African Union

Scholars increasingly investigate how the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) is contested and negotiated in practice. Yet little knowledge exists on the politics African regional interventions provoke in the societies affected by such interventions. Based on an analysis of media reports from Burkina Faso and The Gambia, we show that regional interventions are indeed contested locally, irrespective of the means of intervention applied. Our analysis demonstrates how local elites use regional norms and policies in order to claim power and define what is going (wr)on(g). With this, we provide evidence for the (contested) local effects of APSA and for the relevance of media for researching such effects.

A comprehensive analysis of the war in the Ethiopian region of Tigray. This builds on the work of Volume 1, published in June 2021 and takes the narrative about the war to December 2021. With a forward by the former New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark.
Chapters on:
1. The development of the war, with maps.
2. Humanitarian relief and famine
3. Eritrea and the sanctions regime
4. Diplomacy - both in the region and by the international community
5. Sexual violence and rape
6. The role of the Eritrean and Tigrayan diasporas
7. The looting and destruction of Tigray's unique heritage

How do regional arrangements construct and respond to threat agendas, and to what extent can the existing literature on securitization theory help us understand this process? This article explores these questions by analyzing how the African Union (AU) has responded to contemporary transnational challenges. After providing an overview of the Copenhagen School's concept of securitization, the article discusses whether the known problems and limitations of securitization theory prevent this approach from being applied to regional arrangements. Arguing that they do not do so per se, the article then provides an overview of transnational challenges on the AU's agenda and explores the extent to which the organization has " securitized " them. It concludes that the AU has collectively securitized only a limited number of transnational challenges, particularly terrorism and HIV/AIDS, and that significant problems remain when attempting to apply the Copenhagen School's framework to regional arrangements.

L’intervention occidentale en Libye s’est faite au nom de la défense des valeurs « universelles ». Pour faire respecter ces valeurs, une « guerre humanitaire » a été menée sans prendre en considération une solution politique ou un règlement pacifique du différend. Il s’agira ici de revenir sur la voie préconisée par l’Union Africaine et le président de la Commission de l’époque M. Jean Ping, c’est-à-dire la négociation et la solution politique ; mais aussi sur les éclairages de ce dernier sur la personnalité du « guide » libyen. L’intervention militaire en Libye fut révélatrice de « l’humiliation » des acteurs africains dans la négociation internationale.

Le Royaume ambitionne d’être reconnu comme une puissance africaine émergente dans son identité comme dans son espace de projection. Afin de satisfaire ces ambitions, l’appareil diplomatique se développe et se modernise, tandis qu’une identité de rôle singulière émerge autour de la notion de « juste milieu ». Cette étude présente, sur le plan empirique, les conditions de l’élaboration et de la conduite de cette politique africaine, et analyse, sur le plan théorique, l’évolution de l’identité de rôle marocaine à l'échelle internationale.

With the budget cuts to peace operations implemented last year and the prospect of even more reduction in resources, debates about UN peacekeeping effectiveness have intensified. One of the areas sorely in need of innovation is peacekeeping training and, more generally, the preparation of troops, police officers, and civilians for peace operations.  Secretary General António Guterres  acknowledged this point in January 2018 at the African Union (AU) Headquarters in Addis Ababa, when he emphasized the need to ensure better preparation for peacekeeping forces.  The point is also reinforced by the recent report “Improving Security of United Nations Peacekeepers,” which identified deficient pre-deployment training as one of the main causes of fatalities and serious injuries among peacekeepers in the field. Improving peacekeeping training centers in the most important troop and police contributing countries (TCCs and PCCs) for UN and AU missions—most of them developing countries facing considerable resource limitations—has thus acquired greater urgency.

