Armed conflicts in Africa continue to ravage the continent leaving death, disease, and social, economic and environmental disaster in their wake. In order to develop a regional capacity to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts in Africa, African leaders created the African Union (AU) in 2001, a continental organization to replace the Organization of African Unity. The AU calls for major changes to regional approaches to peace and security and its Constitutive Act is the first international treaty to recognize a right to intervene in a state for humanitarian objectives. Indeed, the AU has the historic potential to bring Africa closer to a more inclusive peace that takes as its central referent the protection of vulnerable populations, not the sanctity of state borders. However, the challenges facing the AU’s new security regime are daunting.

NSI (Powell) completed a Working Paper on the African Union (AU) and The Responsibility to Protect that draws on the case studies of the African missions in Burundi and Darfur, Sudan.   In May 2005, NSI co-hosted a policy roundtable with CENAP, DPMF and South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies (ISS) that brought together stakeholders from the Canadian government as well as African, European and North American civil society and research centres.  Drawing on the discussions at the roundtable, NSI prepared a Policy Brief that develops more specific policy recommendations on how the Canadian government, the African Union and other members of the international community can help build a protection regime in Africa. These outputs will form the basis of multi-year policy research project developed in partnership with CENAP and DPMF with joint initiatives undertaken with the ISS and the UK’s Institute for Public Policy Research.

This multi-year policy research project will explore the operational dimensions of bridging the responsibilities to react and to rebuild in Burundi and Sudan with particular attention given to the reform of the security sector.  The research will consider how national, regional and international actors can best support the transfer of the responsibility to protect civilians in these contexts from external actors to national stakeholders in a way that serves the interests of the most vulnerable populations.  The project will promote evidence-based policy dialogue between key stakeholders from the North and South on these issues. It will also strengthen the capacity of partners to conduct high-quality research, to link research and policy dialogue, and to jointly implement a major collaborative project.  Based on these findings, the project will develop policy recommendations on how multilateral organizations like the UN, EU and World Bank, regional organizations like the African Union, key donors and national stakeholders can deliver on their responsibility to react and rebuild in Africa.

To Read the Policy Brief

 Delivering on the Responsibility to Protect in Africa by Kristiana Powell and Stephen Baranyi (October, 2005) [1MB]

To Read the Working Paper

 The African Union’s Emerging Peace and Security Regime: Opportunities and Challenges for Delivering on the Responsibility to Protect by Kristiana Powell (May, 2005) [264k]