The failure of conflict early warning systems in preventing the 2017 insurgency in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado Province

Abstract

The advocacy of using Early Warning Systems (EWS) as a conflict prevention tool is a phenomenon that gained prominence in international security during the emergence of the Human Security paradigm of the early 1990s. The United Nations (UN) 1992 An Agenda for Peace Report and the 1994 United Nations Development Report underscore the centrality of a human security approach towards conflict prevention and a coordinated international early warning effort. The UN has made efforts towards a coordinated international EWS as part of its conflict prevention strategy. Similarly, regional organisations such as the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), have also responded to this call, made at the UN level, by implementing EWS as conflict prevention mechanisms, viz. through the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) and the Regional Early Warning System (REWS) respectively. Despite these efforts, Mozambique, a member of all three organisations, experienced an insurgency in its Cabo Delgado Province from the year 2017. The insurgency in Mozambique underlines the weaknesses of global EWS and calls into question why conflict EWS failed in preventing the 2017 Mozambican insurgency. Based upon this, the mini-dissertation explores the failure of conflict EWS in preventing the 2017 insurgency in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado Province. In evaluating the reasons for the failure of EWS the project constructs a conceptual framework of analysis of early warning that guides the scope of the study. Subsequently, the study utilises the conceptual framework to interrogate the early warning policies of the custodians of the maintenance of international peace and security in Mozambique, i.e., the UN, AU, and SADC. Thereafter, the study provides the historical background leading to the insurgency in Mozambique. Lastly, the research utilises the conceptual framework to analyse the response inefficiencies and identify the gaps in early warning and conflict prevention synergies of the UN, AU, and SADC in Mozambique towards recommendations that ought to strengthen EWS collaborations and conflict prevention efforts, particularly in light of the current eSwatini crisis.