Constitutive Act of the African Union

About the Author

The Constitutive Act of the African Union was a collaborative document prepared by the delegations from the signatory nations. Accordingly, it is difficult to cite a particular author or group of authors. However, the drive for African unity during this period was led by the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. The Sirte Declaration had been signed in Sirte, Libya, at the OAU's Fourth Extraordinary Session of the Assembly of African Heads of State and Government. This declaration helped serve as an impetus to the formation of the African Union, so Gaddafi would likely have had major input into the Constitutive Act.

Gaddafi was born on June 7, 1942, and grew up in the desert region of Sirte. In 1963 he entered a military academy, and he received additional military training in England, returning to Libya in 1966. He and a group of officers were opposed to the nation's pro-Western monarchy, and on September 1, 1969, they staged a coup d'état when Libya's king, Idris I, was out of the country. They proclaimed the nation a republic, with Gaddafi as president. In the years that followed, he assumed various positions and titles, including that of prime minister, but in 1977 he declared that Libya would be known as a jamahiriya, a word that loosely translates as “state ruled by the masses.” Thus, Gaddafi shed formal titles; he promoted himself to the rank of colonel rather than general, claiming that he did not have to hold grandiose titles, so he is often referred to as Colonel Gaddafi. Although he has no official title such as president or prime minister, he and a close council of advisers hold near-absolute power in Libya.

From his seizure of power in 1969 through the 1990s, Gaddafi was widely regarded in the West as one of the world's most dangerous heads of state. Libya during these years became a haven for terrorists and revolutionary groups committed to opposition to Western imperialism. He was a strong supporter of the pan-Arabism of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He shipped arms to the Irish Republican Army and supported other “liberation” movements throughout the world. In 1986, U.S. president Ronald Reagan ordered bombing raids on Libya in retaliation for suspected Libyan involvement in a bombing at a nightclub in Berlin, Germany, frequented by U.S. military personnel. Among those killed in the bombing raid was Gaddafi's adopted daughter. Later, Gaddafi was in the headlines again when a jetliner exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988; Gaddafi denied Libyan involvement, yet the evidence proved otherwise. Ultimately, in 2003, Gaddafi acknowledged the involvement of Libyan government officials and authorized a large financial settlement to the families of the victims.

Throughout his career, Gaddafi cultivated an image as a flamboyant thorn in the side of the West. The history of Libya under his rule has been a history of economic sanctions, the politics of oil, military skirmishes, denunciations of the West, and Western characterizations of Libya as a “rogue” nation. In the twenty-first century, however, Gaddafi seemed to be trying to improve his image. In addition to the Lockerbie settlement, he opened Libya to weapons inspectors, vowed to support the fight against al Qaeda (the organization responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States), opened diplomatic relations with countries in the West, invited Western leaders to Libya, and in general behaved more like a statesman and less like a revolutionary gadfly. He died in 2011.