UN-AU Strategic Partnership
Expected Council Action
In January, the Council is expected to hold an open debate on the strategic partnership between the UN and the AU with respect to maintenance of peace and security in Africa. South African President Jacob Zuma is expected to preside and the President of the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) in January 2012 (Kenya) is likely to address the Council. The Secretary General is likely to brief on the UN’s strategic vision for UN-AU cooperation. A likely outcome will be a resolution underlining the importance of the relationship and stressing the need to create mechanisms for a more effective strategic partnership.
Background and Key Recent Developments
Since 1990, about 44 percent of Council meetings have dealt with situations in Africa. From 1990 to 2011, the Council mandated 25 operations in Africa; in 2011 alone the Council authorised two complex military actions in Africa—in Côte d’Ivoire by resolution 1975 of 30 March and in Libya by resolution 1973 of 17 March.
Despite some divergences, the UN and the AU have made important strides over the years in building a functioning partnership. The Council has long recognised that the various forms of conflict prevention and management needs in Africa, including most prominently peacekeeping, surpass the UN’s capacity. While UN peacekeeping has registered some marked successes, there is general recognition within the Council that its conflict prevention and mediation efforts in Africa have been less effective.
This recognition is shared by the AU, which, on its creation in 2002, crafted plans for an “African Peace and Security Architecture” and two years later established the PSC. Following these developments, the Council, meeting in Nairobi in 2004, adopted a presidential statement that among other things welcomed the establishment of the PSC and called on the international community to support the efforts of the AU to strengthen its peacekeeping capacity. This was followed by several other presidential statements and Council documents on the evolving relationship.
An important development in this respect was the Council’s 2007 open debate, organised by South Africa during its debut membership on the Council as an elected member, on the UN’s relationship with regional organisations, in particular the AU. That led to a presidential statement which, among other issues, asked the Secretary-General to provide a report on specific proposals for how the UN could better support arrangements for further cooperation and coordination with regional organisations. (For more detail, please see our Special Research Report of 10 May 2011, Working Together for Peace and Security in Africa: The Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council.)
The UN has long recognised that productive burden-sharing between the UN and regional and subregional organisations could be the key to addressing many of the problems. (Chapter VIII of the UN Charter acknowledges the scope for contributions by regional organisations to the settlement of disputes.) The proliferation of crises in Africa requiring outside intervention gave focused attention to this. In January 1992, the Council, meeting for the first time at the level of Heads of State and Government, asked the Secretary-General to recommend ways to strengthen and make the UN more efficient for preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peacekeeping. The result was that in June 1992, the Secretary-General issued his report, An Agenda for Peace, in which he highlighted the role that regional organisations could play in preventive diplomacy, early-warning systems for crisis prevention, peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding.
To date, the Council and the PSC have cooperated on several initiatives, including the AU-led AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the AU-UN Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). Since 2007, members of the two councils have held annual meetings, alternating between their respective headquarters, Addis Ababa and New York.
Following an open debate on 22 October 2010 which discussed the Secretary-General’s report on assistance to AU peacekeeping operations, the Council adopted a presidential statement requesting a report from the Secretary-General defining the UN Secretariat’s strategic vision for UN-AU cooperation in peace and security and taking into account the lessons learnt from the various experiences of joint cooperation between the two bodies. The report was expected to be made available in 2011 but has been delayed and is now likely to be issued in early 2012.
At the 16th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly in January 2011, the chairperson of the AU was asked to submit to the PSC a report on the AU’s “strategic vision of the cooperation between the African Union and the UN on peace and security matters.” The report would be a “contribution to the consideration by the Security Council of the next report of the UN Secretary-General on this issue, bearing in mind relevant AU decisions and the need for flexible and creative interpretation of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter.” The report is expected to be issued later this month and is likely to stress the development of the relationship to the level of a strategic partnership that emphasises mutual respect, African ownership and priority-setting on issues involving peace and security on the continent; high-level dialogue between the PSC and the Council; and clarification of the principle of subsidiarity.
Key Issues
A key issue is how to ensure that the relationship is effective on a strategic, as well as operational level.
Another key issue for the Council is to devise an effective working method on African issues that would benefit from the partnership with the PSC.
Underlying Issues
A key area of unease in the relationship between the Council and the PSC concerns the putative issue of equality of status. The UN’s Charter mandates the Council as having the primary responsibility for international peace and security. Chapter VIII, though recognising the role of regional organisations, merely underlines this mandate.
Consequently, there is anxiety, especially among the P5 members, about diluting this mandate by appearing to defer to the PSC on African peace and security issues. This is the reason why, though the two organs have held several annual consultations to date, the Council has presented these meetings as between individual members of the Security Council—not the Council itself—and the PSC.
The PSC, on the other hand, has held that its understanding of and interest in peace and security issues in Africa far surpasses that of the Council and should therefore enable it to take the lead on such issues with financial and diplomatic support from the UN Security Council.
Council Dynamics
This is one of the more contentious thematic issues on the Council’s agenda, for it goes to the core of the Council’s mandate: primacy on matters relating to maintenance of international peace and security. Almost all the P5 members appear largely inflexible on this point, though they recognise the important role that the AU plays, and can potentially play, in Africa.
On the other hand, some of the elected Council members, including South Africa and India, and exiting members Gabon and Nigeria, appear to prefer deference to the greater knowledge and interest of the PSC concerning emerging issues relating to peace and security in Africa that are not already on the Council’s agenda.
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