Why The Hindrance !

The African Union (AU) and many of the regional organizations on the continent have a formal mandate to engage in mediation and other forms of peacemaking. This is in line with the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union (2002); the ECOWAS Protocol Relating to the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security (1999); and the SADC Protocol on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation (2001). Despite this formal commitment to mediation and its widespread use in practice, neither the AU nor any of the regional organizations has a dedicated mediation unit and specialist expertise in mediation. In some cases, advisers do outlined solutions that are technically sound and based on comparative experience in order to enhance the knowledge of the negotiating parties and the mediators, but this has not helped to overcome deadlocks. These initiatives of instead leads to an environment of mistrust, hostility, volatility and violence. At the end, the peace initiatives consequently suffer from a chronic lack of skill, capacity and support. This creates a vast gap between the peacemaking mandates of African organizations and their ability to deliver on those mandates. 
As illustrated by UNOSOM II in Somalia in 1993, lack of expertise can be very detrimental. A few years ago, AU undertook a serious analysis of conditions in Somalia when the operation was well underway, it did not comprehend the magnitude of the crisis and its misjudgments regarding the authority and legitimacy of local leaders. These contributed to numerous setbacks. A case in point is the Darfur peace process that suffered from lack of mediation expertise. It was evident that the members of the AU team and the resource people who played mediating roles did so with varying degrees of competence. The Darfur mediato...