Abstract
The refurbishment of the Organisation of African Unity in the early 2000s gave birth to the Peace and Security Council in 2003. It replaces the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution established in 1993. The PSC is a new heroic interventionist body that manages and prevents conflicts from escalating and to foster peace and security in Africa. The existence of the PSC in the scene of the African affair conveys much expectations and hopes in conflict management activities concerning intra-state conflicts. This necessitates the combination of political and military instruments to safeguard people’s lives and to restore stability, order, and provide an environment favourable for talks and engagements between disputants for the peaceful resolution of disagreements. This thesis analyses the involvement of the Peace and Security Council’s political and military instruments concerning conflict management in the selected conflicts in Africa, namely the Central African Republic (2013), Côte d'Ivoire (2010-2011) and Libya (2011). Through these case studies, the thesis makes a technical diagnostic of the Peace and Security Council’s conflict management undertakings after 15 years of existence. The conflict management prevents and monitors a tense situation and defuses a crisis or a conflict from breaking out into unprecedented violence.
The thesis seeks to respond to whether the Peace and Security Council’s conflict management apparatus is effective or not. The thesis acknowledges the Peace and Security Council’s involvement in managing conflicts and halting conflict from veering into armed and civil strife in some cases. Nevertheless, it also points out the Peace and Security Council’s lethargic responses to conflicts and finds that the emerging contemporary response mechanism to the conflict does not have the authority, the enforcement capacity and the powers to take decisions that activate the timely diplomatic talks and military interventions. The thesis recommends that the Peace and Security Council must be capacitated, self-funded and immune from political interferences to fulfil its conflict management obligations.
Keywords: African Union, Peace and Security Council, conflict management, peacekeeping and Regional Economic Communities.