The UN and the African Union in Mali and beyond: a shotgun wedding?

The United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) have collaborated in building a viable African Peace and Security Architecture and have worked together in a number of armed conflicts over the past decade. Examples include the peace operations in Burundi and Somalia, and the hybrid peace operation in Sudan's Darfur region which is perhaps the most prominent illustration of this collaboration. Although the UN Security Council authorized the intervention in Libya, which was approved by leading regional organizations (the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Gulf Cooperation Council), it was opposed initially by the AU although the three African states in the Security Council voted for it. Relations cooled as a result and have grown colder still as the UN snubbed the AU and its initial efforts to engage in post‐conflict stabilization in Mali. While the AU sought to prove itself as a capable security provider and partner on the continent with its operation AFISMA, France's Opération Serval and the UN's peace operation for Mali, MINUSMA, bypassed the African Union. This article explores the underlying fault‐lines between the two organizations by examining interactions between the UN and AU since the latter's launch in 2002, but focusing on the Mali case. The fault‐lines emerging from the analysis are different capabilities, risk‐averse vs risk‐assuming approaches to casualties, diverging geopolitics and leadership rivalry.     

A decade of African Peace and Security Architecture

This article examines how the African Union (AU) has handled Africa's peace and security challenges since 2002, defines what has been successful and what remains aspirational. It does so by examining how the AU has responded, from using sanctions against coups, to deploying peacekeeping missions and mediating in conflicts. An African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) has developed since 2002, including a Peace and Security Council, an African Standby Force, a Continental Early Warning System and a Panel of the Wise. This sounds impressive, but the operationalization record is patchy: AU‐deployed missions have been fully dependent on external donors; harmonization is a major problem; serious questions remain over AU capacity; and some of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are developing at a quicker pace than the AU. Given these circumstances and its internal capacity deficit, the AU will likely struggle to exercise oversight of regional processes, including the development of regional standby force arrangements. APSA is clearly based on a liberal peace model, yet democratic systems, respect for human rights and good governance aren't always in place in African countries, and the self‐interest of elites continues to be a constraint on APSA and its success. Over the last decade the AU has found a voice and, despite some setbacks, it has shown through AMISOM in Somalia that it is capable of conducting a successful peacemaking operation. Its biggest challenge is not making the decision to intervene or deploy forces, but the capacity of most African states to deploy effectively. APSA's dependence on external partners needs to diminish over the next decade if better African solutions are to be found to peace and security challenges in the continent. Yet, the internationalized nature of crises such as the one in Mali in 2012–13 requires international partnerships. Not all of Africa's security problems can be solved by Africa alone, but APSA does provide a vision framework for African and external partnership.     

After Westgate: opportunities and challenges in the war against Al‐Shabaab

The attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2013 intensified international scrutiny of the war against Harakat Al‐Shabaab Mujahideen (Movement of the Warrior Youth). This article analyses the current state of affairs with reference to the three principal sets of actors in this war: Al‐Shabaab, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and its international partners, and the various actors currently involved in building the Somali Federal Government's security forces. It argues that although the newly reconfigured Al‐Shabaab poses a major tactical threat in Somalia and across the wider Horn of Africa, the movement is becoming a less important actor in Somalia's national politics. As Al‐Shabaab loses territory and its popularity among Somalis continues to dwindle, other clan‐ and region‐based actors will become more salient as national debates over federalism, the decentralization of governance mechanisms beyond Mogadishu and the place of clannism will occupy centre stage. As a consequence, AMISOM's principal roles should gradually shift from degrading Al‐Shabaab towards a broader stabilization agenda: encouraging a national consensus over how to build effective governance structures; developing an effective set of Somali National Security Forces; and ensuring that the Federal Government delivers services and effective governance to its citizens, especially beyond Mogadishu in the settlements recently captured from Al‐Shabaab. As it stands, however, AMISOM is not prepared to carry out these activities. More worryingly, nor is the Somali Federal Government.     

