Institute for Peace and Security Studies

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Browsing Institute for Peace and Security Studies by Author "Ahmed Hassen (PhD)"

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    Assessment of The Au’s Challenge on the Operationalization of the Continental Early Warning System: Internal and External Factors
    (Addis Ababa University,, 2023-06) Gebriala Hilawe; Ahmed Hassen (PhD)
    This thesis entitled “Assessment of the AU‟s challenge on the operationalization of the continental early warning system: internal and external factors” was conducted with the objective to identify internal and external factors that affects the performance of the continental early warning system of the African Union. Early warning systems are necessary for detecting, analyzing, and addressing potential conflicts before they escalate into severe outcome. When used effectively, EWS helps prevent human suffering, reduce economic loss, and enhance the efficiency of humanitarian aid efforts. The African Union's Continental Early Warning System intended to monitor and provide early warnings on potential conflicts in the continent. However, it has been plagued with multiple challenges to its performance over the last two decades; hence the advantage of researches such as this thesis is immense in terms of identifying the factors that challenge the subject and make appropriate recommendations for better performance. To this end, this qualitative explanatory research method used key informants who are experts on the field of Security Studies, Diplomacy and International relations which were identified and purposefully selected to participate in the thesis. The ten participants in this thesis research were subsequently, interviewed or given open ended questionnaires to fill out. In the end, their response analyzed to identify the factors affecting the subject understudy‟s performance, why these factors are persisting over the years and recommendations for better performance were derived from the data. Moreover, prior studies by other researchers, press briefing, journal articles and online sources properly used as part of literature review; and, to make sense of the data. This thesis has further found that despite its significance for the continent, the continental early warning system faced challenge such as early warning and early response gap, lack of proper funding and problematic sources of funding, from AU‟s forms as a Weak and bureaucratic institution, unclear and overlapping responsibilities between the AU and RECs, organizational inefficiencies and recent restructuring. This study has also discovered that the main reasons that these challenges are persisting are lack of proper funding and lack of political will at the African Union. This is something that must be addressed to enhance the effectiveness of the continental early warning system in preventing and managing conflicts.