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The role of Italy in the African Union (OAU)

  1. The relationship between the UN and the AU
  2. The African common position on the reform of the UN Security Council (Ezulwini Consensus)
  3. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)

 

The relationship between the UN and the AU

Chapter VIII of the UN Charter (https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/ctc/uncharter.pdf) provides the possibility of establishing Regional Organizations that pursue the principles and aims of the United Nations. Art. 53 of the Charter provides in particular that the Security Council may use these organizations to implement enforcement actions of its provisions; obviously these actions must be previously authorized by the Security Council itself. The African Union falls into the category of regional organizations envisaged by Chapter VIII and it conducts peace support operations (AMISOM for example) which are authorized by the UNSC.

Cooperation between the two organizations began in 1990, when the UN and the then OAU formalized it with a cooperation agreement. Since then, the OAU first and the AU then has observer status at the UN, the UN Secretary General always participates, directly or through his delegate, in the AU summit at the beginning of the year, while the President of the AU Commission participates to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which takes place every September in New York. In addition, an UN-AU Conference is held every year, usually in May; the last took place in New York on May 6, 2019. Since 2010, the UN has had its own diplomatic mission to the AU (United Nations Office to the African Union – UNOAU – https://unoau.unmissions.org/), led by Ambassador Hanna Tetteh, Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) and former Foreign Minister of Ghana[1] since 2018.

Since 2006, the UN and AU have entered into ten-year partnership agreements to coordinate their collaboration. The PAIDA “Partnership on Africa’s Development and Integration” (https://www.un.org/en/africa/osaa/advocacy/paida.shtml) is currently in force for the decade 2017-2027, which aims to align the implementation of the AU Agenda 2063 with that of the UN Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development, which was followed in January 2018 by the joint structure for the implementation of the two agendas (https://www.uneca.org/publications/au-%E2%80%93-a-framework-implementation-agenda-2063-and-agenda-2030). In addition to PAIDA, in April 2017 the UN SG and the President of the AU Commission signed the “Joint UN-AU Framework for Enhanced Partnership in Peace and Security ‘(https://unoau.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/jount_un-au_framework_for_an_enhanced_partnership_in_peace_and_security.pdf) to regulate their cooperation in the field of peace and security.

An important factor in UN-AU cooperation is the presence in 25 African countries of UN “Country teams with peace and development advisers”, as well as various Regional Offices and UN Special Envoys (often supported by AU counterparts and/or of the African Regional Organizations – RECs), such as the one for the Great Lakes Region and the one for the Horn of Africa. There are also 9 UN peacekeeping missions in Africa: MINUSCA (Central African Rep. – https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/minusca), MONUSCO (Democratic Republic of Congo – https://monusco.unmissions.org/en), UNSMIL (Libya – https://unsmil.unmissions.org), MINUSMA (Mali – https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/minusma), UNSOM (Somalia – https://unsom.unmissions.org/), UNAMID (UN-AU hybrid mission in the Sudanese region of Darfur – https://unamid.unmissions.org/), UNISFA (Sudanese region of Abyei – https://unisfa.unmissions.org/), UNMISS (South Sudan – https://unmiss.unmissions.org/) and MINURSO (Western Sahara – https://minurso.unmissions.org/). Some of these UN missions were preceded by AU peacekeeping operations: this is the case of MINUSCA, MINUSMA and UNAMID. Furthermore, UNSOM cooperates closely with AMISOM in Somalia.

However, the UN-AU relationship remains unequal, both because the AU is subordinate to the UN for peace and security issues, and because the AU has scarce financial resources and is always forced to resort to help from International Donors. A de facto division of labor has been established between the two Organizations which sees the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) conduct conflict prevention and diplomatic crisis management, while the UN Council supports international attention on them, exerts political pressure on the Parties to the conflict and, when necessary, arrives to deploy peace operations. Despite this inequality, the two organizations have so far collaborated fruitfully; the only contrasts have perhaps been recorded regarding the Libyan crisis, where the AU claims the purely “African” character of this crisis and has repeatedly proposed, so far with little success, to take a leading role in its resolution; in particular, the AU has for some time been proposing to organize a UN-AU National Reconciliation Conference on Libya in Addis Ababa. Also to reduce this inequality, at the extraordinary summit in Kigali (March 2018) the AU proposed that its Peace Fund, with which it aspires to finance its peace support operations on the continent, be financed for the 25% from its member countries (through the imposition of a 0.2% duty on imports from non-African countries) and for the remaining 75% from the UN. This proposal has received the support of the UN SG Guterres and the EU but has so far met with opposition from the US, the main contributor to the UN and its peace.

 

[1] Her predecessor was Ms Saleh-Work Zwede, elected President of Ethiopia in 2018.

 

The African common position on the reform of the UN Security Council (Ezulwini Consensus)

The current UNSC is made up of 5 permanent members with veto right (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, USA) and 10 non-permanent members, elected by the General Assembly for a two-year mandate that cannot be immediately renewed. According to the UN Charter (Articles 108-109), any modification thereof must obtain no less than 2/3 of the favorable votes of the Member States, including the 5 permanent members, and their ratification internally. Starting from the early 90s of the last century, Germany and Japan proposed to expand the category of permanent members and were subsequently joined by Brazil and India; these 4 countries (commonly indicated with the initials G4) aspire to become the new permanent members of the UNSC but their aspirations are thwarted by the “Uniting for Consensus” Group (UfC – Argentina, Canada, Colombia, South Korea, Costa Rica, Italy, Malta, Mexico, Pakistan, San Marino, Spain, Turkey, plus, as observers, China and Indonesia), in which Italy plays the role of “Focal Point”. The UNSC reform is debated in the Inter-Governmental Negotiation (IGN), which carries on in New York since 2009.

