CIAO DATE: 05/2009
January 2009
Institute for Development and Peace
The international community has progressively tasked regional and sub-regional organisations with conflict prevention and peacekeeping. This is largely due to an overburdened UN system. At the same time regional organisations have increasingly come to accept that violence, inter-state and intra-state wars normally affect the region through destabilizing spill-over effects and that promoting peace is in their own best interest. Yet, it is argued in this report that regional organisations’ peace and security functions still do not amount to an effective regional conflict management regime. Furthermore, not all regional and sub-regional organisations have begun to take on this responsibility. The introductory chapter by Herbert Wulf summarizes the reasons why regional organisations have played such a marginal role in the past and illustrates this with examples from different regional organisations. Particularly the African Union and several sub-regional organisations in Africa are now taking on this newly ascribed role while the members of other organisations (particularly within ASEAN and ARF) remain reluctant to give up national sovereignty rights and to imbue the organisation with a peacekeeping role. The conclusion is that the role of regional organizations in conflict prevention and conflict management has been strengthened in recent years but that severe weaknesses, particularly the lack of common values within regional organizations and their lack of capacities, still limit their conflict prevention role.
Resource link: Still Under Construction. Regional Organisations' Capacities for Conflict Prevention [PDF] - 1.1M