ECAS 2013

The European Union has been seen as a new type of 'normative power', aiming at diffusing its values through its external policy. The EU influence in Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly worth noting. The EU is historically a leading partner for Africa and has grown increasingly involved in the management of regional conflict and in post-conflict reconstruction in Africa since the mid '90s. The EU presents itself - in Africa as elsewhere - as a successful model of conflict transformation by regional integration. The European institutions have spent a considerable amount of material resources and diplomatic efforts for promoting regionalism in Africa and for encouraging the transition of African regional organizations from a security culture of 'non interference' to one of 'non indifference'. From a theoretical point of view, the EU maybe effective in preventing and transforming African conflicts through compulsion, social learning, changing context through integration and model setting. Yet, both the motivations and the effectiveness of the EU's transregional cooperation with Africa in the field of conflict resolution are controversial. This paper presents REGIOCONF, a new collective research project aiming at investigating systematically the EU's engagement in addressing regional conflicts worldwide, particularly by promoting regional integration. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the project will address the cases of Sahel, the Great Lakes region and Darfur-Sudan.

Ethiopia finds itself in a balancing act between state security and human security. Ethiopia's national security strategy, its cooperation in the global war on terror, and its role in the regional security structure often contradict the different components of human security such as political or community security. Ethiopia is one of the key allies of the EU in Africa. Even if this alliance officially proclaims human security in Ethiopia as its primary strategy, in realty the human security is compromised. This is mainly because Ethiopia is an ally which the EU can count on its fight against terrorism. Moreover, the Ethiopian government has been securitizing the economic growth. Any environmental, political or economic criticism of its economic strategies such as hydropower investments or its cooperation with large scale agribusiness corporations is often interpreted by the government and its supporters as anti-patriotic and subversive to Ethiopia's national security strategy. Some of its economic strategies such as its cooperation with agro-investment giants like Karuturi Global are causing more food insecurity and displacing local communities. This is most probably going to initiate political conflicts between the government and the local communities. Moreover, the agro-investments are leading to health and environmental insecurities due to increased use of pesticides, contamination of ground water and sickness of the employees. The EU hails Ethiopia's economic performance but looks away from its poor democratic records. This paper attempts to explore how the combination of the Ethiopian and EU security strategies affect the materialization of human security in Ethiopia.

Focusing on the European Union's role as a human security and crisis management actor in Africa, its engagement in the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is of specific interest. From 2003 onwards, and in addition to the more traditional areas of development and humanitarian assistance, the EU has been deploying five civil and military missions in the country. However, and despite the volume of civilian and military capabilities provided by the Union, the role the EU actually plays remains unclear as well as whether it meets its own expectations. This paper therefore intends to critically analyse the EU's approach in the DRC by using implementation theory as the theoretical and conceptual framework. Through the empirical investigation of the Union's crisis management activities, based on extensive field work in the DR Congo carried out in 2010, 2012 and 2013, the paper contributes to the understanding of the EU's current role as an actor in crisis management in the specific context of the DRC as well as more generally regarding its potential as a provider of international security. Thereby, questions of coherence and coordination between and within the different European entities will be centred since coherence and coordination in crisis management are understood as crucial with regard to developing a joint European strategic culture. However, preliminary results suggest so far that the Union does not fully exploit its potential as a peace and security actor in the DRC despite its huge financial commitment and the broad range of activities applied.

The human security paradigm epitomises the widening of threats and who is threatened, to encompass individuals by emphasising a human rights dimension to security. Human security treats the security landscape as neutral making no distinction between impact of insecurities on men and women. Mary Kaldor has referred to human security as the 'strategic narrative' of the EU's security paradigm, a claim that is accepted by the EU as outlined in the 2008 Review of the Implementation of the European Security Strategy (ESS). Yet, in recent years, the EU has also sought to highlight the importance of gender and security through its commitment to implement the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325. UNSCR 1325 emphasises the differentiated impact of conflict on women, and their importance to conflict resolution. How then does the EU reconcile its inherent human security narrative with its commitment to gender and security? Although seemingly compatible, human security and a security agenda that emphasizes the importance of gender potentially constitute competing security priorities.

The effectiveness of EU responses to insecurity requires the in-depth analysis of the EU's security practice. By taking a gender perspective to the six principles of human security established by Kaldor as necessary conditions for truly achieving human security, the proposed paper will examine recent EU engagement in Africa. In particular, the essay will evaluate the processes of EU Training Mission in Somalia (EUTM Somalia), with the aim of drawing out lessons for future missions.

In this paper the European Union is envisaged as a global actor with a lot of influence in the African continent. One of the major domains of its foreign policy in the continent is the area of conflict prevention and management. Even though the EU has achieved a number of positive results in this domain, there is still a lot to be done, since the results of the missions still fall short of expectations. Furthermore, a critical examination of the motives that lie behind EU's conflict prevention and management policies and missions in Africa reveals that establishing human security in the continent is not the primary EU objective; it is rather the secondary. Fulfilling the political and other ambitions of the EU are normally the primary objectives. In addition, the most powerful member countries of the EU, especially former colonial masters, use the EU as banner under which they can maintain or even increase their colonial dominance under a new name, the European Union. This brings into question the credibility of the whole issue of European integration and the establishment of the CFSP/ESDP.

By a critical evaluation of certain case studies, this paper tries to find the answer to the following questions:

 By intervening in conflicts in Africa, does the EU pursue the primary interests of Africa, such as the establishment of human security, or does it pursue the interests of its member states?

 How credible and effective is the EU conflict prevention and management policy in Africa?