ABSTRACT
On the other hand, this unprecedented series of revolts posed at least three main
sets of challenges – geopolitical, operational and legal. From a geopolitical per-
spective, North African countries lie at the crossroads between two regions – the
African continent and the Middle East – and, with the exception of Morocco, are
all full members of both the African Union (AU) and the Arab League. This
substantial interregional overlap between the membership of two major regional
organisations constitutes a unicum in international relations and, together with the active presence in the region of a number of other subregional bodies and extra-
regional organisations involved in substantial cooperation projects (such as the
EU), it created the conditions for making the arena of potential mediators parti-
cularly crowded. From a legal standpoint, the regional and subregional organisa-
tions that engaged with the revolts are designed as eminently intergovernmental
bodies and their statutes give them little or no power to intervene in the internal
affairs of their member states. Much has been written, in particular, on the rela-
tively poor record of both the AU and the Arab League in mediating civil or ethnic
wars and in managing power transitions, especially when they did not spill over
into interstate conflict.3 Indeed, the AU has been described tout court as a ‘‘guardian of incumbent regimes (sometimes against their own people)’’.4
Finally, the Arab spring arguably poses various operational challenges to external
mediators and especially regional and international intergovernmental bodies
because of the sheer pace at which the revolts unfolded, which is problematic for
the complex internal consultation procedures required by most of these bodies for
arriving at a unified stance to be presented on the international stage.
