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The newyearAUUNUNUNAUUNUNUNAUUN UNUNUNAUUNUNUNCARAUAUAUUNUNAUCARYour browser does not support the element. was supposed to herald a bright new era of multilateral co-operation. A slimmed-down peacekeeping force convened by the African Union () but paid for primarily by the was to begin battling against jihadists in Somalia on January 1st, replacing a mission reluctantly funded by the European Union. The arrangement was meant to pave the way for similar operations elsewhere, with the African troops fighting local insurgencies henceforth guaranteed reliable international funding. The Security Council endorsed the new Somalia mission on December 27th. But it is unlikely to live up to its lofty aims. As 2024 drew to a close, diplomats had yet to establish who would pay for it or which countries would contribute peacekeeping troops.The story highlights broader challenges facing multilateral peacekeeping in Africa. As geopolitical competition intensifies, it is becoming harder for the and the to arrange, let alone fund, robust peacekeeping missions. As African governments turn to less savoury alternatives like mercenaries to deal with new security threats, peacekeeping is becoming yet another casualty of today’s messy, multipolar world.Why should anyone care? Peacekeepers have been accused of propping up weak and illegitimate regimes. Too often they have failed to stop atrocities, or to enforce the agreements they were deployed to monitor. Reports of corruption and sexual abuse abound. Yet Africa, which hosts more peacekeepers than any other region, will probably suffer if their importance continues to decline.This has been some time in the making. Peacekeeping in Africa had some success in the 2000s, helping to prevent countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone relapsing into civil war and nudging them to move towards elections. Yet no new peacekeeping mission has been launched in Africa since 2014. In 2023 peacekeepers withdrew from Mali, after a decade fighting jihadists there in vain. Congo’s government wants troops to leave. And though a report in September called for an independent force to protect civilians in war-torn Sudan, neither the Security Council nor the is close to authorising one.One problem highlighted by the fraught Somalia peacekeeping task is money. The resolution authorising the mission postpones the question of funding until the middle of 2025. The ’s overall peacekeeping budget fell by more than $2bn between 2016 and 2024, down from $8bn to around $6bn, even as peacekeepers had to handle increasingly complex threats. Nicholas Haysom, who heads the ’s mission in South Sudan, notes that his troops are expected simultaneously to grapple with “six mini civil wars”, mediate local peace deals and help prepare the country for elections. “If you over-ask and under-resource, you won’t get the results you want,” he says.That undermines the legitimacy of troops whose job, after all, is to keep the peace. “Civilians tend to judge missions by the security they offer, or fail to offer,” says Comfort Ero, who runs the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank. Many Congolese consider the , whose troops arrived 25 years ago, incapable of deterring the armed groups .Another problem is the changing character of conflict in Africa. Though the role of peacekeepers has expanded from a narrow focus on monitoring ceasefires to “peace-building” and preventing atrocities, the strict limits on letting them actually fight often make them look feeble. Conflict often straddles national borders. Many of the groups involved are jihadist extremists. Faced with such adversaries, many African governments are less interested in negotiation and consider peacekeepers ineffectual. “What is a peace mission if you are facing terrorism?” asks one frustrated diplomat.Until recently, peacekeeping had at least stayed fairly free of geopolitical rancour. In the Security Council “peacekeeping was one of the last things which was consensus-based,” says Arthur Boutellis, a former peacekeeper and author of a new book on the subject. Yet in 2018 Russia and China began to abstain on resolutions concerning peace operations. The trend intensified after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Russia has since helped orchestrate the closure of the mission in Mali after troops from Wagner, Russia’s mercenary outfit, arrived there. Wagner fighters are said to have threatened officials in the Central African Republic ().Many governments have become stridently nationalistic in voicing their disdain for multilateralism. The ’s new Somalia mission is hampered by a dispute between Somalia and Ethiopia, which has thrown into doubt the participation of Ethiopian troops who were the backbone of the previous mission. A mooted civilian-protection mission in Sudan was scuppered in 2024 over objections from Sudan’s rulers. In 2004, by contrast, the had been able to override similar objections by Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s dictator at the time. “With a clear, coherent political strategy, the region can convince a host government to accept a peacekeeping mission, or at least acquiesce,” argues Solomon Dersso of Amani Africa, a think-tank in Ethiopia. No such consensus exists on the continent today.So the role of peacekeepers will probably continue to diminish. “I don’t think we are going to see a major, multidimensional peacekeeping mission again for a while,” says Mr Boutellis. Donald Trump is widely expected to slash America’s contribution to peacekeeping, which could reduce its shrunken budget by another third. The proposed funding mechanism for new missions may die on the vine.Private military companies, such as Russia’s Africa Corps (a rebranded Wagner) and Turkey’s Sadat, are likely to benefit. So are countries offering to hire out their own soldiers. Rwanda, which has intervened to help governments in Mozambique and , hopes to hawk its troops to other countries. The United Arab Emirates, already a big supplier of arms to Africa, is thinking of setting up a foreign legion. Where multilateralism still exists, it will probably be through ad hoc coalitions that will have to offer more robust fighting mandates than conventional peacekeepers have. “Basically, what these governments want are forces which operate more like mercenaries,” says Mr Dersso.This more fragmented security landscape will probably be worse for Africans. For all their faults, most peacekeeping missions at least had a mandate to protect civilians and pay attention to human rights. Private firms or national armies taking their place rarely have such qualms.
