1

Reducing the incidence of armed conflict remains a defining priority for Africa. The continent’s 

recent conflicts have killed millions and displaced 

many more, leaving them to run the gauntlet of violence, disease, and malnutrition. These conflicts have 

also traumatized a generation of children and young 

adults, broken bonds of trust and authority structures among and across local communities, shattered 

education and health care systems, disrupted transportation routes and infrastructure, and done untold 

damage to the continent’s ecology from its land and 

waterways to its flora and fauna. In financial terms, 

the direct and indirect cost of these conflicts is well 

over $700 billion.1

Peace operations are arguably the principal international instrument to curb conflict in Africa. Since 

2000, the United Nations (UN) alone has spent over 

$32 billion on its 12 peacekeeping operations on the 

Africa Security Brief

Lessons Learned from 

Peace Operations in Africa

By Paul D. Williams

A P u b l i c at i o n o f t h e A f r i c a C e n t e r f o r S t r at e g i c S t u d i e s

◆ There have been 40 peace operations deployed to 14 African states since 2000.

◆ To be successful, peace operations must be part of an effective political strategy and peace process, not 

a substitute for them.

◆ Policymakers need to move beyond a preoccupation with the number of personnel deployed for 

each mission and focus on what capabilities are needed to generate the desired political effects.

◆ Maintaining legitimacy is a crucial part of achieving success.

H i g h l i g h t s

No . 3 / Ma r c h 2 0 1 0

continent, of which the U.S. Government contributed roughly one-quarter. For some, this has been a 

good investment. The Human Security Brief 2007, for 

instance, concluded that the rise in peace operations 

since the mid-1990s was a major contributing factor 

to the 60 percent decline in the number and magnitude of African conflicts over the same period.

The current resurgence of peace operations began in 1999 with the UN missions in Sierra Leone 

and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) 

following a U.S.-led withdrawal from peacekeeping 

in Africa after the so-called Black Hawk Down episode in Mogadishu in October 1993. Since then, 40 

missions (see table) have been deployed to 14 African states, many of them into tough environments 

with a long list of difficult tasks to achieve. They 

were conducted by a range of international organizations, principally the UN, African Union (AU), and 
2

European Union (EU). A small number were also 

undertaken by individual states, principally France, 

South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

This resurgence indicates that governments 

(both within and beyond Africa) saw peace operations as a viable and effective tool of conflict management. In some respects, this perception was justified. 

Among other things, peace operations have assisted 

several states during the transition from war to peace; 

helped mitigate humanitarian crises and protect civilians; changed the incentives for war and peace 

among the belligerents, sometimes by actively coercing “spoilers”; assisted in the reduction of uncertainty between various conflict parties; helped prevent 

accidents and control skirmishes, which otherwise 

might have escalated to war; and facilitated political 

dialogue between belligerent groups.

But these operations have also generated controversy. On the ground, peacekeepers have not always 

extinguished the flames of war or managed to protect 

its civilian victims. Moreover, too many (military and 

civilian) personnel from various organizations have 

been accused of incompetence, corruption, and sexual exploitation of the people they were supposed to 

protect. At the UN, some of these missions have generated tensions because Western states in particular 

have pushed to establish increasingly ambitious operations with larger numbers of personnel, but have 

been reluctant to deploy their own soldiers or provide 

sufficient materiel. This has produced a significant 

mismatch between the states making the key strategic decisions and the states risking their personnel 

on the ground. In financial terms, the cost of these 

operations has risen at a time when the recent global 

economic downturn has constricted resources.

This brief reviews the major strategic and operational lessons learned from the 40 peace operations 

that were deployed to Africa since 2000 with the aim 

of making these and future operations more effective 

instruments of conflict resolution.

K e y Lesso ns

There are many mission-specific lessons to draw 

but six general lessons bear highlighting.

An Effective Political Strategy Is a Prerequisite for Success. Peacekeeping is an instrument, not 

a strategy. To be successful, peace operations must 

be part of an effective political strategy and peace 

process, not a substitute for them. Without a viable 

political strategy, peace operations should not be an 

automatic response to all wars. As U.S. Ambassador 

Paul D. Williams is Associate Professor in the Elliott 

School of International Affairs at The George Washington 

University. Among his publications is Understanding 

Peacekeeping, 2d ed. (Polity Press, 2010).

W hat A r e P eac e Ope rat i o ns?

