutions 1809 (16 April 2008) and 2033 (12
January 2012).
9. This is noted, for example, in Article 17(1) of the PSC Protocol. Article 52 of the UN
Charter encourages regional arrangements to undertake peaceful resolution of local disputes,
including peacekeeping missions, but Article 53 precludes the use of force without prior
Security Council authorization.
10. See African Union, ‘Report of the Chairperson of the Commission on the
Operationalisation of the Rapid Deployment Capability of the African Standby Force and the
Establishment of an “African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises”’ (AU doc. RPT/
Exp/VI/STCDSS/(i‐a)2013, 29–30 April 2013), para. 53.
11. The UN Security Council continues to view the AU’s ambitions with some suspicion
and for this reason has presented these annual meetings as taking place between individual
members of the Security Council – not the Council itself as an entity – and the AU Peace and
Security Council.
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259
Table 1. African non-permanent members of the UN Security Council,
2002–13
Year
State
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Cameroon
Cameroon
Algeria
Algeria
Ghana
Ghana
Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso
Nigeria
Nigeria
Morocco*
Morocco*
Guinea
Guinea
Benin
Benin
Republic of Congo
Republic of Congo
Libya
Libya
Gabon
Gabon
Togo
Togo
Mauritius
Angola
Angola
Tanzania
Tanzania
South Africa
South Africa
Uganda
Uganda
South Africa
South Africa
Rwanda
Bold: also simultaneously a member of the AU Peace and Security Council.
*Morocco is not a member of the African Union.
mid-2010 with three important mechanisms. First, on 1 July 2010 the UN
established a new Office to the African Union (UNOAU) in Addis
Ababa.12 Later that same month the two organizations agreed to undertake
‘collaborative field missions’, such as the joint AU-UN multi-disciplinary
mission to the Sahel in December 2011. These were intended to help
‘enhance synergy in monitoring, assessment of results and response strategies’ to peace and security challenges in Africa.13 The UN and the AU
also established the Joint Task Force on Peace and Security (JTF), which
met for the first time in September 2010.14
Challenges to cooperation
Despite the proliferation of such mechanisms, UN–AU collaboration continues to confront several significant challenges. First, attempts to develop
12. UNOAU did not become effectively operational until late 2011. It replaced various UN
entities that were previously entrusted with supporting AU peace operations. These included
the AU Peace Support Team (PST) established in 2007 in the DPKO; the Strategic Planning
and Management Unit (SPMU) established as a predecessor to the AU PSOD to launch and
manage AMISOM and which included UN planners; and the Darfur Integrated Task Force
(DITF) also in Addis Ababa, which included seconded staff from both the UN and EU in
support of the AU mission in Darfur (AMIS) and was disbanded when UNAMID was
created.
13. PSC/PR/2.(CCCVII), 9 January 2012, p. 11.
14. The JTF is jointly chaired by the Under-Secretaries-General of the UN Departments of
Political Affairs (DPA), Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), and Field Support (DFS), as well
as the AU Commissioners (for peace and security, and for political affairs), and reviews specific
issues and countries of common interest to the two organizations.
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cooperative frameworks between multi-faceted institutions all face the
generic problem that agreement on general principles does not automatically generate consensus on how to act in particular crises. Moreover, attempts
to perfect and institutionalize collaborative mechanisms between the UN
and the AU run the risk of creating inflexible structures, which can become
redundant if powerful actors feel constrained and work around them to
change the situation on the ground. While most members of the Security
Council and PSC appear to support the idea that UN–AU cooperation
would be enhanced by moving from context-specific to more predictable
mechanisms, such initiatives run into the perennial problem of how to operationalize Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, which was designed in a very
different era of global–regional security collaboration and preceded the creation of most of today’s regional organizations. This has raised two questions: (1) What should a strategic partnership between the UN Security
Council and a regional arrangement entail in practice? and (2) To what
extent can the UN Security Council forge a special relationship with the
AU without setting a precedent for other regions of the world? While the
answers remain unclear, a consensus has developed in both institutions that
business-as-usual is not the correct response.
A second challenge is how to interpret the AU’s position ‘that its requests
should, at a minimum, be duly considered by the UN Security Council’.15
At the Security Council, this has stimulated significant political differences
between some African and non-African members. On the African side,
some states argue the UN Security Council does not always respect the
AU’s views. For example, at the January 2012 UN Security Council debate
on cooperation between the UN and regional organizations in maintaining
international peace and security, Kenya’s then foreign minister, Moses
Wetangula, argued that ‘The practice in the past two years seems to indicate
an undesirable trend that appears to be selective on the part of the Security
Council and that seems to disregard full consideration of the position and/
or recommendations of the AU or its organs.’16 At the other end of the
spectrum, US Ambassador Susan Rice, emphasized that
…some Security Council members feel that African Union member States have not always
provided unified or consistent views on key issues, and that the African Union has on occasion been slow to act on urgent matters. Beneath those perceptions and frustrations,
however, is a deeper issue, that is who is on first? … The Security Council is not subordinate
to other bodies, or to the schedules or capacities of regional or subregional groups. …
[UN-regional] cooperation cannot be on the basis that the regional organization independently decides the policy and that the United Nations Member States simply bless it and pay
for it. There can be no blank check, either politically or financially.17
15.
16.
17.
African Union, AU document, PSC/PR/2.(CCCVII), 9 January 2012, p. 12.
See UN Security Council Proceedings, S/PV.6702, 12 January 2012, pp. 9–10.
Ibid., p. 15.
AU-UN PARTNERSHIP PEACEKEEPING
261
It therefore remains an open question as to what status AU initiatives and
proposals should hold at the UN Security Council.
