The African Union, the United Nations and Civilian Protection Challenges in Darfur

This paper1 examines the nature of the relationship between the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN) in the field of protection of civilians in armed conflicts. The topic is significant because the development that has seen the UN and regional organisations take on and try to implement protection responsibilities means that the civilian protection regime is evolving in terms of its political purposes, main formal institutions and coordination mechanisms, as well as legal frameworks. The AU and the UN have come to operationalise the still contested notion of protection of civilians in armed conflicts through adding this as a dimension of peace operations. Yet, performing such a role is among the most contested and inherently difficult for the UN itself as well as for non-UN actors. In part, states are divided over this emerging norm because it raises difficult questions of sovereignty. It challenges the prevailing interpretations in international society of core norms such as non-intervention and domestic jurisdiction. Additionally, peace operations with civilian protection mandates tend to be short-term, have often entailed high levels of use of force and have had quite ambiguous humanitarian consequences, in combination with unclear lines of accountability between non-UN actors and the UN Security Council (UNSC). The paper proposes that we can best understand the AU-UN collaboration for civilian protection from a perspective that takes seriously the value of legitimacy for state actors. The benefits of such an approach are illustrated by reference to the AU’s lead role in the Darfur conflict and its African Mission in Sudan (AMIS). It concludes that since the AUUN relationship for civilian protection currently seems to be ‘the only game in town’, and since this state of affairs is becoming more institutionalised and legitimated, it is necessary that scholars critically comment on the political effects of this in terms of the quality of the actual protection provided. Fundamentally, the paper draws on a particular understanding of international legitimacy to increase our understanding of how the UNSC has executed its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in relation to Africa.
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