The Mali government has been in conflict with multiple armed groups since 2012. Since 2019, nearly a half a million people in Mali have been displaced due to worsening communal conflict, mostly in the northern and central regions. Extremist groups often exploit youth and use social media and disinformation as a recruitment tool for youth. Youth in Mali are choosing humanitarian and peacebuilding work as an alternative.
Peace agreements with no peace in the Central African Republic
Countries emerging from repressive rule or conflict choose various tools to achieve peace and stability. The path each country takes to achieve stability reflects the degree to which peace can be achieved and sustained. The Central African Republic, which has been referred to as a phantom state or a failed state, has a long history of hostilities and repressive regimes, characterised by military coups, rebel activities, despotic leadership and protracted conflict since its independence from France in 1960. To achieve peace, various leaders of the Central African Republic (CAR) resorted to negotiating and signing peace agreements with the opposition and various armed rebel groups. Between 1997 and 2019, over ten peace agreements have been concluded in the country, with the mediation of international organisations and heads of state. These agreements contain provisions for the cessation of hostilities, amnesties, a call for rebel movements to drop their weapons and disband, and the formation of a national unity government.
Despite the numerous peace agreements signed, CAR civilians are yet to enjoy peace as violence persists. The denial of peace despite the signing of peace deals is accounted for by the following factors: the adoption of impunity through blanket amnesties or inclusion of armed groups leaders into the government, thereby side-lining justice and accountability; the lack of political will by various leaders in the aftermath of peace deals to implement their provisions, and persistent disunity by various actors in the peace agreement, rooted in a history of mistrust. Between 1997 and 2019, 61.5% of the peace deals concluded in the CAR did not result in effective power sharing, causing conflict relapse.
With various issues preventing successful previous peace agreements, it is crucial for the country and other peace stakeholders to develop more effective strategies for achieving peace. One such approach could involve power sharing between the central government and local authorities through political and administrative decentralisation, which could significantly reduce the underlying conflict drivers. Decentralisation creates space for political participation at the community and state levels, promoting democracy, upholding political efficacy, and enhancing local participation in governance. Lack of political representation has constituted the basis for the birth of some armed groups. Another solution to the failed peace deals is a decentralised approach to implementing peace agreements. Peace has hardly been achieved in the aftermath of violence because the local population considers its implementation elitist and limited, excluding the masses who are the most impacted when peace fails. Decentralising the structures for implementing peace agreements will encourage local participation and promote ownership of the process, thereby increasing the likelihood of local support.
Moreover, consistent dialogue with armed groups and public communication after peace deals are two other tools that can help maintain peace. In the CAR, the absence of consistent dialogue between the government and the armed groups has been a significant factor in the failure of peace agreements as it raises suspicion and mistrust. As such, the government and armed groups in the context of a peace agreement need to agree on regular meetings regularly at the committee level to monitor the peace agreement and at the top elite level. Also, the lack of public communication regarding the peace agreements and implementation strategies has caused CAR citizens to perceive the agreements with skepticism. The failed peace deals in the CAR have left the population in trauma. This article has identified some contributory factors to the persistent failure of the peace agreements and made suggestions for implementing peace in the aftermath of such agreements in the CAR.
Women and Grassroots Peacebuilding in South Sudan
Grassroots women’s efforts are rarely documented and recognized. However, the informal peacebuilding strategies employed by Women Peace Activists are as important as the roles of women in formal peace processes. Between 2015 and 2018 the Women’s International Peace Centre conducted research to document the informal strategies that women activists utilized toward peacebuilding in the post-2013 conflict era in South Sudan.
The War in South Sudan that began December 2013 resulted in many deaths and displacements, with women and girls bearing the major burden. Violations continue even after the signing of the 2018 Revitalized Peace Agreement. Throughout the war and even now attacks on civilians, including widespread and systematic sexual violence employed as a tactic of war continue unabated. Women’s participation, as defined by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), refers to the role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peacebuilding and their equal participation.
South Sudanese women have been actively involved in official peace processes and are experienced in informal conflict resolution methods. Through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, women peace activists shared a number of informal strategies they utilized to promote peace. Among these are raising awareness of the conflict and the peace process, public marches and protests, prayer vigils, food provision, and the use of information technology as peace-building tools.
Most times before violence starts, early warning signals are noticed but ignored until a trigger sparks and fighting erupts. When the conflict started in 2013 and again, in 2016, in the Capital Juba, the majority of women and other citizens did not understand what had actually caused the fighting, which led to fear in the population. Women Leaders for Peace composed of women Parliamentarians and women directors of civil society organizations held meetings with the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) leadership. The meeting pushed for the involvement of women in the peace process. This provided the drive to ensure the visibility of women. The women leaders used the media to share information on the conflict and denounce violence.
Women Peace Activists mobilized across religious and ethnic divides and organized public protests to push parties to the Agreement to respect their commitments. Women also organized “A Silent March’ to protest sexual violence and the need for freedom of speech. The Women’s Desk of the South Sudan Council of Churches organized monthly prayers for lasting peace in the country. This prayer engagement provided space to counsel traumatized women and girls. Mothers Union provided food, clothes, bedding and other household items to displaced women and children. In addition, the Mothers Union organized training in farming for women. This enabled trained women to grow food that boosted the nutrition of the family, as well as for sale. This gardening brought women to work and reflect on the conflict as a collective. This action addressed the issues of food insecurity associated with war and shows the significance of food security in peacebuilding.
