OP-ED| Is African Union Missing in Action? By Wafula Okumu

Wafula Okumu says although the AU was hailed as “an elixir” for the continent’s challenges, it has progressively been rendered “powerless” and “forlorn” urging new AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf to marshal the goodwill of African leaders and people to reverse these trends and restore the enthusiasm that welcomed the AU a quarter-century ago.

The Geneva Academy which monitors conflicts around the world points to more than 35 non-international armed conflicts in 12 African countries. These countries are also classified as “alert,” “high alert” and “very high alert” on the Fund for Peace’s 2024 Fragile States Index.

The world is watching worriedly as South Sudan slips into renewed ethnic cleansing and political upheaval that could lead to state collapse, the senseless power struggle between two generals in Sudan reaches cataclysmic levels, and protracted violent conflicts in the Eastern DRC imperil livelihoods of millions of civilians, particularly women and children.

Amid all these, the world is asking where the African Union is. The AU is simply being challenged to justify its claim to possessing “the primary responsibility for promoting peace, security and stability in Africa” and to explain why its elaborately designed architecture to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts on the continent is ineffective.

The well-thought African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) has elaborate structures such as the Peace and Security Council (PSC) with supporting institutions for early warning, preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping as well as legal frameworks such as the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council and guiding principles such as African ownership, lessons learned and partnership.

The commitment to African ownership was informed by the circumstances that influenced the transformation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to the AU in 2002 when it was found out to be incapable of stemming the suffering of the African people as it happened in 1991 and 1994 when the Somali and Rwandan states respectively collapsed.

African leaders decided they would no longer rely on the international community to respond to complex emergencies on the continent. Thenceforth, the AU will assume the supremacy of dealing with peace and security matters in Africa. But it was pointed out that in promoting peace and maintaining security in Africa, the AU will partner with organizations such as the UN and sub-regional organizations such as SADC, ECOWAS, EAC and IGAD under the principles of comparative advantage, subsidiarity, and complementarity.

The AU was also to tap into past experiences and good practices to address challenges facing the continent instead of reinventing the wheel or groping in darkness as if the challenges were occurring for the first time.

While the OAU had been ridiculed for mollycoddling autocrats and dictators who flagrantly violated the rights of their subjects and acting as a club of Africa’s “big men,” the AU was hailed as an elixir for a myriad of problems bedeviling the continent.  Besides defending the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of its Member States, the AU also aimed to promote peace, security, stability democratic principles and institutions, popular participation, good governance, and human and peoples’ rights on the continent.

Its core principles required its Member States to resolve conflicts among themselves peaceably and prohibited them from using force or threatening to use force. While binding its members to the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, the AU gave itself the right to intervene in its Member States experiencing “grave circumstances such as war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.” At the same time, a member state could request the AU to intervene to restore peace and security.

While it might appear as a contradiction that the AU concurrently gave itself the power to intervene in its Member States while barring them from interfering in each other’s internal affairs, it is not. The AU inherited the non-interference principle from the OAU that had strongly upheld the sovereignty principle and required its Member States to strictly respect each other’s territorial integrity regardless of how their citizens were treated.

By strongly upholding the principle of non-interference, the OAU tied its hands and turned a blind eye when its Member States were badly governed. It appeared helpless and hopeless when the leaders brutally murdered thousands of Africans, fragile states weakened and collapsed displacing millions, and intra-state conflicts seemed intractable.

When the AU replaced the OAU, the principle of non-interference was cast off and swapped with the principle of non-indifference to handle such complex emergencies in the future. The codification of this new principle in the AU Constitutive Act profoundly distinguished it as a proactive and exceptional international organization.

The formation of the AU also took place when the world was forging a new norm of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) which the international community committed to halt mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The rationale for the R2P principle was that while recognizing the state’s sovereignty, it also had a responsibility to use it in the interests of its citizens.

However, if a state is incapable of protecting its citizens, it loses its sovereignty, and the international community has the responsibility of intervening to protect them.

Guardrailed by this global norm, the AU codified the right to intervene in failed states and weak states in its peace and security architecture. However, it made a distinction that while it can intervene on its own in failed states, it could only do so in weak or failing states at the invitation of the government in power.

Tangibly, since embracing the non-indifference principle, the AU has never invoked the relevant clauses or activated its application to positively intervene in its failed and weak Member States.

In the first instance, the AU has not developed an intervention mechanism apart from the requirements that such action requires a decision of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government or an invitation of a Member State. So far in its 38 ordinary and 13 extraordinary sessions, the Assembly has never invoked or referred to either Article 4(h) or 4(j) of the AU Constitutive Act.

While it is understandable that no African leader can seek external intervention as that would imply his weakness or incapability to run his state, the AU has not shown interest in elaborating the criteria and modality for intervening on its own or at the invitation of its Member States. This has reduced the AU to a bystander of egregious violations of the human rights of citizens of several African countries under states incapable of properly exercising their sovereignties.

Given the circumstances, there is widespread frustration, similar to that witnessed during the days of the OAU, on the continent as to why the AU has yet to act within its powers to stem the suffering of citizens 12 of its Member States with weak and struggling governments.

It was laudable that in its nascent days, as it strove to establish its peace and security structures, the AU deployed peace support missions to Burundi, Darfur and later to Somalia. However, it aloofly stood by when the US and its NATO allies invoked the responsibility to protect principle to eliminate one of its founders, Muammar Gaddafi, in October 2011. This assassination dampened the spirit of non-indifference and rendered it ineffectual.

Many on the continent are now wondering why the AU maintains deafening silence or feebly reacts to situations in countries demanding intervention as if it does not have the mandate and powers to do so. In its last meeting in Addis Ababa in February 2025, African leaders acknowledged the ineffectiveness of the AU to address ubiquitous peace and security challenges.

The newly installed Chairperson of the AU Commission, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, has a gargantuan task requiring recapturing the Pan-African spirit, marshalling of abundant resources and the goodwill of both African leaders and people, and working around the clock to reverse creeping bad trends and restoring the enthusiasm that welcomed the organisation a quarter a century ago.

For the AU to fulfill its objective of promoting human security in Africa, it must fully operationalize its peace and security architecture including building and activating mechanisms for proactively intervening in African countries with weak and failing states, respecting its norms and principles, and restoring the continental early warning system, operating the Panel of the Wise as its primary tool for managing conflicts and the African Standby Force (ASF) as its intervention instrument.

Over the past two decades, the AU has progressively been rendered powerless, forlorn and reviled for over-depending on “external partners,” wrecked by spur-of-the-moment “reforms,” deprived of strategic and visionary leadership, beleaguered by resurgent national sovereignty wolfing down Pan-African ideals, and gross mismanagement of its institutions and programs.

To awaken the AU from its slumber, strengthen it, and provide it with the necessary powers and resources to enable it to effectually discharge its promotion of human security mandate, African peoples must claim its ownership, and ensure that it lives up to their desire for an efficient instrument for addressing conflict situations in Africa. Afterall, the Constitutive Act expects them to actively participate in its activities.

Dr Wafula Okumu is the author (with Sam Makinda and David Mickler) of The African Union Addressing the challenges of peace, security, and governance and co-editor (with Andrews Atta-Asamoah ) of The African Union at 20: African perspectives on progress, challenges and prospects. The views expressed in this op-ed article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect African Newspage’s editorial policy.