Thirty years after the genocide against the Tutsi, the vow of “never again” has become devoid of meaning, given how the death toll from various wars around the world has reached an unprecedented scale since the end of the Cold War. According to the Uppsala University Conflict Data Program (UCDP), “[I]n 2022, fatalities from organized violence increased by a staggering 97% compared to the previous year, from 120,000 in 2021 to 237,000 in 2022. It signifies the highest death toll since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.” The UCDP report underlines the historically high number of active global conflicts, with 55 state-involved conflicts recorded in 2022, a significant increase on the annual average recorded by UCDP between 2000 and 2013. Moreover, one-sided violence targeting civilians rose sharply in 2022, resulting in around 11,800 civilian deaths at the hands of 45 different states or organized groups.
The African Union (AU) and its African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) were conceived at the end of the Cold War, designed and built for a unipolar, liberal constructivist international order. However, the world is experiencing a dangerous interregnum between the dying post-World War II order and the new global order yet to emerge. Global interregnums reveal an inherent tension between commitments to multilateral cooperation on the one hand and the security dilemmas and national interest imperatives of states on the other. Such periods of intensified security dilemmas create mutually assured distrust and precipitate a “race to the bottom” that undermines international law while generating instability and volatility in international cooperation. It is during such periods of uncertainty and transitional disorder that multilateral frameworks face their greatest tests, precisely when they are most critically needed.
In Africa, conflict-driven fatalities, displacement and economic destruction have reached staggering levels – and are surging. States are at the centre of the conflicts, deaths, displacement, and destruction.
Image: WikiMedia Commons
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