AROUND AFRICA: AU peacekeepers on patrol (LIU CHAN)

> Peace initiatives

The AU declared 2010 as the year of Peace and Security in Africa and several AU peacekeeping missions were dispatched across the continent, along with the UN and countries setting up their own peace initiatives.

In July 2010, Guinea sent hundreds of troops to Somalia to aid the AU's peacekeeping force after the bombings in Uganda toward the end of the World Cup. Somali insurgents claimed responsibility for the bombings in which 76 people were killed. There are more than 7,000 AU peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi, also in Somalia.

The other topical peacekeeping efforts in Africa were in Sudan (Darfur) region, which claimed 61 fatalities from peacekeeping forces and has an annual budget figure of about $1.5 billion. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) claimed 157 lives of peacekeepers in a campaign that has a budget of $1.3 billion. The Central African Republic and Chad also got some UN peacekeeping support with an annual budget of $690 million. The conflict and peacekeeping in Liberia and Ivory Coast each gobbled up about $500 million in the 2009-10 period. Western Sahara conflict claimed the lives of 15 peacekeepers and had a budget of $53 million.

In October 2010 UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appealed to the international community to find sustainable ways of supporting the AU's peace initiatives on the continent as securing the necessary funding is hampering efforts.

To assist with their referendum campaign, Kenyans established the Uwiano Peace Platform, which brought together government, political parties, civil society, churches, local communities, NGO's and many other progressive forces. It helped the Kenyan constitutional referendum process go off in a peaceful and conclusive manner.

> Conflict

Despite the AU declaring 2010 the year of Peace and Security in Africa, two major areas of conflict continue to be the DRC and Somalia. In the DRC, the conflict has sucked in seven nations with about 5.4 million people so far killed since 1998, and children account for 47 percent of these statistics. It has become the world's deadliest conflict since World War II.

In Somalia the conflict between Al Shabab and the transitional government forces intensified in 2010. The United States has supported the transitional federal government militarily. This has also led to the insecurity of arms due to the dysfunctional justice and governmental system in the country. Arms have therefore found their way to pirates who have been taking ships hostage around the Somali waters. In November 2010, one of the highest hostage fee ($9 million) was paid to the pirates for a Hong Kong cargo ship they had intercepted. The situation in Somalia therefore maintained the Horn of Africa as a high conflict area in 2010.