ASSESSMENT OF THE AFRICAN UNION AND RESOLUTION OF THE POST 2010-2011 ELECTION CRISIS IN COTE D’IVOIRE

ASSESSMENT OF THE AFRICAN UNION AND RESOLUTION OF THE POST 2010-2011 ELECTION CRISIS IN COTE D’IVOIRE

INTRODUCTION
The African Union (AU) was established in 2001 to replace the Organization of African Unity (OAU) (OAU). The African Union (AU) is a regional organization that brings together the continent's fifty-three (53) nations for economic and political cooperation. The structure consist of the following
– The Assembly
– The Executive Council
– The permanent Representative Committee
– The Commission
– The Specialized Technical Committee
– The Pan-African Parliament
– The Court Of Justice
– The Economic Social and Cultural Council
– The Financial institution
- The Peace and Security Council, which has 15 members and is in charge of monitoring and intervening in conflicts on the continent utilizing an Early Warning System. According to Article 3 of the African Union's Constitutive Act, the organization has a number of tasks, including: 

– Promoting peace, security, and stability on the continent 

According to Article 3 of the African Union's Constitutive Act, the organization has a number of tasks, including: 

- To promote and safeguard human and people's rights in conformity with the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, as well as other relevant human rights instruments.

Article 4 of the Constitutive Act outlines the organization's essential values, which include: 

Article 4 of the Constitutive Act outlines the organization's essential values, which include: 

– Consideration and rejection of unlawful changes of government. – The right of the union to interfere in a member state according to a resolution of the Assembly under grave circumstances such as war, crimes, genocide, and crime against humanity.

Africa is home to a large number of military conflicts.

It is self-evident that Africa has been confronted by a range of complicated political, economic, environmental, and social upheavals in unprecedented degrees and intensities since the dawn of the twenty-first century. These issues have thrown the continent into a succession of the most catastrophic intra-state wars seen in a single continent anywhere in the globe in the previous 15 years. The United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs labeled eight of the fifteen "complex crises" in Africa (Herbst, 1998; Collers and Mills, 1999). In accordance with the foregoing, Galadima (1990) summarized the continent as follows: In central Africa, ethnic strife erupts in Zaire, Burundi, and Rwanda. In Sudan, there was an armed insurrection in Northern Uganda, as well as border disputes with Ethiopia and Eritrea. Despite attempts to resurrect it, Somalia remains a failed state. In Southern Africa, an armed revolt took place in Lesotho, while Angola was in chaos. Liberia was on the verge of collapse in West Africa, even as rebels wreaked havoc in Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau. While Cote d'Ivoire is dealing with armed insurgency, Sudan is dealing with a humanitarian disaster as a result of a brutal intra-state struggle that has reached genocidal proportions.

The African Union has made an effort to become a more active participant in African conflict settlement.

Between 2002 and 2004, a civil war erupted in Cote d'Ivoire, involving the government of then-President Laurent Gbagbo and the rebel forces Nouvelles de Cote d'Ivoire (New forces), which represented Muslim Northerners who felt discriminated against by the politically dominant and predominantly Christian Southerners. In 2002, France dispatched peacekeepers to Cote d'Ivoire under Operation Unicorn, and in February 2004, the United Nations formed the United Nations Operation in Cote d'Ivoire (UNOCI) to assist the Ivorian parties in implementing the peace deal negotiated in January 2003. By late 2004, the majority of the battles were concluded, and the nation had been divided between insurgents in the north and the government in the south. The two parties agreed to hold new elections in March 2007, but they were postponed until 2010, five years after Gbagbo's tenure was meant to have ended. The country's independent Electoral Commission certified Alassane Ouattara the winner of the 2010 Ivorian presidential election, but the president of the Constitutional Council, a Gbagbo friend, ruled the results illegitimate and declared Gbagbo the winner. Gbagbo and Ouattara both declared victory. The United Nations, the African Union, ECOWAS, the European Union, and France, a former colonial power, have all expressed their support for Ouattara, who was widely regarded to have defeated Gbagbo at the voting box and called on him to stand down.

In March 2011, the post-election crisis in Cote d'Ivoire erupted into a full-fledged armed war between troops loyal to Laurent Gbagbo, the country's President since 2000, and supporters of internationally recognized President-elect Alasane Ouattara. The crisis reached a critical level after months of failed discussions and periodic bloodshed between supporters of the two sides. Ouattara's forces gained control of much of the nation, with Gbagbo entrenched in Abidjan, the country's largest city. As a result, the focus of this research is on the African Union and the resolution of the post-election situation in Cote d'Ivoire in 2010/2011. It would be organized into five chapters in order to vividly display the facts that make up the work's body.

