FACTBOX-What is the African Union?
Jan 30 (Reuters) - Kenya's bloody turmoil will dominate an African summit in Ethiopia this week, underlining how quickly the neighbouring nation has gone from apparently stable regional anchor to the continent's most urgent crisis.
Here are some facts about the African Union:
ORIGINS:
* The AU groups 53 member states and its official languages are English, French and Arabic.
* The AU emerged from the Organisation of African Unity, which was founded in 1963 with a charter signed by 32 countries in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
* The AU aims to help promote democracy, human rights and development across Africa, especially by increasing foreign investment through the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) programme.
* In September 1999, a special summit in Libya issued the Sirte Declaration establishing the African Union loosely based on the European Union model. The AU was officially launched in Durban in July 2002 with South Africa's Thabo Mbeki as chairman. Ghana's President John Kufuor is the current chairman.
INTERVENTIONS:
* The AU's first military intervention in a member state was the May 2003 deployment of a peacekeeping force of soldiers from South Africa, Ethiopia and Mozambique to Burundi.
* A ceasefire was agreed in Sudan's western Darfur region in April 2004 and the AU sent 7,000 peacekeepers with a mandate to monitor the peace and protect those displaced in the camps.
-- Sudan has agreed to allow a hybrid UN/AU force of 20,000 peacekeepers into Darfur, to replace the weak AU mission that observers say did little to halt the violence.
-- Sudan had sent mixed signals about the hybrid force, saying it should be under the AU's command and control rather than the United Nations', and suggesting it should be mainly African.
* In Somalia, the AU has criticised member states for not honouring pledges to send peacekeeping troops to reinforce 1,600 Ugandans and about 400 Burundians, who have been attacked by Islamist insurgents battling the interim government. The AU originally wanted 8,000 troops in Somalia.
