AU’s peer review lets Uganda off scot-free

The coverage of the recent African Union Summit focused, unsurprisingly, on whether Libya’s President Gaddafi would retain the Chair.

He didn’t and it passed, as expected, to Malawi’s President Bingu wa Muthurika.

What the coverage didn’t focus on was the pre-Summit Forum addressing the African Peer Review Mechanism.

There appears to be a growing perception that the AU and its specialised mechanisms are retreating from the promise signalled at its inauguration — that of a continental body that would no longer tolerate gross and systemic human-rights violations and generally bad governance.

In essence, what amounts to protection of those involved in gross and systemic human rights violations (as in Sudan and Zimbabwe) regardless of the motivations for such protection (regional stability, for example) detracts from its moral standing.

And it seems less and less clear on how to handle arguably civilian coups d’etat —involving manipulation, in one way or another, of the electoral process — in now politically pluralist states.

Then look at what’s just happened with the APRM.

The Forum is now chaired by the Ethiopian president.

An irony, to put it lightly.

The Secretariat’s headed by a respected Nigerian economist — whose age and tenure somehow never even came up for discussion as all of the other members of the APRM’s Panel of Eminent Persons were replaced (with the exception of the Algerian member).

The criteria for such replacement somehow also weren’t discussed. And neither was the audit report of the APRM’s Secretariat.

On to the Forum’s main business — discussing the self-assessments by states. Some 30 of the AU’s member states have now acceded to the APRM, with 12 countries having been peer reviewed to date (including Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda).

Benin and South Africa didn’t report, as expected.

Burkina Faso did, focused on climate change and drought.

And Uganda did as well, with its follow-up report (and thus the debate by peers) being focused on educational quality, the use of oil revenues and fertility rates.