Statement of research problem

Africa is separated into five regions: North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa (a continent with a high frequency of violent conflicts). There is no doubting that Africa has seen the greatest number of conflicts, particularly in the last fifty years. Conflicts are caused by economic, political, and social issues, which are aggravated by poverty, poor governance, and weak nations (Rugunda 2010). Each of these regions has a regional organization that was originally formed to promote economic growth, but it has grown in strength and organization over time to engage in dispute resolution. Several wars have been documented in these regions, but the focus of this research is on the post-election issues in Cote d'Ivoire, for which the African Union (previously the Organization of African Unity) was formed to intervene. The African Union's right to intervene by decision, as stipulated in the Constitutive Act, arose from the continent's dreadful track record of massacres, gross and massive violations of human rights, and large-scale population displacement, which have resulted in the African continents hosting the highest number of casualties due to factors ranging from conflicts to bad governance, poverty, failed states, and other factors. Failure to follow the Act's ideals and standards, which constitute the cornerstone of the African Union, is likely to demand any interventions. Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act was enacted with the sole purpose of allowing the African Union to more effectively resolve disputes on the continent without having to sit back and do nothing because of the principle of non-interference in member states' domestic affairs.

The source of conflict in the Ivorian issue is a dispute over two presidential candidates who were proclaimed victors at various times following the November 28, 2010 presidential election. The electoral impasse had heightened political tensions and violence, resulting in several fatalities and human rights violations, prompting attacks by foreign forces. Scholars such as Mwagiru (2000), Mwagiru (2011), and Mpangala (2000) have studied the resolution of conflicts in Africa, seeing them as both simple and complex issues that impede the continent's socioeconomic and political development, requiring resolution processes and peacebuilding as well as effective mechanisms to manage the conflict. In order to resolve conflicts, certain information about the conflict must be gathered, which is why Nyirenda (2000) and Nyerere (1974) explained that conflicts are classified into different types, and the nature of any conflict must be determined in order to assist mediators or the international community in determining what mechanisms to use in such a situation. Solomon writes on the post-election upheaval in Ivory Coast (2011), Reports from the National Coalition for Responsibility to Protect (2011) and the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa (2011), both of which included Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria, all viewed the cause of the crisis as electoral misconduct, in which two candidates were declared winners at different times, and maintained that the African Union needed to put in place several mechanisms to curb the situation in order to maintain peace and security. However, Abel Aziz, the head of the African Union's Peace and Security Council, sees the situation in Cote d'ivoire as a local issue that can be resolved via Africa's expertise, culture, and values. Human rights are the fundamental economical, political, and moral concepts that govern how individuals and groups are treated (Obasi 2007). Analysts are concerned about Africa's constant state of war or disaster. They failed to see the crisis as both domestic and international issues that the African Union could not handle on its own; as a result of the nature of the crisis, it militated the intervention of the African Union and other International Communities, despite various measures being put in place to resolve the issue, as well as the viable link between the crisis and human rights violations.

Objectives of the study

the primary objective for this study are as follows:

The general objective of this study is to critically examine the Africa Union

Resolution of the post 2010/2011 post-election crisis in Cote d’ivoire. While specifically, the study seeks to:  

1. To  Ascertain the causes of the election crisis of 2010/2011
2.  Formation of The Africa union and mediation process in Africa
3.  Critically examine if the Africa Union peace process mechanism in Cote d’ivoire enhance the resolution of the crisis.

Significant of the study

The importance of this study on the African Union's efforts to achieve peace and stability on the continent through conflict resolution institutions is enormous. It demonstrates how serious the search for global peace and security, as well as the preservation of humanity's lives and property, is. We present the theoretical and practical implications using a two-pronged method. On a theoretical level, the research will demonstrate the African Union's inability to address the situation in Cote d'iviore, as well as the fact that many people's rights were infringed as a result of the post-election crisis in Ivory Coast.

The outcomes of this study will surely give much-needed information to government agencies, non-governmental groups, people, and academics.

Scope of the study

This study therefore focuses on the African Union and the resolution of the post-election crisis of 2010/2011 in Cote d’ivoire. It would be sub-divided into five chapters to vividly present the facts that form the body of the work.

Limitation of the study

This study was constrained by a number of factors which are as follows:

 Financial constraint is inevitable considering the present economic situations. Due to lack of finance at the researchers disposal to get materials and in printing of questionnaires. it was not possible to visit some of the police stations and some of the victims of corruption.

 In developing countries like Nigeria, there is the problem of insufficient data.

Time factor: time factor pose another constraint since having to shuttle between writing of the research and also engaging in other academic work making it uneasy for the researcher 

Definition of terms  

African union:The African Union (AU) is a continental body consisting of the 55 member states that make up the countries of the African Continent

Resolution:a firm decision to do or not to do something.

Post election:relating to or occurring in the time following an election 

Crisis:a time of intense difficulty or danger.

BUY THIS TOPIC ON WHATSAPP

Related Project Materials

ABSTRACT

The study is aimed at analyzing the students view about the introduction of sex education into the secondary sc...

ABSTRACT

Living as a human being, health is taken as a priority everywhere you go to. As the famous saying goes “Health is Wealth&r...

ABSTRACT

This research work titled “critical analysis of the regulatory regimes of the petroleum industry in Nigeria” is cent...

ABSTRACT

English as it is spoken in Nigerian (Nigerian English) has been localized or internalized, so to say. This...