Abstract

The launching of the African Union and its Constitutive Act in 2002 was seen as a milestone in the evolution of the continent’s peace and security architecture and the beginning of a promising era of Africa’s norms formulation agenda. This optimism stems from the perceived potential of the Constitutive Act in providing possibilities in confronting African internal violence. The purpose of this article is to test the extent to which the basis of this optimism - the strength of perspectives of the AU peace and security framework - is capable of advancing viable approaches to conflicts. As an illustration, the article uses the AU’s approaches in Burundi, an old enclave in the Great Lakes region whose recent history has been characterised by violence and the first country where the AU attempted to enforce provisions of its peace and security framework under the aegis of its emergency stabilisation mechanisms. The article argues that despite the challenges and shortfalls faced by the AU in Burundi, its approaches played a crucial role in facilitating the transformation of the agencies of violence, culminating in sufficient stability for the advancement of peace. In this sense, the article contends that the invocation of the Constitutive Act in Burundi shows patterns of relative promise in the AU’s peace and security framework.

Key words: Conflict, peace, security, normative framework.