I know that we are pressured by time, and I fully agree that we should have had more time. I'll just deal with both questions as raised.
The latter one is on the issue of the African Union and the Pan-African Parliament, and where they are in terms of human rights. These bodies are new. One was formed in 2000, reconstituted from the OAU into the African Union, with a new leadership and a new vigour to ensure that only those who are building strong states and strong democracies would be members and that as soon as you come into power through a coup, your membership would be suspended immediately—unlike the OAU, which allowed that type of situation to exist.
The Pan-African Parliament is still in its first five years, at its formative stage as a non-legislative body. After five years there will be a debate—and, in fact, it has started now—to make it a legislative body thereafter. Currently it doesn't have any powers in terms of legislation.
Thirdly, there is a challenge of finance, generally. Many member states do not contribute their fees to the African Union, so it is weak as a result. It can take decisions, but it will not be very powerful in executing some of the decisions. There are very few countries on the continent that are able to carry the coffers.
Let's take the African mission in Sudan; currently it's South Africa and Nigeria alone that are carrying that body. That is why there is a call for other nations to come in and contribute, and obviously to support what we have in Sudan around the issue of the United Nations resolution, which they do not like.
A lot of African countries have supported the resolution that it has to go. Once you do that, then they rush to the Arab world and say, “Arab brothers, look what is happening in the United Nations”. It's as complex as that, as my colleague was saying.
It's not a simple matter, but the issue of finance is a bigger issue. Niger is coming on board in terms of beginning to contribute to us some of the resources. They will not be giving money, but it will be equipment, vehicles for the mission to be able to cover Darfur, because the current region we're dealing with in Sudan is Darfur. In South Sudan there is peace. There is a United Nations peacekeeping force, and no problem about it. The northern government is not even raising an issue about it. They're only protecting Darfur.
When you look at the nitty-gritty and ask “why Darfur”, it's that there's talk about the biggest uranium find being found in Darfur. They will accuse the west and say the west wants Darfur because of the uranium in that particular area, and therefore they will not allow anybody to come in because it is their own resource.
So, on the issue of the AU and PAP, they are new bodies, but also quite a number of these are poor people; they are highly indebted, poor countries that we still have in Africa, unfortunately, and some of the debt cancellation that was committed to by rich nations has not yet happened. It has not yet been cancelled, and those countries are still trapped.
A lot of budgets in Africa are 60% or 50% aid that comes into a particular country. This means that country has not yet even recovered to build its own revenue and be a stand-alone and be able to contribute to the continental body that needs to be strengthened in order for us to be able to then implement programs such as NEPAD and so forth.
However, the NEPAD program is still continuing. It may not be grounded fully, in nation-to-nation terms; however, in terms of its being known, generally it is known. Then, parliaments are now beginning to engage at the Pan-African Parliament around the establishment of a commission on NEPAD. In every parliament there will be a commission of some sort for a debate or an engagement with civil society and the people of the respective parliament. They could also begin to follow on that.
There is a lot of transformation also taking place within the AU, because after establishing at the executive level—the ministers of foreign affairs level—now they are looking at the five commissions. They have just opened with commissioners, and the commissioners have to build. NEPAD is going to be removed as a stand-alone, to be included as part of the commission type of program.
Therefore, there's a lot of work and institution building taking place on that continent, and I think that is why you see it as weaknesses, whereas we see it as a building process. Also, it will need some type of partnership from the rich nations really to see that succeeding. With this peer review mechanism, the nations themselves will be able then to introspectively consider whether their democracies are working and then determine how they can rebuild, remodel, and modernize their nations, so that indeed the continent goes into those brighter days that we all visualize. Unfortunately, I could elaborate more, but due to time—