Durban, South Africa — Oganizing A Union For Africa - Durban 2002 (6 of 11)

To better understand how Africa will have to ensure the viability of the African Union project, we asked the jurist and political analyst Albert Bourgi (1) his views of the different stages and the working of the future institution.

MFI : How will the functioning of the African Union be different from that of the OAU ?

Albert Bourgi : What will change is essentially the Secretariat of the OAU, which will no longer be embodied by a Secretary General as such, but by a President of the African Union Commission. That is to say, the Secretariat will be replaced by the AU Commission, a little like the European Union Commission, with a President at its head who will, of course, be chosen by the Conference of Heads of State and Government, but who will above all, at one time or another, require the endorsement of other bodies. Eventually, they will also have to set up the parliament of the new organisation and define its composition and attributions.

MFI : How to you envisage the stages to come ?

A.B. :We are in the presence of the initial bodies of the African Union. I would like once again to refer to the timetable for the setting up of the European Union. Everything was not done in one day. Remember the June 1965 Common Market agricultural crisis... we were far from imagining what the European Union would be like 35 years later... Everything will not be resolved at the Durban Conference. Initially, what is planned and in any case stated as the objective of this organisation, is the representation which the first inter-state bodies should have, that is to say the Council of the Union made up of Heads of State and Government, the Executive Council which will be the former Council of Ministers, the Court of Justice, the Committee of Member States, as well as the African Union Commission. There is obviously a gradual process to the African Union and they will have to take into account the wishes of the states as well as the financial, legal and political resources assigned to the organisation. Since these issues are identified in very general terms, there are obviously many points that need to be worked out, and many differences involving several states that need to be settled. This is why the Secretary General has set up a committee of high-level experts to deal precisely with these questions.

MFI : What can be said of the economic tasks facing the continent and awaiting the African Union ?

A.B. : This is a fairly complex question. Before the adoption of the treaty founding the African Union, the objective of economic integration was spelt out in the Abuja treaty, which created the African Economic Community. They are common treaties. All of this was integrated into the framework of the coming African Union, with the understanding that eventually the Africans will have to succeed in setting up a common market. This implies common policies, convergence... we are still a long way off ! That being said, to facilitate economic integration, there are plans to put in place an African Monetary Fund, a Central Bank, and to reinforce the African Development Bank by giving it other tasks than those it carries out at present... Setting up an African Union presupposes that many stages are accomplished, that many obstacles are overcome. I am convinced that a start had to be made somewhere, and if the overall project may appear almost utopian, we have to remember that the best policies come from more or less ambitious plans. This is one, and one which benefits from the total adhesion of African public opinion.

MFI : What can the African Union do about the multitude of conflicts that continue to hurt the continent ? And what will happen to the existing mechanism for conflict prevention, management and resolution ?

A.B. : This is the famous 1993 mechanism that has been much discussed. In the beginning, this mechanism was not intended to become a collective security system at a regional level. It was given fairly limited objectives. This said, I think that in this phase of building up the African Union, the main issue is above all to improve the working of the central body of the mechanism of prevention, management and settlement of conflicts. There are plans to reinforce its way of working and perhaps to broaden its scope. This mechanism is derided a little too easily, but we seem to forget that it was through this mechanism that the Ethiopia-Eritrea dispute was settled, and that it is through this instrument, through this central organ, that the conflicts in the Central African Republic and in Chad were recently dealt with. We can also refer to the Comoros and recall that the OAU played a major role and showed great visibility in the many crises that hit the archipelago. Let us also cite the case of Madagascar... We cannot ask from the OAU what we expect from the UN. Who can assert that the United Nations Security Council is carrying out fully its mission of peacekeeping and collective security ? Finally, we have to add that around this mechanism, around this central body, a series of more or less formal initiatives and actions, have been carried out, notably through special envoys, special representatives of the Secretary General, and missions of good offices.

MFI : What place does the African Union plan on giving the civil society ?

A.B. : I think African civil society legitimately wants to participate and find its place, and not only in the inter-state organs of the African Union, as in any inter-governmental organization. There will undoubtedly be room for civil society, in particular through the future African Union parliament. It will mean constituting a system of representation, through the members of the pan-African parliament, who may originate from civil society, as we have seen in the European Union. And then other forms of representation for civil society are also planned.

(1) Albert Bourgi is Director of the Center for the Study of International relations at the University of Reims, France.

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