FACTBOX-Background to the African Union
Source: Reuters
Jan 29 (Reuters) - The African Union opened its summit of African leaders in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa on Monday. Here are some facts about the African Union: * The AU groups 53 member states and its official languages are English, French and Arabic. * The AU emerged from the Organisation of African Unity, which was founded in 1963 with a charter signed by 32 countries in Addis Ababa. * The AU aims to help promote democracy, human rights and development across Africa, especially by increasing foreign investment through the New Partnership for Africa's Development Programme. * In September 1999, a special summit in Libya issued the Sirte Declaration establishing the African Union loosely based on the European Union model. The AU was officially launched in Durban in July 2002 with South Africa's Thabo Mbeki as chairman. The current chairman is Congo Republic's Denis Sassou Nguesso. * The AU's first military intervention in a member state was the May 2003 deployment of a peacekeeping force of soldiers from South Africa, Ethiopia and Mozambique to Burundi. * At the last AU summit, hosts Sudan were denied the chairmanship in wrangling which dominated the 2006 meeting. In the hope that the crisis in remote Darfur would be over, a compromise was struck that would give Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir the chair in 2007.
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
