European Union, Africa, Security 

This paper confronts the challenges of developing a European Union human security strategy
for the Horn of Africa (HoA). It observes that the EU already has a broad strategy of regional
engagement, driven by strategic interests, but there is a need for greater coherence and
prioritization to respond to the specific forms and logics of governance that shape security in
this region and to emerging security threats. It provides an overview of the history, geography
and politics of the HoA and examines EU policy, and differences between its perspectives and
those of the governments of the HoA, and civil society. It then analyses priority issues through a
human security framework, including promoting human rights, addressing humanitarian crises
and advancing economic development, and designing and implementing peace missions. It
suggests that the EU engages more deeply with the region as a whole, while placing greater
emphasis on the local empowerment necessary to realise human security. The EU must seek to
understand and engage with public authority in its multiple forms and use its comparative
advantage as a regional body to promote overlapping multilateral forums and mechanisms in
the HoA and with neighbouring regions in Africa and the Middle East. Key actions should include
preventing the emergent security crisis in the Red Sea, and encouraging bottom-up approaches
and regional civil society. 

42 p.; illus.; 28 cm