K. Magliveras, “International Organisations and Denialism: The Case of the African Union” in H. Nelen, J.C.M. Willems & R. Moerland (eds.), Denialism and Human Rights, Intersentia, 2016, pages 267-284 See the edited volume at: http://intersentia.com/en/denialism-and-human-rights.html

En comparación con el viejo continente que había vivido las revoluciones políticas y las luchas religiosas -con sus efectos positivos y negativos- para cambiar el componente sociológico de la sociedad, y posibilitando así una nueva manera de establecer las relaciones diplomáticas y la noción de guerra, Estados Unidos, como país naciente formado por inmigrantes, en un corto espacio de tiempo ha podido imponer sus valores como la referencia de la democracia moderna y el motor que mueve las instituciones en base a sus intereses y el contexto de la geopolítica mundial. De ahí a lo largo de las distintas administraciones, sin importar el color del partido reinante, la Política Exterior siempre se había enfocado en la defensa de los intereses vitales del país. Por eso, aun planteando Obama un nuevo paradigma, lo cierto es que, las relaciones que establece el país con el resto del mundo fueron y seguirán basándose en la imposición de la “democracia”, y el país actuando como el gendarme mundial. Pero lo novedoso aquí es que, con Obama, África dejó de ser visto como un campo peligroso, sino reconociendo sus avances democráticos mediante la cooperación.

« Là où sévissent de graves manquements au respect des droits humains, l'Union africaine (UA) doit être la première à condamner et à réagir rapidement conformément à la lettre et à l'esprit de l'Acte constitutif de l'Union et tous les autres instruments pertinents » dont elle est signataire. † Cette déclaration de Jean Ping, alors Président de l'Union Africaine, est révélatrice de la nécessité pour l'organisation de s'affirmer en matière d'intervention humanitaire. Forte de l'encrage de la notion de Responsabilité de protéger dans ses différents actes et protocoles, contrairement à l'ONU, l'Union africaine semble techniquement prête à répondre des violations graves des droits de l'Homme perpétrées par ses Etats membres. Mais pour que cela se concrétise, l'UA devra veiller à ne pas confondre indépendance et autonomie, à l'heure où la coopération se révèle être un élément incontournable.

Agriculture provides the main support for Zambia’s rural economy, and because of this, growth in the agricultural sector is the clearest avenue through which poverty reduction can be achieved in Zambia. Yet despite widespread recognition of the strong connection between agricultural development and poverty reduction, there is continuing under-provision of public goods investments for over a decade. Zambia’s primary policy objective of achieving accelerated growth and competitiveness in the agricultural sector cannot be achieved unless adequate public resources are committed towards catalyzing the desired growth. Strong evidence from southern Africa as well as throughout the world indicates that long–term public investment in research and development, extension services, rural infrastructure, and food safety and quality systems have high pay-offs and are among the most important drivers of agricultural growth and competitiveness. Agricultural-led development has been identified by Af...

The end of the Cold War, the accelerating pace of globalization and the end of apartheid have combined to give momentum to the revival of regional and pan-African initiatives. The AU was created at the start of the new millennium, and equipped with a new Constitutive Act and institutions, giving fresh impetus to African integration and unity. this paper examines the root of the Pan-African project and the various attempts to revive the United States of Africa and push it to a practical stage. In this sense, it dives first into the origin of a continental policy of Africa integration. Then it explores the Pan-African agenda framed by the African Union since its inception. It finally assess the current level of the Pan-Africanist project in light of the ideal of African Renaissance.

The African Union (AU) has often used mediation as one of its key approaches in its efforts in conflict prevention. As a result, mediation has become a flagship initiative of the organisation, and is undertaken by various actors within the AU. In order to become more effective, the AU now needs to clarify its approaches, roles and responsibilities.

