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The scale of contemporary United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) peace operations in Africa represent a significant shift in the political will of the international community to invest in UN and African peace operations. A macro-pattern has developed where most European and American peace and stability operations are deployed in NATO or European Union (EU) operations in Europe and the Middle-East, whilst most UN peace operations troops are contributed by the developing world and deployed in Africa. However, there is a new willingness in Europe to consider deploying some of its peacekeepers to Africa in EU or UN peace operations. From a UN and African perspective, the USA and Europe have a major political and financial influence on, and stake in, the future of peace operations in Africa. The AU and regional entities like ECOWAS, IGAD and SADC have significantly increased their capacity to undertake and manage peace operations over the last decade. The AU has deployed its first three peace operations, AMIB in Burundi, AMIS in Darfur and AMISOM in Somalia. However, the single most important factor when considering the future of peace operations in Africa is how they are financed, as that determines the size, scope and duration of the missions, and therefore has a direct bearing on their impact. The lack of clear and predictable financial arrangements is now the most important factor hindering the further expansion of African peacekeeping.

In early 2008, the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) released a hundred page document entitled: “United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines”. The Peacekeeping Best Practices Section of the UN DPKO and the Training for Peace Programme at NUPI, with support from the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, organized a seminar in Oslo, on 14-15 May 2008, with the aim of providing a small but globally representative group of researchers the opportunity to discuss the new doctrine with the drafters. The aim of the seminar was to create an opportunity for the research community to engage the authors of the doctrine, to facilitate a dialogue on the key issues contained in the doctrine, and to stimulate further knowledge development about the future of UN peacekeeping operations. Utenriksdepartementet

This edited volume generates a discussion about UN approaches to peace by studying challenges and opportunities that the organisation is facing in the 21st century. We use some of the findings from the HIPPO report as an inspiration and put both its recommendations and broader UN actions in a wider context. We identify four transformations in the global order and study what implications these have on UN peace operations. The first two transformations emanate from the changing relations between states and reflect the increasingly multipolar character of contemporary global governance. The latter two transformations reflect the changing relations between state and non-state actors. These two broad groups of non-state actors are fundamentally incompatible in their outlook on how and whether the international community should be intervening. That notwithstanding, both groups of non-state actors also force the UN and its member states to rethink the centrality of state-based approaches to security and intervention. In this volume, we identify four transformations in the global order and study their implications on the United Nations peace operations. We ask: - How is the rebalancing of relations between states of the global North and the global South impacting the UN’s decision-making, financing and ability to design operations that go beyond the minimum common denominator; - How is the rise of regional organisations as providers of peace impacting the primacy of UN peace operations and how and whether the UN can remain relevant in this era of partnership and competition; - How have violent extremism and fundamentalist non-state actors changed the nature of international responses and what does this mean for previously advanced longer-term approaches to conflict resolution; - How are demands from non-state actors for greater emphasis on human security impacting the UN’s credibility, and whether, in light of the first three transformations, is the UN even able to prioritise people-centred approaches over state-centred ones. Our core finding is that with the entry of new actors from the global South as important players in the peace arena, we seem to be entering a more pragmatic era of UN peace operations. As contributions to this volume show, there is a greater willingness to innovate and experiment with new forms of conflict management, including more robust interpretations of UN peacekeeping and an increasing reliance on regional actors as providers of peace. At the same time, the UN is facing a classic struggle between the promotion of liberal international norms and realist security concerns. The resolution of this struggle is less clear. The contributors to this volume emphasise the importance of people-centred approaches, conflict sensitivity and longer-term thinking as key aspects to continued relevance of the UN, but their conclusions as to how achievable these are by the UN are not as clear cut.

The chapter traces the thinking and the practices surrounding the use of force by UN peacekeepers from the conceptual foundations laid in the era of classical peacekeeping to the contemporary focus on the protection of civilians and more “robust” operations. At the tactical level, a properly equipped and properly commanded force has on occasion been used with decisive effect in response to immediate crises or emergencies. The larger and more critical strategic lesson from the history of robust peacekeeping since 1999, however, is a cautionary one; one that highlights the need for the activities of UN “blue helmets” to be much more closely aligned than they have become over the past decade and a half to the search for viable political solutions to conflict.

Facing threats ranging from Islamist insurgences to the Ebola pandemic, African regional actors are playing an increasingly vital role in safeguarding peace and stability across the continent. But while the African Union has demonstrated its ability to deploy forces on short notice and in difficult circumstances, the challenges posed by increasingly complex conflict zones have revealed a widening divide between the theory and practice of peacekeeping. With the AU ’s African Standby Force becoming fully operational in 2016, this timely and much-needed work argues that responding to these challenges will require a new and distinctively African model of peacekeeping, as well as a radical revision of the current African security framework. The first book to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of African peace operations, The Future of African Peace Operations gives a long overdue assessment of the ways which peacekeeping on the continent has evolved overthe past decade. It will be a vital resource for policy makers, researchers and all those seeking solutions and insights into the immense security challenges which Africa is facing today. CONTENTS: 1. Towards an African model of peace operations /Cedric de Coning, Linnéa Gelot and John Karlsrud -- 2. Confronting hybrid threats in Africa: improving multidimensional responses / Kwesi Aning and Mustapha Abdallah -- 3. Stabilization missions and mandates in African peace operations: implications for the ASF? / Solomon A. Dersso -- 4. The relationship between the AU and the RECs/RMs in relation to peace and security in Africa: subsidiarity and inevitable common destiny / Michelle Ndiaye -- 5. The strategic relationship between the African Union and its partners / Linda Darkwa -- 6. Mission support for African peace operations / Walter Lotze -- 7. United in challenges? The African Standby Force and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises / Jide Martyns Okeke -- 8. What roles for the civilian and police dimensions in African peace operations? / Yvonne Akpasom -- 9. Adapting the African Standby Force to a just-in-time readiness model: improved alignment with the emerging African model of peace operations / Cedric de Coning -- 10. African peace operations: trends and future scenarios,conclusions and recommendations / Cedric de Coning, Linnéa Gelot and John Karlsrud

The Nordic Africa Institute, the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs hosted a seminar in Uppsala, Sweden, on 15 and 16 December 2011, that brought together AU, EU and UN officials closely involved in peace operations in Africa. The seminar’s purpose was to allow participants to compare their experiences of the different support models that have been used to date in Sudan and Somalia. International support for African peace operations provides opportunities but also poses challenges. This report examines four of these challenges in some detail: the AU Commission’s limited capacity to plan and manage peace operations; insufficient political engagement by African member states with AU peace operations; the short-termism and self-interest of some of the AU’s partners; and the need for UN Security Council permanent members to value and ensure a shared AU-UN strategic vision. The report also includes policy recommendations for resolving these challenges.