African Standby Force

The African Standby Force (ASF) (French: Force africaine en attente) is an international, continental African, and multidisciplinary peacekeeping force with military, police and civilian contingents that acts under the direction of the African Union. The ASF is to be deployed in times of crisis in Africa.Addis Ababa, Ethiopia serves as the Force's Headquarters. Douala, Cameroon, was in 2011 selected as the site of the AU's Continental Logistics Base (LOGBASE).

Before the founding of the African Union (AU) in 2001, its predecessor Organisation of African Unity (OAU) did not provide appropriate tools for a collective and comprehensive acting of African states in times of violent crisis, mostly due to the shared value of non-interference into the internal affairs of states. During the 1990s, a series of violent conflicts in Africa, most importantly the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, urged the African states for a change in their common security collaboration. After the establishment of the AU in 2001, the non-interference clause of OAU was not longer valid. The Constitutive Act now gave the AU the right to intervene in a member state in grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

The same year, a new African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) was presented, in order to build and strengthen African capacities for managing and resolving conflicts on the continent. The APSA comprises five pillars that complement one another: A Peace and Security Council, a Continental Early Warning System, a Panel of the Wise, a Peace Fund, and an African Standby Force. The ASF is therefore a constituting element of the APSA.

The establishment of the ASF was directed by the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union, which was signed in July 2002 and entered into force in December 2003. The key document explicitly recognized the roles of the RECs in promoting peace and security in Africa.

...
Wikipedia