Abstract
As the pre-eminent regional organisation entrusted with the maintenance of peace and security in Africa, the African Union (AU) has been engaged with the development of legal and normative instruments as well as mechanisms for addressing complex security challenges confronting the continent. It would appear however that the AU is lagging behind on developing relevant instruments and mechanisms for addressing one particular threat which has recently emerged, namely, the phenomenon of people participating in armed conflicts in countries of which they are not nationals or habitually resident, i.e. foreign fighters. Although Africans have joined armed conflicts in countries of which they are non-nationals and nationals of other countries have been involved in conflicts on the African continent, the focus of the Continent’s collective security organisations, i.e. both the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and its successor the AU, has largely been on mercenaries and in more recent times, those foreign fighters who engage in acts of terrorism. The aim of this chapter is twofold: first, to discuss whether and to what degree the general provisions for peace and security may be used to address the issue of foreign fighters, and second, to look at additional measures that can be instrumental to strengthen the fight against terrorism and extremism in the region.
The author is a Research Fellow at the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy, University of Ghana, Legon.
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Notes
- 1.
See Chap. 1 by de Guttry, Capone and Paulussen in this volume.
- 2.
African Union 2014a.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
Almost all the security officials with whom I had conversations on the issue stated that they had come across some people who had participated in armed conflicts outside their countries of origin because they believed that their religion was under threat. One of the conclusions of the Regional Conference on Countering Violent Extremism was the fact that there were a considerable number of foreign fighters in Africa, especially those joining the Islamist group al Shabaab, who were motivated solely by a religious belief that they were duty bound to undertake jihad.
- 6.
- 7.
Agger 2014; see also ‘Region’s leaders seek to push foreign fighters from Central African Republic’, Reuters 21 October 2013.
- 8.
- 9.
‘Mali Crisis: Foreign Fighters come to help Islamist’, BBC News 23 October 2012. See also African Union 2012, para 4.
- 10.
- 11.
For example, the Argentine Revolutionary Che Guevara joined Laurent Kabilla’s Simba Movement on ideological grounds. For more on this, see British Broadcasting Corporation, ‘Che Guevara (1928–1967)’, BBC History, 25 May 2015.
- 12.
For more on this, see Chap. 9 by Sommario in this volume.
- 13.
This generalisation has been arrived at from a combination of David Shinn’s profile of foreign fighters in Somalia and an analysis of the profile of foreign fighters in Africa. See Shinn 2011.
- 14.
This is particularly true of foreign fighters from the diaspora who return to fight in their native countries and foreign fighters from neighbouring countries. Although separated by artificial borders, some of these people belong to the same group and consider themselves family despite the de jure differences.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
African Union 2002b, Article 3(d).
- 18.
For more on this, see Ewi and Aning 2006.
- 19.
African Union 2002a.
- 20.
Ibid., Para 12.
- 21.
African Union 2014b, para 16(iii).
- 22.
For a detailed presentation of the OSCE’s framework, see Chap. 18 by Creta in this volume.
- 23.
African Union 2002a, para 9.
- 24.
For more on these activities, see ‘Workshop on ’Radicalization, Violent Extremism, De-radicalization, Counter Radicalization, Counter Violent Extremism in ECCAS Region‘, Brazzaville, Republic of Congo’ African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism Newsletter, Issue 8, July–December 2014, pp. 5–6.
- 25.
Peace and Security Council, 455th Meeting at the Level of Heads of State and Government, Overview as of 24 November 2014, Nairobi, Kenya, 2 September 2014.
- 26.
Ibid.
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Darkwa, L. (2016). The African Union and the Phenomenon of Foreign Fighters in Africa. In: de Guttry, A., Capone, F., Paulussen, C. (eds) Foreign Fighters under International Law and Beyond. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-099-2_19
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