Abstract

The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrates the many challenges that the international community (the UN and AU in this case) faces with its new self-proclaimed responsibility of reconstruction and state building. It is argued that both the UN and the AU would be more effective by guiding their strategies in light of the principle of self-determination. This approach would leave the necessary space for Congolese institutions to develop while focusing UN and AU’s on stopping external intervention and resource plundering as well as securing prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The article follows a time-sequencing method that assumes outcomes to be affected by the sequence of events at specific points in time.

Key words: Congolese self-determination, The African Union and the United Nations.