POLICY PAPER Dr Ueli Staeger The future of peace support operations in Africa Aligning the AU, UN, and EU for effective and legitimate interventions Summary Peace is always political. Yet the politics of peace support has never been more obvious than today. The United Na­tions(UN)’s peacekeeping and regular budget in existential crisis, and the Secretary-General warns against“imminent financial collapse” if member states do not pay unpaid ar­rears by July 2026(Davies and Foulkes 2026). The Europe ­an Union(EU)’s next Multi-Annual Financial Framework in ­dicates that the future Global Europe instrument will be heavily member states guided and transactional in its allo­cation decisions(Jones 2026). And at the African Union (AU), a major review of the organisation’s architecture for peace and security found that much of the success(and failure) of instruments hinged on“the voluntary acquies­cence of its constituent member states”(Murithi 2025). In short, in times of crisis, institutional frameworks depend even more on the politics of those responsible for imple­menting them. FES’s networked multi-year project on peace support oper ­ations in Africa has sought integrative and locally adaptive answers to the questions posed by the current crisis in mul­tilateral peace support operations. Driven by the conviction that multilateral approaches to peace and security should remain guided by the principle of collective security, FES staff and partners in workshops and conferences across Af­rica have articulated a synthesis of political realism and values-based multilateralism. This report summarises key diagnostic insights and recommendations for African states, the AU, the EU, and the UN. It complements the in­depth case studies featured in the report Forces for peace: realities of peace support operations in Africa(Friedrich Ebert Foundation 2025). The future of peace support operations in Africa: Aligning the AU, UN, and EU for effective and legitimate interventions 1