The African Union and the Libya Crisis: Situating the Responsibility to Protect in Africa

The inability of the African Union (AU) to effectively advocate and implement policy on a range of issues, means that African countries continue to be at a disadvantage when it comes to securing their collective interests. This article will assess how the Libyan crisis exposed the AU's limited ability to proactively intervene and implement its self-ascribed mandate and responsibility to protect, which is enshrined in the Constitutive Act of the Union. Ultimately, the AU has to adopt a more interventionist and timely posture when it relates to preventing the escalation of crisis on the continent. An effective approach to operationalizing a proactive interventionist stance could lay the foundations for situating and implementing the responsibility to protect citizens in times of crisis on the African continent.