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This article is part of the series — Raisina Files 2025
One-third of all the armed inter- and intra-state conflicts across the world since 1946 have taken place in Africa.[1] Today, at the quarter mark of a new century and following a brief period of optimism, the scourge of armed conflict continues to haunt the continent.[2] While there was an overall reduction in armed conflict at the turn of the century, African states such as Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, and numerous other countries all witnessed either a protraction or escalation of deadly conflicts in 2024.[3] The humanitarian consequences of these conflicts show that it is civilians who bear the brunt.
While wars or armed conflict between states have gradually declined, there has been a corresponding increase in non-state armed conflicts that have become more deadly.[4] These include civil wars such as in Sudan, where a power struggle between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in 2023 has resulted in the fastest-growing humanitarian crisis in the world.[5] Insurgencies and counterinsurgencies have also become more catastrophic. For example, fatalities from the clashes between the Ethiopian government and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLA) and the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) increased from 1,592 in 2020 to a staggering 8,637 in 2021.[6] Violent extremist groups have also stepped up attacks targeting civilians in the Central Sahel states of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger since 2023 as well as in Mozambique beginning in 2017.
These conflicts have resulted in high civilian casualties, grave human rights and international humanitarian law violations, unprecedented internal displacement and refugee crises, and endemic political instability. The devastation caused by the Sudan conflict is such that one out of every six displaced people globally is Sudanese.[7] As a further indication of the severity of the problem, Africa is also over-represented in global humanitarian appeals. The 2025 United Nations Global Humanitarian Overview lists the Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, and Sudan as countries suffering protracted crises, with humanitarian appeals having run consecutively for over 20 years.[8]
At their core, the challenges faced by Africa in protecting civilians from armed conflict in the 21st century stem from failures to address the root causes of conflicts. Existing frameworks and instruments have also failed to establish rapid and effective protection mechanisms to shield civilians from the threat posed by armed groups. The 1994 Rwanda genocide remains the most devastating failure in civilian protection in Africa.a The scale of gross human rights and international humanitarian law violations experienced in Rwanda and the tumultuous aftermath of the genocide that still ripples through Central Africa highlight the precariousness of reliance on tools such as international peacekeeping. The United Nations Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) essentially became a spectator to genocide.[9]
In the enquiry into the catastrophic failure following the genocide, the UN found the enabling conditions to be stark: primarily, the lack of capacity, resources, and political will to protect civilians from predictable threats.[10] Despite earnest endeavours by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and its successor the African Union (AU) to learn from the mistakes of 1994, echoes from the past remained, and the AU and the international community failed to prevent the recurrence of genocide in Darfur in 2003 and further, in Sudan, the endless cycle of conflict that has driven the country to the brink of state failure.[11]
In all these cases, political will is key to achieving any type of solution; “political will” is not easily defined, though, nor reached. Scholars have clarified that political will exists when a sufficient set of decision-makers who share a common understanding of a particular problem is committed to supporting a commonly perceived and potentially effective policy solution.[12] Yet in most conflicts in Africa today, the protection of civilians does not seem to be a primary concern for any of the decision-makers.
The primary responsibility for protecting civilians from armed conflict lies with the state. However, as demonstrated in Africa, the state has become increasingly involved as a party in armed conflict either in fighting insurgencies and rebellions or engaging in one-sided violence against civilians. Both states and non-state armed actors have been increasingly implicated in violations of human rights and humanitarian law. In this scenario, it is increasingly challenging, complex, or even impossible to hold the state as the primary duty bearer accountable for the protection of civilians due to the inherent conflict of interest involved.[13] States with a record of systematic human rights abuses or repression of political dissent are often reluctant, or even hostile, to attempts to hold security forces responsible for the commission of atrocities against civilians.