Promoting Women,Peace and Security in the Pacific Islands: hot conflict/slow violence

How has the Women, Peace and Security agenda been advanced in the Pacific Islands? While some observers argue that this region suffers from a contagion of unrest, violence and state weakness, these estimates commonly ignore the vital work women have performed in the region as promoters of peace and security. Even when such activity places them in direct personal danger, women across the region have spearheaded efforts to bridge communal boundaries and challenge the increasing normalisation of violence, gendered and otherwise, that accompanies threatened or actual incidents of conflict. As this article demonstrates, these efforts have had profound impacts on the ground in conflict-affected Pacific Island countries. They have also received increased recognition at the level of institutional politics, with member states of the Pacific Islands Forum recently accepting a Regional Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. This has been hailed as a significant achievement for the region's women peacebuilders. But much of this plan is focused on women's contributions to peacebuilding at the pointy end of a crisis. This overlooks the extent to which the ‘slow violence’ of environmental degradation, masculinised politics and militarism also compound gendered insecurity in the region. Attention to these issues offers a contradictory picture of the gains made in promoting the Women, Peace and Security agenda in the Pacific Islands. While this advocacy framework has provided important opportunities for the region's women peacebuilders, it may also have discouraged broader reflection on the prevailing structural conditions at work across the region which function in an attenuated fashion to undermine women's security and the achievement of a gendered regional peace.     

Rhetoric from Brussels and reality on the ground: the EU and security in Africa

This article overviews the development of African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) to date and examines EU involvement in this. The European Union is the major financial partner in both military and non‐military assistance to the African Union (AU). Europe has shifted from being a major UN troop contributor towards the funding of African‐led peace operations, as well as the emergence of time‐limited, high‐impact, missions. With the exception of Somalia, these ESDP operations have provided little direct security benefit to Europe and their success has been limited. They have provided experimentation opportunities of ESDP capabilities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Guinea Bissau. Events in the eastern Congo in late 2008 demonstrate that the EU needs to consider carefully when it intervenes militarily in Africa: non‐intervention and coordinated bilateral diplomatic efforts by EU member states can be more effective.     

Women and Peace Building: Local Perspectives on Opportunities and Barriers

The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 has made strong provisions to include women in peace‐building interventions and actions. This is, however, rarely observed in practice beyond local‐level activities. This article discusses new qualitative evidence on the opportunities and barriers to women's participation in peace‐building processes, based on a comparative analysis of case studies conducted in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal and Sierra Leone. The findings show that women's engagement in peace‐building activities, beyond their immediate social relations, is restricted by institutional, economic, cultural and social obstacles. These barriers prevent the realization of gender equality objectives in peace‐building initiatives. Moreover, local understandings of peace typically place family relations at the centre of how women engage with peace‐building processes, and how other community members perceive women's roles in peace building.     

‘Add women and stir’: the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands and Australia's implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325

With the changing nature of warfare and the increasing awareness of the specific gender dimensions of war and peace, the international legal framework has been expanded to address the particular challenges faced by women in conflict and post-conflict contexts. This process culminated in 2000 with the first United Nations document to explicitly address the role and needs of women in peace processes: United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security. Thirteen years on, this article assesses the extent to which Australia's stated commitment to women, peace and security principles at the level of the international norm has translated into meaningful action on the ground in the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). The analysis shows that despite it being an ideal context for a mission informed by UNSCR 1325, and Australia being strongly committed to the resolution's principles and implementation, the mission did not unfold in a manner that fulfilled Australia's obligations under UNSCR 1325. The RAMSI case highlights the difficulty in getting new security issues afforded adequate attention in the traditional security sphere, suggesting that while an overarching policy framework would be beneficial, it may not address all the challenges inherent in implementing resolutions such as UNSCR 1325.     

