Il principio della pace e le missioni militari internazionali in Africa: consenso, uso della forza e sicurezza multilivello nel diritto internazionale

Abstract

The principle of peace and international military missions in Africa: consent, use of force and multilevel security in international law

The principle of peace, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, is grounded in the prohibition of the use of force as a legal limit on the exercise of states’ military sovereignty. However, the increasing proliferation of international military missions, particularly in Africa, raises significant legal questions regarding their qualification under international law.

Such missions, often established within the framework of the United Nations, the European Union or coalitions of states, cannot be fully classified either as collective security measures or as acts of self-defence. Rather, they appear to constitute practices based on the consent of the territorial state and on forms of multilevel military cooperation.

In this context, a tension emerges between the role of such missions as instruments for maintaining peace and their potential function as mechanisms of security projection and influence over host states, particularly in situations marked by power asymmetries. This contribution examines the legal regime of international military missions in Africa, focusing on the role of consent as a basis of legitimacy and on the limits imposed by the prohibition of the use of force, in order to assess whether these developments reflect a transformation of the principle of peace in contemporary international law.