Back to Basics : The Path to Enhancing African Adherence to International Humanitarian Law

Abstract

As of 2014, 52 per cent of the world’s armed conflict incidents occurred in Africa, an increase of 10 per cent on 2013. As a result, Africa is often the focus of much media attention when demonstrating the violent nature of armed conflict. Africa is seen as the theatre of untold human suffering. In 2000, African leaders recognised that the scourge of conflict in Africa is a major impediment to Africa’s development. Sixteen years later the African Union has made advances in addressing conflicts and the root cause through the African Peace and Security Architecture and the African Governance Architecture. These efforts, in the frame of Agenda 2063 and the aspiration to ‘end all wars by 2020’, have the potential to advance the peace and security agenda on the continent. Consequently, notions of conflict prevention and conflict resolution, good governance and security sector reform have taken centre stage in recent peace and security dialogue, leaving ratification of international instruments as the ‘parent pauvre’.