Handle with Care! A Qualitative Comparison of the Fragile States Index's Bottom Three Countries: Central African Republic,Somalia and South Sudan

For the past four years, the Fund for Peace has ranked the Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan as the ‘most fragile states’ in the world, in its annual Fragile States Index (FSI). The three countries’ almost identical scores suggest comparability; however, critics raise concerns about the FSI's data aggregation methods, and its conflation of causes and consequences. This article treads the uncharted path of unpacking the empirical realities that hide behind FSI indicators. Drawing on data collected during field research in the three states, the authors investigate three security indicators (security apparatus, factionalized elites, and external intervention) and propose an alternative, qualitative appreciation. Each country's fragility is based on how security forces, elites and interventions evolved over time and installed themselves differently in each region of the country. The qualitative assessment presented here shows that not every indicator matters in all cases at all times or throughout the country. Most crucially, the authors unveil enormous differences between and within the FSI's three ‘most fragile states’. Such variations call for better‐adapted and more flexible intervention strategies, and for quantitative comparisons to be qualitatively grounded.     

How Japan matters in the evolving East Asian security order

This article argues that Japan matters crucially in the evolving East Asian security order because it is embedded both in the structural transition and the ongoing regional strategies to manage it. The post‐Cold War East Asian order transition centres on the disintegration of the post‐Second World War Great Power bargain that saw Japan subjecting itself to extraordinary strategic constraint under the US alliance, leaving the conundrum of how to negotiate a new bargain that would keep the peace between Japan and China. To manage the uncertainties of this transition, East Asian states have adopted a three‐pronged strategy of: maintaining US military preponderance; socializing China as a responsible regional great power; and cultivating regionalism as the basis for a long‐term East Asian security community. Japan provides essential public goods for each of these three elements: it keeps the US anchored in East Asia with its security treaty; it is the one major regional power that can and has helped to constrain the potential excesses of growing Chinese power while at the same time crucially engaging with and helping to socialize China; and its economic and political participation is critical for meaningful regionalism and regional integration. It does not need to be a fully fledged, ‘normal’ Great Power in order to carry out these roles. As the region tries to mediate the growing security dilemma among the three great powers, Japan's importance to regional security will only grow.     

Trade and peace: the EU and Gaddafi's final decade

This article examines the effectiveness of the EU's use of trade to induce peace in Libya during Gaddafi's final ten years in power, between 2001 and 2011. During this period, the EU implored and reiterated through rhetoric, policy and the exchange of goods and services that trade was to be used as a tool to maintain peace and prevent conflict. Indeed, this peace‐through‐trade assumption is at the heart of the EU, which was founded on the notion that economic interdependence ameliorates potential causes of conflict. Initially, this article embeds its argument in the theory concerned with the relationship between trade and peace, followed by tracking the development of the EU's policy. The main body of the article then provides evidence which goes against the assumption that the trade–peace relationship is positively correlated. Specifically, it is argued that the EU's peace‐through‐trade policy failed in this instance due to the fact that it failed to take into account the Libyan context: namely, the Middle Eastern state's ethnographic and historical makeup; the weapons of mass‐destruction programme and the subsequently induced sanctions; Gaddafi's rule and attempts at reform; as well as the 2011 conflict. All these factors amalgamated to ongoing conflict in Libya during Gaddafi's final decade in power despite EU–Libyan trade continuing to take place during this timeframe.     

