Strategic Thinking on East Africa

From the Huffington Post By Dr. Tedros Adhanom Today and tomorrow, the African Union and my country of Ethiopia are proudly hosting the first Core Group Meeting of the Munich Security Conference held on the African continent. Senior leaders from Africa, Europe and the U.S. have gathered in Addis Ababa to exchange ideas on how […]

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Institute for Security Studies The African Union (AU) Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has been active since 2007 – but the mission is struggling to fulfil its peace-support function and is dealing with a plethora of challenges, including an increasing number of attacks from al-Shabaab. The June 2016 attack on the Ethiopian contingent in Halgan highlighted […]

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Strathink Editorial Team In a world saturated with bad news, the recent eruption of heavy fighting in South Sudan’s capital not only is tragic but threatens the entire region.  Since December 2013, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar have been dismantling the fragile political unity of the world’s newest state and […]

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An Eritrean refugee protests against government outside EU offices in Israel [File: Amir Cohen/Reuters] The United Nations rights council has called on the African Union to investigate Eritrean leaders over alleged crimes against humanity after a damning report by a UN commission. UN: Eritrea government commits crimes against humanity In that report, the UN’s Commission […]

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DEVELOPING: A team of gunmen took hotel guests hostage after storming the building in a Somalia’s capital city, Mogadishu on Saturday, police have revealed. A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the gate of the Nasa-Hablod hotel near the capital’s busy KM-4 junction, followed by a second explosion heard inside the hotel as gunmen fought […]

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Philip Hammond visits as British troops deploy to support UN security effort Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, visited Somalia on 2 June as part of a three day security visit to East Africa. The UK is the only EU country to maintain an Embassy in Somalia and has taken a lead in coordinating international support for […]

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From The Heritage Institute Background International and regional efforts to increase the effective participation of women in peace building and in the reconstruction and development of societies have gained momentum in the past two decades. In 2000, United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 formally addressed the need to change women’s continued exclusion from participation […]

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The African Union’s (AU’s) counter-terrorism policy isn’t working. Looking back at 2015 and the many terrorist incidents that punctuated news headlines in Africa, it is difficult to escape this conclusion. There was the attack by al-Shabaab gunmen on Garissa University in Kenya in April, which killed 148 people – mostly students. There was the Boko Haram […]

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International Crisis Group By Abdul Khalif & Cedric Barnes | @CedricHoA This year, the armed Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab has notched up a series of bloody successes against both Somali targets and the African Union peace-enforcement mission AMISOM. Meanwhile, the international community has been busy cajoling principals of the Somali federal and state governments into […]

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African Union says armed group is hoping to stage attacks disguised as AMISOM troops, using uniforms it took from them. Hamza Mohamed |  The African Union said the uniforms were taken from its army camps [File: AP] The African Union (AU) says the al-Qaeda-linked armed group, al-Shabab, is planning attacks in Somalia using AU troop uniforms […]

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