Africa

Current conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on Rwanda

Since the end of World War II, there have been more than 200 armed conflicts around the world, many of them in the last twenty years. The idea of the foundations of the world order in the form of international principles and rules, multilateral treaties and universal international organizations ( UNs ) for world peace and security, protection of human rights, disarmament and economic and cultural cooperation has received increasing support from the general public.

Although Africa has considerable mineral wealth, it is the poorest continent in the world. The exceptions are South Africa and Botswana with their own exchange rates and Nigeria with one of the fastest growing economies in the world. However, the UN ranks 33 African countries among the least developed, where people live mainly on agriculture. What causes poverty? Many see the beginnings of this bad situation in colonialism, others in the declaration of independence and subsequent corruption, despotism, violence and instability.

Somalia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda.

Like most disputes in sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades, ethnic conflicts and the civil war in Rwanda have their roots in the social, political and economic factors of the pre-colonial era. The first inhabitants of the Great Lakes region were the ancestors of today's members of the Twa tribe, which make up about 1% of the total Rwandan population. Around the year 1000 BC, Bantu-speaking Hutus, originally from Central Africa and oriented mainly to agriculture, began to settle in the area, and 500 years later also Tutsis, who came from the north and subsisted mainly on pastoralism. These new people have almost replaced the original population. Until the genocide in 1994, the Tutsis accounted for 10% and the Hutus for 90% of Rwanda's total population.

Attachments, photo gallery

List of used literature and internet sources

The West African security complex is home to a number of dangerous phenomena, such as terrorism, insurgency, organized crime and warlordism. The following text tries to comprehensively capture the interactions of these actors from a somewhat broader perspective.

June 7, 2012 - Azawad Province declares independence, but separatists are divided. Some of them are open about the connection to the ^Al-Qaida.

We know a lot of wars of different lengths from history. Seven days, seven years, thirty years and even a century long. But have you ever wondered how long the shortest war lasted? Believe it or not, it was half an hour. Exactly half an hour and eight minutes. It was not a fight between mafia families or indigenous tribes, but a regular conflict between two sovereign states. It took place more than a hundred years ago on the east coast of Africa, where in August 1896 Great Britain and Zanzibar got into a crossroads, so to speak, (or perhaps crescents - a conflict between a Christian and a Muslim country).

The wave of civil wars, genocide and weak or collapsed states in Africa has certainly become one of the most pressing problems in the post-Cold War world, which is essentially affecting Europe as well. The following text tries to find a correlation between the GDP incomes of African countries and the probability of the outbreak of civil war.

Also in the 21st century, the African continent is constantly torn apart by wars and armed conflicts. Since independence, more than half of African countries have become involved in some of the conflicts and are currently in the process of either fighting for peace or post-conflict peace reconstruction. Peace is one of the most important preconditions for Africa to ensure the continent's future development, but in the future it would be very difficult for each state to ensure the required security individually. According to most African government officials, the only way to achieve this goal is to adopt a common strategy in the name of solidarity and cooperation, especially in view of the deepening global globalization. An illustrative example of current joint efforts to "solve African problems through African ways", for example in the field of security, can be seen in the African Union project.

In this chapter, I would like to address the facts that preceded the creation of the African Union. I will focus mainly on the origin and development of the ideas of pan-Africanism as the ideological basis of this organization. The African Union can be seen as the third phase of the institutionalization of pan-Africanism, and the first phase can be described as the creation of the Pan-African Congress. The establishment of the Organization of African Unity was the result of the second phase of this institutionalization. The principles of operation of the OAJ and the results of its activities will be described and analyzed in detail in the second part of this chapter.

During the 1990s and early 21st century, it became increasingly clear that the further functioning of the OAU was not possible and that it was necessary to transform its interests and capabilities and respond to the changes taking place in the international community by creating a new organization. The African Union began its work in 2002 at a summit in Durban, South Africa, where representatives of 53 African states met. The newly formed organization has set as one of its main goals a change in approach to peace and security issues.

Africa has been estimated to have witnessed approximately 30 conflicts since the 1960s, costing the lives of more than 10 million people on the African continent and costing more than 250 trillion USD. Since the 1980s, Africa has experienced more wars and armed conflicts than any other continent.

At a meeting of the OAU Council of Ministers in 1976, a decision was made to divide Africa into five main regions, within which the individual regional economic communities were subsequently formed. These organizations were supposed to serve as centers of regional economic development from the outset, but the environment of instability and the poor security situation in many parts of Africa slowed down their deeper integration and development.

In ensuring security and stability on the African continent, the AU relies on cooperation with some international organizations, such as the EU, the G8 Group or the United Nations, in financial, material, institutional and logistical terms. In my diploma thesis I will focus mainly on cooperation with the UN as the most important partner in connection with this issue.

The current conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur has been described as the "biggest humanitarian catastrophe" since the end of the Cold War. According to the latest statistics, more than 300,000 people have lost their lives as a result of direct violence or malnutrition and disease in this conflict, which flared up in 2003, and more than 2.5 million have been displaced. Despite the fact that the international community has repeatedly declared its efforts to resolve the current situation and not allow further events such as the genocide in Rwanda to be repeated, not enough necessary and decisive steps have been taken to resolve the crisis.