‘Triangular’ Relationships Between the United Nations and African Regional and Sub-Regional Organizations in Maintaining Peace

Over the past few years, the relationships between the United Nations (‘UN’), regional and sub-regional organizations in maintaining peace and security in Africa have evolved. The African Union (‘AU’) began coordinating enforcement actions conduct- ed by African sub-regional organizations with the authorisation of the UN Security Council (‘UNSC’), which maintained its political control over them. The UN Charter and relevant legal regimes of those organizations seem to allow this kind of relation- ship. Such a trend may explain, in part, the UNSC’s most recent practice of authorising regional and sub-regional enforcement actions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, instead of Chapter VIII. In carrying out those authorised military operations, African regional and/or sub-regional organizations perform their own statutory powers and pursue their own statutory objectives at the continental level. They do not act as ‘decentralised organs’ of the UN.