The African Union gate-keeping role as a regional organization is saddled with the responsibility to find effective solutions to problems inherent within the region. This manifest role as contained in the AU Constitutive Act and the phrase, "African Solutions to African Problems", explains the need for unity before execution. The customary solution adopted by the organization is often diplomacy and mediation. The response therefore to the Libyan crisis was not an exception. The AU response as contained in its Roadmap constituted a ceasefire, mediation, transition and a peaceful coexistence of the fractions within the country. The internal fractions included the Gadaffi government and the Transitional National Council (TNC) among other rebel groups. External actors included the different organisations such as the AU, United Nations (UN), North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Organisation Islamic Conference (OIC), and League of Arab States (LAS) but of interest to this paper is the AU. Using descriptive analysis of secondary data sourced from academic journals, institutional communiqué, media materials and documents relevant to this study, the paper critically examined AU's response to Libya Crisis. These include: political indecision on what approach to resolve the crisis, political and economic constraints, disagreement among AU member states, lack of political will, poor publicity for the defunct AU's Roadmap, the Gaddafi factor as well as the politics of interest. The research concludes that the void of unity and where there is disunity, the will to carry out a peaceful or any operation becomes an illusion. It recommends among others the need to drive security resolutions with resources and the political will in order to fulfill its role as a regional gatekeeper.

The aim of this article is to place the African Union’s (AU) membership admission approach within the context of the aspiration to deepen regional integration efforts in Africa. Put in more specific terms, to what extent should values such as democratic principles, good governance, rule of law, and free and fair elections impact on admission of members into institutional activities? Despite the fact that the AU Constitutive Act espouses these values in Articles 3 and 4, the AU has rather prioritised the lax requirements of geography, simple majority vote, and the ratification of its Act as conditions for membership. It is argued that these lax membership rules contradict the supranational aspiration of the organisation, and rather best suits an intergovernmental entity. In addressing this, the article recommends the need to include strict conditions for membership in the AU Constitutive Act, and the enhancement of the role of AU organs in regulating initiatives that promote democratic practises in member states.

Référence: GUELDICH (H.), "L'Accord portant création de la zone de libre échange continentale africaine", in BEN ACHOUR (R.) et GUELDICH (H.), Intégration et régionalisme en Afrique: où en est l'Union africaine aujourd'hui?, Journée d'étude du 1e novembre 2018, éditions 2019, SIMPACT, pp.112-125

Les mouvements migratoires africains, de plus en plus croissants, sont majoritairement intra-continentaux, et bien souvent régionaux. C’est pour cette raison que l’Union africaine, en coordination avec les organisations régionales, ont adopté une feuille de route ainsi qu’un grand nombre de politiques et de cadres juridiques et normatifs en la matière depuis le début des années 2000. Cependant le tout nouveau Cadre de politique mi-gratoire pour l’Afrique révisé et plan d’action 2018-2030 (MPFA) annonce un changement de paradigme impor-tant : le passage d’une sécuritisation de la question migratoire à une progressive désécuritisation de celle-ci.

The  Responsibility  to  Protect,  or  R2P,  today  finds  itself  invoked  widely  among  international policy makers as well as academics,1 and Africa is the region with which it has been most closely identified.  Edward  Luck,  special  adviser  to  the  United  Nations  (UN)  Secretary-General,  has declared that ‘the responsibility to protect really came from Africa and the African experience’,2 and  ‘emerged,  quite  literally,  from  the  soil  and  soul  of  Africa’.3  Three-quarters  of  the  ‘crises’ listed  on  the  website  of  the  International  Coalition  for  the  Responsibility  to  Protect  are  in Africa,4 analysts have located an incipient R2P in Article 4 of the African Union’s Constitutive Act,5 and R2P has been represented as fulfilling the promise of ‘never again’ coming out of the failure to intervene in the Rwandan genocide.

This  chapter  questions  this  conventional  wisdom  on  R2P  and  Africa.  It  locates  R2P’s  pre- cipitous rise not in a supposed organic relation to the continent, but in its inherent ambiguity, which makes it politically useful for a range of different projects by both African and Western political actors. Because of these many ways in which R2P has been used in practice, it is more useful  to  bypass  the  often  hyperbolic  claims  of  R2P’s  supporters  and  detractors  and  to  look instead  to  concrete  cases  in  which  R2P  has  been  invoked—specifically  Darfur,  Kenya  and Libya—and  tentatively  to  abstract  from  those.  Ultimately,  the  chapter  concludes  that  in  the context of Africa’s international relations with the West, there is, in fact, little that is new about R2P and, moreover, what is new is in fact more dangerous than beneficial.

