Peacekeeping Partners: The United Nations, Regional Organizations, and Conflict Resolution in Africa 1990-Present

Abstract

Since 1990, many peacekeeping efforts in response to intrastate conflicts in Africa have been the product of cooperation between the UN and regional organizations. In this thesis, I undertake to determine what this cooperation looks like and what its impacts are. Specifically, I ask under what conditions the UN decides to deploy peacekeepers to a conflict in which a regional organization has established a peacekeeping operation and how peacekeeping cooperation affects the peacekeeping process. Much of the literature on these peacekeeping partnerships perceives the peacekeeping efforts of regional organization as subsidiary to UN peacekeeping operations. I find, instead, that regional organizations in these partnerships are just as, if not more, crucial to peacekeeping as the UN. Regional organizations influence whether the UN intervenes in these conflicts and shape the peacekeeping priorities of UN missions.