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FACTBOX-What is the African
Union?
Wed Jan 30, 2008
Jan 30 (Reuters) - Kenya's bloody turmoil will dominate an African
summit in Ethiopia this week, underlining how quickly the
neighbouring nation has gone from apparently stable regional
anchor to the continent's most urgent crisis.
Here are some facts about the African Union:
ORIGINS:
* The AU groups 53 member states and its official languages are
English, French and Arabic.
* The AU emerged from the Organisation of African Unity, which was
founded in 1963 with a charter signed by 32 countries in the
Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
* The AU aims to help promote democracy, human rights and
development across Africa, especially by increasing foreign
investment through the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)
programme.
* In September 1999, a special summit in Libya issued the Sirte
Declaration establishing the African Union loosely based on the
European Union model. The AU was officially launched in Durban in
July 2002 with South Africa's Thabo Mbeki as chairman. Ghana's
President John Kufuor is the current chairman.
INTERVENTIONS:
* The AU's first military intervention in a member state was the
May 2003 deployment of a peacekeeping force of soldiers from South
Africa, Ethiopia and Mozambique to Burundi.
* A ceasefire was agreed in Sudan's western Darfur region in April
2004 and the AU sent 7,000 peacekeepers with a mandate to monitor
the peace and protect those displaced in the camps.
- Sudan has agreed to allow a hybrid UN/AU force of 20,000
peacekeepers into Darfur, to replace the weak AU mission that
observers say did little to halt the violence.
- Sudan had sent mixed signals about the hybrid force, saying it
should be under the AU's command and control rather than the
United Nations', and suggesting it should be mainly African.
* In Somalia, the AU has criticised member states for not
honouring pledges to send peacekeeping troops to reinforce 1,600
Ugandans and about 400 Burundians, who have been attacked by
Islamist insurgents battling the interim government. The AU
originally wanted 8,000 troops in Somalia.
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