Conflict & Resilience Monitor – 28 May 2025

This year, the United Nations (UN) celebrates 80 years of trying to create a safer and more stable world. In reflecting on this grand milestone at the recent UN Peacekeeping Ministerial, UN Secretary-General (UNSG), Antonio Guterres, noted that the UN is operating at a time when it is facing the highest number of conflicts since it was founded. The complexities around managing this conflict landscape are compounded by several factors including an increasingly crowded theatre of war which proffers militarised solutions over political ones, and ongoing humanitarian crises whose social and economic repercussions will persist long after the fighting ceases.  How can UN Peacekeeping adapt to this conflict context?

Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine about a ceasefire are ongoing, with no agreement in sight yet. However, an exchange of prisoners on 25 May, following the first direct talks in Istanbul on 16 May is a positive confidence building measure. One aspect that has not received a lot of attention yet is how such a ceasefire will be monitored, and who will do the monitoring?

The African Standby Force (ASF) was established as a key component of the African Union’s (AU’s) strategy to address conflicts across the continent. Despite over two decades of development, the ASF has yet to be deployed in any mission, highlighting significant challenges in its institutional and operational readiness. The current crisis in Sudan underscores the urgency for the ASF to evolve into a more agile and responsive mechanism capable of addressing complex conflicts across the continent.

The Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) recently hosted a national conference on electronic voting, focusing on the feasibility, sustainability, and policy considerations of introducing e-voting in the country. This discussion comes more than a decade after the IEC first initiated dialogue on the topic in 2013, where a similar conference concluded that South Africa’s current paper-based voting system, often referred to as manual voting, was sufficient for the time being. Twelve years later, the Commission has reconvened stakeholders for further deliberation, following extensive research on electronic voting in collaboration with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). The research, conducted by the HSRC, culminated in a Policy Discussion Document, which the Commission hopes will generate public policy debate on electronic voting (e-voting) technologies and the feasibility of introducing such technologies in South Africa. Reflecting on the importance of this initiative, IEC CEO Mr Sy Mamabolo stated: “It is part of the statutory purview of the Commission to conduct research with a view to improving the quality of elections. We must investigate new approaches to improve the electoral process, voter experience, accessibility, and enable cost savings.”