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.
Kathryn Nash
Kathryn Nash is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Law School. Her research focuses on the role of regional organisations in peace and security, and she is the author of African Peace: Regional Norms from the Organisation of African Unity to the African Union (MUP February 2021).
Brooke Coe
Brooke Coe is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Oklahoma State University (USA). Her work compares regional law and organisations in the global South, and she is the author of Sovereignty in the South: Intrusive Regionalism in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia (CUP 2019).
 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?){kind=link}