The African Union and the International Criminal Court: counteracting the crisis

In October 2016, South Africa became the first nation to withdraw from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), after Burundi began taking steps to leave it. Kenya is likely to follow, and other states, like Uganda, could take the same cue. The ICC is facing the most serious diplomatic crisis of its history, with the African Union (AU) denouncing double standards, neo‐colonialism and ‘white justice’, and regularly threatening to withdraw from the Rome Statute en masse. This article adopts both an interdisciplinary and a pragmatic policy‐oriented approach, with the aim of producing concrete recommendations to counteract the crisis. It firstly outlines the context of this crisis which, although not new, is becoming increasingly serious. It then responds to the AU's objections to the ICC. The court's ‘Afro‐centrism’ is explained by objective facts (the occurrence of mass crimes taking place on the African continent, the large number of African parties to the Rome Statute, the principle of complementarity) as well as by subjective decisions (a convergence of interest between the African leaders who brought the cases to the court themselves to weaken their opponents, and the prosecutor who needed quickly to find cases). Afro‐centrism should also be nuanced, as the ICC has already shown an interest in cases outside Africa and the extent to which it is a problem is a matter of perspective. The article also responds to the ‘peace vs justice’ objection, and emphasises that African states were instrumental in creating and sustaining the ICC. It finally formulates recommendations to ease relations between the ICC and AU, such as to investigate more outside Africa, reinforce African national jurisdictions, create intermediary institutional structures, promote regional‐level action, and rely more on ICC‐friendly African states and African civil society.     

Human security and development in Africa

There has been a recent rise in optimism about Africa's prospects: increased economic growth; renewed regional and national political commitments to good governance; and fewer conflicts. Yet, given current trends and with less than eight years until 2015, Africa is likely to fail to meet every single one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Home to almost one‐third of the world's poor, Africa's challenges remain as daunting as ever. Despite highly publicized increased growth in some economies, the combined economies of Africa have, on average, actually shrunk and are far from meeting the required 7 per cent growth needed to tackle extreme poverty. A similar picture emerges from the analysis of Africa's performance on the other MDGs. In a world where security and development are inextricably connected in complex and multifaceted ways, Africans are, as a result, among the most insecure. By reviewing a select number of political, security and socio‐economic indicators for the continent, this analysis evaluates the reasons underlying Africa's continuing predicament. It identifies four critical issues: ensuring peace and security; fostering good governance; fighting HIV/ AIDS; and managing the debt crisis. In assessing these developmental security challenges, the article recalls that the MDGs are more than time bound, quantified targets for poverty alleviation–they also represent a commitment by all members of the international community, underwritten by principles of co‐responsibility and partnership, to an enlarged notion of development based on the recognition that human development is key to sustaining social and economic progress. In recent years, and often following failures, especially in Africa, to protect civilian populations from the violence and predation of civil wars, a series of high‐level commissions and expert groups have conducted strategic reviews of the UN system and its function in global politics. The debate has also developed at the theoretical level involving both a recon‐ceptualization of security, from state centred norms to what is referred to as the globalization of security around the human security norm. There has also been a reconceptualization of peacekeeping, where the peacekeeping force has enough robustness to use force not only to protect populations under the emergent responsibility to protect norm, but also enough conflict resolution capacity to facilitate operations across the conflict–development–peacebuilding continuum. This article opens up a discussion of how these ideas might be relevant to security regime building and conflict resolution in African contexts, and suggests how initiatives in Africa might begin to make a contribution to the theory and practice of cosmopolitan peacekeeping.     

Localising the Australian National Action Plan on Women,Peace and Security: a matter of justice

In the bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council, the Australian government emphasised international peace and security and Indigenous peoples as two of the eight key elements supporting its nomination. Australia's positive track record in support of the UN Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, including the delivery of an Australian National Action Plan (NAP) along with recognition of historical injustices to Indigenous Australians, was highlighted as a valid and important argument in favour of its nomination. The Australian NAP, however, has all but ignored the local context in its development and application, focusing instead on its commitments abroad. This framing of the Australian NAP is informed, firstly, by the WPS agenda policy framework applying to conflict and post-conflict situations, and, secondly, by its location within the UN mandate, requiring those situations to be internationally recognised. This article applies Nancy Fraser's tripartite justice framework to reveal that the Australian NAP gives rise to the political injustice of ‘misrepresentation’ in relation to intra-state (violent), domestically situated Indigenous–settler relations, which are denied the status of ongoing internationally recognised conflict. The author suggests that the remedy to this injustice is to reframe and recognise the conflict status of Indigenous–settler relations in the localisation of the Australian NAP. This localisation creates openings for Indigenous Australian women to engage with the WPS agenda in meaningful ways.     

