Peace & Security Council Report

The July 2022 Peace & Security Council Report by the Institute for Security Studies examines the complexities of Africa's regional economic communities (RECs), the partnership between the United Nations and the African Union (AU), the identity crisis of the African Standby Force (ASF), and the systemic challenges in eradicating extreme poverty across the continent.

• Africa's regional economic communities (RECs) suffer from a 'spaghetti bowl' of overlapping memberships, where 106 memberships exist across eight RECs and two regional mechanisms despite the AU having only 55 member states. This overlap, combined with limited state resources and understaffed diplomatic representations, is viewed by high-ranking officials as a 'potential stumbling block to coordinated integration'.
• There is significant disparity in the integration levels of RECs. The East African Community (EAC) is identified as the most economically integrated region, while the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD) is the least integrated, described as a 'relic' of Muammar Gaddafi's ambitions.
• The partnership between the UN and AU faces critical political challenges, specifically regarding the sustainable and predictable financing of AU-led peace support operations (PSOs). This deadlock is attributed to resistance from key UN Security Council (UNSC) members and a lack of detailed AU human rights and financial compliance frameworks that would satisfy the US and UK.
• The African Standby Force (ASF) is experiencing an 'identity crisis' due to a lack of clarity regarding the division of labour between the AU and RECs. This is evidenced by the deployment of regional forces, such as the SADC mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) and the EAC force in the DRC, which are often mandated outside the ASF framework and only later recognized as ASF deployments.
• Africa is unlikely to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of reducing extreme poverty to below 3% by 2030. Under a 'Current Path' forecast, 479 million Africans (28.1% of the population) will still live in extreme poverty by 2030. However, a 'Combined Agenda 2063 scenario' involving multisectoral interventions could reduce this rate to 6.4% by 2043.
• Extreme poverty in Africa is highly concentrated by region and country. As of 2019, Central Africa had the highest extreme poverty rate at 54.8%, while North Africa had already met the SDG target of below 3%. South Sudan was recorded as the poorest country with a rate above 80%.

APA

Woldemichael, S., Louw-Vaudran, L., Singh, P., Aikins, E. R., & McLachlan, D. T. (2022). Peace & Security Council Report. Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/psc-report148.pdf

Chicago

Woldemichael, Shewit, Liesl Louw-Vaudran, Priyal Singh, Enoch Randy Aikins, and Du Toit McLachlan. Peace & Security Council Report. Institute for Security Studies, 2022. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/psc-report148.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{woldemichael2022peace, author = {Woldemichael, Shewit and Louw-Vaudran, Liesl and Singh, Priyal and Aikins, Enoch Randy and McLachlan, Du Toit}, title = {{Peace \& Security Council Report}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2022}, month = jul, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/psc-report148.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }