The first decade of the Organization of African Unity

African peace ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Sharpe

This book analyses the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa, including both refugee and human rights law as well as treaty and institutional elements. The regime is addressed in two parts. Part I analyses the relevant treaties: the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, and the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The latter two regional instruments are examined in depth. This includes the first fulsome account of the African Refugee Convention’s drafting, an interpretation of its unique refugee definition, and original analysis of the relationships between the three treaties. Significant attention is devoted to the systemic relationship between the international and the regional refugee treaties and to the discrete relationships of conflict and relationships of interpretation between the two refugee instruments, as well as to the relationships of conflict and of interpretation between the African Refugee Convention and African Charter. Part II focuses on the institutional architecture supporting the treaty framework. The Organization of African Unity is addressed in a historical sense, and the contemporary roles of the African Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the current and contemplated African human rights courts are examined. This book is the first devoted to the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa.


Author(s):  
Markus Kornprobst

This chapter examines contending African interpretations of peace and change; how some of these interpretations have come to constitute continental institutions; and how these institutions, in turn, have succeeded or failed to make a difference. Its argument is threefold. First, African interpretations of peace and change converge around a nexus of five elements: liberty, unity, development, pacific settlement of disputes and democracy. Second, this nexus left a major mark on continental institutions, first the Organization of African Unity and then the African Union. Third, although Africa’s record of peaceful change is very promising when one is to apply markers for peaceful change traditionally used in international relations, the continent has experienced very pronounced and persistent obstacles to implementing the five elements of the much more demanding nexus.


1965 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. O. Elias

Early in 1961, the President of Liberia, the Prime Minister of Nigeria, and the Prime Minister of Sierra Leone decided to act as joint sponsors of a conference of the leaders of all the independent African states for the purpose of promoting inter-African co-operation. Liberia, as the the oldest of the three sponsoring states, graciously offered to play host. The idea was that all the African states that were independent at that time were ipso facto eligible for membership of the conference. This conference would include the small group of independent African states, usually referred to as the Casablanca bloc, consisting of the United Arab Republic, Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Morocco. This group had signed the Casablanca Charter which was a brief document setting out the aims and purposes of the organization, among which were schemes of economic and social co-operation and the establishment of an African High Command for the purpose of self-defense of its members as well as for that of ridding the continent of Africa of all forms of colonialism. When, therefore, the decision was taken by the three sponsoring states to call a Pan-African conference, it was envisaged that all the then independent states in Africa, including the so-called Casablanca bloc states, would attend and take a full part in its deliberations.


1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gino J. Naldi

Since its founding in 1963, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) has placed special emphasis on the preservation of the territorial integrity of African states. It has actively contributed to the development of relevant rules of international law, such as that of uti possidetis. Its opposition to the fragmentation of states has been absolute. However, the small island state of Comoros has challenged this state of affairs. The seemingly successful secession of ‘Anjouan’ has threatened the cherished principles of the OAU. This article critically analyzes the relationship between the principles at the heart of the dispute, those of self-determination and uti possidetis, and concludes that there is no legal proscription on the secession of ‘Anjouan’.


2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayala Levin

In the 1960s, Addis Ababa experienced a construction boom, spurred by its new international stature as the seat of both the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Organization of African Unity. Working closely with Emperor Haile Selassie, expatriate architects played a major role in shaping the Ethiopian capital as a symbol of an African modernity in continuity with tradition. Haile Selassie's Imperial Modernity: Expatriate Architects and the Shaping of Addis Ababa examines how a distinct Ethiopian modernity was negotiated through various borrowings from the past, including Italian colonial planning, both at the scale of the individual building and at the scale of the city. Focusing on public buildings designed by Italian Eritrean Arturo Mezzedimi, French Henri Chomette, and the partnership of Israeli Zalman Enav and Ethiopian Michael Tedros, Ayala Levin critically explores how international architects confronted the challenges of mediating Haile Selassie's vision of an imperial modernity.


Author(s):  
R. A. Akindele

World peace, like war, has tended to become indivisible. Nonetheless, the formal organization of international peace and security continues to be anchored to the principle of division and imperfect co-ordination of responsibility between universal and regional instrumentalities. The problem of maintaining world peace would probably have been much less troublesome than it is now if the international system had either been hierarchically organized, or based upon a strictly federal foundation. Needless to say, the global system remains largely a semi-primitive political order characterized, as it is, by a decentralized structure of power configuration.


1973 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
D. Elwood Dunn

One of the strongest impulses that led to the creation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 was the desire of free Africa to hasten independence in colonized Africa. When the leaders of independent Africa convened to inaugurate the first international regional organization of its kind in Africa, there seemed total agreement on the principle of self-determination. What Kwame Nkrumah had proclaimed six years earlier upon Ghana's accession to independence was echoed in the keynote address of the Ethiopian Emperor: “Our liberty is meaningless unless all Africans are free. Our brothers in the Rhodesias … Mozambique … cry out in anguish for our support and assistance.”


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document