Indonesia: the key to South-East Asia's security

Indonesia has played a vital role in the security of South-East Asia for more than 30 years, both through its prominent position in ASEAN and the ARF and through the stability and longevity of the Suharto regime. The central theme of this article emphasizes that peace and stability in Indonesia are the key to peace and stability in the South-East Asian region. However, instability within ASEAN countries themselves and the risk of serious upheaval in Indonesia have the potential to infect other parts of South-East Asia. The author assesses Indonesia's role in shaping regional security and the country's prospects for a successful democratic future in which the West has a strong interest in encouraging the more moderate Indonesian Islamic elements to build enduring and democratic political institutions.     

‘Beyond anything we have ever seen’: beheading videos and the visibility of violence in the war against ISIS

This article examines the role of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria's (ISIS's) beheading videos in the United Kingdom and the United States. These videos are highly illustrative demonstrations of the importance of visual imagery and visual media in contemporary warfare. By functioning as evidence in a political discourse constituting ISIS as an imminent, exceptional threat to the West, the videos have played an important role in the re‐framing of the conflict in Iraq and Syria from a humanitarian crisis requiring a humanitarian response to a national security issue requiring a military response and intensified counterterrorism efforts. However, this article seeks to problematize the role and status of ISIS's beheadings in American and British security discourses by highlighting the depoliticizing aspects of reducing a complicated conflict to a fragmented visual icon. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for further attention to how the visibility of war, and the constitution of boundaries between which acts of violence are rendered visible and which are not, shape the political terrain in which decisions about war and peace are produced and legitimized.     

South Sudan: a volatile dynamic of accountability and peace

Since the warring parties to South Sudan's civil war (2013–15) signed a peace agreement in August 2015, South Sudan has endured a series of setbacks and clashes that have threatened the fragile peace process. This article examines many key factors affecting the peace process, including rampant corruption, military factionalism, gross human rights abuses and ineffective foreign intervention/pressure. It shows that the past and present failure to structure accountability at the institutional level drives the instability and distrust that has limited the political dialogue and consensus needed to implement the peace deal. To frame this issue of accountability, the article distinguishes between core (essential) and peripheral (self‐serving) objectives of promoting accountability. In doing so, it seeks to devise and apply the logic of this dynamic of accountability and to explain the unexpected outcomes of South Sudan's conflict. It argues that, rather than transforming the conditions and hostile relations of South Sudan's situation, international demands for accountability continue to fuel the volatile tensions between international authorities and the various factions inside the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The central conclusion the article draws is that instead of signifying the official beginning of the end of the conflict, the peace agreement has wedged itself between the core and peripheral objectives of accountability, thereby setting the stage for further stalemate and increasing distrust among domestic and international authorities.     

The arc of autonomy in Georgia's Ajara

Drawing on the case study of Georgia's Ajara region, this paper makes the argument for foregrounding autonomy as a strategy used by states for managing diverse territories. Particularly salient to the concept of autonomy is its flexibility as a spatial fix, one which can be variously deployed depending on the form of political relations between center and periphery. Empirically, we draw from a set of 22 interviews conducted in Tbilisi and Ajara's capital of Batumi to trace the arc of autonomy in the republic through its Soviet and post-Soviet history. Established on cultural grounds, the form of Ajara's autonomy has subsequently been institutional, instrumental, and nominal. The republic today maintains its autonomous status, though its competences are delimited from Tbilisi; rather, this status serves as a model for the future—albeit unlikely—reincorporation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia into the Georgian state. In conclusion, the paper endorses greater engagement with autonomies that fall short of conflict and separatism but nonetheless provide valuable insights into the suite of strategies that states employ in the management of territory. Autonomies are possibly entering a new, more unstable period of centralizing pressures that will challenge their original purpose and perhaps also regional peace and stability.     

