Normative Turbulences: Inter-Organizational Conflicts and Collaboration in Africa and the Reshaping of Human Rights and Security Norms

This paper focuses on how inter-organizational conflicts and collaboration between international and African regional organizations are re-shaping the norms and practices of interventionism. In the past era of Liberal Peace interventions, much work has gone into analyzing Global North actors and institutions promoting the diffusion of norms (particularly human rights) in Global South contexts. This linear outlook is challenged as actors/institutions that were previously seen to be on the ’receiving end’ offer increasingly influential alternative organizing principles, while the interventionary will and resources of established Western powers are waning. The paper analyses the effects of contemporary inter-organizational interaction in the African context on international interventionism. It focuses on the inter-organizational ‘negotiations’ over the mandating of the ‘use of force’ in peace operations, in which the African Union (AU) and the Regional Economic Communities are playing increasingly significant roles –sometimes in conflict, sometimes in a division of labour, with the United Nations – within an issue area that harbours significant tensions with normative bearing (especially tensions between human rights and protection norms, counterterrorism agendas and attempts to extend state authority). The paper aims to contribute to debates on how regional and international organizations, through their conflicts and collaborations, co-produce and reshape global norms.