The United Nations And Conflict Management In Africa: Examining Its Achievements And Failures

ABSTRACT

This thesis is an important analysis of the role United Nations plays in conflict management in Africa, it examines UN achievements and failures; the case study is Sudanese first civil war. The study investigates the role of the United Nations in the peace initiatives of the conflict in Sudan that caused millions of peoples life from decades of deadly civil revolt from 1955-1972. The Sudan conflict is one of the worse tragedies that has ever befallen mankind, the conflict brought great disrupt to the system of government of the country placed their  natural and human resources at the brim of extinction alongside the ethnic, religion as well as finance all of which had enormous consequence on the neighbors of the country; although the conflict escalated real quick the UN  was slow in coming to their aid which is why the conflict went on for long while with lots of lives lost, homes and properties destroyed; a lot more fleeing the country and seeking refuge in another country. Domestically, the conflict came about due to the inequality and uneven distribution of the income gotten from their natural resources between the northern and the southern Sudanese and the religious differences; whereby the northerners are Muslims and want the implementation of the sharia law while the southerners are Christians and so wouldn’t give up their culture and religion. This created hatred between the two conflicting sides, blossoming into a full out war.

Furthermore, the fact that the Muslims and the southerners are mostly occupying the government seats were excluded from decision-making and treated as inferior. The southerners began to seek for justice in distribution and allocation of seat and funds after they got their independent in 1956 but the northern leaders were not ready to let go or share the leadership of the country with the south so the conflict began to build up and people began to choose sides, but the conflict came to full fledge when the newly elected government decided to implement the sharia law; the southern Christians rose in revolt while the north fought back. For this reason, both sides began killing each other, abusing and destroying properties worth millions so much that the international humanitarian community became disturbed and fearful that the fight might spill out to the neighboring countries in terms of refugees and become an international dispute, if it’s not settled. Therefore, this thesis aims at finding out the UN role in managing conflict in Sudan. The research will also be exploring the question of why the UN does not bother to find out the root cause of conflicts before resolving it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER PAGE

TITLE PAGE

APPROVAL PAGE

DEDICATION

ACKNOWELDGEMENT

ABSTRACT
LIST OF ABREVIATIONS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT
• PROBLEM STATEMENT
• AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
• RESEARCH QUESTIONS
• SCOPE OF THE STUDY
• SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

CHAPTER TWO – LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1     REVIEW OF THE STUDY

2.2       THE CONCEPT OF CONFLICT

2.3       CONFLICT RESOLUTION

2.4      REVIEW OF FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS

2.4.1    Reconsidering African conflicts

2.5      ROOT OF CONFLICTS IN AFRICA
2.6      CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
2.7       BODIES FOR PEACE AND SECURITY

CHAPTER THREE

3.0          METHODOLOGY

3.1         INTRODUCTION

3.2         HISTORY OF SUDAN

3.2.1    Religions and Ethnicity

3. 2.2 National Resources

3.2.3 Approaching Independence

3.3       THE SUDANESE CRISIS (1955-1972)

3.4     EVOLUTION AND FORMATION PURPOSE OF UNITED NATIONS

3.5    THE UNITED NATIONS POST COLD WAR REFORM

3.6     AVOIDING CONFLICT

3.7     CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER FOUR

4.0       THE UNITED NATIONS INTERVENTION

4.1       The UN’s tasks in Sudan

4.2       Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

4.3       UN Emergency Mine Action Program in Sudan (UNMAS)

4.4       World Health Organization (WHO)

4.5       World Food Program (WFP)

4.6       World Food Program (WFP)

4.7       United Nations Mission in Sudan proposed

4.8       THE CONCLUSION OF UNITED NATIONS MISSION IN SUDAN (UNAMIS)

4.9       UN FAILURES

CHAPTER FIVE

• CONCLUSIONS
• RECOMMENDATION

LIST OF ABREVIATIONS

CW                              Cold War

CPA                            Comprehensive Peace Agreement

FAO                            Food and Agriculture Organization

IGAD                          Inter Governmental Authority on   Development

SAF                             Sudanese Armed Forces

SANU                         South African National Union

SC                               Security Council (UN)