The problem is exacerbated by the lack of a strong unified AU voice in
New York. This is partly due to the limited AU representation, which lacks
both a strong mandate and human and financial capacities, and is thus
unable to play an effective bridging role between the AU PSC and the
African member states at the UN. Unlike the UN’s Office to the African
Union (UNOAU) in Addis Ababa, which has dedicated specialists and
subject matter experts, the AU’s representation in New York does not have
peace and security experts such as planners for peace operations or military
advisers. Such personnel could liaise with the UN’s secretariat at a working
level and provide expert advice to the AU ambassador. Nor do the 15 AU
PSC members meet as a group in New York, despite some efforts to use the
Security Council’s Ad Hoc Working Group on Conflict Prevention and
Resolution in Africa as a forum for this purpose. Another obstacle to promoting a unified African voice is the lack of a mechanism for elected
African members of the UN Security Council who do not hold concurrent
seats on the AU PSC to participate in the PSC’s private deliberations in
Addis Ababa. Consequently, Africa’s representatives on the UN Security
Council may not always be informed of AU Peace and Security Council
positions and decisions in a timely manner. Moreover, even when a clear
AU position is articulated, African members of the UN Security Council
may not automatically represent this official position in New York and vote
in accordance with it. This occurred most blatantly in the vote over UN
Security Council resolution 1973 (2011) imposing a no-fly zone over
Libya, when all three elected African members of the Security Council
(Gabon, Nigeria, and South Africa) voted in favour in spite of an earlier
AU communiqué rejecting ‘any military intervention, whatever its form’.18
The unresolved question of the UN Security Council’s relationship with
the African regional economic communities (RECs) represents a third
challenge. This also stems, in part, from the vague nature of Chapter VIII
of the UN Charter. In practice, the AU has tried to establish a subsidiarity
principle to ‘harmonize and coordinate’ its relations with the continent’s
RECs and relevant peace and security coordinating mechanisms.19 In
theory, therefore, if the UN Security Council could coordinate its position
with the AU, it should, by default, also be coordinated with the relevant
18. African Union, AU doc. PSC/PR/COMM.2 (CCLXV), 10 March 2011, para. 6.
19. The AU has signed a memorandum of understanding on peace and security issues with
eight RECs (AMU, CEN-SAD, COMESA, EAC, ECCAS, ECOWAS, IGAD, and SADC)
and two coordinating mechanisms (EASBRIGCOM and NARC). See ‘Memorandum of
Understanding on Cooperation in the Area of Peace and Security between the African Union,
the Regional Economic Communities and the Coordinating Mechanisms of the Regional
Standby Brigades of Eastern Africa and Northern Africa’ (signed in Algiers, June 2008).
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REC (or RECs). However, Chapter VIII of the UN Charter does not distinguish between regional and sub-regional arrangements, thus the AU and
the RECs all constitute regional arrangements and they do not necessarily
exist in a hierarchical relationship.
This opens the door for several potential challenges. For instance, which
regional arrangement should the UN Security Council coordinate with
when the policy responses of the AU and the relevant REC (or RECs) on a
particular situation diverge? This occurred between the AU and SADC
over the crisis in Madagascar in 2009; the AU and ECOWAS during the
debacle in Côte d’Ivoire during 2010–11; and in the initial international response to the turmoil in Mali in 2012. According to Article 16.1(a) of the
PSC Protocol, the PSC shall ‘harmonize and coordinate the activities of
Regional Mechanisms in the field of peace, security and stability to ensure
that these activities are consistent with the objectives and principles of the Union’
[emphasis added]. More recently, however, some of the RECs have pushed
back against what they perceive as AU attempts to control them. Hence
while the 2008 Memorandum of Understanding between the AU and eight
RECs emphasized the ‘recognition of, and respect for, the primary responsibility of the Union in the maintenance and promotion of peace, security
and stability in Africa’ and called for the AU to coordinate the efforts of
these parties to harmonize their views when dealing with the UN, it also
called for ‘adherence to the principles of subsidiarity, complementarity and
comparative advantage’.20 Critics see this latter clause as watering down the
AU’s leadership role in relation to the RECs.21 Cases where a REC and the
AU adopted different policies have complicated considerably the issue of
the UN Security Council’s collaboration with African actors, particularly
when UN policy was closer to a REC and left the AU feeling ignored.
Another complicating factor stems from the overlapping but distinct
memberships apparent in how Africa’s ‘regions’ are defined for peace and
security purposes. Most notable are the different but sometimes overlapping memberships of the eight RECs, the five regional standby forces, and
the five regions that are used as the basis for membership of the AU’s Peace
and Security Council.
Difficulties can also arise when the available REC frameworks do not
map neatly onto the policy challenge at hand. As the recent case of Mali
demonstrates (see below), ECOWAS membership and mechanisms were
not optimally configured for responding to the crisis alone. A response
required the active participation of other non-ECOWAS states – ‘pays du
champ’ – including Algeria, Chad, Morocco (not a member of the AU,
either), and Mauritania at both the political and security levels.
20.
21.
Ibid., articles 4 (ii), 21.1, and 4 (iv) respectively.
Interviews, UN and AU officials, Addis Ababa, 2–4 August 2012.
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263
A fourth set of challenges stems from the divergent views on peace operations evident at the UN and AU. However, in one sense this divergence
also potentially represents an opportunity, given the AU’s willingness to
undertake higher-risk peace enforcement tasks as opposed to the UN’s
more cautious approach. The UN’s peacekeeping philosophy derives from
the lessons learned over the past six decades and nearly seventy missions.
