The African Peace and Security Architecture: Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue of African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review (ACPR) is devoted to the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). It aims, among other things, at providing a criti cal analy sis of the nature and impact of APSA, contributing to existing debates around APSA’s effectiveness, as well as helping to develop paradigms for studying the continental African peace and security system.

APSA is a broad framework of peace and security norms, principles, processes, and mechanisms that the African Union (AU) has adopted since May 2001 to promote and institutionalize peace, security, and development on the African continent. APSA is a collectivist security arrangement, making every member of the AU own and be responsible for the maintenance of peace and security in Africa. It is partly a response to changes in the post-Cold War security landscape, particularly in relation to the need to devise “African Solutions to Afri can Problems.” APSA also emerged as part of measures aimed at preventing non- African governments from interfering in the affairs of Afri can states. AU’s strong support for African leaders indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its vociferous opposition to the 2011 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military intervention in Libya are the most recent examples of the values and principles underpinning this collectivist African peace and security perspective.

APSA is based on norms that bring together shared standards of appropriate behavior on peace and security to which AU member states collectively subscribe.¹ The most prominent of these is the shift from adherence to the principle of non- interference, to that of non- indifference (Kioko 2003). The Constitutive Act of the African Union (CAAU) and the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC protocol), which created legal room for APSA to intervene in the internal affairs of its member states in order to promote and keep peace, compromised the sacrosanct nature of the international norm of territorial integrity. AU interventions can take different forms, in clud ing: mediation, as in the case of Kenya in 2008; suspension from participation in AU activities, as in the case of Mauritania in 2008; rebuke and suspension of AU membership, as in the case of Côte d’Ivoire in 2011; economic sanctions, as in the case of Mali in 2012; and, as a last resort, military intervention, as in the case of the Comoros Islands in 2007.

APSA’s causal ideas are in the form of policy blueprints adopted by AU leaders to give some semblance of coherence to AU peace and security activities on the African continent. Among the key policy instruments are the 2002 “Conference on Security, Stability, Development, and Co- operation in Africa” (CSSDCA), the Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development Policy (PCRDP) adopted in 2007, and the 2005 Ezulwini Consensus. While the CSSDCA committed the AU to the promotion of human security, the PCRDP sought to bind AU members to a postliberal conception of peacebuilding. It also seeks to enhance African ownership of peacebuilding on the African continent. The Ezulwini Consensus articulates key African positions on major peace and security issues, and also frames the AU approach to peace and security in terms of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

The guidelines and rules of APSA are provided in the CAAU and are outlined in detail in other legal instruments, such as the PSC protocol and the African Non- Aggression and Common Defence and Security Pact. Among AU peace and security rules, Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the AU stands out. It gives the AU the right to intervene in the internal affairs of a member state in order to “prevent war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.” This threshold condition for intervention provided by the AU is lower than those outlined in most other international legal codes (Weiss 2004).

Knowledge on APSA is based on reflections and activities of carefully selected African policymakers, researchers, think tanks, donors, diplomats, and regional economic communities, who are all committed to promoting a...