A regional framework for promoting security: the case of Southern African development community (SADC) in Southern Africa
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Date
2002
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Publisher
University of Dar es Salaam
Abstract
This study attempts to assess and explain the utility of the regional security framework of SADC to deal with security problems in the Southern African region. It also endeavours to derive lessons from SADC's own, practical experiences, and hence, establish whether it can become a model for security arrangements in other regions. The study reveals that the SADC organizational structure largely enhances prospects of addressing security problems in Southern Africa. The formalization of the political and security sector, evidently through the creation of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, presents SADC and the region with quite a new approach to security matters, which is different from the flexible and informal approach of the FLS. The SADC approach focuses on both military and non-military matters. This approach has enabled SADC to build functional co-operation in a number of security issues, and allowed it to generate homegrown solutions to security problems in the region. The SADC member states have collaborated on a wide range of security issues including peacekeeping training undertakings, prevention and management of organized crime, mediation of conflicts, control of small arms flows and illicit drug trafficking, and concluding a Protocol on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation. The study further discloses that there is a growing co-operative culture to solve regional problems, and this provides a firm foundation for the evolving regional security architecture. The study establishes that the experience of the SADC's security framework is pointing out to other regional arrangements recognized under chapter VIII of the UN charter that only co-operative efforts rather than unilateral action can improve security situations in their respective regions.
Description
available in print form, East Africana Collection, Dr. Wilbert Chagula Library,(THS EAF JX1901.S6A35)
Keywords
Southern African Development Community (SADC), Security, International, Peaceful change (International)
Citation
Ahmed, R. (2002) A regional framework for promoting security: the case of Southern African development community (SADC) in Southern Africa, Masters dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam. Available at (http://41.86.178.3/internetserver3.1.2/detail.aspx)