Eric Nicholls: Waging Peace In Africa
[Eric Nicholls is a researcher at the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia.]
News from Sub-Saharan Africa these days is mostly bad. Stories of extreme poverty, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS and political instability fill the media and the region’s prognosis seems bleak.
But not all the news is bad. For one thing, Africa is no longer the world’s most violent region—indeed it is more peaceful today than at any other point since sub-Saharan nations gained their independence 40 years ago. Increased peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities deserve much of the credit. The good news is revealed in a recent report from the University of British Columbia's Human Security Centre, the Human Security Brief 2006, which shows some startling declines in the number and intensity of wars throughout the continent.
The worldwide armed conflict total began to fall after peaking in the early 1990’s. Yet, as other regions began to improve, political violence in much of Africa increased. At least 22 Sub-Saharan countries—around half the total—suffered war during the 1990’s, and others fought in neighbouring states.
The violence peaked in 1999, with 16 wars in the region. Then came a major decline. By 2005 there were only five (in Burundi, Chad, Uganda and two in Ethiopia), a decline of close to 70 percent. Notably, these are all civil wars—there hasn’t been a war between African states since 2000. (The report considers Sudan to be in the Middle East and North Africa region, and not in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, including Sudan would do little to alter the trends described.)
Over the past six years, peace agreements have been signed in Angola (2002), the Democratic Republic of Congo (2002), Eritrea-Ethiopia (2000), Ivory Coast (2005), Liberia (2003), Senegal (2004), Sierra Leone (2000) and Southern Sudan (2005). Several more conflicts have ended in military victory or simply petered out. And other countries are moving towards peace: Burundi’s last active rebel group signed a ceasefire in September, negotiations between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government may end a brutal 19-year old war and recent events in Somalia could bring some much-needed stability.
But it’s not just the number of wars that is down. The number of countries beset by wars in Sub-Saharan Africa also declined from 13 to 4 between 1999 and 2005, allowing more governments to focus on development.
Perhaps most importantly, the severity of conflicts is way down in Sub-Saharan Africa (and globally). Although combat deaths are notoriously tricky to measure accurately, the number of combatants and civilians killed directly by the fighting (‘battle-deaths’) dropped over 95 percent, from close to 100,000 in 1999 to around 2,000 in 2005. In 1999, the average conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa had over 6,000 battle-deaths per year. In 2005, the figure was less than 400.
Data on conflicts that don’t involve governments—for instance, intracommunal warfare and fighting between rebel groups—tell a similar story. In Sub-Saharan Africa such conflicts declined in number from 24 to 14 between 2002 and 2005. Over the same period, the number of countries experiencing such conflicts declined from seven to five, and the number of battle-deaths from 4,500 to 900.
Terrorist incidents and deaths also seem to be down somewhat. Likewise, the number of campaigns of violence against civilians seems to be on average lower now than in the 1990’s (there were six campaigns in 2005). And the number of refugees is down dramatically, from around 6.8 million in 1994 to about 2.6 million at the end of 2005, though the trend for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP’s)––i.e. those who have not crossed an international border—is less clear.
What can explain these dramatic improvements? The end of the Cold War clearly played a role. But the key factor seems to have been the extraordinary increase in international efforts to stop and prevent wars. The United Nations has taken the lead here, but regional organizations, NGO’s and individual countries have all made important contributions. Perhaps most importantly, African organizations and states have increasingly been assuming the burdens of peacekeeping, mediation and enforcement of democratic norms.
Until 1989 there had only ever been one U.N. peacekeeping mission in Sub-Saharan Africa. By 1994 there were seven missions in the region, and in 2005, eight out of 17 U.N. operations worldwide were Africa–based. A growing number of U.N. offices—in Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, the Central African Republic and elsewhere—support conflict prevention, the consolidation of peace and post-conflict reconstruction.
The U.N. has not acted alone. Troops from the European Union are helping to keep the peace in the DRC. France has peacekeepers in the Ivory Coast. African countries and organizations have also undertaken their own peace operations, in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Darfur and West Africa. There is talk of African peacekeepers supporting the transitional government in Somalia....
