V-3. African Integration and Peacekeeping

Convener: Keith Gottschalk (University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa); e-mail: kgottschalk @ uwc.ac.za

The African Union family of organizations, including its regional communities such as ECOWAS, have both remarkable achievements in economic integration and peacekeeping, compared to intergovernmental regional organizations on other continents, but also serious and persisting, protracted problems. For example, over 75 000 African troops participate in UN and hybrid peacekeeping operations, but the AU has failed to set up its merely 20 000-strength African Standby Force, whose launch was originally scheduled for 2010. Similarly, while the AU summits regularly sign treaties and declarations whose full implementation would require a partial ceding of sovereignty to a supra-national entity, the reality is that the member states regularly fail to implement even less momentous resolutions. For example, the Yamoussoukro Declaration is unimplemented after seventeen years. This panel invites papers exploring any of this comprehensive range of continental challenges and topics. Papers may focus on either the continent, or a sub-regional organization’s terrain.