Peace operations involve the expeditionary use of uniformed personnel (police and/or military) 

with a mandate to:

◆ assist in the prevention of armed conflict by supporting a peace process

◆ serve as an instrument to observe or assist in the implementation of 

ceasefires or peace agreements

◆ enforce ceasefires, peace agreements, or the will of the United Nations (UN) Security 

Council in order to build stable peace.

This encompasses UN, UN-authorized, and non-UN operations, which may range in size from 

small observation and security sector reform missions involving fewer than 50 personnel to multidimensional operations involving tens of thousands of soldiers, police, and civilians.
3

to the UN Susan Rice recently put it, “peacekeepers 

cannot do everything and go everywhere.” First and 

foremost, they should not be deployed to active war 

zones unless they are part of a viable political process 

for managing or resolving the conflict. Nor should 

peacekeepers be deployed unless they have active 

cooperation from the host government(s) in question. They should generally avoid crossing what has 

been dubbed the “Darfur line”—“deploying where 

there is no (real) consent by the state.”2

 If civilians 

are being systematically massacred by their own governments and international society wants to stop it, 

then a peace enforcement intervention rather than 

a peacekeeping operation is needed.

Strategic Coordination Is Crucial. Peace operations usually involve a variety of actors (states, 

international organizations, and nongovernmental 

organizations [NGOs]) working in the same environment. Strategic coordination among them is therefore 

crucial. It will be more likely to occur if policymakers 

recognize at least three things. First, since different 

organizations will always maintain their own distinct 

agendas, coordination needs to be treated as a political, not just technical, exercise. Second, since the 

early 1990s, the UN has clearly been the single most 

important organization for conducting peacekeeping 

in Africa. Other institutions have also played important roles—particularly the AU, which has deployed 

over 15,000 peacekeepers, and the EU, which has 

conducted seven peace operations on the continent. 

Consequently, strategic coordination in Africa should 

focus on developing sensible divisions of labor within 

the complicated UN–AU–EU nexus; clarifying how 

the continent’s subregional arrangements, including 

the regional brigades of the African Standby Force, 

are supposed to relate to the AU; and ensuring that 

policymakers do not overestimate the AU’s current 

capabilities.3 Third, policymakers need to work hard to 

ensure that the relevant actors—especially states contributing personnel and members of the authorizing 

institution—share a similar vision of the operation’s 

purpose, mandate, and rules of engagement (ROEs).

Ends and Means Must Be in Synch. To be 

successful, peacekeepers must be given the resources 

necessary to achieve their goals. There are at least two 

dimensions to this issue. First, the goals of an operation 

should be neither contradictory nor technically impracticable. They should be set out in clear, credible, 

and flexible mandates with appropriate ROEs. For example, policymakers should avoid the strategic headache handed to the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), which was told to assist successive Congolese 

governments that were as much a part of the country’s problems as the rebels. Second, once mandated, 

policymakers need to prevent large discrepancies from 

developing between the authorized force levels and 

the actual numbers of personnel on the ground. Such 

personnel gaps not only hamper a mission’s ability to 

take advantage of the so-called golden hour immediately after the cessation of fighting, but they also signal 

to the conflict parties a lack of political will within the 

authorizing organization. The good news is that with 

the exception of the AU/UN Hybrid Operation in 

Darfur’s (UNAMID’s) first year in Sudan, the UN has 

made substantial progress in reducing its vacancy rates. 

The AU, however, has failed to quickly deploy the 

authorized number of troops in its missions in Burundi, 

Sudan, and Somalia. In Somalia, it is still struggling 

to enlist and deploy the 8,000 peacekeepers that it authorized for the operation in January 2007. Reducing 

vacancy rates at the AU will require building a broader 

pool of significant troop and police contributing countries, and finding more strategic lift capabilities to ferry 

personnel into the theater of operations.