The Association of Women with Disabilities (AWD) ensured the inclusion of women living with disabilities in humanitarian response and enabled this group to receive food items and other relief items. This is important as women and other persons with disability are always forgotten in contexts of conflict and post-conflict settings.
The South Sudan Women Peace Activists joined other informal engagements through the broader South Sudanese Civil Society and established a mechanism to raise the voices of the people, particularly women, to influence the peace process and ensure that the delegates at the Peace table show a serious commitment to bringing peace to South Sudan. For instance, the #South Sudan Is Watching Campaign aimed to show the leadership and the world that the South Sudanese people are united as citizens.
Women of South Sudan received support from other African women. An online campaign #SawaSouthSudan brought together influential women leaders from South Sudan, the African continent, and the world in a Virtual Summit to elevate the voices of South Sudan’s women, galvanize international support, and foster dialogue around solutions for lasting and equitable peace. The Special Envoy of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC) on Women, Peace and Security also led a solidarity mission to South Sudan as part of the campaign to restore the dignity of the women of South Sudan. This was an affirmation that women’s voices on the impact of the war were being heard and evoking actions and interventions at different levels.
The activities carried out by these women contribute to sustaining peace in South Sudan, and require sacrifice, resilience and courage. These approaches are usually not recognized but have been valuable to building peace. Despite the work done by grassroots women they usually do not receive funds to support their work. It is important that women’s peacebuilding is recognized, supported and valued by providing resources to sustain women’s informal peace-building work.
Which Regional Organisations are Driving Peace Processes in Africa?
Intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) at all levels of the international system are engaged in peace and security – they monitor situations that could lead to conflict; host negotiations between conflict parties; observe ceasefires and serve as ‘guarantors’ of peace agreements; deploy peacekeepers and other personnel; and even engage in warfighting themselves, especially in counterterrorism roles. As the number of security-oriented IGOs has grown, pressing policy questions have emerged about inter-IGO relations: How should labour be divided among them, and how can they work together in productive ways? We know that the United Nations (UN) has a mandate to maintain international peace and security, but regional-level organisations also have responsibilities for peace and security, and some have invested heavily in enhancing their capacity. On the African continent, one key innovation in this vein is the development of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). This arrangement to some degree formalises relations between the African Union (AU) and the African Regional Economic Communities (RECs) that represent sometimes distinct and overlapping geographic areas. The success of this arrangement moving forward will in part depend on the capacity of the RECs to serve as peace and security providers in their zones, but RECs vary greatly in this respect. Our research seeks to examine this variation in a fine-grained way, illuminating uneven trends in regional IGO peace process engagement tasks that receive less scholarly and media attention than peace operations.
In order to conduct this research, we read almost 300 peace agreements concluded in Africa during 2002-2015 and coded them for pre-agreement engagement (e.g. IGO facilitation of negotiations) and post-agreement engagement (e.g. IGO commitments to monitor ceasefires). Perhaps unsurprisingly to observers of African regionalism, our data show that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) leads among the RECs in all categories of peace process engagement, including facilitation, monitoring, and implementation. Importantly for inter-IGO relations, it also has higher engagement levels in West Africa than does the AU. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has been generally less engaged than the AU in its sub-region, but it may be closing this gap on the implementation and monitoring front considering it surpassed AU engagement during 2012-2015. The Intergovernmental African Development Community’s (IGAD) engagement levels have been comparable to SADC’s, but it does not show evidence of increasing engagement over time, and most of its activities have focused on one situation: South Sudan. The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) is significantly less active than SADC or IGAD but it was more engaged in the 2010s than in the 2000s. Finally, the activities of the Community of Sahel–Saharan States (CEN-SAD) were mostly limited to the 2006-2009 era of Libyan ruler Gaddafi’s leadership.
Our quantitative data is suggestive of patterns of organisational interaction that we investigated further via case studies. In some peace processes, we find leadership to be consistent and concentrated in a single IGO. For example, in the first Liberian civil war that began in 1990, ECOWAS led efforts to negotiate peace agreements. Many of these peace agreements failed, and other IGOs became involved. However, these other IGOs, including the UN, acknowledged ECOWAS’ leading role and adhered to the parameters set out in the ECOWAS peace plan. In other cases, we find overlapping and shifting leadership. Following the 2007 peace process in the Central African Republic, several RECs, notably ECCAS, engaged in negotiating peace agreements and setting the parameters for peace. The AU also sought to lead, resulting in open disagreements with ECCAS when the latter sought to assert sub-regional primacy. These disagreements led to inter-IGO competition in an already chaotic conflict environment.
Fundamentally, our research investigates IGO responsibility for peace and security, responsibility which varies greatly across Africa’s subregions and across peace processes. While this piece focuses on intra-regional dynamics, our forthcoming work examines dynamics amongst regional and global organisations across regional spheres. We hope that these and other research findings can inform debates about who should be responsible and where the resources should come from. These debates are taking place at the highest levels of international policy-making and are likely to intensify as global dynamics continue to shift. For example, the AU has been for years consistently pushing the UN to delegate more authority for peace and security to regional organisations while simultaneously pushing for more reliable UN funding to support regional efforts. The AU and African RECs are having similar discussions within the context of the APSA. Our research seeks to illuminate the patterns of IGO practice that shape and are shaped by these policy discussions.
