Provisional Program of Work for the Month of July 2022

Date | July 2022

In July, Djibouti will be chairing the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC). Council’s provisional programme of work for the month envisages three sessions addressing four substantive agenda items. One of these will have a thematic focus while the other three will be addressing country/region specific situations. Council is also scheduled to undertake a field mission to Somalia during the month.

On 01 July, the PSC Committee of Experts (CoE) is set to convene a meeting in preparation for two upcoming consultative meetings of the Council. The first one is the 7th Informal Joint Meeting and 16th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting of the PSC and the United Nations (UN) Security Council (UNSC). The second one is the 3rd Annual Consultative Meeting between the PSC and Policy Organs of Regional Economic Communities and Regional Mechanisms for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution (RECs/RMs).

The first substantive session of the month, scheduled to take place on 05 July, is envisaged to have two agenda items. The first agenda will be committed to an updated briefing on the situation in the Horn of Africa. The AU High Representative for the Horn of Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo, is expected to brief Council, mainly on the situation in Ethiopia as he did in his earlier briefings to the Council. This will constitute the second briefing of the High Representative to Council in 2022, the first one having taken place in February. Although a briefing session was planned to take place in May at the request of High Representative Obasanjo, it was later cancelled. The coming briefing is expected to provide Council updates on the High Representative’s activities since his last briefing as well as overall developments regarding the situation.

The second agenda for Council’s session on 05 July will be a briefing on the situation in South Sudan. This session comes at a time when the end of the transitional period is fast approaching before the completion of key transitional activities envisaged in the Revitalised Agreement for the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS).  The coming session is expected to assess where the transitional process stands, what to do with some of the more transitional tasks that could not be completed before the end of the transitional period and whether and how the elections envisaged to take place in early 2023 could be organized. Council may also follow up on the decisions of its previous session on South Sudan – the 1060th meeting – where among others, it mandated the AU PCRD Centre to prioritize South Sudan amongst its priority areas of focus and requested the AU Commission to dispatch a post-conflict needs-assessment mission to South Sudan. The session can also serve as an occasion for considering the conclusions of the Council’s filed mission to South Sudan that took place in February 2022. Although Council planned to convene a session in March to consider the report of its field mission, that did not take place.

On 11 July, Council will consider and adopt the draft provisional programme of work for the month of August 2022.

The third session of the month will be taking place on 21 July and will be committed to the consideration of the report of the Chairperson of the AU Commission on elections in Africa. This is a session which was initially planned to take place in June but later moved into July due to changes to Council’s programme of work for the month of June. Following the previous report of the AU Commission Chairperson on elections in Africa conducted in the period from July to December 2021 – considered at Council’s 1062nd session – the coming report is expected to provide details of elections conducted during the first half of 2022 (January to June 2022).

The last session of the month is expected to take place on 25 July. The session will be committed to a briefing on the situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) and operations of the AU Observer Mission in CAR (MOUACA). It is to be recalled that MOUACA was authorised by the PSC at its 936th session held in July 2020. The mission’s main purpose is to support and monitor the implementation of the Political Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in CAR. The session will be important to draw attention to some of the key factors that continue to limit progress in the implementation of the Political Agreement and impede effective discharge of MOUACA’s mandate. The session may also serve to follow up on the status of implementation of the decisions of Council’s previous –  1011th – session, including its request for the Chairperson of the AU Commission to conduct an assessment on the illegal flow of arms in CAR and submit a detailed report to Council and for the AU Commission to undertake a technical needs assessment mission to the CAR, with a view to mapping out the priority needs of the CAR Government.

From 27 to 29 July, Council will conduct a field mission to Somalia to take stock of the political, security and humanitarian developments in the country. This filed mission comes not long after the end of the long delayed and protracted electoral process that culminated in the election of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as President of Somalia. It is to be recalled that the PSC played an important role for the electoral process by rejecting the attempt of the former president to extend his term of office and the field mission serves as an occasion for affirming close working relationship with ATMIS and the AU for implementation of the Somalia Transitional Plan and achieve stability in Somalia.

The provisional programme of work for July also envisages in footnotes, the possibility of convening of a session to consider renewal of the mandate of G5 Sahel Joint Force, on a date to be determined. The footnotes also envisage possible PSC informal consultations with the Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), Bankole Adeoye as well as consultations between the PSC Chair and UNSC President for the month, also on dates to be confirmed.