Conflict Resolution In Africa The Case Of The Organisation Of African Unity Oau

The objective of this research is to investigate the causes of conflict in Africa. Further, it discusses the role played by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in ensuring political order during its period of existence. The study employs content analysis of historical documents, academic works, internet sources and also current conflict situations in Africa as a baseline for its argument. Mainly, the study shows which major sources of tension need to be resolved to enjoy a sound, stable, peaceful, political and economic environment in the new millennium.

This thesis examines the future of conflict resolution in Africa and the role of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in the process, based on the 1993 OAU's "Mechanism" (MCPMR). It argues that, in Africa, historical evidence suggests a continuing pattern of internal conflicts aggravated by destabilization attempts. It also seeks to demonstrate that for various reasons, the OAU has been weak in this type of conflict. This opens two options. One, making the OAU irrelevant, is to maintain the present track and end up between an evil and a lesser evil scenarios. The first is the intervention by a regional power, using a sub-regional organization. Here the risk is to see the regional power, in the absence of a watchdog, use the organization for its own agenda, as in the Nigerian interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, with the ECOWAS. The other scenario is the intervention by a country or group of countries for purely selfish reasons to change another country's political leadership, as in the Angolan interventions in Zaire and Congo. The second option, less likely without substantial reforms, is for the OAU to use the support available from the international community to establish itself as a forum, an organizer, a legitimizer and a watchdog.

While dramatic changes are taking place on the international scene and among the major powers, Africa continues to suffer from a multitude of violent conflicts. The toll of these conflicts is monumental in terms of war damage to productivity, scarce resources diverted to armaments and military organizations, and the resulting insecurity, displacement, and destruction. At the same time, Africans, in response to internal demands as well as to international changes, have begun to focus their attention and energies on these problems and are trying innovative ways to resolve differences by nonviolent means. The outcomes of these attempts have urgent and complex implications for the future of the continent with respect to human rights, principles of democracy, and economic development. In this book, African, European, and U.S. experts examine these important issues and the prospects for conflict management and resolution in Africa. They review the scholarship in resolution in light of international changes now taking place. Addressing the undying, internal causes of conflict, they question whether global events will promote peace or threaten to unleash even more conflict. The authors focus their analysis on the issues involved in African conflicts and examine the areas in need of the most dramatic changes. They offer specific recommendations for dealing with current problems, but caution that unless policymakers confront the security situation in Africa, further destruction to national unity and political and economic stability is imminent. Case studies and themes for further, long-term research are recommended.

"These two volumes clearly demonstrate the efforts by a wide range of African scholars to explain the roots, routes, regimes and resolution of African conflicts and how to re-build post-conflict societies. They offer sober and serious analyses, eschewing the sensationalism of the western media and the sophistry of some of the scholars in the global North for whom African conflicts are at worst a distraction and at best a confirmation of their pet racist and petty universalist theories." --From the introduction by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza This book offers analyses of a range of African conflicts and demonstrates that peace is too important to be left to outsiders.

A three way co publication between the Development Policy Management Forum in Addis Ababa, the African Centre for Applied Research and Training in Social Development, and the Community of the Sahel Saharan States in Libya presenting a pan African perspective on the revitalised African Union and conflict management within the continent.