Browsing by Author "Isoaho, Eemeli"

The 2015 World Summit Outcome Document underlined the fundamental role of sovereign states as protectors of their citizens from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, but it further stressed that should a state fail to protect its citizens from such atrocities, the international community would have a responsibility to intervene. As the first UN document to explicitly declare that states would no longer be safe from foreign interference solely on the principle of sovereignty, the Outcome Document’s formulation of the emerging concept of 'responsibility to protect' was unprecedented. In seeking to study the implementation of the responsibility to protect principle in the context of the African Union, this study analyses how the Union has conceptualized sovereignty vis-à-vis humanitarian interventions. The theoretical framework of study is built on two opposing notions of sovereignty a pluralist, state-centered sovereignty akin to traditional Westphalian sovereignty, which considers all states equal in their protection from foreign intervention, and a solidarist notion of sovereignty that prioritizes the protection of civilians against mass atrocities over the protection of states against foreign interference. The discussion of the study’s main findings draws on theories of political realism. The research analyses 346 communiqués issued by the Peace and Security Council of the African Union between 2004 and 2014 to ascertain whether the Union maintains a pluralist or a solidarist understanding of sovereignty. The method of analysis builds on content analysis and combines both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The analysis suggests a twofold argument. On the one hand, the AU PSC maintains a state-centered, pluralist understanding of sovereignty. The Peace and Security council categorically links sovereignty to the territorial integrity of member states, thereby conceptualizing sovereignty in the context of bordered nation-states. It also strongly rejects foreign humanitarian interventions and issues sanctions to primarily to protect states, not civilians. On the other hand, the findings suggest that the African Union is slowly moving towards a more solidarist notion of sovereignty that prioritizes civilian protection. Although most calls for sanctions relate sanctions to the protection of the state, since 2012 the AU PSC has increasingly called for sanctions on humanitarian grounds. The Peace and Security Council has also opened up its traditionally closed deliberations for engagement with civil society actors in open sessions on themes closely related to the protection of civilians. An analysis of the findings suggests that the African Union suffers from severe lack of financial self-sufficiency, which undermines its neutrality but also its ability to react rapidly to emerging crises. Moreover, the notion of subsidiarity and seeking African solutions to African problems are prevalent in the Union’s policy discussions, which contribute to rendering it more likely to oppose non-African interventions in its member states. A theoretical discussion of these findings from the perspective of political realism further points to growing economic interdependence and transnationalization of African crises as factors that might explain the African Union’s shift towards solidarist sovereignty.