Seminar Summary Report of ISS Public Seminar Series “Enhancing the African Union Sanctions Regime”

This report summarizes a seminar held on October 28, 2009, in Addis Ababa, which discussed the development and enhancement of the African Union (AU) sanctions regime. The seminar focused on leveraging United Nations (UN) experience to build a robust AU framework, including the role of the AU's Sanctions Committee and the necessity of combining sanctions with diplomacy and monitoring mechanisms.

• For sanctions to be effective, two conditions must be met: a technical condition involving the "design and the infrastructure of the management of implementation" and a political condition regarding the "will to act quickly, evenhandedly and consistently."
• The UN Security Council's history with sanctions provides both a technical model for the AU to follow and a political model of "what should be avoided". The UN's approach evolved from comprehensive economic sanctions and arms embargoes in the early 1990s to targeted sanctions against individuals and groups, though these targeted measures have faced criticism for including "innocent or deceased individuals".
• A proposed operational model for an effective AU sanctions regime consists of three distinct bodies: a sanctions committee to "administer, monitor and implement sanctions", a sanctions secretariat for administrative support, and a sanctions monitoring group to "monitor and gather practical information".
• The AU sanctions regime faces several structural and political challenges, including "limited inter-African dependency", "weak AU leverage", "inadequate resources", "laxity of borders", and "endemic and systematic corruption".

APA

Institute for Security Studies (2009). Seminar Summary Report of ISS Public Seminar Series “Enhancing the African Union Sanctions Regime”. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/28OCT09REPORT.PDF

Chicago

Institute for Security Studies. Seminar Summary Report of ISS Public Seminar Series “Enhancing the African Union Sanctions Regime”. 2009. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/28OCT09REPORT.PDF.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Institute for Security Studies |title=Seminar Summary Report of ISS Public Seminar Series “Enhancing the African Union Sanctions Regime” |date=28 October 2009 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/28OCT09REPORT.PDF |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{instituteforsecuritystudies2009seminar, author = {{Institute for Security Studies}}, title = {{Seminar Summary Report of ISS Public Seminar Series “Enhancing the African Union Sanctions Regime”}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2009}, month = oct, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/28OCT09REPORT.PDF}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }