Resolution AHG/RES.16(1) on Border Disputes Between African States
Document
The commitment to respect borders existing at independence: the decision that settled the map question.
SOLEMNLY DECLARES that all Member States pledge themselves to respect the borders existing on their achievement of national independence.
This single sentence committed the OAU's members to respecting the borders existing at independence, a decision taken to prevent conflict between states. The resolution addresses borders, not the constitutional design of a future federation: it neither provides for one nor forecloses one. But it entrenched the political geography within which every unity debate since has had to operate.
Context
A year after the OAU's founding, the new states faced the question their borders posed: the colonial map had cut through peoples and markets, but redrawing it risked endless war. The Assembly's answer was to freeze the map, citing "extra-African manoeuvres aimed at dividing African States."