The African Union Non-Indifference Stance: Lessons from Sudan and Libya

Abstract

The legal and policy documents of the African Union (AU) are founded on a human security paradigm that obliges the continental body to maintain a non-indifference stance on human rights abuses. This doctrine of non-indifference departs from the state-centric security principle of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which gave excessive privileges to state elites. Although the AU has intervened to address security challenges in the continent, misgivings persist that the continental body’s interventions continually favor state regimes at the expense of the human rights of ordinary citizens. Adducing the cases of the AU’s responses to the conflicts in Sudan (2004–07) and Libya (2011), this article examines the credibility of the AU’s non-indifference stance to gross human rights violations. The study contends that the undue influence of state regimes on the AU’s initiatives as well as its limited capacity for intervention raise doubts on the continental body’s purported transition from a state-centric framework to a human security paradigm.