SG                               Secretary General (UN)

SHEC                          Southern High Executive Council

SPLM/A                      Sudanese People Liberation Movement

SRSG                          Special Representative of the Secretary General

UN                              United Nations

UNDP                         United Nations Development Program

UNHCR                      United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF                     United Nations Children’s Fund

UNMIS                       United Nations Mission in Sudan

UNMISS                     United Nations mission in south Sudan

US                               United States

USSR                          Union of Soviet Social Republic

WB                              World Bank

WFP                            World Food Program

WHO                          World Health Organization

CHAPTER ONE

1.0                                                            INTRODUCTION

1.1                                                BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Conflict is an inevitable part of life and it has recurrent decimal in every political system. As a social problem, it is as old as man and cuts across continents, regions and nations. Conflict arises in societies as a result of rival opinions, divergent wants, competing needs and opposing interests (Aderanti, 2015). Conflict can be classified into intra-personal, interpersonal, intra-group and inter-group conflicts. In this paper, we are concerned with intra and inter-group conflicts in Africa. Ethnic/religions conflicts, border conflicts, civil strife, civil wars and genocides are rampant in Africa. Specific instances of conflicts in Africa include ethnic/religious conflicts which developed into civil wars in Zaire, Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia, Uganda and Lesotho to mention but a few; turmoil in Angola; state /rebels conflicts in Serra Leone, Cote D’ Ivoire and Guinea Bissau; border conflict (Ethiopia and Eritrea, Nigeria and Cameroon) and genocide in Somali. International Colloquium Report (2012) also observed that since the collapse of the Soviet Bloc that marked the end of the Cold War by 1989/1990, civil conflicts increased in Africa. It took the form of genocide in Rwanda in 1994 resulting in about 800,000 deaths. In fact, fourteen of the sixteen wars fought in Africa from 1990 to 1997 were intrastate wars, and in 1992, the African continent hosted 46.7 percent of all civil wars in the world (Collier et al., 2014). The rising trend of intra/ interstate (s) conflicts in Africa are partly explained by internal political, economic and ideological contradictions. Hence, eight out of the fifteen complex emergencies declared by the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs in late 20th and 21st centuries was in Africa (Umozurike, 2015). Meanwhile, the United Nations (UN) sometimes ignored its responsibilities to keep the peace in Africa, and the African Union or its predecessor Organization of African Unity (OAU) lacks the capacity and the resources for successful peacekeeping interventions. The tasks of managing or resolving conflicts in Africa have been profoundly difficult. Some of the theoretical bases of conflict resolution are justice, peace, security and stability of the political system (Akpuru-Aja, 2011). United Nation (UN) have tried with varying degree of success (sometimes significant and most time non-significant) in resolution of conflicts in Africa.

The United Nations was created in 1945, following the devastation of the Second World War, with one central mission: the maintenance of international peace and security. The UN accomplishes this by working to prevent conflict, helping parties in conflict make peace, deploying peacekeepers, and creating the conditions to allow peace to hold and flourish. These activities often overlap and should reinforce one another, to be effective.

The UN Security Council has the primary responsibility for international peace and security. The General Assembly and the Secretary-General play major, important, and complementary roles, along with other UN offices and bodies.

The conflict resolution community seems to pursue conflict resolution efforts in Africa from a variety of purposes and interests and with policies that are often replete with ambiguities and contradictions. This situation may be the reason why many African conflicts may be silenced but remain largely unresolved. According to Abaagye (2015), African conflicts involve the activities of seasoned peacemakers using the best of personal skills and recently developed knowledge about ways of managing and resolving conflicts, international efforts at conflict management have not been particularly effective or efficient in overcoming the disasters that have brought them to the continent. The critical question then is how we understand the problem of conflict resolution in Africa when the actors, mainly external to Africa, propagate the idea of peace and conflict resolution corresponding mainly to their own interests and view of Africa and the world.

