Martin Welz

The UN and the African Union in Mali and beyond: : a shotgun wedding?

The United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) have collaborated in building a viable African Peace and Security Architecture and have worked together in a number of armed conflicts over the past decade. Examples include the peace operations in Burundi and Somalia, and the hybrid peace operation in Sudans Darfur region which is perhaps the most prominent illustration of this collaboration. Although the UN Security Council authorized the intervention in Libya, which was approved by leading regional organizations (the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Gulf Cooperation Council), it was opposed initially by the AU although the three African states in the Security Council voted for it. Relations cooled as a result and have grown colder still as the UN snubbed the AU and its initial efforts to engage in post-conflict stabilization in Mali. While the AU sought to prove itself as a capable security provider and partner on the continent with its operation AFISMA, Frances Operation Serval and the UNs peace operation for Mali, MINUSMA, bypassed the African Union. This article explores the underlying fault-lines between the two organizations by examining interactions between the UN and AU since the latters launch in 2002, but focusing on the Mali case. The fault-lines emerging from the analysis are different capabilities, risk-averse vs risk-assuming approaches to casualties, diverging geopolitics and leadership rivalry.

Multi-actor peace operations and inter-organizational relations : insights from the Central African Republic

ABSTRACT Multi-actor peace operations have become the dominant mode of peace operations since the end of the cold war. This article uses the literature on institutional linkages and inter-organizational relations, thus far developed independently from the literature on such operations, to shed light on the relations between the organizations involved in them. The analysis of one specific case – the interactions between the United Nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of Central African States and the European Union in the Central African Republic – shows the usefulness of merging this body of theory with the primarily empirically driven research on peace operations and UN–regional collaboration. The findings of this study are meant to facilitate further research on multi-actor peace operations and serve as a building block for a theory explaining the emergence and configuration of such operations.

Military twists and turns in world politics: downsides or dividends for UN peace operations?

Russia’s challenge to the post-cold war order, and the rise of Islamic State have resulted in a call for increased military spending among NATO members. Despite the increased demand for UN peace operations, any expansion is unlikely to benefit the world organisation. Instead we see an increasing reliance upon regional organisations like the African Union, European Union and NATO, in particular, for robust peace operations. An analysis of Western states (France, Germany and the USA) suggests that future investments in weaponry, technology and staff will primarily benefit NATO and the EU, but not the United Nations.

Legacies of the Past : The Influence of Former Freedom Fighters and their Rhetoric in Southern Africa

Abstract The liberation struggle impacts on the current political landscape of Southern Africa. In this regard, some scholars speak of enduring ‘post-liberation states’, whereas others foresee the slow but inevitable decline of the active role of freedom fighters in politics. We aim to enrich the debate over the legacies of the liberation struggle by providing empirical evidence in a three-step analysis. Firstly, we provide figures on the composition of cabinets since independence, demonstrating not only that more than half of todays cabinet members are former freedom fighters, but also that their numbers are continuously decreasing. Secondly, we compare recent election manifestos of liberation-movements-turned parties to older documents of the same movements, showing that in Namibia and South Africa, freedom fighter rhetoric is more subtle than overt, which differs from the case in Zimbabwe. In a third step, we contrast these findings with evidence from practical politics. Through this multilayered comparative analysis, we also reveal the opportunistic use of the liberation struggle as a political tool across all three country case studies.