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AU's Nascent Security Council Has Its Work Cut Out

Business Day (Johannesburg)
NEWS
May 26, 2004
Posted to the web May 26, 2004

By Sapa-AFP, Business Day Reporter
Addis Ababa
Officials vow new watchdog will have more bite than OAU
The African Union (AU) yesterday officially launched the Peace and Security
Council, billed as a robust guarantor of stability in Africa, much like the
United Nations (UN) Security Council.
Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, the current chairman of the 53-member
AU, formally inaugurated the council at a ceremony at the organisation's
headquarters in Addis Ababa attended by the heads of state and government from
at least eight countries.
The council has been meeting since March. With the AU's rights to intervention,
the handling of states such as Zimbabwe and Sudan will be yardsticks for the
nascent council. The troubled countries represent a challenge to the council's
objectivity and its adherence to guiding principles.
"Peace and security are the indispensable conditions for Africa's socioeconomic
development," he said. Chissano went on to express his hope that the
continent's "crises and conflicts will be substantially reduced, if not
eliminated, thanks to the Peace and Security Council".
"We congratulate ourselves that in less than two years of existence, the AU has
made unprecedented progress in setting up our organisation's structures."
Of the AU's 17 planned organs, five are up and running, including the
conference of heads of states, the executive commission and the advisory
parliament. In the pipeline are an African central bank, court of justice,
human rights court and social and economic council.
AU Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare described the security council as "a
valuable instrument that has the power to anticipate and prevent policies that
could lead to genocide".
Officials have vowed that the new council will act to intervene in the
continent's conflicts, setting the two-year-old AU apart from its largely
toothless predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which proved
impotent in the face of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
"In the past, the OAU was accused of complicity. We are replacing the principle
of noninterference with the principle of nonindifference," Said Djinnit, AU
commissioner for security, said.
"That doesn't mean we will solve (all) the problems, but that we won't remain
indifferent," he said. "The object is not to replace the blue helmets (UN
peacekeepers) with AU missions. We maintain that the UN has a primary role to
play in peacekeeping."
He promised that the AU would not hang around while the UN decided whether to
act.
Nigerian President and Peace and Security Council chairman Olusegun Obasanjo
declared that council members undertook to strive for "a stable, secure,
peaceful and developed Africa".
Leaders who are expected to attend the official opening included Algerian
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his counterparts Omar al-Beshir of Sudan and
Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

   

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