The African Union and the United Nations cooperation on peacekeeping in Africa.

Abstract

The African Union (AU) in response to the many violent conflicts that had erupted on the continent endorsed the agreement with regards to the formation of a Peace and Security Council (PSC) in Durban in July 2002 and this became operational as the African Union Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) in December 2003. The AU has sought to develop capacities for peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace building to deal with endemic conflict on the continent, but all of these is limited in their reach and effect. The AU has noted the challenges to its peacekeeping efforts, therefore cooperation with the United Nations has been one way to address these challenges. The African Union and the United Nations are presently collaborating in peace keeping missions in Somalia (AMISOM), Darfur (UNAMID) and the Central African Republic (MINUSCA). This thesis focused on AU peacekeeping capacity and specifically on how the cooperation between the AU and UN, has worked in practice and contributes to the discussion on peacekeeping operations as an effective mechanism of resolving conflicts in Africa. This thesis accessed new areas such as the strategic nature of the African state, international interest and involvement in the AU-UN peacekeeping operations in Darfur, Somalia and CAR, legitimacy issues, such as the local ownership of the peace operations, impact of Armed no state actors on peacekeeping operations in Africa, using Somalia, Sudan (Darfur) and the Central African Republic where the AU and UN are involved in cooperative peacekeeping operations to assess that. This thesis adopted a case study and qualitative paradigm which involved a structured gathering , presentation, analysis of data on the effectiveness of the African Union and the United Nations peacekeeping operations in Somalia, Sudan (Darfur) and the Central African Republic and adopted the collective security theory as its theoretical framework. This thesis finds out that seven factors such as funding, mandates that are clear and achievable, the doctrines of the United Nations peacekeeping, external actors, regional dimension of the conflict, issues of legitimacy, acceptance, local ownership, the roles of Africa’s regional economic communities and coordination between them and the African Union, the activities of armed non-state actors impacted significantly on the effectiveness of the peacekeeping operations of the African Union and the United Nations in Africa. This thesis recommends increased collaboration and coordination amongst the African Union, the United Nations and Africa’s regional economic institutions.