These are that peacekeeping is unlikely to succeed where one or more of
the following conditions are not in place: (1) a peace to keep, where the
signing of a ceasefire or peace agreement is one (but not the only) important indicator of when parties are genuinely seeking peace; (2) positive regional engagement; (3) the full backing of a united Security Council; and
(4) a clear and achievable mandate with resources to match.22 UN peacekeeping also continues to operate based on three core principles: (1)
consent of the parties, particularly of the host country government; (2) impartiality; and (3) non-use of force except in self-defence and defence of the
mandate. These principles have come under intense scrutiny in some conflict zones and have at times limited the efficacy of the UN’s peacekeepers.
For example, some African states have criticized the UN for failing to
provide an adequate response to the changing nature of peace and security
challenges on the continent, which may require different, and more forceful, responses (such as in Somalia, eastern DRC, and Mali). They have also
criticized the inconsistency in the application of UN principles – providing
logistical and financial support to the AU’s enforcement mission in
Somalia (AMISOM), but not in Mali (AFISMA).
The AU’s philosophy of ‘peace support operations’ is significantly different, in part because they are intended to address the entire spectrum of conflict management challenges as opposed to the UN’s focus on supporting
existing ceasefires and peace agreements. The AU has concluded that the
UN’s peacekeeping doctrine renders it unable to ‘deploy a peace mission …
in a situation like Somalia … even though significant advances have been
made on the ground’ [in this case by AMISOM]. Unlike the UN, the AU
has therefore developed ‘a different peacekeeping doctrine; instead of waiting
for a peace to keep, the AU views peacekeeping as an opportunity to establish
peace before keeping it’.23
As discussed below with reference to the cases of Somalia and Mali,
these different views can give rise to significantly divergent notions of the
purpose, configuration, and force requirements for peace operations
within the UN and AU. The International Criminal Court (ICC), and in
particular the UN Security Council’s refusals to defer the indictments
22. United Nations, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and guidelines (DPKO/
DFS, New York, NY, 2008), pp. 49–51.
23. PSC/PR/2.(CCCVII), 9 January 2012, para.71.
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made against Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir and to drop charges
against Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, have also been a source of
tension between the AU and the UN.24 The AU had already instructed its
member states not to act on the arrest warrant for the Sudanese President
back in 2009, and at its January 2013 summit, the AU considered a draft
resolution calling on African states to withdraw from the ICC while the
AU Chairperson accused ICC prosecutors of racial bias against
Africans.25 However, despite these calls, the large majority of AU member
states continued to abide by their obligations as members of the ICC and
the July 2012 AU summit – originally scheduled to take place in Malawi –
was relocated to Addis Ababa after Malawi’s President announced that the
arrest warrant against President Bashir would be acted upon if he were to
attend.
A further potential – but as yet untested – challenge revolves around the
issue of which entity can authorize ‘humanitarian military intervention’ in
Africa.26 The source of tension is Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the
AU, which the Union’s Assembly claims gives it the right to intervene in its
member states in ‘grave circumstances’, namely, genocide, crimes against
humanity, and war crimes. The UN Charter, however, stipulates that military force against a sovereign government can only be used in self-defence
or with the express authorization of the UN Security Council.27 To date,
this issue has not posed significant problems because the AU has not
invoked Article 4(h) to justify a humanitarian military intervention, although it has invoked it in relation to the trial of Hissène Habré, the former
president of Chad.
Pragmatic partnerships in UN-AU peace operations
All of these challenges have shaped the context in which the UN and the
AU have collaborated on specific peace operations in Africa. During the
1990s, most of the large peace operations on the continent were conducted
by the UN or by African regional arrangements, particularly by ECOWAS,
which deployed troops in several civil wars in West Africa, only receiving
24. The UN Security Council is able to defer ICC cases for up to 12 months under article
16 of the Rome Statute. The deferral can be renewed indefinitely, but the Security Council
cannot order the court to drop a case.
25. See, for example, Walter Menya, ‘Africa seeks withdrawal from ICC’, The Star (Kenya),
24 May 2013, <http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-121600/africa-seeks-withdrawal-icc>
(24 January 2014); ‘African Union accuses ICC of ‘hunting’ Africans’, BBC News, 27 May
2013, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22681894> (24 January 2014).
26. We define humanitarian military intervention as the use of military force by external
actors, without host state consent, aimed at preventing or ending genocide and mass atrocities.
27. Article 53 of the UN Charter states: ‘no enforcement action shall be taken under regional
arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council’.
AU-UN PARTNERSHIP PEACEKEEPING
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the UN Security Council’s blessing post facto in some cases.28 During the
2000s, however, there was a dramatic increase in UN peacekeeping, especially in Africa where the majority of UN “blue helmets” were deployed to
some of the organization’s largest missions in the two Sudans and the
DRC.
The creation of the African Union in 2002 facilitated a new era in
African-led peace operations, with three major missions in Burundi (AMIB,
2003–4), Darfur (AMIS, 2004–7), and Somalia (AMISOM, 2007–present),
as well as a number of smaller monitoring and electoral support and security
missions, principally in the Comoros (see Table 2). In 2013, the AU took on
two new missions in Mali and the Central African Republic. While the missions in Burundi, Sudan, and Somalia were initially conceived as interim
“bridging” operations in preparation for a larger and longer-term, multidimensional UN presence, they evolved into different forms of longer-term
partnerships between the UN and the AU rather than simple takeovers.
