Based on intellectual openness and an interest in transdisciplinary perspectives, this edited volume introduces scholars of African Peace and Security to innovative methodological and conceptual approaches, offering new insights into the inner life of APSA.

This volume offers an informed and critical analysis of the operationalization and institutionalization of the peace and security architecture by the African Union and Africa's Regional Economic Communities (RECs). It examines the institutions that will carry the mandate forward, raises pertinent research questions for the successful operationalization of the architecture and debates the medium and long-term challenges to implementation.

This book brings to fruition the research done during the CEA-ISCTE project ‘’Monitoring Conflicts in the Horn of Africa’’, reference PTDC/AFR/100460/2008. The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) provided funding for this project. The chapters are based on first-hand data collected through fieldwork in the region’s countries between 4 January 2010 and 3 June 2013. The project’s team members and consultants debated their final research findings in a one-day Conference at ISCTE-IUL on 29 April 2013. The following authors contributed to the project’s final publication: Alexandra M. Dias, Alexandre de Sousa Carvalho, Aleksi Ylönen, Ana Elisa Cascão, Elsa González Aimé, Manuel João Ramos, Patrick Ferras, Pedro Barge Cunha and Ricardo Real P. Sousa.

This open access book on the state of peacebuilding in Africa brings together the work of distinguished scholars, practitioners, and decision makers to reflect on key experiences and lessons learned in peacebuilding in Africa over the past half century. The core themes addressed by the contributors include conflict prevention, mediation, and management; post-conflict reconstruction, justice and Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration; the role of women, religion, humanitarianism, grassroots organizations, and early warning systems; and the impact of global, regional, and continental bodies. The book's thematic chapters are complemented by six country/region case studies: The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan/South Sudan, Mozambique and the Sahel/Mali. Each chapter concludes with a set of key lessons learned that could be used to inform the building of a more sustainable peace in Africa. The State of Peacebuilding in Africa was born out of the activities of the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP), a Carnegie-funded, continent-wide network of African organizations that works with the Wilson Center to bring African knowledge and perspectives to U.S., African, and international policy on peacebuilding in Africa. The research for this book was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of peacekeeping in Africa. Recent events in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mali remind us that violence remains endemic and continues to hamper the institutional, social and economic development of the African continent. Over the years, an increasing number of actors have become involved in the effort to bring peace to Africa. The United Nations (UN) has been joined by regional organisations, most prominently the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU), and by sub-regional organizations like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Meanwhile, traditional and emerging powers have regained an interest in Africa and, as a consequence, in peacekeeping. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the trends and challenges of international peacekeeping in Africa, with a focus on the recent expansion of actors and missions. Drawing upon contributions from a range of key thinkers in the field, Peacekeeping in Africa concentrates on the most significant and emerging actors, the various types of missions, and the main operational theatres, thus assessing the evolution of the African security architecture and how it impacts on peace operations. This book will be of much interest to students of peacekeeping and peace operations, African politics, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR.

Towards an African Peace and Security Regime: Continental embeddedness, transnational linkages, strategic relevance provides an informed and critical reflection on the adequacy of the emerging African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) to the medium- and long-term challenges and opportunities of conflict prevention, management and resolution in Africa. Complementary to the editors’ Africa’s New Peace and Security Architecture: Implementing norms, institutionalising solutions (Ashgate 2010), this volume revolves around three main areas of focus: the continental ‘embeddedness’ of norms, values and processes required for the gradual coming into shape of the African peace and security regime; its transnational linkages as well as the wider collective security environment; and the empirical analysis of the connections between the continental level and the regional economic communities with case-studies on ECOWAS, SADC and COMESA.

This book concerns the United Nations’ peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-building, and post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Africa from 1960 to 2021. Succinctly discussed are historic and contemporary peace, security, and economic engagements within 18 countries spanning eight African regions: the Great Lakes; the Economic Community of Central African States; East Africa; the Horn of Africa; North Africa; the Sahel Region; West Africa; and Southern Africa. The book develops a neo-realist and imperialist critique that discusses how resource-rich, conflict-ridden states have become easy targets for capitalists, terrorists, and transnational crime, aligned to geostrategic parochial interests. Critically argued is that endogenous economic growth factors, if applied effectively, can achieve both peace and security, and meet the Global Sustainable Development Goals. Such efforts require constructive engagement with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. However, the book contends that the cornerstone of multilateral engagement involves Africa’s 55 states and the African Union’s three major pillars: the Peace and Security Council, the African Governance Architecture, and the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Development Centre, which have the ability to move resource-rich, conflict-ridden states out of transnational crime and poverty. This book offers wide-ranging analyses of contemporary African diplomacy and a compelling critique of UN peacekeeping efforts in Africa, which resonates to scholars of international relations, peace and conflict studies, and African politics.

An examination of how peacekeeping is woven into national, regional and international politics in Africa, and its consequences.

This study examines the African Union's peacekeeping role in managing African conflicts. Based on a qualitative research methodology, it analyses AU peace operations in Burundi and Somalia, and hybrid peacekeeping in Darfur, in order to identify the lessons learned and suggest how future outcomes may be improved.