Humanitarian Intervention and Sovereignty: A Case Study of the African Union in Darfur

There are two kinds of injustice: the first is found in those who do an injury; the second in those who fail to protect another from injury when they can. (Cicero, De Offiis I, vii trans. Michael Winterbottom, 1994)

Non-state actors are increasingly getting involved in the affairs of developing nation-states thus altering the nature of state sovereignty. This research attempts to investigate the evolving concept of state sovereignty in the context of the African Union’s intervention in Darfur, Southern Sudan. Its aim is to question whether the alleged large-scale violation of human rights and government-sponsored violence perpetuated against Darfurians provides a mandate for other actors in the international system to intervene within such situations. Thus the study is intended to assess the impact of the humanitarian intervention undertaken by the African Union in Darfur, as granted within the body’s Constitutive Act. Furthermore, the research analyzes the level of accountability held by the African Union in alleviating the situation in Darfur. Additionally, another important objective of the thesis is to empirically analyze the role played by the African Union in attempting to resolve the conflict. The situation in Darfur can be identified as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the post-World War Two world. An estimated 2 million people are believed to have died in the fighting or as a result of conflict- induced famine and at least two million have been displaced from their homes. (UNDP, 2009) The rights of Black Darfuri people have been for several years been denied by the leaders within Khartoum government, who are mostly from Arab descents. This in turn led to the outbreak of violence between the Arab and non-Arab population. The conflict increasingly led to mistrust and suspicion that was to last between the two parties for centuries. Also, the Sudanese national army that is meant to protect all citizens of the state was mobilized together with the Janjaweed militia to participate in the displacement and murder of Darfurians with little or no Arab ancestry. Furthermore, the presence of the African Union peacekeepers in Darfur did not serve to impede the violence. The study will include the gathering of secondary data and this shall involve collecting information from scholarly books, peer-reviewed journals and relevant government publications.