66 Anyangwe/Right to self-determination under the African Charter integration. A Pan-African Parliament has been created as the continental legislature to make law for the peace, order and good government of Africa, though it does not yet have full legislative mandate. The African Union Commission together with the AU Chairperson and the Peace and Security Council represent what may be regarded as the executive arm of a continental government in gestation. The role of the African Standby Force includes ensuring continental peace, security and safety. The right of the AU to intervene in member states under certain circumstances is enshrined in article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act and is accepted as a limitation on the principle of noninterference and non-intervention in the internal affairs of AU member states. In this context, the principle of territorial integrity is unlikely to have the same power as it appears to have now. 4.2 Intangibility of borders inherited from colonisation Africa has adopted the attitude that in the short term, and in the absence of a better alternative solution to border problems, boundaries inherited from colonisation are to be retained. Decolonisation was not to be the occasion for new sources of doubt and controversy about boundaries. The Resolution on Border Disputes adopted in 1964 recites that ‘the borders of African States, on the day of independence, constitute a tangible reality’. It declares the solemn pledge by all member states ‘to respect the frontiers existing on their achievement of national independence’. This policy of maintaining the colonial territorial status quo at independence, for want of something better, is repeated in article 4(b) of the AU Constitutive Act. It represents a rejection of frontier revisionism which could result in the disintegration of most of the existing states and even the complete disappearance of some of them.52 The policy appears to have a great deal of good sense behind it. Boundary and territorial disputes represent some of the most explosive sources of conflict in Africa. The policy prioritises avoidance of disputes and of threats to the peace in Africa.53 It is a qualification of the right of self-determination in the sense that the territorial framework of the various colonial territories are accepted as the units of self-determination within which sovereign statehood is achieved. This precludes self-determination involving claims to territory not comprised within each such unit at independence no matter the cultural, religious or ethnic justification for the claims. The continental organisation therefore refuses to uphold the right to self-determination entailing changes in existing frontiers. This refusal is additionally based on the principle of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each African State. 52 53 T Imobighe The OAU, African defence and security (1989) 31. I Brownlie African boundaries: A legal and diplomatic encyclopaedia (1979) 7; I Brownlie Basic documents on African affairs (1971) 360; see also, CG Widstrand (ed) African boundary problems (1969).