Le Code panafricain d’investissements, adopté fin 2016 par un comité d’experts de l’Union africaine, constitue un modèle intéressant de ces nouveaux textes internationaux visant à concilier le droit des investissements étrangers, le développement durable et la responsabilité sociale des entreprises. L’instrument est original et son potentiel est important pour les progrès de la Responsabilité sociétale des entreprises ou des organisations (RSE/RSO) dans les pays d’Afrique subsaharienne, et particulièrement dans les pays francophones qui ont une tradition de droit codifié. La force juridique de ce Code est néanmoins à construire, et demande une action volontaire de toutes les parties prenantes.

This chapter examines the relationship between the United Nations and regional organizations and its implications
for the effectiveness, coherence, and impact of multidimensional peacekeeping. In particular, it considers the UN’s
increased cooperation with organizations such as the European Union, the African Union, and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization and explores the successes as well as the limitations of these partnerships. The first part of
the chapter provides a brief historical overview of the ambiguous relationship between ‘universalism’ and
‘regionalism’. The second part of the chapter explores the advances, successes and level of institutionalization
between the UN and selected regional organizations. Part three of the chapter examines the key challenges and
limitations in the relationship between the UN and regional organizations in the field of multidimensional
peacekeeping. While cooperation schemes have advanced considerably through institutionalization and pragmatic
coordination, structural rivalry, divergent strategic visions, as well as technical and administrative obstacles
nevertheless serve as a reminder of the inherent difficulties of peacekeeping partnerships.

This thesis assesses the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as it has played out in Nigeria. The APRM is an initiative by the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) to promote good governance through self-assessment and monitoring by African states. The APRM is particularly interesting as a continental (rather than single country) programme which puts the good governance agenda in the hands of African states themselves (rather than international financial institutions, for example). Focusing on the National Programme of Action (NPoA) of 2009 - 2012, the research finds that the APRM has had little or no impact on governance in Nigeria. Notwithstanding the NPoA's limited contributions to national development, the entire process has failed to recognise, engage and tackle the underlying socio-political dynamics of politics in the country, which have the most impact on governance structures and processes. The thesis accounts for this outcome by examining structure (through the role of actors) and underlying socio-political dynamics, both nationally and internationally. In terms of actors the research explores the role of individual leaders, NEPAD and APRM secretariats (national and continental), federal state representatives, regional and sub-regional organisations, international donors, and civil society in the APRM process. In terms of underlying factors, Richard Joseph's theory of prebendalism gives analytical power to understanding the APRM within Nigeria's political culture, while the neo-Gramscian perspective of cultural hegemony enables an analysis of the APRM within the broader international context. Both contribute to a holistic assessment of the APRM in Nigeria. Neither one of these two theoretical contributions is able to offer a comprehensive assessment if used unmodified or on their own. The APRM has the potential to open new political spaces for collaborative engagement between government and civil society in Nigeria, with the possibility of beneficial effects for governance and accountability. So far, however, this potential has not been realised. This must be judged as a significant shortcoming to date.