Define and Deliver “Robust” Operations. In 

2000, the so-called Brahimi Report concluded that 

once deployed, peace operations must be based on 

robust doctrine, force posture, and ROEs that do not 

“cede the initiative to their attackers.”4 This would 

enable missions to achieve their mandated tasks as 

well as protect their own personnel and local civilians. Ideally, military units within peace operations 

should be strong enough to deter parties from using 

force against peacekeepers and civilians. This is important because weak missions have frequently fallen 

“peacekeepers should not be 

deployed to active war zones 

unless they are part of a viable 

political process for managing or 

resolving the conflict”
4

Mission Location Dates Size1

MINURSO Western Sahara 1991– 237

ECOMOG 2 Sierra Leone 1997–2000 approx. 14,000

MINURCA Central African Republic (CAR) 1998–2000 1,350

MONUC a Democratic Republic of the Congo 

(DRC)

1999–2002 4,278

UNAMSIL Sierra Leone 1999–2005 17,670

OAU Joint Monitoring Commission DRC 1999–2000 43

UNMEE Ethiopia, Eritrea 2000–2008 4,200

OLMEE/AULMEE Ethiopia, Eritrea 2000–2008 43

Operation Palliser Sierra Leone 2000 approx. 1,300

SAPSD Burundi 2001–2003 750

OMIC 2 Comoros 2001–2002 14

CEN–SAD Force CAR 2001–2002 300

ECOMICI Côte d’Ivoire 2002–2004 approx. 1,500

Operation Licorne Côte d’Ivoire 2002– 4,000

FOMUC CAR 2002–2008 380

JMC and IMU Sudan 2002–2005 24

OMIC 3 Comoros 2002 39

MINUCI Côte d’Ivoire 2003–2004 76

MONUC b DRC 2003– approx. 18,408

UNMIL Liberia 2003– 13,600

ECOMIL Liberia 2003 3,600

Operation Artemis/IEMF DRC 2003 2,205

AMIB Burundi 2003–2004 3,250

ONUB Burundi 2004– 5,770

ONUCI Côte d’Ivoire 2004– 9,216

AMIS Sudan 2004–2007 approx. 7,700

MIOC Comoros 2004 41

UNMIS Sudan 2005– 9,952

EUPOL Kinshasa DRC 2005–2007 approx. 30

EUSEC–RD Congo DRC 2005– 44

EU Support to AMIS 2 Sudan 2005–2007 approx. 50

EUFOR–RD Congo DRC 2006 2,275

AMISEC Comoros 2006 1,260

MAES Comoros 2007–2008 350

AMISOM Somalia 2007– 5,000

EUFOR–Chad Chad 2007–2009 3,700

MINURCAT Chad/Central African Republic 2007– 3,030

UNAMID Sudan 2008– 19,600

Operation Democracy in 

the Comoros

Comoros 2008 1,800

MICOPAX CAR 2008– 500

EU SSR–Guinea Bissau Guinea Bissau 2008– 33

UN Missions UN-authorized Missions UN-recognized Missions Non-UN Missions

Co l o r K e y

Tab lE. P eac e Ope rat i o ns i n A f r i ca, 2 0 0 0 – 2 0 0 9
5

prey to spoilers. The decade began with hundreds of 

UN peacekeepers taken hostage by rebels in Sierra 

Leone. At least by the decade’s end (in late 2009), 

two UNAMID peacekeepers held hostage in Darfur 

for more than 100 days were released relatively unscathed. While it is hard to argue against the idea 

of “robustness” in principle, what it should mean in 

practice needs greater clarification. Operations that 

envisage threatening or using force to protect the 

mandate, civilians, and their own personnel clearly 

need to be authorized under Chapter VII of the UN 

Charter. But this alone does not clarify what types of 

military capabilities or ROEs are most suitable for a 

particular operation.

Focus on Effects, Not Just Numbers. Issues 

related to force generation—that is, getting enough 

peacekeepers on the ground quickly—have always 

been a crucial component of peace operations. But in 

order to be successful, peace operations must generate 

particular political effects in the theater such as coercing spoilers, protecting displacement camps and supply 

routes, or promoting the rule of law. As a consequence, 

policymakers need to move beyond a narrow preoccupation with deploying a particular number of personnel 

for each mission and focus instead on what capabilities 

are necessary to generate the desired political effects. 

The more complex the tasks given to peacekeepers, 

the more niche capabilities they will require. Among 

the most important for multidimensional operations 

are engineer and medical units, communications and 

logistics capabilities, field intelligence, formed police 

units,5

 and special forces. To this list should be added 

the general need for more female peacekeepers, not 

least because of the significant roles they can play in 

relation to information-gathering, policing, and responding to the challenges of sexual and gender-based 

violence. Appropriate vehicles are also crucial, particularly armored personnel carriers, helicopters, and 

unmanned aerial vehicles. These will need to come 

from outside the continent since African states currently provide very few of the UN’s 26 engineering 

units or its 177 helicopters.