Accountability is further complicated by the proliferation of multiple actors in conflict theatres across the continent: militias, transnational violent extremist groups, and even private security companies that have little incentive to observe the rules of war. These nonstate actors operate across Africa’s diffuse state borders, blurring the lines of responsibility to and accountability for atrocities committed against civilians. The emergence of groups such as Boko Haram in the Sahel, Al-Shabaab in East Africa, and Ahlu Sunna wa Jama (ASWJ) in Mozambique in the 21st century has made the resolution of long-running conflicts near impossible.[14] These groups have been formed in the crucible of centre-periphery cleavages, often thriving in marginalised areas where the state is absent. Many states threatened by extremist groups also have a proclivity for heavy-handed military responses with often high civilian collateral damage. Addressing the threats posed by such extremist groups demands more than a securitised response. An imperative is the resolution of deep underlying grievances against the state that create conducive conditions for extremist groups to mobilise and operate, to begin with.[15]
Accountability at the regional and continental level is also complicated. Numerous African states have been credibly linked with supporting militia groups, insurgents, and other non-state armed actors with whom said states have mutual interests to wage conflict in neighbouring countries. This is best illustrated in the DRC and South Sudan which have been turned into conflict theatres: Conflicting neighbouring state interests morph into bloody proxy wars that leave civilian populations often isolated from the centre and left at the mercy of armed groups.
In such scenarios, remedies offered by frameworks such as the African Union Peace and Security Architecture (APSA)—the AU’s blueprint for promotion of peace, security and stability in the continent—often fall short in preventing the escalation of armed conflict.[16] APSA is designed as a strategic framework for peace and security in Africa to encompass, among others, early warning and conflict prevention, peace-making, peace support operations, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction and development, promotion of respect for human rights and humanitarian action, and disaster management. Its operationalisation is hinged on the fundamental principle of subsidiarity, where the five regional economic communities (RECs) serve as first responders to conflict situations through instruments that include diplomacy and mediation at the onset of conflicts, and peace support operations such as hybrid AU and UN peacekeeping missions—once there is a “peace” to be kept or enforced.[17]
However, the main shortcoming remains the reliance on member states to operationalise this framework and the consequent disparity in results. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), for example, has a better track record in early warning, peacebuilding, and even military intervention in The Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in the face of inaction by the international community.[18] Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has grappled to contain the escalation of conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. This variance has been attributed largely to the member states’ investments in the two regions to empower the respective apparatus. The ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), formed in 1990, has intervened in multiple conflict situations; in contrast, the East Africa Standby Force (EASF) has remained dormant amidst the escalation of humanitarian situations in South Sudan, Sudan, and Ethiopia.[19]
Internationally, the lack of political will is succinctly illustrated by the chronic inability of the principal global organ for the maintenance of global peace and security, the UN Security Council (UNSC), to prioritise civilian protection over the interests of the five permanent member states, or the P5—China, France, Russia, the UK, and the United States. While this is not unique to Africa, it is a dynamic that leaves the fate of entire communities facing the threat of armed conflict—and in desperate need of concerted, rapid, and decisive interventions—to the vagaries of great-power political calculi.[20] The UN Charter endows the P5 with the power to veto any action by the UNSC, often stymieing urgently needed global action to protect civilians from armed conflict. The use of veto power by P5 member states has often delayed critical action such as the vetoing in November 2024 of a UNSC Resolution calling on Sudan’s warring parties to cease hostilities and ensure delivery of humanitarian aid.[21]
Investing in Conflict Early Warning Systems
The natural starting point for ensuring that civilians are protected from armed conflict in Africa, as with anywhere else in the world, should be investing in early warning mechanisms and conflict prevention. Most grave human rights and humanitarian law violations against civilians are not an inescapable reality but are likely predictable, at best preventable, and at worst, mitigatable. Frameworks such as APSA should leverage technological advancements to improve conflict early warning systems and invest in capabilities to independently monitor conflict situations before they evolve into humanitarian catastrophes. While technology is a double-edged sword, as seen in the use of social media to spread hate speech and disinformation that only accelerate violence, there have also been promising initiatives to use these tools to monitor and predict the outbreak of violence. An example is the innovative use of platforms such as Ushahidi as part of IGAD’s Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism around key events such as elections that are likely to be triggers for armed conflict.[22] Linking early warning systems to both hard and soft conflict prevention and management tools such as preventive diplomacy, security force deployment, and anticipatory humanitarian action is critical to mitigating the potential impact of conflict events.
