SUDAN: The African Union is making attempts to move away from its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity, regarded as a dictators' club, writes Rob Crilly
When African heads of state gather in Khartoum at the end of this week, they will not have to look far beyond the Sudanese capital to find the major failures and challenges facing the African Union.
Its troops are bogged down in Sudan's western Darfur region as they attempt to monitor a non- existent ceasefire. Neighbouring Ethiopia and Eritrea have returned to the brink of war with little hope of a resolution to their border dispute.
Eleven million people are at risk of starvation in the countries that surround Sudan in the Horn of Africa.
However, it is the first issue that has dominated the run-up to the summit, sparking a fierce row about whether Sudan is fit to take a leading role in the AU given that its soldiers and their Janjaweed allies continue to launch attacks on civilian villages in Darfur.
Protocol dictates that Sudan, as host of the 2006 summit, should take over the rotating chair of the AU.
David Mozersky, Sudan expert with the International Crisis Group, said President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's government would be the worst possible head of an organisation designed to spread democracy.
"If Sudan takes the AU leadership, it wins credibility, but to the detriment of the African Union," he said. "The Sudan government has been one of the worst perpetrators of human rights abuses on the African continent for the last two years."
The criticism sounds strangely familiar.
When the AU was set up in 2002, it was designed to supersede the Organisation of African Unity, regarded as little more than an ineffective talking shop or "dictators' club".
In contrast, the 53 members of the union - headquartered in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa - have attempted to take a more pro-active role.
There are ambitious plans to establish a human rights court, a central bank and a single currency by 2023.
In short, its mission is to spread democracy and prosperity through a region mired in poverty and riddled with disease.
Yet for all the grand ideals, there remains one obvious similarity with the old "dictators' club" - something that might euphemistically be termed a "personnel problem".
For a start, the AU was conceived by the Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy, not exactly known for his commitment to democracy at home.
Other leading lights such as Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, both once regarded as a new type of democratic leader, have succumbed to the temptation to use security forces to silence opposition in the past year.
Then there are the unreconstructed tyrants, such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.
For Prince Mashele, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, this is the crucial challenge for the AU.
"If you look at how the AU operates, the highest decision- making body - the summit of the AU - is made up of the leaders of the different nations," he says. "So if you look at their record, what is their record of governance? Can they be entrusted with entrenching democracy if they themselves do not have a good record in that regard."
So what of their record in spreading democracy through Africa? Analysts point to several diplomatic triumphs that suggest the AU has been an effective force in nudging troubled nations - such as Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo - towards free elections.
Most recently, says Mr Mashele, AU sanctions were instrumental in ensuring that Faure Gnassingbe was unable to inherit the presidency of Togo on his father's death last year.
"The chairperson of the AU commission was quick to announce to Togo that the AU would not recognise the presidency of the son, which led to the holding of elections and so on. So you can argue that the AU played a role in ensuring democracy in Togo."
Elsewhere there remains a reluctance to meddle in the internal affairs of members.
The AU has come under fire for failing to chastise Robert Mugabe for destroying the homes of tens of thousands of people living in shanty towns.
Mugabe says the settlements are illegal but few analysts doubt his real motive is to punish the urban voters who backed the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in elections last year.
And Darfur - once seen as a crucial test of Africa's ability to sort out its own problems - remains a festering sore. Some 7,000 AU troops are struggling with a limited mandate and lack of resources to police a region the size of France.
At times they have been simply outgunned by rebel factions or Janjaweed militia; at others have had to stand back, hamstrung by a mandate which permits the use of lethal force in narrowly defined circumstances, as Sudanese soldiers or police have attacked civilian villages yards from their base.
Yet for all the limitations of a continent-wide body with an annual budget of about $40 million (€33 million) compared with the European Union's $150 billion (€125 million), there is agreement that the AU has already made a difference to the spread of democracy, freedom and human rights.
In particular, 17 countries have now signed up to an AU protocol on the rights of women. It guarantees protection for women with HIV, access to reproductive health services and it tries to tackle traditional practices such as female circumcision.
Almost half its governments have signed up to a peer review mechanism, allowing members to monitor each others' adherence to good governance and sound economic practice.
This year, the AU is planning a pharmaceutical policy, guaranteeing universal access to generic drugs and setting out plans for their production in Africa.
Irungu Houghton, pan-Africa policy adviser with Oxfam, says: "We are convinced that the AU is a positive force for the continent. Yes there are shortcomings but on the whole, it is a much more effective advocacy instrument for Africa internationally and also domestically, within Africa, than its predecessor, the Organisation of African Union, ever was."