Conflict & Resilience Monitor – 22 September 2022

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February heightened pre-existing global geopolitical tensions. Since June 2022, high-level visits from Germany, Russia, France, and the United States (US) to 13 African states illustrate the competition for Africa’s hearts and minds. Renewed attention by global powers has raised concerns about whether Africa can defend its interests while international relations are increasingly strained. African states must carefully consider their strategic choices and positions to prevent being drawn into global disputes.

Whichever direction the Russian-Ukraine war may take over the next few weeks and months, the conflict has already impacted on the next harvesting season. This will have a ripple effect on global food security, possibly for several years. African food-insecure nations should thus brace themselves for a challenging future.

The dependence of African States on marine fisheries resources may render the continent particularly exposed to conflict, food insecurity and economic instability due to regulatory gaps and failures in fisheries. Regulatory voids in African fisheries governance may cause conflict among right-holders, destructive economic activities, and crime, with compounding and cascading effects on the continent’s security risk exposure. Greater awareness and understanding of how different forms of regulatory failures and gaps in fisheries governance lead to security threats may assist African States when developing national maritime security strategies.

On 24 August, fighting resumed between the federal government of Ethiopia and Tigrayan forces, ending the five month long humanitarian truce. It was on 24 March that the Ethiopian government declared an ‘indefinite humanitarian truce’ to improve the dire humanitarian situation in the northern part of the country and to give peace a chance. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) reciprocated by expressing willingness to respect the truce and cessation of hostilities on condition of an adequate and timely humanitarian assistance. The truce largely held for five months, paving the way for some positive measures towards ending the conflict that first broke out on 4 November 2020.

In 1948, during the advent of the human rights program post-World War II, it was acknowledged in the Universal Pronouncement of Human Rights that there are basic unchallengeable civil liberties and essential independences that apply to every individual. This was the beginning of taking conscious and informed decisions about gender equality.