But otherwise it has done little to its credit, and perhaps the biggest joke of all is that there is an African country that is not in the AU- Morocco, as the AU ridiculously continues to recognise the not-and-never extant SADR as a member. To be areal force for good the AU would need to abandon the principle of "non-interference" that discredited the OAU and limits its ability to be an agent of progress. Of course, the issue is that there are more African leaders who are at least illiberal in their style of rule than those who are not, so the introduction of interventionist doctrines such as R2P or whatnot is tantamount to opening Casandra's Box.
The continued Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara in violation of international law is a disgrace and it would be very wrong of the AU to recognize it. Of course the EU is an even bigger hypocrite for not implementing economic sanctions against Morocco.
R2P is part of article 4 of the AU charter, so they do have the possibility of enforcing it if a higher number of African governments become democratically elected and/or the most important ones decide to act more decisively in genocide/ethnic cleansing scenarios. SA and Nigeria have most of the responsibility here.