À partir de l’évolution de la configuration réticulaire des voies de communication terrestres transfrontalières, cette thèse propose une analyse historique du processus d’intégration régionale entre le Cameroun et les pays limitrophes d’Afrique Centrale entre 1920 et 2016. Il s’agit de répondre à la préoccupation de savoir comment est-ce que, du point de vue du Cameroun, la construction desdites voies a influencé son rapport à ses voisins durant la période indiquée. Les méthodes de recherche et d’analyse historique sont couplées à la pluridisciplinarité. La démarche diachronique articule les mutations en deux temps.
Le temps colonial va de 1920 à 1960. Il est marqué, durant l’entre-deux-guerres, par des investissements importants en infrastructures de transports terrestres de la part de l’administration coloniale française pour projeter l’économie du Cameroun vers les colonies d’Afrique Centrale et leur faire profiter de sa position stratégique. Un processus d’intégration de fait s’esquisse entre le Cameroun et l’AEF. Toutefois, dès les années 1930 l’administration coloniale pense avoir établi la quantité de liaisons interterritoriales nécessaire pour susciter des interactions économiques entre le Cameroun et l’AEF. De 1940 à 1960 l’on constate une baisse progressive de l’intensité des travaux. En effet, le contexte politique heurte les enjeux économiques malgré la planification après 1945. La symétrie entre constructions des routes transfrontalières et désir d’exploitation économique harmonisée des territoires du Cameroun et de l’AEF qui cède à la construction d’un espace politique fragmentée au voisinage de 1960.
C’est dans ce contexte que le Cameroun et ses voisins de l’ex-AEF (Gabon, Congo, République Centrafricaine et Tchad) accèdent à l’indépendance. Considérablement, l’intégration est à reconstruire entre ces territoires qui décident de former une union douanière en 1964. Le Cameroun et ses voisins de l’UDÉAC l’envisagent tout en campant sur l’héritage matériel et immatériel (politique) colonial. Il est en résulte une stagnation du réseau routier transfrontalier et une dynamique d’intégration atténuée durant les trente-cinq ans de l’union. L’avènement de la CÉMAC en 1994 s’accompagne d’une cascade de projets d’infrastructures. Le Cameroun apparaît comme le point de départ ou d’aboutissement de plusieurs d’entre eux dans le sillage des travaux qui s’en suivent. Il en découle une redynamisation du processus d’intégration régionale avec les pays de la sous-région. Cependant, il est désormais sous l’influence de la mondialisation et du capital néolibéral.

None of the borders shaping modern African countries have existed in the same guise prior to the Europeans' arrival. Especially starting from the nineteenth century, European powers increasingly deprived lands in Africa of their native social organization, in pursuance of vital space for the colonial machinery. The boundary lines created throughout Africa are indeed a genuine product of colonialism and were used to delimit artificial spaces of dominance. Within these areas, in fact, both subjugating powers and social representations acted to the detriment of the Africans.

South Africa’s voting behaviour on the UN Security Council should not be summed up as that of a rogue state supporting Council dissidents against the large nations and alliances.

South African voting behaviour on the Security Council during its first tenure has consistently displayed its adherence to a principled rules based system.  A system that does conform to the original mandate of organisational process.  In its role on the Security Council, South Africa adhered to an honour-based system and sought not to undermine the mandate of other organs of the UN.

In both tenures on the council 2007-2008 and 2011-2012, South African voting behaviour advocated the principals of multilateralism that aims to avoid unilateralist engagement – an action chosen by few to influence the many.

Since the revolution in modern telecommunications that followed the invention of the telegraph, telecommunication networks have provided channels for the fast delivery of communications across national borders. This transnational nature of telecommunication networks have led to the establishment of international regulatory regimes on the subject. On the other hand, developing countries consider regional economic integration as a major strategy for promoting trade and development, telecommunications have been seen within this context as a strategic tool for facilitating regional economic integration. This has also led to the establishment of regional telecommunication regulatory regimes that aim to promote regional integration and regulatory harmonization. This book discusses telecommunication regimes established by international and regional organizations such as the United Nations, the International Telecommunication Union, the World Trade Organization, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, and the Southern African Development Community, among a number of others. It will be relevant to policy makers, regulators, lawyers, law students, investors and telecommunication operators, as well as any person interested in international and African regional telecommunication regimes.

