The Nordic Africa Institute – Publications

La complexité grandissante des environnements sécuritaires impose unhaut niveau d’exigences vis-à-vis des opérations de paix africaines etcomplique les efforts de long terme pour la consolidation de la paix etle renforcement de l’État. Les expériences de l'Union africaine (UA) etdes sous-régions au cours de la dernière décennie montrent qu’unmodèle africain des opérations de paix a émergé, qui est en contradictionavec les scénarios et les hypothèses multidimensionnelles demission qui sous-tendaient originellement le cadre de la Force africaineen attente (FAA).

Increasingly complex security environments are placing high demands on African peace operations, and complicating efforts at long-term peace- and statebuilding. From the experiences of the African Union (AU) and the sub-regions over the last decade, an African model of peace operations has emerged that is at odds with the mission scenarios and multi-dimensional assumptions that underpinned the original framework of the African Standby Force (ASF).

Facing threats ranging from Islamist insurgences to the Ebola pandemic, African regional actors are playing an increasingly vital role in safeguarding peace and stability across the continent. But while the African Union has demonstrated its ability to deploy forces on short notice and in difficult circumstances, the challenges posed by increasingly complex conflict zones have revealed a widening divide between the theory and practice of peacekeeping. With the AU ’s African Standby Force becoming fully operational in 2016, this timely and much-needed work argues that responding to these challenges will require a new and distinctively African model of peacekeeping, as well as a radical revision of the current African security framework.

The first book to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of African peace operations, The Future of African Peace Operations gives a long overdue assessment of the ways which peacekeeping on the continent has evolved overthe past decade. It will be a vital resource for policy makers, researchers and all those seeking solutions and insights into the immense security challenges which Africa is facing today.

The fall of authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya has changed political dynamics on the African continent. One immediate concern has been the implications of these developments for the African Union (AU) and its member states. Would overall political dynamics in the AU be changed? Would the most powerful member states use the altered circumstances to enhance their influence on AU policies andframeworks? What would the impact be for the AU's overall authority? In this Discussion Paper series, three edited papers are presented that tackle AU political and institutional dynamics in light of the Arab revolts. A particular puzzle addressed is the current postures of South Africa, Ethiopia and Algeria within the AU. A separate analysis of Nigeria's role was published earlier in the NAI-FOI Lecture Series on African Security.

The work in this discussion series reflects the longstanding collaboration between the Swedish Defence Research Agency's Project Studies in African Security and the Nordic Africa Institute to build Africa-related research capacity on peace and security.

This book analyses the new and difficult roles of regional organizations in peacemaking after the end of the Cold War and how they relate to the United Nations (UN).

Regional organizations have taken an increasingly prominent role in international efforts to deal with international security. The book highlights the complex interaction between the regional and sub-regional organizations, on the one hand, and their relations with the United Nations, on the other. Thus, the general issues of UN and its authority are scrutinized from legal, practical and geopolitical perspectives. Taking on a broad geographical focus on Africa, the Arab world and Europe, the book also provides an extensive range of case studies, with detailed analysis of particular situations, organizations and armed conflicts.

The authors scrutinise the heterogeneous relationship between the different organizations as well as the challenges to them: political resources, legal standing, financial assets, capabilities and organizational set up. Moreover, they investigate whether regional organizations, as compared to the UN, are better suited to deal with today’s intra-state conflicts. The book also aims to dissect the evolution of these institutions historically – in relation to Chapter VIII of the UN Charter which mentions the resort to 'regional arrangements’ for conflict management – as well as more generally in relation to the principles of international law and UN principles of peacemaking.

This book, written by a mixture of established scholars, diplomats and high-level policymakers, will be of great interest to students as well as practitioners in the field of peace and conflict studies, regional security, international organisations, conflict management and IR in general.

This article explores how the protection of civilians is being militarized by African policymakers and diplomats. I draw on practice approaches to analyze what social groups are doing when they claim to “protect civilians.” I show how innovative protection mechanisms can be seen as a function of officials and diplomats coping with the changing circumstances of increasingly militarized politics in Africa. Specifically, accountability mechanisms for unintended and intended civilian harm by African security operations have originated in connection with this development. I argue that these are results of anchoring practices, which means that everyday informal interactions in one context become linked to another context. I argue that these emerging accountability mechanisms represent a new combination of practices, with the potential of changing the routine activities and mutual learning between policymakers and diplomats.

At the turn of the century the regional-global security partnership became a key element of peace and security policy-making. This book investigates the impact of the joint effort made by the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN) to keep the peace and protect civilians in Darfur.