Building a Research Network on the UN Security Council´s Elected Members to Enhance Africa´s Peace and Security Architecture

In 2021, 60 percent of UN Security Council meetings focused on Africa and 84 percent of its peacekeepers were deployed on the continent.

However, non-permanent or elected ten (E10) member states have limited influence in the Council due to the dominance of the permanent five members (P5) – the US, China, Russia, Britain, and France. This has eroded the legitimacy of the body, with a membership unexpanded in 56-years. A majority of financing in the UN system addresses exclusion and other threats to security.

Yet, the Council is dysfunctional, with unclear results in advancing the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16: to promote peaceful, just, and inclusive societies.The Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) (Sweden) and the University of Johannesburg’s Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) (South Africa) are establishing a network on the topic of the E10 of the UN Security Council.

The network – consisting of a core group of 10 researchers – will deepen research on how E10 states navigate in the Council, illuminating its practice and prospects for enhancing Africa’s peace and security architecture. This work will fill a lacuna in the research that often focuses on the P5 and/or treats the Council as a unitary actor.

During January-December 2022, the organisers will convene research workshops in Johannesburg (March 2022), Uppsala (June 2022) and research/policy webinars targeting the Nordic, African and UN policy community.