Conflict & Resilience Monitor – 20 December 2023

Intergenerational justice is essentially concerned with the duties and responsibilities that present generations have to past and future generations, and the moral considerations that ought to be considered when actioning these duties and responsibilities.

The manifestation of climate change is driving dramatic shocks that exacerbate migration, disasters, and conflicts. Climate change is already adding a complex dimension to the humanitarian, security and natural resource challenges that confront communities and states. Hence, climate change is often described as a “threat multiplier” because it exacerbates the risk factors that already give rise to conflict and instability.

The African Union (AU) has adopted a common position on the financing of AU peace support operations through the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping budget, and a UN Security Council resolution to this affect is currently being negotiated. The AU hopes this funding arrangement will solve the problem of finding adequate and predictable funding for its peace operations. However, financing AU peace operations via the UN will have several unintended but foreseeable negative consequences that need to be taken into account.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) has been present in Mozambique since June 2021. Prior to its deployment, discussions among peace operations scholars and practitioners centred on the mission’s feasibility, given SADC’s lack of experience in counterterrorism operations and concerns about the organisation’s financial capacity to sustain a prolonged mission. This paper intends to illustrate that the SAMIM mission is unique in its pragmatic approach to peace operations and counterterrorism. Using the concept of pragmatic peace operations and the empirical evidence of SAMIM, the paper argues that the principles behind its practice could mark a new generation of peace operations.