and Keywords The African Union (AU), an international organization comprising all 54 independent states in Africa and Western Sahara, was established in May 2001 to, among other things, promote regional integration, interstate solidarity, peace, good governance and to enhance the African voice in the global system. This article examines successes and failures of the AU. The central argument is that the pan-African organization is like the proverbial forest that has bad trees dotted around its many good trees. The AU has been very successful in addressing the needs of the African political class but it is yet to make a significant difference in the lives of many ordinary Africans. The importance of the pan-African organization to African political elite is such that they would have created it today if it did not already exist. The AU has socialized African leaders to accept liberal values as the foundation of international cooperation in Africa; enhanced the agency of African political class on the world stage; and established progressive and innovative rules and norms for the African continent. It has also created many useful decision-making structures that have contributed to the prevention, management, and resolution of conflicts in Africa. The AU has, however, been less successful in connecting its activities and programs to many ordinary Africans; providing common public goods and services valued by commoners in Africa; giving voice to the majority of young people in Africa; promoting intra-Africa trade, good governance, and financial independence of the African continent as well as struggled to address the expressed material needs and quotidian concerns of ordinary Africans.

Embracing  ACIRC  during the Golden Jubilee of the OAU/AU  anchored on the theme "Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance" sounds as a  historical endeavour for AU  to give a new impetus and own its peace efforts across the continent. However, this initiative was  also widely  sniped  within APSA stakeholders especially the RECs and many member states.

How do concepts emerge and change? This chapter investigates the concept of the 'blue economy'. The concept was originally proposed as an alternative to the 'green economy' and as a way of thinking innovation and sustainability. Over the years it has evolved into a concept that is primarily about the economic potential of the sea. The developing blue economy agenda aims at providing new direction for ocean governance, maritime trade, ocean resource exploration and ocean health. Increasingly it is also linked to concerns over maritime security. The chapter investigates the twist and turns that the concept of blue economy has been taking. It draws on a practice theoretical framework that argues that we should appreciate the way in which concepts are responses to concrete problematic situations. A range of such problematic situations are investigated. The chapter offers both, a rich empirical case from one of the least studied areas of global governance, as well as a new way of thinking about conceptual change in practice. Concepts are one of the basic linguistic material of international politics. Yet, the study of concepts is often reduced to a concern of historians of international thought. This misunderstanding is gradually corrected, 1 the awareness is growing that concepts are also a productive entry point for understanding contemporary international politics and how it changes. This new recognition is linked to the re-evaluation of linguistic structures as part of the introduction of discourse-theoretical and post-structuralist thoughts to the discipline of international relations (IR). These textualist perspectives have well advanced our understanding of why and how language matters in international politics. They, however, tend to focus on larger systems of meaning and do not scrutinize single concepts, their evolution, and career. In this chapter, I argue for basing the study of concepts on a practice theoretical perspective. 2 I draw on a contemporary and recently emerged concept: the Blue Economy. The concept of Blue Economy emerged over the last decade as a new way of thinking about and governing the oceans. I use the case of this concept to develop three interrelated claims for practice-based concept analysis: Firstly, following the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Dewey I suggest that the meaning of a concept lies in its use. Concepts have no inherent meaning outside of their use. For Wittgenstein concepts are part of what he called " language games ". For Dewey, making a similar argument decades earlier, concepts had to be seen as part of " conjunct activities " of a community of functional language use. Rather than " language games " or " conjunct activities " I suggest the more established term of " practice " , to refer to the sets of activities within which concepts are used. In consequence, the study of concepts implies to study the practices of which concepts are part, the collectives that carry and enact the practice and the situations they are part (practical configurations).

This article argues for a shift in researching African interventions: from a top-down study of African regional norms and institutions towards a view ‘from below’ on the actual practices of intervention and how they play out on the ground. Such a view is important in order to understand the contested politics of African interventions as well as disconnects between grand regional architectures and their imprints on the ground. In doing so, this article also seeks to link research on African interventions to the academic debate on peacebuilding and peacemaking interventions more generally. While this literature has increasingly taken the ‘local’ into account, such a localisation in terms of researching African interventions has yet to take place. This article suggests three dimensions in which a view ‘from below’ could be translated into the research agenda on African interventions.

