The African Union, Responsibility to Protest and the Interventions in the Crisis in Cote d’Ivoire and Libya
The AU’s constitutive Act ascribes to the state the responsibility for protecting its citizens. Where a state fails to live up to these commitments, the AU has a right to intervene for human protection purposes through multilateral military force, if necessary. However, the promise of the AU has not been fulfilled. Non-African intervention has been decisive and dominant in the recent crises in Cote d’Ivoire and Libya. This paper reviews the events in Libya and Cote d’Ivoire and identifies the factors that have rendered the AU incapable of driving the peace and security agenda in the continent under the UN regime of the RP2, focusing on praxis under the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1970, 1973, and 1975.
Keywords: african, cote, crisis, d’ivoire, interventions, libya, protest, responsibility, union