Comparing Apples with Oranges? : UN and EU Approaches to Rule of Law in Sub-Sahara Africa

Abstract

Historically, the European Union (EU) has concentrated its European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) missions in its backyard (Tocci 2007) until deployments in Africa became a viable policy option for ESDP engagement. Since the developments in the Democratic Republic Congo (DR Congo), where the French were spearheading Operation Artemis, and Sudan, where the EU has supported the African Union (AU) in its Mission in Darfur, the EU has also deployed missions under the ESDP umbrella to Africa, Aceh, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine. In addition to military interventions, there are some which are deployed as civilian crisis management missions. In this context, the EU has developed specialized police and rule of law missions. Rule of Law, in general, has become a central concept in peace operations. Furthermore, in both the EU and the United Nations (UN), several tools have been developed which serve as organizational and policy blueprints for rule of law efforts in peace operations. In contrast to ESDP, which began only after 2000 to develop tools for financing regional initiatives1 and stand-alone peace operations, the UN has a long experience in deploying peace operations to Sub-Sahara Africa where the organization also experienced two of its peacekeeping disasters, in DR Congo in the 1960s and in Rwanda in the 1990s (Debiel 2003). Despite the growing literature on peace operations, there are only few comparative studies of how different international organizations deal with similar problems in the rule of law area, including police reforms.2 This chapter seeks to first contribute to a discussion of general policies, looking at both UN and EU definitions and conceptualizations of the rule of law efforts at the Headquarters level, and their translation into field operations.