(2018) 2 African Human Rights Yearbook 67 The Resolution on Border Disputes confirms the continuity of colonial boundaries in principle. It is very similar to the principle uti possidetis juris adopted in Latin America in the wake of the Spanish Empire and its internal administrative divisions. However, the Resolution does not erase the existing agenda of disputes. It does not affect demarcation disputes, or frontiers in dispute in colonial times, or frontiers in dispute before the colonial intervention. New states inheriting an obscure or an un-demarcated colonial alignment just have to face the said boundary problems, but no more.54 It does not seem that the Resolution was originally binding on member states. At least Somalia and Morocco did not consider themselves bound by it and appeared to have expressed reservations.55 At that time Somalia was still dreaming of ‘Greater Somalia’ and Morocco of ‘Greater Morocco’. Over time, however, by its general acceptance and repeated reference to it by states, the resolution has evolved into a binding legal principle.56 The resolution came to be considered through the conduct of, and repeated pronouncements by, African states and the continental Organisation as embodying the principle according to which frontiers do not lapse when decolonisation or secession takes place. The principle is now enshrined in the basic constitutional text of the AU and in the treaty on peace and security in Africa. The principle of territorial integrity protects the territorial framework that is legally that of a state. It is secured by a series of consequential rules, namely, rules prohibiting interference or intervention in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state, rules prohibiting the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of any state, rules imposing respect for borders as of the date of independence, and the rule of obligatory non-recognition of territorial changes brought about in breach of international law. The territory of each African state consists of the spatial area it inherited from colonisation. In most cases the alignment would have been described and delimited (even if imprecisely) or demarcated as an international boundary by the relevant colonial powers. In some other cases it would have been defined as an intra-colonial boundary of the units of a larger territory of the colonial power, it becoming international on achievement of independence. The Constitutive Act of the AU proclaims the defence of the territorial integrity of its members as one of its objectives (article 3(b)). But this simply has to do with the relations between the Organisation and its members. It has nothing to do as between AU members inter se or between such a member and a non-member or between a member and component parts of its territory. It has nothing to do with what happens within a given state because the principle of territorial integrity is relevant only as regards 54 55 56 Brownlie (n 53) 11. Brownlie (n 53) 11. C Anyangwe ‘International law and the acquisition of colonial territories in Africa’ (2005) 37 Zambia Law Journal 21; T Maluwa ‘International law-making in the Organisation of African Unity: an overview’ (2000) 12 African Journal of International and Comparative Law 201.