Although some scholars on conflict in Africa (Akuffo, 2010) agree that conflict in Africa stems primarily from crises of national governance and from the failure of governmental institutions in African countries to mediate conflict, this work covers the study of root of many conflicts in Africa. Furthermore, the study also examines the achievements and failures of United Nations in conflict management in Africa.

1.2                                                      PROBLEM STATEMENT

The magnitude of war in Africa is evident in the fact that, in the last decade, the attempt to deal with armed conflicts on the continent has made up about two-thirds of the United Nations Security Council’s activities and has involved nearly three quarters of its active peacekeepers (Hanson,, 2019). International and regional organisations have often taken the lead in attempting to resolve these conflicts. ‘Conflict’ in Africa, since the end of the Cold War up to the present, has overwhelmingly been intrastate (Bundu, 2019), coming in the form of the ‘new wars’ according to (Burton, 2020).  This distinction is important inasmuch as the nature of the conflicts determine specific difficulties in their resolution, with intrastate conflicts proving more difficult to resolve than war between states (Bundu, 2019). This paper will study the impact that the United Nations (UN) had on the conditions of conflict resolution.

1.3                                          AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The main aim of this study is impact of United Nations on conflict management in Africa: examining its achievements and failures (using sudan as a case study). The objectives of the study are:

1. To identify factors that promotes conflict resolution in Africa.
2. To find out the UN role in managing conflict in Sudan.

• To explore the question of why the UN does not bother to find out the root cause of conflicts before resolving it.

1. To argue that the United Nations mission is usually successful but not permanent   and the reason is because the method they used in resolving the conflict does not touch, the root of the problem and so given chance for a reoccurrence of the same previously tackled conflict over and over, which is why in the case of Sudan, the rise of the second civil war which also saw a second UN mission   followed by the secession of south Sudan came also resulting in a temporary peace agreements.
2. To highlight the reform strategies of the united nations and shows an analysis that these reform exercises are still not enough to prevent future conflicts from reoccurring, regardless of the temporary peace achievements tackling issues that is most crucial and at the right time with every available method with enough personnel and intervening at the earliest sign of potential dispute is what needs to be done in order to put out the fire while no life is lost yet.

1.4                                                      RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Some of the questions the paper will provide answers to are:

1. What are the factors that promote conflict resolution in Africa
2. What the role UN role in managing conflict in Sudan?

• why the UN does not bother to find out the root cause of conflicts before resolving it?

1. What the reform strategies of the united nations?

1.5                                                       SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This paper covers examining the roles, limitations and prospects of UN in conflict resolution in Africa. It was conducted using documentary analysis. This work finds out the UN role in managing conflict in Sudan. The research will also be exploring the question of why the UN does not bother to find out the root cause of conflicts before resolving it.

This thesis argues that the United Nations mission is usually successful but not permanent   and the reason is because the method they used in resolving the conflict does not touch, the root of the problem and so given chance for a reoccurrence of the same previously tackled conflict over and over, which is why in the case of Sudan, the rise of the second civil war which also saw a second UN mission   followed by the secession of south Sudan came also resulting in a temporary peace agreements. This paper highlights the reform strategies of the united nations and shows an analysis that these reform exercises are still not enough to prevent future conflicts from reoccurring, regardless of the temporary peace achievements tackling issues that is most crucial and at the right time with every available method with enough personnel and intervening at the earliest sign of potential dispute is what needs to be done in order to put out the fire while no life is lost yet.. The paper concludes that UN has played very important role in conflict resolution in the region.

1.6                                                 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study will provide the student with a basic understanding of the field of conflict resolution and its application, both theoretically and practically, to peacekeeping intervention in contemporary international conflicts. The course explores the emergence and development of the academic discipline of conflict resolution and its relation to the evolution of peacekeeping. The nature of conflict and the dynamics of contemporary conflict are defined, along with the key concepts and techniques for resolving conflict. The study will also explores the significant areas that will improve responses to today’s complex emergencies, including conflict analysis and mapping, early warning and conflict prevention, contingency and complementarity approaches, interagency coordination, post-conflict peace building and reconciliation, cultural understanding, and gender awareness.