Community-Focused Protection Mechanisms
The upsurge in violence and flagrant violations of human rights and humanitarian law across the continent also highlights the dearth of community-focused and conflictsensitive civilian protection mechanisms that can provide the last line of defence against armed groups. While there has been progress in the evolution of conflict prevention and management frameworks such as APSA, the safety and security of communities vulnerable to armed conflict remains inextricably linked to the willingness of states to prioritise civilian protection in conflict situations.[23]
A familiar pattern is the African Union Peace and Security Council’s (AUPSC) preference for diplomacy and mediation at the onset of hostilities between a government and non-state armed groups such as rebels even as the warring parties commit atrocities against civilians. This poses a conundrum over whether the firmly established principles of sovereignty and non-interference in internal state affairs take precedence over the protection that civilians are entitled to under humanitarian law. By the time warring parties come to the negotiating table and make commitments to protect civilians, it is often too late for the dead and wounded, internally displaced, and refugees.[24]
It should be possible for Africa’s RECs to chew gum and walk by deploying standby troops to conflict zones, creating safe humanitarian zones or corridors to reach the most affected, and sending observers to monitor human rights and humanitarian law violations even as the search for a political solution between warring parties drags on. These mechanisms should tap into and work with local actors to ensure they are fit-for-purpose and conflictsensitive. As an example, any troops deployed to quell fighting must understand the local context and work with existing community and local authority structures to avoid exacerbating any ethnic, tribal, or sectarian divisions while discharging their mandate. The lessons from Rwanda and Darfur are a stark reminder that the protection mechanisms should be triggered independent of political processes before it is too late.
UN Reform
The elephant in the room for the protection of civilians from armed conflict is the in-built, fundamental, and existential inequality in the global peace and security architecture.[25] The UN system casts a long shadow over the fate of civilians threatened by armed conflict. Over the past eight decades, the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council have exercised deterministic influence on conflict in numerous situations, occasionally with devastating consequences for civilians trapped in conflict zones in Africa where the P5 have competing strategic interests. Members of the P5 not only hold veto power over any action by the UNSC but also command the lion’s share of global arms sales. Between 2019 and 2023 alone, the arms trade of P5 members accounted for more than three-fourths of global arms sales.[26] Oxfam estimated over a decade ago that 95 percent of the most used arms in African conflicts are supplied from outside the continent, including from P5 countries.[27]
Any meaningful progress towards the protection of civilians and enforcing respect for international humanitarian law will inevitably hinge on the prospects of democratising the UNSC to make it more inclusive, efficient, and responsive to threats facing civilians trapped in conflict. The ways of working of the UNSC and the use of veto power should be reformed to ensure that UNSC’s decision-making on interventions in conflict and humanitarian situations are based on the humanitarian imperative and not the strategic interests of the P5.[28] The veto power has been used to block critical action such as resolutions calling for ceasefires or demands on warring parties to ensure humanitarian access in countries such as Sudan, prolonging humanitarian suffering.[29]
The challenge of protecting civilians from armed conflict in Africa sets out what seems to be a Sisyphean task. Past failures such as the genocides in Rwanda in 1994 and in Darfur in 2004 have been spectacularly catastrophic and should have provided sobering lessons on the need to put in place robust protection mechanisms to shield civilians from the excesses of war. However, as demonstrated, the lack of political will to establish and operationalise effective and responsive protection mechanisms perpetuates situations that leave civilian populations severely vulnerable to increasingly deadly conflict.
As a proposed way forward, African Union member states must invest in strengthening conflict early warning systems and linking them to community-based and conflict-sensitive protection mechanisms that respond proactively, rapidly, and effectively to emerging crises. The African Union Commission (AUC), the Permanent Representatives of the African Union Peace and Security Commission (AU PSC), and the respective secretaries of each REC must work closer together to bolster early warning systems and to solicit buy-in from African governments to reap the peace dividends that would accrue as well as strengthen civilian protection norms.
African civil society groups should also buttress the case for a reimagination and redesign of APSA to adopt more conflict-sensitive approaches, to be more inclusive of local actors and solutions closer to conflict-affected communities, and to incentivise and empower regional actors to act boldly and swiftly in ensuring civilian protection remains the primary objective of interventions in conflict situations.
