Before the founding of the African Union (AU) in 2001, its predecessor Organisation of African Unity (OAU) did not provide appropriate tools for a collective and comprehensive acting of African states in times of violent crisis, mostly due to the shared value of non-interference into the internal affairs of states. During the 1990s, a series of violent conflicts in Africa, most importantly the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, urged the African states for a change in their common security collaboration. After the establishment of the AU in 2001, the non-interference clause of OAU was not longer valid. The Constitutive Act now gave the AU the right to intervene in a member state in grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.