Persistent problems in African integration and peace-keeping
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Date
2018
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Sabinet
Abstract
African economic integration and peacekeeping constitute respectively the
largest institutionalization, and the largest operationalization, of the African
Union (AU) and its sub-regional organisations. The number of African soldiers
and police in AU and United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations has grown
steadily. Sometimes, major strategic decisions have been mistakes which
aggravated, or even catalysed conflicts that would not otherwise have occurred.
The peacekeeping missions in Nigeria and Somalia are examples of these.
Peacekeeping operations are in the larger scheme of things part of the on-going
project of African integration. This paper identifies major problems that remain
persistent after half a century of protracted Pan-Africanist endeavours at subregional and continental integration. One recurrent occurrence is the chasm
between aspirational treaties voluntarily signed, and their implementation,
taking at best a decade or decades. Often, entities founded on paper remain
dormant, until in a subsequent decade another structure is founded to
operationalize the function of the previous paper entity, with this process going
through several iterations.
Description
Keywords
African peace-keeping, African Union, AU commission, Implementation, African integration
Citation
Gottschalk, K. (2018). Persistent problems in African integration and peace-keeping. Journal of African Union Studies, l. 7, (3),67-87