Global Policy Forum

By Wilson Johwa Bulawayo

As the third annual summit of the African Union (AU) draws closer, the spotlight is falling on the organisation's newest branch: the Peace and Security Council, and its proposed standby force.

Inaugurated in May at the AU headquarters in Ethiopia, the 15-member council will be advised by a panel comprising five Africans of repute. Analysts hope the council - which still has to be ratified by a majority of AU members - will prove a more powerful and efficient agency than other bodies set up to resolve the continent's woes. The council aims to provide a "timely and efficient response to conflict and crisis situations" on the continent, such as unconstitutional changes of government, humanitarian and natural disasters.

Inevitably, questions have been raised about funding for the standby force that will give council the muscle it needs to contain such situations.

According to Kondwane Chirambo of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), trans-continental peace-keeping operations have shown themselves to be financially demanding and politically delicate. And, some have fallen short of the demands placed on them. (Idasa is a think tank based in South Africa's capital, Pretoria.) He says that while the United Nations has provided back-up for certain operations, this has not always met "the demands of conflict situations in quantitative terms". As an example, he gives the global body's decision to send an 11,000-strong peace-keeping force to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This was hardly adequate, he observes, when one considers that the DRC is almost a quarter the size of the United States.

Currently, there are six UN peace-keeping missions in Africa. The largest - consisting of 13,000 officers - has been deployed in Liberia. Others are located in Sierra Leone, the DRC, the Ivory Coast and Burundi. Ethiopia and Eritrea have 4,000 peacekeepers stationed between them. African countries do contribute to some of these operations. Of the UN's 12,000 peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, for example, a third is African.

The protocol establishing the Peace and Security Council says that a Peace Fund which receives allocations from the AU budget will finance interventions in Africa. Voluntary contributions can also be made by AU member states and "other sources" such as the private sector or individuals.

But, Chirambo notes that most African states are short of money without the added burden of footing the bill for a standby force. "In theory, this is a laudable move," he says. "But we should be under no illusions that this is by any means a straightforward adventure. Peace building and security operations are extremely costly."

As a result, Africa may find itself turning to wealthy countries again to raise money for aircraft carriers, helicopter gunships - and the salaries of troops. It's a prospect that alarms political analyst Thomas Deve. "Africans will never progress by relying on handouts from the West," he told IPS.

At last month's Group of Eight summit in the American state of Georgia, U.S. President George Bush proposed a scheme under which the body would train up to 75,000 African peace keepers. These troops would be ready for deployment by 2010. Bush pledged to ask Congress for 660 million dollars to kick-start the programme.

A new standby force would also have to grapple with the threat posed by the AIDS pandemic. The levels of HIV prevalence are known to be high amongst African troops, many of whom have contracted and transmitted the virus while serving in foreign countries. Furthermore, some of the lustre has been taken off the proposal for the standby force by claims that the initiative is not home grown. Various observers say it is simply the result of increased pressure by Western powers for Africa to shoulder the burden of resolving its conflicts.

But despite these problems, there is hope that the Peace and Security Council signals the birth of a new era in African conflict resolution.

The AU is keen to distance itself from its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was unable to stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide. About 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in this massacre. "In so far as the union moves away from the position of the OAU on the non-interference of states, then the AU is on a new footing," says Horace Campbell, a Professor of African-American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University in the U.S.

Previous peace-keeping missions launched by African countries include the intervention in Liberia, following the outbreak of civil war there in 1989. The Economic Community of West African States dispatched forces to the country. Four years later the UN Security Council followed suit by establishing the UN Observer Mission in Liberia. This became the first UN peace-keeping initiative undertaken in cooperation with an existing intervention launched by another body.

Campbell also points to the work of the South African government and others in bringing peace to Burundi. "This has not succeeded completely, but it has prevented a near genocide," he says.

The AU summit will be held in Addis Ababa from Jul. 6 to 8.

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