Introduction

This chapter presents the history of the francophone world as it pertains to issues of peace and conflict in order to critically assess its specificity and to situate it in academic debates on peace operations. It argues that the historical specificity of French colonialism is the inescapable a priori context of peace missions, even if this context is rapidly evolving and interacting with non-francophone spaces. The chapter defines documents, and presents an overview of the increasing francophone fact of peace operations. It examines the instruments and institutions of Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) and their articulation with those of the UN. The chapter provides a better understanding of the institutional, organisational, bureaucratic, and legal security arrangements operating in Francophone and Anglophone African countries, to highlight their commonalities and differences and to provide an overview of the actors, structures, and how security systems function.