ABSTRACT
The last decade has seen a decrease in the number of violent conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa. While violence in parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan and South Sudan, Somalia, Mali, and Nigeria show that many areas of Africa remain highly insecure, the overall extent and severity of conflict in Africa has decreased since the end of the Cold War. The Human Security Report argues that international peacemaking and peacebuilding policies are an important part of the explanation for the overall decline in conflict in the 1990s and 2000s (Human Security Report Project 2011).1
