UK attends African Union Summit
Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch-Brown joins other world and African ministers and heads of state for the African Union (AU) Summit in Libya on 1-2 July.
AU member states will discuss pressing African issues such as Sudan and Somalia as well as global issues such as the impact of the economic crisis on Africa.
There will also be discussions surrounding the Summit theme, 'Investing in agriculture for economic growth and food security'. Lord Malloch-Brown is due to have bilateral meetings with political figures from Africa, China, and the United States among others.
Speaking in an interview on his arrival in Libya, Lord Malloch-Brown said:
"Somalia's really high on the agenda. The Government there is under real pressure from rebels. There's fighting going on as we speak and we’re all racing to do what we can to support it, because if you remember a few years ago the country had really slumped under the control of hard line Islamist elements.
We’re just anxious to see a Government there that represents everybody, that protects people’s human rights and offers a decent living to people. And that hangs in the balance at the moment."
Read the full transcript of his interview
Background to the AU Summit
The AU is a relatively young organisation but is making an increasingly positive contribution to tackling a range of security and political crisis, such as maintaining peacekeeping forces in Somalia and Darfur, and working to re-establish democratic processes in Mauritania and Madagascar.
The first AU Summit was held in Durban in 2002. The origins of the AU summit were enshrined in the Sirte Declaration, signed by Heads of Government and States of Africa in 1999. The priorities of the declaration were for the establishment of an African Union, 'with a view to accelerating the process of integration in the continent to enable it play its rightful role in the global economy while addressing multifaceted social, economic and political problems compounded as they are by certain negative aspects of globalisation'.
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