The Board of Peace launched by United States (US) President Donald Trump last month has been widely criticised as an attempt by America’s leader to usurp the United Nations (UN) Security Council. For sub-Saharan Africa, there is an additional grievance: none of its states was invited to join, aggravating the region’s marginalisation.
Even by Mr Trump’s standards, this board is an astonishing presumption. He invited about 60 countries to join, of which around 26 accepted. The board began as an initiative to implement the US Gaza peace plan – a role endorsed by the UN Security Council in November 2025.
But it has quickly morphed into a body tasked with resolving worldwide conflicts, with Mr Trump holding sole executive veto power.
Because of the initial Gaza mandate, the board comprises several Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar – and Israel. Others include Argentina, Belarus, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Except for Hungary, European and other Western countries have either not been invited or have declined. France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Spain and Slovenia are reportedly among the seven that declined.
Canada accepted, but Mr Trump withdrew the invitation after Prime Minister Mark Carney criticised him at Davos. China and Russia were invited but are non-committal.
In Africa, only Egypt and Morocco have joined. These are North African countries, and Morocco participates in Trump’s Abraham Accords.
South Africa, at odds with the US, was clearly not invited. Zane Dangor, International Relations and Cooperation Department Director-General, posted on X: “Being supportive of a reformed and effective multilateral system with the UN at its core is incongruent [with] being part of a private Peace Board constituted of unaccountable billionaires and where the agenda is to replace and destroy the UN with acolonial-stylee mandate system.”
Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Senior Researcher Priyal Singh sees in the membership a focus on Middle Eastern countries involved in rivalries in the Red Sea, Horn of Africa, and Gulf of Aden. “But I think sub-Saharan Africa is completely marginalised. I don’t think there’s been any invitation extended to any country in that region.”
She believes the board’s purpose is “to create some semblance of legitimacy and credibility for unilateral US action.” Its rules give Mr Trump a complete veto in his own right and apparently independent of his US presidency.
Ms Singh believes Gaza will test the board. But even if it achieves some success there, it might “have a net hollowing-out effect on the broader global conflict response system through the UN and so on.” That includes the African Union (AU). “Ultimately, it’s just creating a parallel structure to bypass the UN.”
Ms Singh thought the board would pursue peacemaking in the same way Mr Trump has so far done on his own. But Mr Singh cites an article by the International Crisis Group’s Richard Gowan and Daniel Forti, who say it seems unlikely the board will “build up the sort of institutional apparatus for supporting mediation and peacekeeping efforts … the UN has built over decades.”
They note that though claiming to have solved eight wars, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Southeast Asia, Mr Trump tends to “push for quick bargains and not worry about their implementation. [Many of the wars he claimed to have ended] quickly reignited. The Board of Peace looks like a framework for his freewheeling diplomacy, not the painstaking business of making peace deals stick over time.”
Jakkie Cilliers, chairperson of the ISS Board of Trustees and African Futures and Innovation Head, agrees that the board would compete with the UN and AU. It would rival multilateralism more generally, fragmenting the existing peacebuilding architecture, which would not be good for Africa in particular.
“Trump thinks peace agreements are like selling a building. You sign an agreement and everybody sticks to it. So you sign an agreement between the DRC and Rwanda, but it means nothing because there’s no commitment, no enforcement, no accountability.” That, Mr Cilliers says, is because institutions are needed to police agreements.
However, he acknowledges that Mr Trump has “shaken the tree” and shown that “many of the shibboleths we’ve been holding onto have not been working.” These include peacebuilding efforts, especially in Africa.
Mr Cilliers sees the transactionalism inherent in Mr Trump’s foreign policy and in the board, manifesting itself, for example, in countries contracted to do peacekeeping elsewhere – something that has already started happening. France for example is paying (via the EU) for Rwanda to defend its gas facilities in northern Mozambique, and the US, Canada and others have pledged to fund Kenya’s security mission to counter criminal gangs in Haiti.
Like many of Mr Trump’s forays into foreign policy, it’s not clear how seriously we should take his Board for Peace. Most commentators seem to be taking it seriously enough to be alarmed. But Brookings Institution foreign expert Bruce Jones dismisses it as a ‘double nothingburger’ – suggesting it’s a Trumpian vanity project and a grandiose post-presidential occupation that few countries take seriously beyond the Gaza assignment.
Given the UN Security Council paralysis, it’s arguably useful or even necessary to occasionally assemble a coalition of the willing to tackle a particular problem like Gaza. But trying to put the whole world under the control of a group of countries and individuals chosen by one man is surely a recipe for despotism.
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If it does take off, one notable peril in this displacement of the UN-led multilateral peace system is that if resolving any particular conflict is not in the interests of rich board members, and the UN and AU have been sidelined, who will come to the rescue? If Russia decides to join, for example, what hope for Ukraine?
Peter Fabricius, Consultant, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Pretoria
(This article was first published by ISS Today, a Premium Times syndication partner. We have their permission to republish).