These efforts, however, would be incomplete without confronting and addressing the fundamental inequality and imbalance in the global peace and security architecture that serves the narrow interests of the powerful at the expense of the fate of the global majority. A reform of the UN Security Council to make it more democratic, inclusive, and effective is long overdue and key to ensuring that the global system prioritises civilian protection over realpolitik. The wind is already in the sails of the UN General Assembly, and the ambitions outlined in the latest UN reform process through the 2023 Summit of the Future call for vigilance by the global majority. Emerging powers should sustain the momentum for UN reform by leveraging their influence through more inclusive platforms such as the G20 and BRICS to overcome the stasis and imbalance of power that has dogged the UN.
a Over the course of about 100 days between April and July 1994, nearly one million ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu were systematically targeted and killed by Hutu radical militias in Rwanda despite the presence of the United Nations.
Endnotes
[1] Johan Brosché and Kristine Höglund, The Diversity of Peace and War in Africa, SIPRI, 2015, 110-121.
[2] Júlia Palik, Siri Aas Rustad, and Fredrik Methi, “Conflict Trends in Africa, 1989–2019,” PRIO Paper (2020).
[3] Jakkie Cilliers, “Why is Africa More Violent in 2024?” ISS Today, January 2025,https://issafrica.org/iss-today/why-were-africa-s-violence-levels-up-in-2024
[4] Brosché and Höglund, The Diversity of Peace and War in Africa
[5] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), Global Humanitarian Overview 2025, January 2025, https://humanitarianaction.info/document/global-humanitarian-overview-2025.
[6] Heni Nsaibia, “The Sahel: A Deadly New Era in the Decades-Long Conflict,” Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, 2024.
[7] UN-OCHA, Global Humanitarian Overview 2025
[8] UN-OCHA, Global Humanitarian Overview 2025
[9] Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Vintage Canada, 2009).
[10] Douglas G. Anglin, “Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda,” International Journal 56, no. 1 (2001): 149.
[11] Adeoye O. Akinola and Emmaculate Asige Liaga, “Africa and the Scourge of Conflict and Insecurity,” In Contemporary Issues on Governance, Conflict and Security in Africa (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023), pp. 1-15.
[12] Lori Ann, Post Amber NW Raile, and Eric D. Raile, “Defining Political Will,” Politics & Policy 38, no. 4 (2010): 653-676.
[13] Jeffrey Gettleman, “Africa’s Forever Wars,” Foreign Policy 178 (2010): 73.
[14] Héni Nsaibia, “The Sahel: A Deadly New Era in the Decades-Long Conflict,” ACLED, 2024.
[15] Akinola and Liaga, “Africa and the Scourge of Conflict and Insecurity”
[16] Solomon A. Dersso, “The APSA, Ten Years On: Mapping the Evolution of Regional Mechanisms for Conflict Management and Resolution,” African Conflicts and Regional Interventions (2016): 13.
[17] Dersso, The APSA, Ten Years On.
[18] Øystein H. Rolandsen, “South-South Cooperation at the Advent of Great Power Competition: The Capacity of IGAD and ECOWAS to Deal with Threat Proliferation in Africa,” 2020.
[19] Rolandsen, “South-South Cooperation at the Advent of Great Power Competition”
[20] Samir Saran, “The United Nations Security Council is Constituted to Further the Colonisation Project,” ORF Expert Speak, June 2023, https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-united-nations-security-council-is-constituted-tofurther- the-colonisation-project
[21] United Nations, https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15901.doc.htm
[22] Patrick Meier, “Crowdsourcing to Map Conflict, Crises, and Humanitarian Responses,” In Peace and Conflict 2014 (Routledge, 2016), pp. 122-141.
[23] Adekeye Adebajo, “The Curse of Berlin: Africa’s Security Dilemmas,” Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft 4 (2005): 83-98.
[24] Dersso, The APSA, Ten Years On.
[25] Saran, “The United Nations Security Council is Constituted to Further the Colonisation Project”
[26] Marc Cohen, Amy Croome, and Elise Nalbandian, “Vetoing Humanity: How a Few Powerful Nations Hijacked Global Peace and Why Reform is Needed at the UN Security Council,” 2024.
[27] Debbie Hillier, “Africa’s Missing Billions: International Arms Flows and the Cost of Conflict,” 2007.
[28] Saran, “The United Nations Security Council is Constituted to Further the Colonisation Project”
[29] United Nations, https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15901.doc.htm
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