• AMIB = African Mission in Burundi

• AMIS = African Union (AU) Mission 

in Sudan

• AMISEC = AU Mission for Support 

to the Elections in The Comoros

• AMISOM = AU Mission in Somalia

• AULMEE = AU Liaison Mission to 

Ethiopia and Eritrea

• CEN–SAD = Community of Sahel–

Saharan States

• ECOMICI = Economic Community 

of West African States (ECOWAS) 

Mission in Côte d’Ivoire

• ECOMIL = ECOWAS Mission in 

Liberia

• ECOMOG = ECOWAS Monitoring 

Group

• EU SSR = European Union (EU) 

Security Sector Reform

• EUFOR = EU Force

• EUFOR–RD = EU Force–

Democratic Republic of the Congo

• EUPOL = EU Police Mission

• EUSEC RD Congo = EU Advisory 

and Assistance Mission for Security 

Reform in the Democratic Republic 

of the Congo

• FOMUC = Multinational Force in the 

Central African Republic (CAR)

• IEMF = Interim Multinational 

Emergency Force

• IMU = International Monitoring Unit

• JMC = Joint Military Commission

• MAES = AU Electoral and Security 

Assistance Mission to The Comoros

• MICOPAX = Mission for the 

Consolidation of Peace in CAR

• MINUCI = United Nations (UN) 

Mission in Côte d’Ivoire

• MINURCA = UN Mission in CAR

• MINURCAT = UN Mission in CAR 

and Chad

• MINURSO = UN Mission for the 

Referendum in Western Sahara

• MIOC = AU Observer Mission in The 

Comoros

• MONUC = UN Mission in the 

Democratic Republic of the Congo

• OAU = Organization of African Unity

• OLMEE = OAU Liaison Mission in 

Ethiopia-Eritrea

• OMIC = OAU Mission in The 

Comoros

• ONUB = UN Operation in Burundi

• ONUCI = UN Operation in Côte 

d’Ivoire

• SAPSD = South African Protection 

Support Detachment

• UNAMID = AU/UN Hybrid Operation 

in Darfur

• UNAMSIL = UN Mission in Sierra 

Leone

• UNMEE = UN Mission in Ethiopia 

and Eritrea

• UNMIL = UN Mission in Liberia

• UNMIS = UN Mission in Sudan

A c r o n ym K e y

No t e

1

 Estimated maximum deployed.
6

Legitimacy Matters. In peace operations, maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of the relevant audiences—including the conflict parties, local civilians, 

international NGOs, and foreign governments—is a 

crucial part of achieving success. Importantly, peacekeepers are never in total control of their legitimacy 

because it depends on the perceptions of other actors. 

The situation is made more complex because the relevant audiences may well come to different conclusions about the legitimacy of the same actor or action. 

Operations perceived as legitimate will be more likely 

to achieve their objectives, not least because they will 

find it easier to attract personnel, funds, and political support, and locals will provide them with good 

intelligence and other forms of assistance. Operations perceived as illegitimate will struggle on both 

counts, as the AU mission in Somalia has found to 

its considerable cost. Irrespective of the specific details of the mandate, a peace operation’s legitimacy 

can be eroded by various forms of behavior, most notably when peacekeepers are accused of committing 

war crimes—for example, African Union Mission in 

Somalia (AMISOM), failing to protect civilians from 

violence (UNAMSIL, AMIS, MONUC), corruption 

(MONUC, AMISOM), and sexual exploitation and 

abuse (MONUC, UNMIL). The potential for illegitimate behavior will be reduced by ensuring that peacekeepers are well trained to cope with the challenges 

they are likely to face in the field, follow similar codes 

of professional ethics, are adequately paid during their 

tours of duty, and are punished if found guilty of illegal acts.

P o l i c y Impl i cat i o ns

In light of these lessons, a number of practical 

steps can be taken to address the challenges raised by 

contemporary peace operations in Africa.

Clarify Mission Tasks. First, there needs to be 

greater clarification about the tasks that peacekeepers 

should be able to deliver (and those that are beyond 

them). Once agreed, these should be translated into 

clear doctrine, guiding principles, mandates, and 

ROEs. The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations in particular has made important advances in 

these areas in recent years, most notably through the 

publication of its Principles and Guidelines. But some 

priority topics still require more attention, including disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration 

schemes; security sector reform initiatives; civilian 

protection; rule of law functions; and the military’s 

role in the provision of humanitarian relief. The central fault line in international debates continues to 

be over whether peace operations should fulfill many 

wider peace-building tasks beyond those necessary 

to provide military stability in the theater. Without 

a greater degree of consensus on these fundamental 

issues, it will be impossible to design effective mandates and curricula for “training” peacekeepers or to 

know what resources missions will need.