During this period the ability of African states to field considerable
numbers of uniformed peacekeepers increased significantly. This was in
large part due to the support provided by various ‘train and equip’ programmes, including those run by the United States, France, and the
United Kingdom. Since 2009, African states have contributed over 35,000
UN peacekeepers (see Figure 2) in addition to those deployed on the AU’s
missions. Nevertheless, it is notable that the majority of these uniformed
peacekeepers are coming from less than 20 percent of the AU’s members
(see Figure 3).29
These UN-AU partnerships were driven by particular political and security circumstances that motivated the organizations to develop pragmatic
solutions, and they did not result from a joint assessment of the situations
or a shared vision of how to address them. Indeed, the African Mission in
Burundi (AMIB) was set up in large part because the UN Security Council
would not authorize a peacekeeping operation in the absence of a comprehensive ceasefire agreement. AMIB thereafter usefully prepared the ground
for the deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission (ONUB) twelve months
later, when most of its approximately 3,000 troops were “re-hatted” into
the UN mission. While AMIB faced considerable logistical and funding
challenges, it contributed to stabilizing the country and demonstrated a
willingness and ability of the AU and some of its member states to take on
peace enforcement mandates. When, in 2006, the government of Burundi
asked the UN’s peacekeepers to leave the country, it permitted the AU to
28. For details, see Paul D. Williams, War and Conflict in Africa (Polity, Cambridge, 2011),
Chapter 10.
29. The top seven African Union contributors of troops and police to UN peacekeeping
operations have varied since 2000, but as of December 2013 they were Egypt, Ethiopia,
Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, and Tanzania.
266
Table 2. African Union Peace Operations, 2003-2013
Duration Size
(approx.
max)
Finance Method
Key TCCs /
PCCs
Main Task(s)
Main
Achievements
AU Mission in
Burundi (AMIB)
2003–4
3,250
TCCs + donors
South Africa
Peacebuilding
AU Military
Observer Mission
in the Comoros
(MIOC)
AU Mission in
Sudan (AMIS)
[re-hatted into
UNAMID]
2004
41
TCCs
South Africa
Observation
Enforcement;
DDR; facilitated
humanitarian
assistance
Facilitated and
secured the
electoral process
2004–7
c.7,700
TCCs + EU + UN
support packages
Peacekeeping /
Civilian Protection
Protected (some)
civilians;
facilitated
humanitarian
assistance
Special Task Force
Burundi
2006–9
c.750
TCC
Nigeria,
Rwanda,
South
Africa,
Senegal,
Ghana
South Africa
VIP Protection
AU Mission for
Support to the
Elections in the
Comoros
(AMISEC)
2006
1,260
TCCs + EU support
South Africa
Election Monitor
VIP protection for
negotiating rebel
leaders; DDR
Monitored
elections; keep
security forces
out of elections
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Mission
2007–
22,126
a) TCCs + donors
b) UN + donors
Uganda,
Burundi,
later Kenya
Protection of
Government,
counter-insurgency
AU Electoral and
Security
Assistance
Mission to the
Comoros
(MAES)
Operation
Democracy in
Comoros
2007–8
350
TCCs + EU + Arab
League
South Africa,
Tanzania
Election Support
2008
1,350 +450
Comoros
TCCs + donors
Tanzania,
Sudan
Enforcement
2013
9,620
TCCs + donors + AU
Chad, Nigeria
Enforcement /
Stabilization
2013
3,652
TCCs + donors + AU
DRC, Rep. of
Congo,
Cameroon
and Gabon
Stabilization
African-led
International
Support Mission
for Mali
(AFISMA)
African-led
International
Support Mission
to the Central
African Republic
(MISCA)
Protected TFG;
degraded
insurgents;
facilitated
humanitarian
relief
Failed to facilitate
restoration of
constitutional
authorities in
Anjouan
Removed
incumbent
illegitimate
regime
Fought insurgents
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AU Mission in
Somalia
(AMISOM)
Too soon to tell
267
TCCs, troop-contributing countries; PCCs, police-contributing countries; DDR, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration; TFG, transitional
federal government.
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AFRICAN AFFAIRS
Figure 2. Uniformed personnel deployed by African Union member states
in UN and AU missions (31 July, annual)
maintain one battalion, which proved crucial in helping the follow-on UN
peacebuilding presence (BINUB) to carry out the remaining tasks necessary to support the peace process.
Similarly, in 2006, the UN and the AU had agreed to replace the African
Mission in Sudan (AMIS) with a larger and better-equipped UN peacekeeping operation. After the Sudanese government opposed the deployment of such a UN force and insisted on the mission retaining its
predominantly African character, AMIS was eventually replaced by a
UN-AU Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) – the first of its kind – at
the end of 2007. In the interim period, AMIS was assisted by an EU
support package as well as the UN’s so-called ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ assistance
packages to help with planning functions and logistics. In the lead-up to the
creation of UNAMID, the UN assistance mission to the AU in Addis
Ababa, as well as the two joint AU-UN technical missions carried out in
Darfur and the joint reports to the UN Security Council and the PSC, all
contributed to starting technical cooperation between the UN and AU.
Similar cooperation would later reappear in relation to AMISOM. As
discussed below, in late 2006, the AU had also initially envisaged a UN
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269
Figure 3. Origin of UN uniformed peacekeepers, 2000–13 (31 December,
annual)
operation taking over from its mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and
requested the UN to support the planning and preparation for AMISOM’s
deployment.
The experiences in Burundi, Darfur, and Somalia helped both organizations agree that neither one of them, on its own, could address Africa’s
peacekeeping burden effectively. They also illustrated the comparative
advantages of the AU over the UN in certain African contexts. First, the
AU (and the RECs) could deploy troops from neighbouring countries
more quickly and cheaply than the UN, which tended to deploy larger and
more costly multi-dimensional operations.30 Second, AU-mandated troops
carried out peace enforcement tasks in contexts where the absence of a
comprehensive ceasefire agreement or political settlement prevented the
UN from deploying a peacekeeping operation, and/or where UN troop30. It should be noted that the case of UNISFA (2011), where the UN rapidly deployed
troops from neighbouring Ethiopia, would temper this argument.