Africa currently has 3 non-permanent seats and is the only continent that does not have permanent seats in the UNSC. To put a remedy to what the continent sees as an injustice, in 2005 the African countries adopted a common position on the reform of the Security Council at a meeting held in Ezulwini, in the then Swaziland (now Eswatini). This common position, known as the “Ezulwini Consensus“, was then ratified at the extraordinary meeting of the AU Executive Council in March 2005 in Addis Ababa. It demands that the 3 seats Africa currently has in the UNSC be increased to 7, of which 2 must be permanent and with the right of veto. Concerning the veto, the AU has made it clear on various occasions that it is in favor of its abolition but, as long as this right exists, even future permanent African members must enjoy it in order not to be inferior to others. The Ezulwini Consensus provides that the African countries that will hold the future 2 permanent seats will be designated by the AU and this causes an ambiguity of interpretation because it is not clear whether the 2 African countries designated by the AU will permanently occupy this position (interpretation given by Nigeria and South Africa, which aspire to cover them and for this purpose they coordinate with the G4) or on a rotating basis (interpretation that is popular with other African countries – such as Algeria, Egypt and Kenya – which could thus aspire to become permanent members as well). The second interpretation has many points in common with the UfC position which calls for the creation of a new category of long-term seats, that is, with a mandate exceeding two years and immediately re-eligible. In fact, the UfC Group proposes a UNSC with 26 seats, by adding 9 new “long-term” seats, assigned to the UN regional groups (3 to Africa; 3 to Asia-Pacific; 2 to GRULAC; 1 to WEOG) and two further 2-years seats (1 to EEG; 1 in rotation reserved for Small States and SIDS[2]). Immediate re-election is intended to meet those countries that aspire to a permanent seat (such as the G4), guaranteeing them longer periods of service in the UNSC, while allowing greater access to the Council for all 193 UN member states. Some permanent members, such as China and Russia, are also looking with growing interest at this UfC formula.

Within the AU, the updating of the African common position on the reform of the UNSC is delegated to the group of Foreign Ministers of 10 countries (C10), currently chaired by Sierra Leone and which includes Algeria, Congo Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Libya, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia. The C10 meets regularly shortly before the AU Summits (its last meeting was held in Dakar on 12-13 January 2020) and then submits its conclusions for approval to the AU Summit (the last time was in Addis Ababa on 9-10 February 2020). So far, the conclusions of the C10 have done nothing but reiterate, in essence, the African common position of the Ezulwini Consensus.

 

[2]   GRULAC: Group of 33 countries from Latin America and the Caribbean

WEOG: Group of 28 Western and Allied Countries.

EEG: Group of 23 Eastern European countries

Small States: Countries with populations of less than 1 million

SIDS “Small Island and Developing States”

 

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA – https://www.uneca.org/)

UNECA is one of the 5 regional commissions of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), of which it is the operational branch in Africa. Established in 1958, it is based in a compound in the center of Addis Ababa where there is also the office of the UN SG Special Representative at the AU (see above, chapter 1) and many of the UN Specialized Agencies (see list below), of which UNECA has the task of coordinating the action. It is led by an Under Secretary General and Executive Secretary – a position held since 2017 by Dr. Vera Songwe (Cameroon – https://www.uneca.org/pages/biography) – and its mandate is to support the economic and
social development of the 54 member countries (all African countries), promote regional integration and international cooperation for the development of Africa.

Since 1999, UNECA has been organizing consultative coordination meetings of the UN agencies for the 5 regions into which Africa is divided (Regional Coordination Mechanism for Africa), which are chaired by the UN Deputy Secretary General. Following the restructuring of 2019, it now has 3 main functions (core functions):

  1. Think Tank. UNECA carries out analytical studies on the various economic, political and social aspects of the continent, which are often accompanied by recommendations to member countries on the most appropriate political choices to be adopted;
  2. Convening. UNECA convenes and manages the meetings of the Regional Coordination Mechanism for Africa mentioned above;
  3. Operational. UNECA provides advice on the most appropriate policies to follow to member countries, African Regional Organizations (RECs) and, above all, to the African Union regarding the needs of the continent and the emergence of global challenges.

 

UNECA’s work is divided into 7 groups (clusters) of programs:

  1. Macroeconomic policies and governance;
  2. Trade and regional integration;
  3. Finance and private sector development;
  4. Data and statistics;
  5. Technology, climate change and natural resource management;
  6. Poverty, inequality and social policy (which also includes the ‘Center for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women’);
  7. Development and economic planning.

For more details, see: https://www.uneca.org/pages/our-work.

 

UNECA has 5 regional offices:

  1. in Yaounde’ (Cameroon) for the central region (https://www.uneca.org/sro-ca);
  2. in Kigali (Rwanda) for the eastern region (https://www.uneca.org/sro-ea);
  3. in Rabat (Morocco) for the north region (https://www.uneca.org/sro-na);
  4. in Lusaka (Zambia) for the south region (https://www.uneca.org/sro-sa);
  5. in Niamey (Niger) for the western region (https://www.uneca.org/sro-wa).

 

For the development of human resources, it employs a support body, the Institute of Economic Development and Planning (IDEP – https://www.uneca.org/idep/), operational since 1963 and based in Dakar (Senegal).

Cooperation between UNECA and AU is ensured through a Joint Secretariat Support Office (JSSO), which also deals with cooperation with the African Development Bank (AfDB). In addition, UNECA holds an annual meeting with the AU Conference of Finance Ministers.

As mentioned before, UNECA finally ensures the coordination of the action of the numerous UN agencies operating in Africa. Those present in Addis Ababa (all competent for both Ethiopia and the AU) are: