The Kimberley Club ?
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| International-UN-NGOs |
| The African Union: An exclusive club for brutish despots |
| 2018-06-10 |
| [Al Jazeera] On January 28, Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was elected to head the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... 's (AU) 31st session that is due to start in January 2019. This was a massive diplomatic coup for a leader that human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... groups hold responsible for the deaths of at least 817 peaceful protesters in Cairo in a single day five years ago. If everything goes according to plan and Sisi indeed succeeds Rwanda's President Paul Kagame as AU president, for one year he will serve as the chairperson of an organization that claims to work towards modernising governments, accelerating economic growth, reducing poverty and improving access to healthcare and social services throughout Africa. While African leaders' decision to hand over the presidency of the AU's 31st session to a controversial figure like Sisi (whose ousting of Egypt's first democratically elected president in 2013 prompted the organization to suspend Egypt's membership for nearly a year) is undoubtedly problematic, it is not at all surprising for anyone who is familiar with the organization's history of protecting and even promoting Africa's strongmen. The AU boasts leaders within its ranks who have profoundly patriarchal and conservative values, questionable legitimacy and blood-spattered pasts. In many ways, the 55-member organization is a fine example to how a collective determination to establish and maintain democratic principles can go terribly wrong. The Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the forerunner to the AU, was established on May 25, 1963 in Æthiopia's capital Addis Ababa to safeguard African interests - especially in respect of lingering colonialism. The OAU was disbanded and replaced by the more inclusive AU in 2002. Since its conception, the organization adopted a number of important new documents establishing norms at continental level, including the 2007 African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance. However, nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits... the continental body has struggled to act upon the noble vision for democratic change envisioned in this charter. In the last decade, the AU has proved to be highly efficient in publishing decisions, declarations and blurbs, but it has repeatedly failed to take constructive disciplinary action against tyrannical administrations. Today, the scarcity of viable, all-inclusive multiparty democracies, especially in central and North Africa, suggest the organization has failed to achieve most of its goals and instead transformed into an exclusive club of brutish despots who exhibit weak, corrupt, undistinguished and divisive ...politicians call things divisivewhen when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive,they're principled... leadership. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 The Kimberley Club ? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2018-06-10 10:29 |
| #3 The AU boasts leaders within its ranks who have profoundly patriarchal and conservative values, Quit reading the biased drivel right there. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2018-06-10 08:41 |
| #2 ....paging Pre-Columbian American natives to the courtesy phone. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2018-06-10 07:43 |
| #1 Never understood an entire people who couldn't figure out the wheel. |
| Posted by: Woodrow 2018-06-10 05:46 |