Prioritize Peace Operations to Support Effective Peace Processes. Policymakers should put more 

resources into designing effective peace processes that 

address the causes as well as the symptoms of armed 

conflicts. Indeed, the merits of deploying a particular 

peace operation should be assessed with direct reference to the prospects for constructing a successful 

peace process. Stalled peace processes in Sudan and 

Somalia as well as the DRC and Côte d’Ivoire emphasize the importance of this point. Constructing effective peace processes is never solely about providing 

more money, although funds spent wisely will usually 

help. Rather, it requires the provision of better and 

sustained mediation from senior political figures as 

well as greater organizational support for them. Moreover, mediators and their teams who are permanently 

based in the region concerned will be more likely to 

have a positive impact than special envoys who make 

only fleeting visits to the conflict zone in question. 

Effective mediation requires an ability to engage in 

sustained dialogue with lots of local groups, not only 

the leaders of armed factions. Although Darfur is 

probably the best example of a conflict that attracted 

an extraordinary amount of international attention 

that failed to be translated into an effective peace 

process, the AU High-Level Panel on Darfur provides 

“peacekeepers are never in total 

control of their legitimacy because 

it depends on the perceptions of 

other actors”
7

a useful model for stimulating a reconciliation process 

and is worthy of replication elsewhere.

Design Better Entry and Exit Strategies. 

Knowing when and where to deploy peace operations and when they should leave is a fundamental 

but underdebated question. With regard to getting 

in, more thought needs to be given to the issue of 

consent: whose consent is essential, whose consent is 

desirable but not essential, and what should be done 

if these actors withdraw their consent or place additional conditions upon it after peacekeepers deploy? 

In particular, policymakers need to decide how they 

should protect civilians when a sitting government 

is perpetrating atrocities against elements of its own 

population. The greater the level of international consensus on these fundamental issues, the better. A lack 

of consensus will complicate matters when deciding 

on an exit strategy. Indeed, questions about appropriate exit strategies and the benchmarks to assess a 

mission’s ongoing performance need more systematic 

analysis. This is particularly important for operations 

with state-building components to their mandates 

and those helping to strengthen state authority in the 

face of armed challengers (for example, AMISOM 

and MONUC). Combined with the issue of consent, 

such benchmarks would help clarify how to proceed 

when debates emerge over how and when to end operations (as is currently occurring with regard to UNMIL, MINURCAT, and MONUC). At a minimum, 

senior peacekeeping officials (military and civilian) 

fresh from the field should be brought together with 

analysts regularly to reflect upon these issues and record their conclusions.

Deliver More and Better Resources. Failed 

peace operations seriously damage the credibility of 

the organization(s) involved, do a great disservice to 

local civilians, and sometimes even endanger the notion of peacekeeping itself. As a consequence, once 

the decision has been made to deploy an operation, 

maximum international effort should be expended 

to ensure that it succeeds. In time, a critical mass of 

successful missions will invigorate the peacekeeping 

brand and strengthen the credibility of the UN Security Council and other peacekeeping actors such as 

the AU and EU. Peacekeepers therefore deserve to 

be given more and better resources. Specifically, resources are needed to overcome personnel overstretch, 

assets/capabilities overstretch, financial overstretch, 

and headquarters/command and control overstretch. 

Shortfalls in personnel and capabilities of the kinds 

discussed above should be relatively easy to overcome 

if the world’s most advanced military powers made a 

more serious commitment to UN peace operations. At 

the AU, more of the organization’s 53 members need 

to be persuaded to train and then deploy their troops 

and police on peace operations. In financial terms, the 

costs have grown steadily as peace operations have 

been asked to carry out more and more tasks, often 

in inhospitable environments. The good news is that 

compared to operations conducted by the world’s most 

advanced military states in the North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization, UN peacekeeping is cost effective. At 

around $8 billion in 2008–2009, the UN peacekeeping 

budget is less than 1 percent of global military spending. In relation to command and control structures, 

more well-educated management personnel are needed 

within the relevant secretariats of the crucial organizations, particularly the UN and AU.

