Africa out of Westphalia : An Analysis of Article 4 (h) in the Constitutive Act of the African Union

Abstract

The African Union (AU) is a Union composed of most of the countries on the African continent, designed, in part, to unite and strengthen the position of these countries in the world (www.african-union.com). The AU is a new development of the nearly forty-year-old Organization of African Unity (OAU). Which was an organization widely accused of being a mere “dictators’ club” (Francis 2006:28). The new organization, however, includes some rather significant changes as opposed to the former OAU . One of the most significant amendments is the reorganization of the principle of non-intervention to a principle of intervention under certain criteria. The African continent has a special history when it comes to state sovereignty. Since the early days of colonization there has been a rigid system of state sovereignty and non-intervention. The realignment of the sovereignty principle, therefore, marks as a substantial normative change in political thought. It is a change that has been done in concert with nearly all the African states. The construction of the Union has empowered the organization to cut across the sovereignty principle and take an interventionist stand. It opens up the possibility for the African Union to act as an autonomous actor and intervene into the domestic affairs of another member state without its consent. The joint resolution disembarks the longstanding notion that intervention is a cardinal sin in the interaction amongst the African states and, more importantly, it rattles the cage of absolute state sovereignty. A resolution like this is very much a part of making the African Union a super national organization rather then an international one. This thesis will, therefore, investigate the normative change of the principle of sovereignty within the context of the establishment of the African Union. It scrutinizes key factors that may have contributed to this decision being made and gazes into how and why state leaders would give up sovereignty.