Read entire article at TomPaine.com
News from Sub-Saharan Africa these days is mostly bad. Stories of extreme poverty, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS and political instability fill the media and the region’s prognosis seems bleak.
But not all the news is bad. For one thing, Africa is no longer the world’s most violent region—indeed it is more peaceful today than at any other point since sub-Saharan nations gained their independence 40 years ago. Increased peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities deserve much of the credit. The good news is revealed in a recent report from the University of British Columbia's Human Security Centre, the Human Security Brief 2006, which shows some startling declines in the number and intensity of wars throughout the continent.
The worldwide armed conflict total began to fall after peaking in the early 1990’s. Yet, as other regions began to improve, political violence in much of Africa increased. At least 22 Sub-Saharan countries—around half the total—suffered war during the 1990’s, and others fought in neighbouring states.
The violence peaked in 1999, with 16 wars in the region. Then came a major decline. By 2005 there were only five (in Burundi, Chad, Uganda and two in Ethiopia), a decline of close to 70 percent. Notably, these are all civil wars—there hasn’t been a war between African states since 2000. (The report considers Sudan to be in the Middle East and North Africa region, and not in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, including Sudan would do little to alter the trends described.)
Over the past six years, peace agreements have been signed in Angola (2002), the Democratic Republic of Congo (2002), Eritrea-Ethiopia (2000), Ivory Coast (2005), Liberia (2003), Senegal (2004), Sierra Leone (2000) and Southern Sudan (2005). Several more conflicts have ended in military victory or simply petered out. And other countries are moving towards peace: Burundi’s last active rebel group signed a ceasefire in September, negotiations between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government may end a brutal 19-year old war and recent events in Somalia could bring some much-needed stability.
But it’s not just the number of wars that is down. The number of countries beset by wars in Sub-Saharan Africa also declined from 13 to 4 between 1999 and 2005, allowing more governments to focus on development.
Perhaps most importantly, the severity of conflicts is way down in Sub-Saharan Africa (and globally). Although combat deaths are notoriously tricky to measure accurately, the number of combatants and civilians killed directly by the fighting (‘battle-deaths’) dropped over 95 percent, from close to 100,000 in 1999 to around 2,000 in 2005. In 1999, the average conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa had over 6,000 battle-deaths per year. In 2005, the figure was less than 400.
Data on conflicts that don’t involve governments—for instance, intracommunal warfare and fighting between rebel groups—tell a similar story. In Sub-Saharan Africa such conflicts declined in number from 24 to 14 between 2002 and 2005. Over the same period, the number of countries experiencing such conflicts declined from seven to five, and the number of battle-deaths from 4,500 to 900.
Terrorist incidents and deaths also seem to be down somewhat. Likewise, the number of campaigns of violence against civilians seems to be on average lower now than in the 1990’s (there were six campaigns in 2005). And the number of refugees is down dramatically, from around 6.8 million in 1994 to about 2.6 million at the end of 2005, though the trend for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP’s)––i.e. those who have not crossed an international border—is less clear.
What can explain these dramatic improvements? The end of the Cold War clearly played a role. But the key factor seems to have been the extraordinary increase in international efforts to stop and prevent wars. The United Nations has taken the lead here, but regional organizations, NGO’s and individual countries have all made important contributions. Perhaps most importantly, African organizations and states have increasingly been assuming the burdens of peacekeeping, mediation and enforcement of democratic norms.
Until 1989 there had only ever been one U.N. peacekeeping mission in Sub-Saharan Africa. By 1994 there were seven missions in the region, and in 2005, eight out of 17 U.N. operations worldwide were Africa–based. A growing number of U.N. offices—in Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, the Central African Republic and elsewhere—support conflict prevention, the consolidation of peace and post-conflict reconstruction.
The U.N. has not acted alone. Troops from the European Union are helping to keep the peace in the DRC. France has peacekeepers in the Ivory Coast. African countries and organizations have also undertaken their own peace operations, in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Darfur and West Africa. There is talk of African peacekeepers supporting the transitional government in Somalia....