CHAPTER FIVE

5.1                                                            CONCLUSION

Sudan has experienced civil unrest for so long that it has become a pattern within the country’s political society. I believe that this paper has provided the reader with the background knowledge to understanding the issues of the Sudan civil war and how it came to existence. The analysis shows my fair opinion about the UN operation in Sudan regarding its success or failure based on the UN intervention or role mentioned, particularly in peace and security and technical benchmarks in which expectations were aligned to address and achieve lasting peace and humanitarian relief.

In my opinion, there is a clear difference between peacekeeping and peace building, you cannot keep peace without building it, in that when those technical benchmarks are put in place, the keeping of such peace comes in and strengthen it. In a required effort to solidify the gains of any mission under the UN flag, the support to local government peace initiative should allow them to function properly without external assistance, which means, those government, after receiving the necessary support should muster the courage and strength to stand on their own in terms of security, rule of law and economic prospects.

My analysis critically evaluates the situation that brought about the crisis in Sudan and I applaud the Sudanese and the UN for coming to terms on the agreement of ending the UNMIS mission after the completion of UNMIS mandate. This clearly speaks to the fact that something positive has happened, whether it is permanent or not, it shows that the Sudanese have agreed to take their own peace and security and other important issues under their own control, which to a larger extent was the sole purpose of UN intervention, but did the conclusion of UNMIS lead to permanent peace?

At the conclusion of the UN mission in Sudan analysts expressed thoughts that the UN achieved its mandate and that the mission was a success given that it led to the secession of southern Sudan from the republic of the Sudan.

These questions left me wondering as I strolled through the analysis of the UN role that horridly wrapped up its mission in the Sudan during the six (6) years of the mission, the UN made considerable progress in the implementation of the CPA and strengthened relationship between the two parties the agreement, the UN successfully achieved a peaceful holding of  elections and the exercise of rights of self-determination for southern Sudan that led to the creation of the world newest nation  (the republic of southern Sudan)

The UN mission in the Sudan accomplished lots of tasks but not permanently, obviously the UN lack of competence in the case of Sudan is drawn from ignoring the persistent confrontation in the red zones or flashpoint areas in Sudan and conducting secession process of southern Sudan climaxing the UN mission tasked with the responsibility of reaping lasting and durable peace in the Sudan. Establishing new mission in southern Sudan clearly shows that the previously concluded mission was not completely resolved  and that the conflict had restarted again. I believe that as a peace body, the UN should have tried to squash out the fire before separating the two sides because the tension between the two side was bound to instigate into another round of conflict, which it did .allowing the secession of southern Sudan before attempting to settle scores in those flashpoint areas  was a bad move on the side of the united nation, because no matter how good and successful you are at keeping peace, without rooting out  and dissolving the root cause of the problem, the probability of reoccurrence is very high and that is what my paper  have tried to show case here, that the united nation may have put in a lot of effort into keeping peace in Sudan but because the most crucial step was neglected ,it brought about disrupt and a second civil war.

With the new mission established in southern Sudan ,the strategy is now underlining the gains made by the UN in the Sudan  and as the result of this very issue that cannot be excused from the bigger picture  of the Sudan saga, the reformed  image of  the united nation may have been tainted. With the secession of south Sudan, a part that constituted huge portion of the initial UN Sudan mission, success cannot be claimed because the threats posed by the uprising conflicts in these new areas have the potential to destroy the entire UN image and the previously achieved peace.

5.2 RECOMMENDATION

I believe that the success achieved by the UN in the Sudan settlement would be permanent if the UN had focused on resolving the tension before the succession of south Sudan, they wouldn’t have had to embark on a second mission in south Sudan. Because the agreement that ended the first civil war in 1972 did not get rid of the tension that had originally caused it at first leading to another start-up of north south second civil war which lasted from 1983 to 2005.although the second war is over now, the tension is still in air between these two country.

The crucial point to get across is not to dwell on arguing about the possibility of war, but to make the united nations and the Sudanese people realize that if the tension between the two country is not resolved starting from the root cause, the probability of them slipping back into war no matter the form of agreement that is reached, will continue to be high.