African Union, useful or useless?

The list includes Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast and now the Central African Republic (CAR). While Africans themselves and the international community may look to the African Union (AU) to facilitate peace and stability, the AU has struggled to fulfil this mandate despite having mechanisms aimed at pre-emptively detecting possible conflicts.

Funding has often been blamed as the AU's main obstacle to carry out missions on the continent but there are other underlying problems that have limited the AU's ability to resolve major conflicts. Africa needs to be made more aware of the work the AU does. Often we hear of stories of western interventions in states such as the Ivory Coast, Egypt and Libya. This can be attributed to the influence the west has on the international arena. But this predominance undermines the AU's own legitimacy: when Africans do not see AU intervention it is increasingly likely that Africans will not have faith in its ability to intervene.