From economic cooperation to conflict prevention

Faced with the increased incidence of wars in certain ACP Group regions, often reducing their development efforts to zero, conflict prevention was recognized as a priority in the cooperation agreements signed in Cotonou in 2000 between the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and their principal partner, the European Union. These provisions assumed particular importance with the entry into force of the European External Action Service on 1 December 2010.

The increased strength of the strategic partnership between the EU and the African Union (AU) was also a major factor in the latter’s decision to set up a Peace and Security Architecture, the major operational consequence of which is the creation of an African Standby Force (ASF) within the next three years.

Other major players participate in these ‘peace missions’. First and foremost the United Nations (UN), whose missions in Africa are by far the most numerous compared with the rest of the world. The United States also cooperates with certain EU Member States supported by the European Development Fund, especially in the Caribbean, to combat drug traffickers.

As a general rule, the preference today is for multilateral actions, such as those to rehabilitate underpaid or unpaid Armed Forces, as has happened following the Armed Forces mutiny in Burkina Faso at the end of March, or to try and pacify regions, as in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the EU, the Europeanisation of security and defence interventions in the ACP countries, especially in Africa, through its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), is not without some gnashing of teeth in the European capitals. But today they, and especially the former colonial powers, seem more or less ready to unite under the EU flag.

Marie-Martine Buckens