FACTBOX-What is the African Union?
Source: Reuters
July 1 (Reuters) - African Union leaders met in Ghana's capital, Accra, on Sunday to discuss a long-standing plan for a pan-African government as championed by Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. Here are some facts about the African Union: ORIGINS: * 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 the Ethiopian capital, 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 (NEPAD) 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. Ghana's President John Kufuor is the current chairman. INTERVENTIONS: * 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. * A ceasefire was agreed in Sudan's western Darfur region in April 2004 and the AU sent 7,000 peacekeepers with a mandate to monitor the peace and protect those displaced in the camps. -- Last month Sudan agreed to allow a hybrid UN/AU force of 20,000 peacekeepers into Darfur, to replace the weak AU mission that observers say did little to halt the violence. -- Sudan had sent mixed signals about the hybrid force, saying it should be under the AU's command and control rather than the United Nations', and suggesting it should be mainly African. * In Somalia, the AU wants more troop commitments and funding to help Africa send troops to reinforce 1,600 Ugandans patrolling in the capital, Mogadishu, where they have been attacked by Islamist insurgents battling the interim government. The AU originally wanted 8,000 troops in Somalia.
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