The Relationship Between the UN Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council in the Field of Peacekeeping

Abstract Article 53 gives the SC the power to utilize regional (arrangements or) agencies to carry out enforcement action under its direction; but ‘no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council’. The rules of Treaty establishing the AU have been interpreted in several ways in relation to Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. In this respect it is helpful to look at the effects of Article 103 of the UN Charter. This provision directs the conduct of the Member States, which are parts of other international organizations, in a way consistent with the same provision. Article 103 requires that the rules in question. are to be interpreted and applied by Member States of AU in accordance with the combined provisions of Articles 2.4, 24 and 53 of the Charter. There is a gap between the ambitions for autonomy derived from the rules of the Constitutive Acts of the AU and of other regional and sub-regional African organizations and the actual operating capacity of the organizations in question. This does not exclude the fact that those rules lead us to focus on the exceptionality of the African situation and on the relevant operational contexts. The rules of the AU Constitutive Act can be used as the basis of a partnership with the UN, characterized by the primacy of the PSC compared to the organs of other regional and sub-regional African organizations with responsibilities for maintaining internationalpeace and security.