
The African Union passport: A waste of time - darshandsoni
https://medium.com/@darshandsoni/the-au-passport-a-waste-of-time-ef4faf9c5d12#.8enngk88g
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nevi-me
Very good read! I was also puzzled at why diplomats who have little travel
issues were first to get the passports.

I live in South Africa, and with the ruling party and president seeing their
eyes on potentially making the former AU chair our next potential president;
I've been quite critical of her capabilities.

I have largely thought of the AU passport as Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma's vanity
project. There's lots of structural issues which you mention, that make the
practicality of the passport difficult, and than none have been dealt with
says a lot.

My opinion is that ECOWAS have done better in managing their region than the
AU has in intervening. The recent Gambian situation being a good example. I
can't talk much about SADC as we have Swaziland and Zimbabwe that are
violating human rights with SA and other members not intervening much.

Your solution of adopting ECOWAS and/or other frameworks is more feasible.

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Pica_soO
Sir, there seems to be a problem with your African Union Passport, would you
please follow me to the local police station to waste 2-3 hours and
contemplate the absence of a bribe?

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edblarney
I would imagine the real issue is that other countries will likely not accept
it.

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darshandsoni
That's a fair point when dealing with such a large number of countries (and a
widely varying stage of development between them). But the passport would have
to be designed to adhere to ICAO standards in any case. That would make
countries legally obliged to accept it as a valid travel document. But that,
in addition to all the other factors mentioned in the article, requires a lot
of formalisation or written AU mandate - none of which has happened.

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germanier
> designed to adhere to ICAO standards in any case. That would make countries
> legally obliged to accept it as a valid travel document

That can't be true. It is possible for private individuals to create documents
that adhere to those specifications. In fact, some do but of course the
documents are not accepted.

~~~
darshandsoni
I stand corrected! So from what I read up, ICAO adherence only facililitates
quicker processing at the entry point[0]. But member nations are not bound to
anything.

So I previously thought that a country can obviously choose who it will accept
with its own laws, but that it has to still recognise a valid travel document.
That's obviously not true because there are many countries that refuse to
recognise documents like the Israeli or Republic of China passports, despite
them being perfectly standardised. Or the case of individually declared
documents like the world passport or Liberland [1].

So in this case, the AU would have to formalise the status of the document in
law, then member nations have to ratify it, before anyone should feel
comfortable trying to travel on it. But of course, this isn't EU law that is
generally well enforced; there's hardly anything stopping many African nations
from flouting international, regional or even their very own set of laws!
Hardly looking promising... It's just a shame there's so much wasted effort
going in to this.

0 -
[http://www.icao.int/Security/FAL/TRIP/Pages/default.aspx](http://www.icao.int/Security/FAL/TRIP/Pages/default.aspx)

1 - [https://liberland.org/en/request/](https://liberland.org/en/request/)

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rurban
Good read, but the title is entirely misleading. It's not a waste of time, the
AU passport is extremely important to be rolled out.

But the current scheme is of course a sham, a mere propaganda piece. And maybe
yet another scheme to get paid bribes a 2nd time. Nevertheless, you have to
start somewhere to build pressure.

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riffraff
morocco is actually a member of the AU again, since a couple weeks

[http://www.worldbulletin.net/todays-news/183967/morocco-
rejo...](http://www.worldbulletin.net/todays-news/183967/morocco-rejoins-
african-union)

~~~
darshandsoni
Right you are! I've put a footnote in the article to reflect the change in
status. After all those years outside, the AU probably strategically wanted a
sizeable regional power like Morocco back in. Unfortunately for the Sahrawis,
apart from an EU ruling every now and then, their cause is all but forgotten.

In the larger context of the article though, it probably doesn't change much
of the political reality.

