ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the extent to which the AU serves as an interlocutor of the continent in its relations with the EU. It argues that while theoretically the AU is the key spokesperson and negotiator in Africa’s dealings with the EU, this is hardly the case in practice. On the contrary, there have been occasions when regions or individual African states have assumed contradictory, often directly oppositional, postures to the official stance of the AU. Lacking effective instruments of compulsion, the AU has failed to reprimand such ‘errant’ states. The decision to pass a resolution, albeit non-binding, for African states to pull out of the ICC, knowing that African leaders were sent to the Hague by their own citizens, underscores the pliability of the AU. The continental body imparted a major contradiction in advocating human rights while in the same breath creating conditions for impunity.