Residual Responsibility to Implement: the AU, the Constitutive Act, and the Responsibility to Protect

Abstract Decades after the African Union adopted the Constitutive Act and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), mass atrocities continue to go unchecked in Africa. The continent hosts a rising number of unresolved conflicts and humanitarian crises, rendering the promise of ‘African solutions to African problems’ mere rhetoric. This article analyses both the complementary features of the Constitutive Act and R2P, which provide the AU with the power to prevent and stop mass atrocity crimes, and the challenges which continue to impede it from successfully upholding its responsibilities.