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contributing countries (TCCs) would be more reluctant to send troops.
Third, the AU and African troops could sometimes add political legitimacy
and leverage to a peace operation, especially in contexts where the host government and/or sub-region did not welcome a UN presence.31
In sum, where the political agendas of the UN and the AU coincided,
pragmatic divisions of labour evolved whereby African states provided
troops and the UN and other partners provided increasingly comprehensive
logistical and financial support packages. These support mechanisms were
ad hoc and authorized by the UN Security Council on a case-by-case
basis.32
The financial assistance for the various missions was equally ad hoc, and
various models of support emerged. Under AMIB, bilateral donors provided minimal support to the TCCs through a trust fund but the bulk of the
operation was self-financed by the lead state: South Africa. AMIS was
largely paid for through direct donor support ( primarily the EU) but TCCs
also benefited from in-kind enabling support from a number of bilateral
partners as well as UN ‘light’ then ‘heavy’ support packages. The re-hatting
of the AU mission as the AU-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID)
gave it access to the UN’s assessed peacekeeping budget in addition to
other forms of UN assistance.
AMISOM went from a direct donor support model similar to that used
in AMIS to one in which the UN (assessed) peacekeeping budget supported certain aspects of the AU mission (through the UN Support Office
to AMISOM, UNSOA), while the EU paid for the peacekeepers’ allowances, and other partners provided in-kind support in the form of training and
equipment to the contributing countries.
The counter-LRA Regional Cooperation Initiative endorsed by the UN
Security Council in June 2012 provides another approach, consisting of a
coalition of the willing (four national armies) authorized by the AU and
benefiting from in-kind support from bilateral donors ( primarily the US) as
well as UN peacekeeping operations present in those countries.33
In late 2012, the AU asked the UN Security Council to adopt the
AMISOM model for the African-led International Support mission in Mali
31. UN operations have had to deal with growing distrust displayed by several African host
governments, notably Sudan, Chad, and the DRC.
32. For an overview and discussion see Gelot, Gelot, and de Coning (eds), Supporting
African Peace Operations.
33. In November 2011, the AU Peace and Security Council authorized the Regional
Cooperation Initiative for the Elimination of the LRA (RCI-LRA). The Initiative is made up of
three components: (1) The Joint Coordination Mechanism located in Bangui, CAR, is chaired
by the AU Commissioner for Peace and Security and composed of the defence ministers of the
affected countries. (2) The Regional Task Force (RTF) comprises some 5,000 troops from the
affected countries with a headquarters in Yambio, Republic of South Sudan, and a Joint
Intelligence and Operations Centre, based in Dungu, DRC. (3) The Joint Operations Centre,
which provides planning and monitoring functions for the RTF.
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(AFISMA). However, the UN Secretary-General cautioned that ‘fundamental questions on how the force would be led, sustained, trained,
equipped, and financed remain unanswered’. Based on lessons from the
AMISOM experience, the Secretary-General emphasized that the AU’s
‘request to the Security Council to authorize a UN support package for an
offensive military operation raises serious questions’ in terms of the UN’s
image, and hence its ability to play other humanitarian and peacekeeping
roles.34 The fact that the Security Council ultimately authorized AFISMA
in December 2012, but denied it the same kind of logistical and financial
UN support package as AMISOM, created friction between African TCCs
and the AU, on one side, and the UN on the other. The result was that the
initial AFISMA deployment was planned for September 2013 – a full eighteen months after the coup that sparked the crisis! As it turned out, this
timetable was dramatically accelerated in January 2013 when France
launched Operation Serval and international assistance enabled AFISMA
to start deploying shortly thereafter. Nevertheless, African troops deployed
to Mali remained dependent on voluntary contributions to an AU trust
fund – which represented a return to the AMIB/AMIS collaborative model.
In April 2013, the UN Security Council decided that ‘authority be transferred from AFISMA to MINUSMA [the Multi-dimensional Integrated
Stabilization Mission in Mali] on 1 July 2013’, at which point most of the 6,000
AFISMA troops already on the ground were absorbed by MINUSMA.35
The AMISOM experience
AMISOM exemplifies both positive and negative aspects of the UN–AU relationship and is a crucial test case for several reasons.36 First, as the only
peace operation launched under AU command and control between 2007
and early 2013, AMISOM was a central focus of the debates about UN–
regional cooperation. Second, after the surge of troops that arrived after
mid-2010, AMISOM became the biggest and most complex peace operation the AU had ever conducted. This was crucial because it is in the laboratory of big missions that the UN–AU relationship has been forged and
AMISOM’s early experience starkly exposed the limits of the AU’s capabilities (material, financial, and bureaucratic) and reiterated the importance of
finding workable partnerships with various external actors, including the
34. United Nations, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the situation in Mali’ (S/2012/894,
29 November 2012).
35. United Nations, UN Security Council resolution 2100 (25 April 2013), para. 7. Initially
the major African TCCs in MINUSMA were Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Nigeria,
Senegal, and Togo.
36. For a detailed analysis of AMISOM, see Bronwyn E. Bruton and Paul D. Williams,
Counter-Insurgency in Somalia: Lessons learned from the African Union Mission in Somalia,
2007–2013 (Joint Special Operations University, Tampa, FL, forthcoming April 2014).
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UN. AMISOM was also notable for carrying out a number of difficult tasks
including VIP protection, war fighting, counter-insurgency, and facilitating
humanitarian assistance. That these were not traditional peacekeeping tasks
significantly complicated efforts to support AMISOM through mechanisms
designed for UN peacekeeping missions. The subsequent debates about
how to sustain AMISOM led to the creation of an unprecedented UN-AU
collaborative mechanism: the UN Support Office for AMISOM (UNSOA),
which provides logistical support to AMISOM using UN-assessed contributions and the AMISOM Trust Fund.
