A changing financial landscape
The international development cooperation system that previously funded the first generation of African-led peace support operations, such as AMIB (Burundi), AMIS (Sudan), AMISOM (Somalia), AFISMA (Mali) and MISCA (Central African Republic), has radically changed over the past 36 months. This change has been driven by three interrelated macro trends: the reconfiguration of the global order, the Russian war in Ukraine, and the pivot away from multilateral approaches.
The G20 Summit that has just concluded in South Africa reflected how significantly the world order is changing. The last four G20 Presidents were Indonesia, India, Brazil and South Africa. The next G20 president is the USA, but thus far President Trump has shown no interest in multilateral cooperation.
With this shift a gap has opened up between those responsible for coordinating the global financial and economic policy and those responsible for maintaining international peace and security. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has not authorised any new peacekeeping operations over the last 10 years, despite a sharp increase in the number and intensity of conflicts over this period. The Trump administration has gone further by withdrawing from various UN bodies and commitments, such as the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Sustainable Development Goals, and by significantly cutting or reducing funding to the UN system, including UN peacekeeping. As a result the UN is facing a financial crisis, and financial support for African Union (AU)-led operations, as envisaged in Resolution 2719, is therefore not a viable option for the future.
The uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration’s commitment to supporting Ukraine and its commitment to NATO, has resulted in most European countries significantly increasing their defence spending. For many European countries this means that there is less funding available to support international peace and security. The direct implication for the AU and African-led peace support operations is a substantial decline in EU and European donor support for peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding initiatives.
As a result, neither the UN, nor Africa’s traditional partners in Europe, are able to provide the level of financial support to African peace support operations that was previously available. Africa’s partners in the Gulf and the East are not filling the gap either. Instead, many countries seem to prefer bilateral engagements with the parties involved in African conflicts, rather than supporting the AU or other African institutions.
Self-financing African-led peace support operations
As a result of these changes in the geopolitical and financial landscape, the AU and other African institutions have no option other than to consider how they can self-finance their own peace and security needs.
There are several ways in which African countries and organisations have self-financed peace support operations in the past, including through lead-nation arrangements, assessed contributions, and nationally funded deployments. We have seen lead-nations, like Nigeria, taking responsibility for the bulk of the costs of operations like the ECOMOG operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone, where it deemed it in its national interest to do so. South Africa played a similar role in AMIB (Burundi) until the UN took over the mission.
Another model is assessed contributions, for example the SADC missions in Mozambique (SAMIM) and in the DRC (SAMIDRC) were financed through assessed contributions that the SADC Member States had to collectively take responsibility for.
The third example is where countries deploy their forces in their own national territory, covered by their national budget, but as part of a coordinated regional effort, for example the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) in the Lake Chad Region or the Regional Coordination Initiative for the Elimination of the Lord’s Resistance Army (RCI-LRA) that spanned operations in Uganda, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR).
Another option is funding through the AU Peace Fund for small, low-cost operations like unarmed observer missions or mediation initiatives. The Peace Fund has demonstrated steady growth and increasing functionality and there are a number of ways in which contributions to the fund could be increased, including from the private sector.
Implications, challenges and opportunities
The most significant implication for future African-led peace support operations is that they will have to be designed around available resources. In other words, the scope of missions, both in ambition and size, will have to be influenced by what the African states and institutions can afford and sustain.
We see a similar reality in the UN context. Downward pressure on the UN budget will require future UN peacekeeping operations to be less costly, and this can only be achieved if their mandates are less ambitious, focused on fewer objectives
and roles and limited in duration. This would imply smaller missions focused primarily on political processes and security guarantees, and deployed for clearly defined limited time frames. Many tasks currently undertaken by large UN multidimensional peace operations – for example those deployed in the CAR, the DRC and South Sudan – such as judicial reform, security sector reform, disarmament and demobilisation and human rights, amongst others, will in future need to be assumed by UN agencies and other partners.
In the AU context this means that it will be impossible to deploy and sustain large operations like AMISOM-ATMIS-AUSSOM. In their place we are likely to see much smaller, more focused and short-duration missions mandated with very specific objectives, such as the SADC mission in Mozambique (SAMIM).
This is not necessarily a negative development. Some of the large missions have produced unintended effects such as the stabilisation dilemma, where the more effective a mission is in generating security, the less incentive there is for ruling elites to make the kind of political compromises that can achieve sustainable peace. As a result, many missions, including those in places like the DRC and Somalia, become effectively trapped with no exit strategy, because they provide enough security to keep ruling elites in power, but there is no incentive for those same elites to take the actions necessary to end those conflicts.
Self-financing also means that Africa retains the agency to manage its own conflict resolution initiatives. UN funding for AU-led operations under Resolution 2719 would by definition, have required those missions to be directed through UNSC mandates. The AU’s experience in Somalia demonstrates that this arrangement results in external actors determining the ambition, scope, and timelines of such operations. Whilst international partnerships will remain essential, self-financing would ensure that the African countries and institutions deploying these operations retain full agency over them, and that relationships and partnerships will have to reflect that agency.
Self-financing also means that the AU and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) will have to adjust their capacities to mandate, plan and support peace operations to this new reality. A revitalised African Standby Force (ASF) would need to have the ability to put together “just-in-time” coalitions of states willing to deploy and fund their own operations. This would require developing new roles and relationships between the AU’s Peace and Security Council, which must mandate, authorise or endorse such operations; the AU Commission, which may deploy civilian leadership and civilian staff, and/or a support mission; and the lead nation, regional economic community or sub-regional body responsible for deploying and managing the core military or police capabilities of the mission.
A revitalised African Standby Force (ASF) would need to have the ability to put together “just-in-time” coalitions of states willing to deploy and fund their own operations.
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There is no need to re-invent the wheel. Africa’s experience over the past two decades offers several examples of self-financed peace operations from which valuable lessons may be drawn. However, rather than remaining exceptions, these models must now be adapted so that they can form the core resource strategy for Africa’s peace and security architecture in the decades ahead.
There is no need to re-invent the wheel. Africa’s experience over the past two decades offers several examples of self-financed peace operations from which valuable lessons may be drawn.
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Cedric de Coning is a senior advisor for ACCORD and the research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
