Protecting Civilians in Armed Conflict: The Case of the African Union Mission in Somalia

Abstract

Protracted armed conflicts have proliferated in Africa since the 1990s. This has led to efforts by the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) responding to, and mitigating, armed conflicts. Of all the challenges facing the AU, the question of how to protect civilians is most pressing. The Union continues to confront this challenge through the non-indifference norm, which emphasizes its duty to intervene in instances of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. When it was adopted, the norm embodied several possibilities concerning how it could have been operationalized in practice; it could have either aligned with the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the Protection of Civilians (POC), or some combination of the two. This dissertation examines the process and degree to which civilian protection norms have been localized, internalized, and operationalized by the AU, both regionally and in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).