Conclusions: What Works, What Doesn’t and Why?

The overarching objective of this study was to examine the African Union’s peacekeeping role in African conflicts and also to learn from these operations in order to better understand how to build on these lessons to improve the outcomes of AU peace operations in the future. The review of the literature in the field of armed conflicts, peace operations and those international and African institutions designed to manage conflict, formed the basis for developing a framework for the study. Reviewing the literature also assisted with developing the research questions as well as in designing the field research instruments. The field research and the data analysis provided an empirical basis for the study. Moreover, the research questions were addressed by juxtaposing field data with the information gathered from the scholarly literature. This chapter will follow the structure of this book by revisiting the research questions and addressing them in relation to interpreting the results of the study.