The Centre for Social Sciences Research (CSSR) and the  Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa  (IDCPPA) at the University of Cape Town invite you to join us for a lunchtime seminar on 27 February 2024 at 12:45pm. The seminar will be presented by Dr Michael Abey.

About the Seminar:

Civil Society Participation in Conflict Early Warning & Response Systems of the AU, ECOWAS, IGAD and SADC

Civil society participation in the conflict early warning and response systems (CEWRS) of African intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) is not only expected to benefit their ability to collect data, conduct analyses and timely respond to the potential escalation of violent conflict but also augment the relevance of conflict prevention efforts for citizens. These hopes contrast with the systems’ protracted operationalisation, low capacity of civil society organisations (CSOs) and challenges of integrating civil society actors into (inter) governmental institutions. Questioning whether participation delivered expected benefits, the paper examines how CSOs contributed to data collection, analyses, warning and responses in the CEWRS of the AU, ECOWAS, IGAD and SADC. It assesses the comparative advantages of the participation models in the four organisations that constitute building blocks of the African Peace & Security Architecture (APSA). Finding that participation hardly met expectations raised in early warning literature, the paper argues that, for civil society inclusion to deliver, CSO networks would need to emulate the West African model by building independent CEWRS and linking them to those of IGOs rather than solely feeding information into (inter)governmental systems. The study is based on 60 key-informant interviews with representatives of the AU, ECOWAS, IGAD, SADC and CSOs. It holds transferable lessons for the participation of civil society actors in inter(governmental) structures for early warning and conflict prevention in the APSA and beyond.

Speakers

Dr. Michael Abey is a postdoc and lecturer at the University of Basel and an IDCPPA associate. His academic and policy research focuses on the APSA, mediation, civil society inclusion, peace agreement implementation, transitional governance, intrastate conflicts, and coups d’états in Africa.

Michael holds a PhD from the University of Basel. He worked at the University of Edinburgh and Graduate Institute Geneva, conducted studies for IJR, PeaceRep, the Kroc Institute and Nordic Africa Institute, and was a visiting fellow at WITS, UWC, HSRC and the University of Zimbabwe.

 

 27 February 2024
 12:45 - 14:00 SAST
  CSSR Seminar Room, 4.29 Robert Leslie Social Science Building, UCT

Hosted by the Centre for Social Science Research and the Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa