AFRICAN UNION PASSPORT LAUNCHED

The long-awaited African Union passport was launched at the opening ceremony of the 27th ordinary session of the assembly of the AU summit in Kigali, Rwanda yesterday The assembly is made up of heads of states and governments of the fifty four member states of the AU. The AU Commission’s Chairperson, Dr. Dlamini Zuma, presented the passport to the chairperson of the union, president Idriss Deby of Chad and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. Miz Dlamini Zuma, in her address, said the passport was a landmark achievement of the commission and was intended to help with regional integration of people of the continent. Meanwhile Morocco has formally announced its wish to rejoin the African Union, 32 years after leaving the organisation. In a message to the AU summit in Rwanda, the Moroccan King Mohammed the sixth said the time had come for his country to retake its place within its institutional family. Morocco left the AU in 1984, after the organisation recognised the independence of Western Sahara. Moroccans describe Western Sahara as its country's "Southern Provinces".