The African Union forged ahead this week with far-reaching plans to steer the continent towards prosperity by tackling its most pressing security problems head-on, even if serious questions remain about finance.
The 53-member organisation drew a respectable turn-out of heads of state — as well as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan — for its third summit meeting at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, where the crises in Sudan’s Darfur, the Great Lakes region and Côte d’Ivoire dominated proceedings.
To a large extent, the summit vindicated the oft-voiced claim by the AU’s architects: gone are the days of non-interference in the affairs of fellow members when the stability of the continent is at stake.
Instead, a spirit of collective responsibility, of determined trouble-shooting, prevailed — even if this meant stepping on toes.
Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in particular bore the brunt of this tougher line.
Such was the umbrage taken by DRC President Joseph Kabila in the immediate run-up to the summit that he decided to stay at home when the chairperson of the AU’s executive commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, had the gall to criticise his stewardship of a post-war transition government.
But it was Darfur, where 15 months of rebel attacks and a heavy-handed response by government troops and an allied militia have spawned what the UN terms the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe, that really proved the AU has much sharper teeth than the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) it replaced in 2002.
Not since the continent collectively rounded on Pretoria’s apartheid regime has an African country found itself the target of such focused pressure from its peers to change its ways.
Stop bombing civilians, disarm and prosecute your human-rights-abusing militia, strive for a peaceful resolution, was the message of the summit.
More humiliatingly, Khartoum had little choice but to accept grudgingly the imminent deployment of 300 armed AU troops on its soil to protect AU ceasefire observers because the Sudanese government has proved unable to guarantee their safety.
“We can say for certain that the responsibility for Darfur is on the AU and the government of Sudan working together. There can be no question as to where responsibility lies,” declared AU chairperson and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo at the summit’s close.
In other words, no more blind eyes and no more total reliance on the UN and the West to sort out African messes.
“We have to learn to tell the truth,” Konare told reporters.
This “determination to be pro-active on our continent’s problems … is central to the future of our organisation and the attainment of our objectives” of integration and development, explained Obasanjo.
But these objectives, set out in a vision, a mission and a strategic plan endorsed at the summit, carry a hefty price-tag — $1,7-billion dollars over the next three years to be precise, a figure, like a proposal to earmark 0,5% of their annual budgets, which the heads of state decided needs further discussion.
The OAU’s budget was $43-million a year.
It was partly because the AU ran out of money that it had to hand over control of another military peace mission, in Burundi, to the UN in June, and the organisation’s engagement in Darfur is only possible because the European Union is footing the bill.
Considerable funds will also be required to bankroll the continental standby force that is a cornerstone of the AU’s evolving pan-African security policy, which is being steered by a new Peace and Security Council, and for other nascent organs such a Parliament and human rights court.
“I think what they has done over the last two years is absolutely and unexpectedly impressive, especially in the areas of peacekeeping and crisis management,” EU envoy and old Africa hand Aldo Ajello said.
“The plan of action is very ambitious, perhaps too ambitious … but there is a very strong will to go ahead with this,” he added. — Sapa-AFP
African Union’s Sudan pledge