The launching of the African Union on 9 July 2002 marked the turning of a new page in Africa's modern history. This is especially significant in the context of efforts by African nations to achieve deeper political unity and economic integration. The Constitutive Act of the African Union was adopted barely nine months after the adoption of the Sirte Declaration on 9 September 1999, by which African leaders decided to reorient the objectives of the Organization of African Unity to accelerate African integration as a pillar of the continent's collective response to the challenge of globalization. This article argues that while the speedy elaboration, adoption and ratification of the Act demonstrated the collective desire of African countries to accelerate the process of integration, this rush inadvertently precluded a serious debate on the nature and scope of integration entailed in the project of the African Union. The result was the adoption of a document regarded by some of its own signatories, for varied reasons, as an instrument lacking in substance and limited in its scope. These perceived inadequacies have necessitated the early amendment of the Act. However, it is argued here that these amendments will do nothing to hasten the pace of African political unity or economic integration, as they are largely symbolic. They do not deal with the substantive lacunae identified in the Act.

The African Union marks a new era in institution-building in postcolonial Africa. It is conceived as an aspect of Africa's response to the challenges of globalization and regional integration. It is also part of the historic quest for deeper African unity. This discussion focuses on the political and contextual dynamics behind this development, and assesses its significance for the project of African integration. While offering no extensive examination of all the core provisions of the Constitutive Act, particular attention has been paid to some key principles. It is argued that the African Union represents a significant departure from the political, legal, and institutional framework of the OAU, and is predicated on a range of principles that reflect new thinking and approaches among the African states.

Some three decades ago, two African international legal scholars explored, in separate essays, the impact of the newly independent African states on the development of certain areas of international law. The argument advanced in these discussions was straightforward enough: that the participation of the new African states in the international legal order, together with the unprecedented developments in international organizations and technology, had greatly circumscribed the frontiers of traditional international law; and that Africa, as a continent, had ceased to be merely an object of a Eurocentric international law, and was gradually taking up its place as a subject of, and an active participant in, contemporary universal international law.

On 26 April 1988, the International Court of Justice (hereinafter ‘the ICJ’ or ‘the Court’) delivered its Advisory Opinion on the Applicability of the Obligation to Arbitrate under section 21 of the United Nations Headquarters Agreement of 26 June 1947 (hereinafter ‘the PLO Mission case’). Although it might be argued that in this case the Court was not really called upon to deliberate or pronounce upon significantly fundamental issues of international law, the Opinion does raise a number of issues that may in time come to be regarded as landmark planks in the growing body of the Court's jurisprudence. But not all aspects of the Opinion can be cast in a positive light, at least from the point of view of some legal commentators. On the contrary, there are certain aspects of the decision which may arguably be characterized as a blot on the Court's jurisprudence. I propose to address two of these: the ICJ's approach to the interpretation of the provisions of the UN Headquarters Agreement which were at the centre of the dispute between the United Nations and the United States, and the question of prudential discretion as exercised by the Court in this particular case. But first, a discussion of the background facts.