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2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

16. Africa at the United Nations: From Dominance to Weakness

Author : James O. C. Jonah

Published in: Africa and the World

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Chapter 16 assesses the strength of Africa’s engagement with the United Nations since the 1950s. The author argues that the African position within the United Nations has moved from one of dominance to one of decline, providing a brief but meticulous background and analysis of the key challenges that have confronted African governments within the world body during and since the Cold War. The Security Council is still lopsided, in that it no longer represents the balance of power in the world demographically. The chapter emphasises that it is therefore important for the African continent to steer itself away from dependency, and pay and fund its institutions as well as its UN dues.

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previous chapter Africa and the Middle East: Shifting Alliances and Strategic Partnerships

next chapter Africa and the International Criminal Court

This chapter is based on James O.C. Jonah, “A Life in Peacekeeping”, a paper presented at the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR) seminar Towards a New Pax-Africana: Making, Keeping, and Building Peace in Africa, Stellenbosch (28–31 August 2013); and James O.C. Jonah, “Africa and the United Nations”, a paper presented at the CCR seminar Africa and External Actors, Cape Town (24–25 August 2016). I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dawn Nagar, Senior Researcher at the Centre for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town, for her research and assistance as I completed this chapter.

“A Critique of the United Nations Security Council”, 5 April 2013, http://.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions-the-united-nations-security-council

James O.C. Jonah, “The Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and the Secretariat” (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2009), pp. 65–85.

Robert H. Jackson, “Negative Sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa”, Review of International Studies 12(4) (1986), pp. 247–64.

R. Emerson, “Colonialism, Political Development, and the UN”, in Norman J. Padelford and Leland M. Goodrich (eds), The United Nations in the Balance (New York: Praeger, 1965), pp. 120–39.

See especially Stanley Hoffmann, “In Search of a Thread: The UN in the Congo Labyrinth”, Africa and International Organization, vol. 16, no. 2 (Spring, 1962), pp. 331–61, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2705388

Madeleine G. Kalb, The Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa—From Eisenhower to Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1982).

Jackson, “Negative Sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa”.

Jonah, “The Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and the Secretariat”.

Toyin Falola, Key Events in African History: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002), p. 243.

The first group of United Nations military observers arrived in the mission area on 24 January 1949 to supervise the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. These observers, under the command of the military adviser appointed by the UN Secretary General, formed the nucleus of the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan. See http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unmogip

UNTSO’s activities have been and still are spread over territory within five states, and therefore it has relations with five host countries—Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Syrian Arab Republic. See http://untso.unmissions.org

See also Centre for Conflict Resolution, “The African Union: Regional and Global Challenges”, seminar report (August 2016), http://www.ccr.org.za

See “United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, Fact Sheet”, 2016, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/documents/bnote0416.pdf

See “United Nations Development Programme, Our Projects”, 2016, http://open.undp.org/#2016/filter/region-RBA

Henry Anyidoho, “A Tale of Two Tragedies: Rwanda and Darfur”, in Adekeye Adebajo and Helen Scanlon (eds), A Dialogue of the Deaf: Essays on Africa and the United Nations (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2006), p. 154.

Title: Africa at the United Nations: From Dominance to Weakness
Author: James O. C. Jonah
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Africa and the World
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62589-8

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-62590-4

Copyright Year: 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62590-4_16