The ‘war on terror’ and extremism: assessing the relevance of the Women,Peace and Security agenda

Recognizing the critique of sexual essentialism in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, this article moves beyond this familiar narrative to address the narrowness of conflict frames that have to date been engaged by the WPS agenda. The events of 11 September 2001 brought new urgency and vibrancy to state action in the realm of counterterrorism. This momentum was illustrated both by the response of national legal systems and by more concerted efforts to achieve multilateral and multilevel counterterrorism cooperation on the international level. Notably, terrorism and counterterrorism have long been of only marginal interest to mainstream feminist legal theorists. Until recently concerted analytical feminist scrutiny has been missing in the assessment of terrorism, radicalism and counterterrorism discourses. This article addresses the lack of attention to terrorism, counterterrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE) initiatives in the WPS mandate and its consequences for mainstreaming gender interests in foundational aspects of peace and security practice. Recent normative augmentations including UNSCR 2242 and the amplified mandate of the Counter‐Terrorism Committee to include gender considerations are assessed. The article argues that these moves to include gender come late, and on the terms set by security‐minded states. The late attention to gender in counterterrorism leaves little capacity to produce an inclusive and reimagined feminist agenda addressing the causes conducive to the production of terrorism and the costs to women of counterterrorism strategies. This pessimistic assessment warns of the pitfalls of exclusion and inclusion in the new security regimes that have been fashioned post 9/11 by states.     

Kin state non‐interventionism: Albania and regional stability in the Western Balkans

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Albanian regional policy from 1992 to 2013. Situated in a conflict‐ridden region and surrounded by co‐ethnics living in Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, Albania has successfully resisted pressure to undertake interventionist regional policies. However, there are no structured accounts as to how Albania fashioned its non‐interventionist regional policy. This article fills this gap and retraces the development of Albanian regional policy as a function of its inter‐mingled domestic politics and regional and international dynamics. The article concludes that the Albanian regional approach has been shaped by its legacy of communist isolation, pro‐Western predisposition and recognition that accommodation of Western interests would overcome its constraints and advance the rights of Albanians living in the Western Balkans. The analysis is important not just for understanding Albania's actions but also for disentangling the relationship between regional policy, nationalism and a kin state's domestic and international constraints.     

The effectiveness of UN and EU sanctions: lessons for the twenty‐first century

A fractious UN Security Council has contributed to the decline in effectiveness of a number of UN sanctions adopted in recent years. Yet they remain a tool of the Council, for example with regard to Libya in 2011. The challenge is to understand how UN, country (US) and regional sanctions (EU, AU, Arab League) can be meaningful in such a climate. The four books reviewed make various suggestions, from clarity of mandate to better evaluating impact. Mikael Eriksson's Targeting peace seeks to evaluate the complexity of the sanctions policy process. He argues that effectiveness comes partly from understanding politics (episodes of sanctions), but also from institutional reform—‘black box’ processes, as he calls them. Sanctions are more successful as part of a wider package. Clara Portela in European Union sanctions and foreign policy examines the use of sanctions as a political tool, including the suspension of development aid and the withdrawal of trade privileges. She shows how the EU plays an important role in signalling and constraining when UN sanctions are weak. For example, informal measures like the 2003 EU decision to invite only dissidents to national day receptions in Havanna resulted in the release of detainees that it had aimed for. The high rate of success of development aid cut‐off stands in sharp contrast with EU Common Foreign and Security Policy sanctions. The unintended consequence of good intentions is also highlighted by both Portela and Eriksson—Zimbabwe in particular but also Côte d'Ivoire and Iran pose similar challenges. The imposition of EU or UN sanctions is easier than reaching consensus to lift them, although events in Burma (Myanmar) in 2012 have resulted in smooth suspensions of most US and EU sanctions. All four books show that targeted sanctions cannot be seen as stand‐alone measures, nor assessed in isolation. Sanctions are multi‐faceted and require detailed assessment of political context, episode and institutional process.