Hard News on Committee Session #2

Finding Alternatives Way: The Funding of Peace Support Operations (PSO)

Explore a possible way for the African Union (AU) to finance its peace and security programs.¹

The African Union (AU) is best positioned to send peacekeepers to the continent's various war zones. The AU has a huge responsibility regarding peace and securing in Africa.² The PSO puts together policies, guidelines, agreements, frameworks and mechanisms to help bring together regional peace and security mechanisms to respond to peace support operations and security challenges on the continent. The African Union is dependent on international partners to finance the security.

Reliable funding for peace operations, quoting from the delegate of Senegal, they believe the most possible is external funding because it is the most pragmatic source of funding, for example countries from Europe. The delegate of Nigeria also agrees with the statement that external funding is the most possible from now on. For the information, peacekeeping operations are funded by the Contributions for International Peacekeeping Activities (CIPA) account. The delegate of Mozambique is offered to realize the decision by the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government, so that the parties could negotiate a compromise that allows the AU to treat troop contributions as an in-kind payment toward the 25:75 burden sharing formula.

Recently, the delegate of Egypt proposed the revoking of membership because it builds on the existing three-stage sanctions of the October 2018, 11th extraordinary meeting. Even though revoking of voting rights is already stated in the constitutive act, they can imply towards the alternative source of income. But Peace Support Operations (PSO), does not necessarily must be contributed by using money to fund. It is okay to send materials or even troops, and peace building capacity.

¹Ababa, Addis. (2020, January 31). “The Price of Peace: Securing UN Finance for AU Peace Operations”. Crisis Group, https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/286-price-peace-securing-un-financing-au-peace-operations²African Union. “Peace Support Operations”. African Union, https://au.int/en/directorates/peace-support-operations