Especially in AMISOM’s early years, the mission also exposed some important differences in the UN and AU approaches to peace operations.
Most notably, in spite of repeated AU calls for AMISOM to transition into
a ‘blue helmet’ mission, the UN repeatedly refused to deploy a UN force to
Mogadishu, arguing that the circumstances on the ground were not appropriate. And, finally, AMISOM involved more institutional partnerships
than arguably any other peace operation in the post-cold war era. As a consequence, it involved a more complicated mix of parties than just the UN
and AU, including most notably the European Union, which paid the
allowances for AMISOM personnel, and a range of bilateral partners who
provided various support programmes to the contributing countries.
AMISOM’s experiences exposed sources of both cooperation and conflict between the UN and AU. Initially, the mission was a source of major
tension for the two institutions. AMISOM was established as an exit strategy
for the Ethiopian military, which had occupied Mogadishu in December
2006 in order to support Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
AMISOM’s deployment was controversial because the Ethiopian delegation
broke the Peace and Security Council’s internal rules of procedure,37 and
because the AU Commissioner called for the UN Security Council to take
over the mission without securing the agreement of the relevant authorities
in New York. The net result was that AMISOM did not transition into a
UN operation as the AU had initially envisaged, and it attracted only two
TCCs – Uganda and Burundi – until mid-2012, after which Kenya,
Djibouti, Nigeria, and then Sierra Leone all deployed contingents of uniformed personnel.
By 2009, the situation in Mogadishu was dire, with AMISOM embroiled
in a bloody struggle; caught between various anti-TFG forces – most
notably al-Shabaab – fighting for control of the city. Because the logistics
model provided by the TCCs and several external donors (mostly the
37. Despite being a key party to the conflict under discussion, the Ethiopian representative
played a crucial role in the debate to establish AMISOM. Under Article 8.9 of the Protocol
Relating to the Establishment of the PSC (2002), Ethiopia’s representative should have withdrawn
from the deliberations after the briefing session. Instead, she even sought to chair the meeting,
arguing that her country was not a party to the conflict.
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273
United States and United Kingdom) was woefully insufficient, the UN
established an unprecedented logistics support package for AMISOM.38
Although this did not meet all of AMISOM’s requirements, it significantly
improved the situation.39
Positive collaboration continued in late 2011 after Kenyan and Ethiopian
forces launched major military operations against al-Shabaab strongholds
across south and central Somalia. These developments prompted a major
rethink of AMISOM’s activities and facilitated a new phase of AU–UN cooperation. During December 2011, the UN, the AU, and a variety of other
partners worked together on a Joint Technical Assessment Mission that
subsequently produced new strategic and military concepts of operations
for AMISOM, increasing its strength to nearly 18,000.40 This cooperation
was particularly significant because in late 2010 the UN Security Council
had rejected the AU’s request to fund an increase in AMISOM’s troop
strength to 20,000 personnel. Instead, Security Council Resolution 1964
(22 December 2010) endorsed a troop increase from 8,000 to only 12,000.
The Security Council’s fundamental problem was apparently the lack of
clarity about how the AU generated the figure of 20,000, and hence it
remained unwilling to finance these extra troops until the AU could
provide the detailed operational military analysis to demonstrate why they
were required.41
These two very different outcomes suggest that the collaborative process
of conducting a Joint Technical Assessment Mission involving AU officials
and personnel from the newly established UNOAU (as well as other key
partners) was the key to generating consensus. The establishment of the
UNOAU was crucial in this regard; providing the AU with technical and
political support, it nurtured a more trusting relationship and helped bring
the UN to the AU’s doorstep in Addis Ababa. It also seems clear that the
AU began to view the UNOAU as a valuable partner.
The next major phase of UN–AU collaboration should have come after
the selection of the new Federal Government of Somalia in September
2012. However, this time the two organizations could not generate a
38. UNSOA was recommended by the Prodi Panel (2008) and was consistent with the UN’s
ten-year plan to strengthen the AU’s capacity in peacekeeping. UN Security Council resolution
1863 (16 January 2009) authorized UNSOA to provide logistical support in the functional
areas of supply (rations, fuel, and general supply); engineering, including construction, power
generation, and water supply; medical support; aviation; transportation; strategic movement
support; equipment repair and maintenance; public information; strategic and tactical communications; and information and technology support.
39. Interview, former AMISOM Force Commander, Kampala, 15 August 2012.
40. These were endorsed by the AU PSC and the UN Security Council on 5 January and
22 February 2012 respectively. African Union, AU doc. PSC/PR/COMM.(CCCVI), 5
January 2012 and UN Security Council resolution 2036 (22 February 2012).
41. Interviews, UN officials, Addis Ababa, July 2012, and US, UK, and UN officials,
New York, May 2012.
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consensus over a proposed joint strategic review process. Although the
initial plan was to conduct a joint UN-AU strategic assessment of their engagement in Somalia, this did not happen. Next, it was proposed that the
AU and the UN should conduct parallel assessments – perhaps facilitated
by UNOAU – but that idea also failed to materialize. Instead, the UN conducted its review in late 2011, before the AU.42 While the UN team
endorsed the creation of a new UN political mission in Somalia, the AU
review team concluded that with the status quo untenable and a transition
to a UN peacekeeping operation not feasible, a new joint AU-UN mission
should be established to provide for sustainable and predictable funding. In
the interim period, the AU team argued that AMISOM should be
enhanced before joining with the new UN mission.43 The net result was
that in early 2013 the AU PSC and UN Security Council both agreed that
AMISOM should continue its work, but authorized slightly different mandates for the mission.44 The size of the mission and the UN’s logistical
support package was to remain the same despite calls by the AU for major
enhancements. By June 2013, the lack of additional capabilities led AU officials to conclude that AMISOM had reached ‘its operational limit’ since it
remained ‘without all the required force enablers’. AMISOM would henceforth not engage in ‘major advances to recover more territory from Al
Shabaab’.45
The AFISMA experience
Just as UN–AU cooperation seemed to reach an all-time high in Somalia,
the 2012 crisis in Mali served as a reminder that progress remains reversible. Not only were African actors and the UN slow to respond, but following some early cooperation between the UN, the AU, and ECOWAS, the
crisis became a significant source of conflict between the UN and the AU
and exposed their different perspectives on several important issues.
While UN planners assisted AU and ECOWAS planners in developing
the AFISMA Concept of Operations and the UN Security Council authorized AFISMA in resolution 2085 (20 December 2012), the Security
Council did not follow the AU’s request to create a UN-funded support
package for the mission as it had done for AMISOM in 2009. In the
42. Interviews, UN officials, New York, 23 June 2013, and AU officials, Addis Ababa, 8
January 2013.
43. See United Nations, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on Somalia’ (UN doc. S/2013/69,
31 January 2013) and United Nations, UN doc. S/2013/134, 5 March 2013, paras. 50–51.
44. African Union, AU document PSC/PR/COMM(CCCLVI), 27 February 2013 and UN
Security Council Resolution 2093, 6 March 2013.
45. African Union, AU document PSC/PR/2.(CCCLXXIX), 13 June 2013. Quotes from
paragraphs 27, 72 and 16.
AU-UN PARTNERSHIP PEACEKEEPING
275
absence of a UN support package, the AU organized an emergency donor
conference on 29 January 2013 in Addis Ababa, where donors pledged an
initial $450 million to support AFISMA. The AU also decided to allocate
$50 million to AFISMA – the first time that the AU’s budget would be
used to support a peace operation.46 While the international dithering continued, France launched Operation Serval on 11 January 2013 following a
request from the Malian authorities to counter the advance of Islamist militants and other rebels. This dramatically altered both the dynamics on the
ground and the terms of the international response, as discussions got
under way at the Security Council with a French-led push to replace
AFISMA with a UN force.
Unfortunately, the process of creating the UN Multi-dimensional
Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) resurrected several
sources of conflict in UN–AU relations. From the AU’s perspective, there
were three main problems with Security Council resolution 2100, which
created MINUSMA. First, the resolution made deployment of a UN force
contingent on certain criteria being met on the ground.47 This left
AFISMA unclear on whether it would operate until the end of its mandate
(in December 2013) and thus caused bureaucratic problems in hiring personnel and ordering logistical and supply services. The second problem
was that MINUSMA would not conduct peace enforcement and counterterrorism tasks directly, as the AU had called for, but would instead rely on
a parallel French force to continue combat operations. Third, the AU’s
requests regarding key personnel were not followed by the UN Security
Council, including the suggestion that the head of AFISMA should be
nominated as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Mali.
The resolution’s decision that only those AFISMA troops that met ‘United
Nations standards’ would be integrated into MINUSMA was an additional
source of contention among African TCCs.48 Finally, the AU may also
have felt sidelined by the fact that the inclusive negotiation process on Mali
would henceforth be ‘facilitated by the Secretary-General, in particular
through his Special Representative for Mali’.49 The AU was consequently
denied the ‘central political role’ it was hoping for.50
46. See remarks by the Chairperson of the AU Commission, Addis Ababa, 29 January 2013,
<http://www.peaceau.org/uploads/auc-speech-cp-donors-conference-mali-29-01-2013.pdf>
(28 January 2014).
47. United Nations, UN Security Council resolution 2100, para. 8 reads: ‘with respect to
the cessation of major combat operations by international military forces in the immediate
vicinity of and/or within MINUSMA’s envisaged area of responsibility and a significant reduction in the capacity of terrorist forces to pose a major threat to the civilian population and international personnel in the immediate vicinity of and/or within MINUSMA’s envisaged area of
responsibility’.
48. United Nations, UN Security Council resolution 2100, para. 7.
49. United Nations, UN Security Council resolution 2100, para. 4.
50. African Union, AU doc. PSC/PR/COMM.(CCCLVIII), 7 March 2013, para. 13iv.
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Thus on the same day as the Security Council passed resolution 2100,
the AU PSC criticized it, noting with concern:
that Africa was not appropriately consulted in the drafting and consultation process that led
to the adoption of the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the deployment of …
MINUSMA to take over AFISMA, and stresses that this situation is not in consonance
with the spirit of partnership that the AU and the United Nations have been striving to
promote for many years, on the basis of the provisions of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter.
Council further notes that the resolution does not adequately take into account the foundation laid by the African stakeholders, which led to the launching of the process towards
the return to constitutional order, the initiation of the ECOWAS-led mediation, the adoption of the transitional roadmap and the mobilization of the support of the international
community through the Support and Follow-up Group on the situation in Mali. Council
also notes that the resolution does not take into account the concerns formally expressed
by the AU and ECOWAS and the proposals they constructively made to facilitate a coordinated international support for the ongoing efforts by the Malian stakeholders.51
In the course of a single day, the UN and the AU had once more fallen
into conflict.
Conclusions
Great power politics and international legitimacy norms have clearly
encouraged and shaped the rising number of peace operations in Africa
since the establishment of the AU. Legitimacy struggles over which institution should exercise political authority in responding to a particular crisis
have also became a source of conflict between the UN and AU, most
notably over how to respond to the civil war in Libya (2011). But these
factors did not predetermine how specific crises should be tackled and
other, more bottom-up factors need to be considered to understand the
shifting patterns of cooperation and conflict in contemporary UN-AU partnership peacekeeping.