Recruit More Civilians. An important part 

of tackling these overstretch issues will hinge on 

strengthening the civilian elements of peace operations, especially police and civilians with expertise 

in rule of law issues, engineering, agriculture, and 

other development issues. Although civilians can 

actually be more expensive to deploy per head than 

troops, when an operation’s strategic objective involves building a self-sustaining peace and not only 

carrying out specific military tasks, they are an essential component of the mission and should be prioritized accordingly. Policymakers therefore need to 

think hard about where to find significant numbers of 

well-qualified civilians and how to persuade them to 

commit significant periods of time to working with 

peace operations. Importantly, this should include 

hiring more local civilians as well as foreigners. 

“knowing when and where 

to deploy peace operations 

and when they should leave 

is a fundamental but 

underdebated question”
8

Africa Center for 

Strategic Studies

Director: Ambassador William 

M. Bellamy (Ret.)

National Defense University

300 Fifth Avenue, Building 21

Fort Lesley J. McNair

Washington, DC 20319-5066

Phone: + 1 202-685-7300

Web site: www.africacenter.org

Africa Center 

Regional Office 

in Dakar

Regional Manager: 

Elisabeth Feleke

Phone: 221 33 869 61 00

Email: FelekeE@ndu.edu

Africa Center 

Regional Office 

in Addis Ababa

Deputy Regional 

Representative: 

Mahlet Yared

Phone: 251 11 517 42 08 

Email: Mahlet.Yared@ndu.edu

Africa Security Briefs

Editor: Joseph Siegle, Ph.D.

Phone: + 1 202-685-6808

Email: Sieglej@ndu.edu

The Africa Security Briefs series presents research and analysis 

by ACSS experts and outside scholars with the aim of advancing 

understanding of African security issues. The opinions, conclusions, 

and recommendations expressed or implied within are those of 

the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the 

U.S. Department of Defense or any other agency of the Federal 

Government. For more information on ACSS, visit the Web site at 

http://www.africacenter.org.

The Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) supports the 

development of U.S. strategic policy toward Africa by providing highquality academic programs, undertaking policy-relevant research and 

analysis, and fostering awareness of and open dialogue on U.S. strategic 

priorities and African security issues. Toward these aims, the ACSS 

is committed to building networks of African, American, European, 

and international military and civilian leaders and articulating African 

perspectives to U.S. policymakers.

AFRICA CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES

AFRICA CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES

CENTRE D’ETUDES STRATEGIQUES DE L’AFRIQUE

http://www.africacenter.org

At the same time, creating a bigger pool of highly 

qualified senior mission staff will also go a long way 

toward addressing the command and control challenges identified above.

Co n c l usi o n

Peace operations in Africa have revealed some 

of the best and worst dimensions of peacekeeping. 

Despite a range of valid criticisms and serious imperfections, peace operations remain international 

society’s principal tool of conflict management, and 

empirical evidence suggests they have contributed 

to the decline of conflict in numerous war-torn territories. To use a clichéd phrase, if peace operations 

did not exist, it would be wise to invent them. Like 

any good creation, however, reform is needed to reflect those elements that are working well and change 

those that have failed. Accordingly, policymakers and 

analysts alike should work to ensure peace operations 

are given sensible operational directives, clear mandates, and sufficient resources to fulfill the proposed 

objectives. The resulting success stories would contribute to the downward trend in the number and 

magnitude of African conflicts, reduce the human 

and economic cost of violence, and thereby open the 

door to more dynamic and sustained development.

No t es

1

 Based on Paul Collier’s estimate that the cost of each “typical” civil war in a low-income country is approximately $64 billion. 

See <http://users.ox.ac.uk/~econpco/research/conflict.htm>. A conservative estimate could identify 11 such wars in Africa since 2000 

(Angola, Burundi, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of 

the Congo, Liberia, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan [twice], and Uganda).

2

 Bruce Jones et al., Building on Brahimi: Peacekeeping in an 

Era of Strategic Uncertainty (New York: Center on International 

Cooperation, April 2009), 12.

3

 See Paul D. Williams, “The African Union’s Peace Operations: A Comparative Analysis,” African Security 2, nos. 2/3 

(2009), 97–118.

4

 Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations, UN document A/55/305–S/2000/809 (New York: UN, 2000).

5

 These are specialized, armored police units consisting of 

approximately 125 officers from a single country.