Currently viewing the tag: "peacekeeping"

This article examines the roles of the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) in the Central African Republic (CAR), where there is a long history of successive conflict resolution efforts that have been overseen by the international community and the region alternatively. The AU, regional economic communities (RECs) such as the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), and regional leaders have also played important roles during the many initiatives aimed at resolving conflict in CAR. This article analyses the responses and relationship between these institutions and actors, beginning with the deployment of an inter-African monitoring mission in 1997. It focuses less on what happened during those conflicts and more on who defined the objectives and strategies of international responses, and who decided which instruments should be used in pursuit of these goals.

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On 11 November 2016, the World Peace Foundation held consultations in Addis Ababa with policymakers and experts on the proposed deployment of a ‘Regional Protection Force’ (RPF) for South Sudan. A policy memo summarizing those consultations is now available on the African Peace Missions website.

You can read an excerpt from the policy memo below.

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Occasionally, a senior international policymaker provides a candid, on-the-record, reflection on the question of what he or she reads, and how academics might best influence policy.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno, who was head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations from 2000-2008, is a prime example of a self-identified intellectual who took on a very senior policymaking […]

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The intra-state nature of African conflicts is a product of the breakdown of law and order, public safety and security as well as collapse of police and law enforcement institutions resulting in weak states. While most of the challenges of peacekeeping operations require policing skills, political decision makers are increasingly relying on military responses. Consequently, PSOs, policing and populations are being militarized in the process. Peacekeepers are obliged to bridge the policing gaps through the provision of interim executive policing services in host countries. More importantly, they are expected to assist in rebuilding and re-establishing credible policing and rule of law institutions and services in those Member States. The rule of law is the crucible of any state and cornerstone of good governance, without it there is chaos, crass impunity and rule of the jungle.

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International peacekeeping operations are deployed to complicated and troubled places. Often, reliable information is scarce, rumors and poorly-founded allegations are common, and interpretation of events is highly politicized. Recent controversies around what is going on in Darfur illuminate the need for much better data.

A former UN official, Aicha Elbasri, has made much-publicized allegations that […]

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