We submit that the principal driver of this relationship has been the need
to develop pragmatic operational responses to major crises, most notably
the missions deployed to Darfur, Mali, but especially Somalia. These missions drove institutional collaboration and innovation for several reasons.
First, once deployed, both institutions had a vested interest in ensuring the
success of these operations, or at least avoiding their obvious failure. In
each case, the UN Security Council came under considerable pressure to
live up to its primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and
security, while the AU was pressured to live up to its new principle of ‘nonindifference’. From the AU’s perspective these situations highlighted the
organization’s commitment gap – while some African states were willing to
51. African Union, AU doc. PSC/PR/COMM(CCCLXXI), 25 April 2013, para. 10, emphases in the original.
AU-UN PARTNERSHIP PEACEKEEPING
277
contribute troops, there remained a ‘major gap between the PSC’s willingness to authorize such missions and the AU’s ability to implement them’.52
The resulting AU dependence on external donors significantly undermined
its credibility in this area.
Moreover, these missions did not fit neatly with the existing AU institutional frameworks such as the African regional standby forces framework or
the RECs, nor were they initially deemed appropriate theatres for UN
peacekeeping operations. Yet the UN was obliged to engage politically, and
gradually was called upon to play a larger military role. As discussed above,
the result was the evolution of several variants of UN-AU partnership.
In addition, these operations forced the UN and the AU to develop innovative funding and support mechanisms because the AU’s headquarters
support capacities were limited and its official system of funding did not
work.53 The most important innovation in this regard was UNSOA, which
for the first time ever financed a regional operation from the UN’s assessed
peacekeeping budget. Yet such ad hoc support packages are not without
their problems. Regularly, AU representatives have expressed the point
made by Ambassador Lamamra – that the UN Security Council must
‘afford due consideration to our [the AU’s] legitimate requests and address,
in a more systematic manner, the funding of AU-led peace support operations undertaken with the consent of the UN’.54
The second important driver of UN–AU relations has been bureaucratic
politics within and between the two institutions.55 Although UN and AU
officials have often worked together effectively, some bureaucratic procedures – and sometimes a lack of them – have at times highlighted key differences and exacerbated tensions. Some of the friction stems from the
major inequalities between the UN and AU bureaucracies. While the UN
Department of Peacekeeping Operations is over 20 years old, can draw on
over 60 years of peacekeeping experience, regularly manages over 100,000
uniformed and civilian personnel in the field, and has a budget of over $7
billion per year, the AU is just over a decade old, has virtually no dedicated
peace operations budget and limited headquarters, planning, and logistics
capacities. The AU has also had to build its new capacities while conducting
52. African Union, ‘Moving Africa forward: African Peace and Security Architecture 2010
assessment study’ (AU document, 2010), para. 68.
53. Article 21 of the PSC Protocol states that member state TCCs/PCCs should bear the costs
of AU peace operations during the first three months while the AU will reimburse them within
a maximum period of six months and then proceed to finance the operation. Obviously, this
has not worked in practice.
54. Statement by Ambassador Ramtane Lamamra, S/PV.6702, 12 January 2012, p. 8.
55. It is now widely accepted that bureaucracies can have a major influence on how international institutions carry out their roles. See, for example, Michael Barnett and Martha
Finnemore, Rules for the World: International organizations in global politics (Cornell University
Press, Ithaca, NY, 2004).
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major fire-fighting operations in response to multiple, simultaneous, and
ongoing crises across the continent. This has resulted in a hugely unequal relationship between the two bureaucracies, not only in terms of human and financial resources but also in terms of operating procedures. Unequal
personnel numbers have also been evident in the joint UN-AU assessment
missions and reviews, as well as the meetings of the JTF, where the UN contributed the large majority of staff and financial and logistical resources. In
such circumstances, the UN’s support packages for AU missions have risked
creating “capacity substitution” (where external actors perform tasks for the
AU) rather than genuine “capacity building” (where external actors work
with the AU while leaving behind enhanced local capacities). The unequal
relationship is also reflected in the UN’s greater ability to maintain institutional knowledge and information management tools. These inequities have
made it difficult consistently to replicate successful processes such as the
2012 AMISOM surge.
Distinct organizational cultures have further impeded UN–AU cooperation. For example, the monthly agendas of the two councils have not been
coordinated (while the UN Security Council has a formal public agenda,
the AU PSC does not), nor has the agenda for their annual meeting.
Different working methods are often apparent, including over how the
councils adopt communiqués and resolutions: the AU Commission has a
far greater role in drafting such documents than the UN Secretariat, where
the Permanent Members of the Security Council have the monopoly over
“pen holding” – leading the drafting process – although in coordination
and with support from the UN Secretariat’s relevant departments. Timing
has also raised challenges. For instance, the AU PSC rarely meets far
enough in advance to feed its position/decisions into the UN Security
Council’s work agenda – for instance, on mandate renewal issues – even if
the AU PSC has sometimes proven quicker than the UN at reacting to specific crises on the continent. This can significantly limit the Security
Council’s ability to give ‘due consideration’ to the AU PSC’s requests. Nor
are there currently any standard operating procedures for the AU to submit
a request to the Security Council for consideration – whether for financial
or diplomatic support.
Great power politics and the international normative context will always
play important roles in shaping peace operations responses in Africa.
However, greater focus on these more bottom-up sources of cooperation
and conflict between the UN and the AU could ultimately bring significant
improvements to both the decision-making processes in Addis Ababa and
New York and to operational responses and the conduct of peace operations in Africa’s most challenging theatres.