Ethiopia, having all the assets [natural and human resources] the rest of Africa have, in addition to being a pioneer in cementing African unity and, forming and hosting the OAU (now AU), and it influence in shaping the African political discourse [more specifically in the horn of Africa (HOA)] – the global powers from West to East have always competed to win Ethiopia as their sole trophy in the geopolitically significant Horn of Africa.

With the exception of the Derg regime that was forced to stick with the communist bloc betrayed by the west that sided with Somalia’s ZaedBarre& the separatist insurgents in the north, and the TPLF- led – EPRDF regime that made itself of full service to the western powers who brought them to power while playing with the Chinese along the side, Ethiopia has always taken a neutral stance in global political affairs – thereby expanding its diplomatic reach on all fronts from Africa to Europe, from Middle East to the Caribbean, and from the US to Russia, China, Japan, Korea and other Asian powerhouses.

Under Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia has further strengthened its diplomatic ties with the Middle East who relied on Africa for food and water security – and port and military domination over the Red Sea and Bab-el-Mandeb, while influencing the global political dynamics using their oil resource as leverage. Similarly, Ethiopia has strengthened its diplomatic ties with China and Russia – whose growing economic and military influence in HOA countries [ET, ERI, SOM, DJI and SUD] and the rest of Africa is of immense threat to western [most particularly, US] interest in the region.

As a result, Ethiopia is under the surge of diplomatic pressures on account of several strategic issues arising from the GERD, global geopolitical rivalry between western powers, China & Russia; as well as some Middle East/Arab states. Sudan's irredentist border claims as potential trigger of high risk border conflict in the horizon, the intense global political pressure on Ethiopia is being shooted from all sides-be it the US, UK, European Union and the Arab League. It is to be noted that all these problems are coupled with one another. Decoupling these problems might help the Ethiopian government and the diplomatic community.

المقصود بالأزمة الليبية في هذه الورقة هو الاضطرابات وأعمال العنف التي تشهدها ليبيا وبخاصة بعد صراع الشرعيات بين المجلس الوطني الليبي المنتهية مدته والبرلمان الليبي الذي انتخب دون توافقات ما بين الداعين لانتخابه وأنصار المجلس الوطني الليبي منذ يونيو 2014، وهو الأمر الذي تحول لصراع مسلح بين العديد من الأطراف المنطوية تحت مسميين كبيرين هما عملية الكرامة بقيادة اللواء متقاعد خليفة حفتر، وأنصار عملية فجر ليبيا من كتائب الثوار وأنصار المجلس الوطني الليبي، وهنا تقوم الورقة بتحليل موقف الاتحاد الأفريقي من هذه الأزمة ومدى قدرته على الدفع باتجاه حل لها أم الدفع بها إلى مزيد من التعقيد؟

La responsabilité de protéger est devenue ces dernières années un enjeu central dans les relations internationales pour faire face aux crises politiques et aux conflits civils. Elle se fonde sur une interprétation de la souveraineté comme responsabilité de protection de l'Etat envers les populations résidant sur son territoire. A partir des exemples du Darfour et de la Libye, cette recherche tente de comprendre l'ensemble des implications que cette interprétation occasionne dans les relations régionales (Union africaine et Ligue des Etats arabes) et dans les relations de domination au sein des sociétés concernées. L'approche défendue permettra d'interroger l'universalité du concept tout en questionnant ce qui constitue la souveraineté des Etats postcoloniaux au XXIème siècle.

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The Responsibility to Protect became nowadays at stake in the international relations in order to resolve political crises and civil wars. It is founded on the interpretation of sovereignty as "responsibility of protection" for civilians who dwells the territory of the State. From the examples of Darfur and Libya, we are looking for explanations about every implications that this interpretation produces on regional relations (African Union and League of Arab States) and on the domination in those societies. By this approach, we will be able to investigate the universality of the concept and what sovereignty really means for postcolonial States in the 21st century.