Project Materials

THE ROLE OF THE AFRICAN UNION (A.U.) IN PROMOTING PEACE AND SECURITY IN AFRICA

ABSTRACT

Since the transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to African Union

(A.U.) various measures were adopted by the newly formed organization to promote

peace and security in the African continent, apart from the efforts of the United

Nations (UN) whose primary purpose is to promote peace and security all over the

world.

The role of the newly formed African Union has been expanded to include

issue of human right promotion, conflict management, promotion of good

governance and the issue of unconstitutional change of government. This is the first

time in the history of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) that the issue of

“exclusive domain” has been removed from the Charter of the OAU and by including

in the new Constitutive Act of the AU the right of the Union to intervene in the

internal affairs of a member country where there is arm conflict.

Various specialize

agencies were created in the new AU Act including African Charter on Human and

Peoples’ Rights and the African Human Right Commission, the African Human Right

Court, all in a bid to provide peace and security in the continent.

The reason why

African Union is promoting peace and security in the continent is simple: peace and

security is a desirable societal objective as opposed to war and conflicts and to mark

a departure from the traditional one-level belief by the International Community that

African countries are more conflictual in nature.

The end of the Cold War has

altered the international strategic environment and forced a radical revision of the

global power structure disrupting the natural harmony amongst people and replaced

them with hostile ideologies. African States were products of colonial designs.

Their

economies operated in a system of global transactions that seems biased against

them. After independent, erstwhile colonial masters continued to influence direction

by providing aids, advice and models of development, which at the end of it not

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beneficial.

Lack of unity, good governance and a strong economic base has made

Africans have a significant share of responsibility for its failure. By late 1980s a

continent touted as a “continent of promise” in the independence decade of the

1980s was fast becoming a “global basket case.”

All through the 1960s and the first

half of the subsequent decade, Africa was perceived as having more opportunities

than Asia or Latin America but lack basic social structure.

The reverse turned out to

be the case as the story of African development was marked more by human and

natural tragedies combined with remarkable failure of socio-economic and political

management, vast population increase, declining food production rates, debts

overhang, unemployment, bad governance, lack of good health facilities and

accelerated poverty all contributed