Provisional Programme of Work of the PSC for November 2026

Provisional Programme of Work of the PSC for November 2026

Date | November 2026

In November, the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire will assume the role of chairing the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC). The month’s Provisional Programme of Work (PPoW) includes eight substantive sessions.  There is one session that will focus on a country-specific situation in addition to the session on the AU mission in Somalia. All the remaining sessions will address thematic issues. The PPoW also includes the annual PSC Retreat on the Review of its Working Methods. All sessions are expected to take place at the ambassadorial level. It is also worth noting that two sessions will be held in an open format. The PPoW also envisages that the Committee of Experts (CoE), the PSC subsidiary body, is also expected to hold three meetings during the month.

The PSC will begin the month with a CoE meeting on 2 November to prepare for the 17^th Joint Consultative Meeting between the PSC and the EUPSC. It is expected that the preparatory meeting will focus on shaping the interventions that the PSC members will deliver on the draft agenda items for the joint retreat and the consultative meeting.

On the same day in the afternoon, the PSC will convene its first substantial session of the month, which will be an open session on the ‘Review of Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development in Africa.’ This is an annual statutory session that is held in November, and this year’s session coincides with the 20th anniversary of the AU PCRD Policy. The last session on this was at the 1312^th session held on 17 November 2025. It is worth noting that during the session, the PSC requested the AU Commission to ‘extend the period for the commemoration of the PCRD Awareness Raising from one week to one month, effective from 2026.’ This year will be the first transition from PCRD Awareness Week to a month-long engagement involving various PCRD-related activities. This will be the 6^th edition of the AU PCRD commemoration. Held under the theme ‘Twenty Years of Building and Sustaining Peace: From Policy to Action,’ the 2026 PCRD Month will provide an opportunity to take stock of the 20-year journey, reflect on lessons learned and identify priorities for implementation of the revised AU PCRD Policy for the next decade, having regard to the profound changes both on the continent and globally.

Following this, the next day, 3 November, the CoE will meet again in the morning to continue preparing for the AUPSC – EUPSC Annual Joint Consultative Meeting. Their second agenda item will be to prepare for the PSC Retreat, which will be held later in the month on 16 and 17 November.

On the afternoon of the same day, 3 November, the PSC will convene its second substantive session of the month focusing on ‘Youth, Peace and Security.’ The session, which will be convened in an open format, will be held following the Council’s 807^th meeting of November 2018 decision to ‘institutionalise and regularise an annual open session dedicated to the theme of ‘Youth, Peace and Security in Africa.’ This session will also build on its last dedicated session on the theme, the 1310^th session, held on 11 November 2025. The session will also take place a day after the commemoration of African Youth Day, which is celebrated annually on 1 November. This year will mark the 20^th anniversary of the African Youth Charter (AYC), which will be commemorated under the ‘AYC@20’ campaign. Adopted by the AU Assembly on 2 July 2006 in Banjul, The Gambia, the AYC is the continent’s foremost legally binding instrument dedicated to promoting, protecting and advancing the rights, responsibilities and development of young people aged 15 to 35. The Charter provides Member States with a comprehensive framework to strengthen youth participation, expand access to education, employment, health, peace and security and ensure that young people are empowered to contribute meaningfully to national and continental development. The official AYC@20 commemoration will take place during the 6^th Pan-African Youth Forum to be held from 16 to 20 November at the AU Commission, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

On 5 November, the AU PSC and the EU PSC will convene for their 9^th Annual Informal Joint Retreat in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Since 2015, the AUPSC and the EUPSC have made it a standing practice to hold an informal joint retreat ahead of their annual consultative meeting. These retreats usually centre on current thematic issues. Past retreats have covered subjects such as cooperation between Africa-led missions and EU CSDP missions and maritime security, and this upcoming engagement may also touch on predictable and sustainable financing for AU-led peace support operations including implementation of UNSC Resolution 2719, youth, peace and security, WPS and children affected by armed conflicts among others.

On 6 November, the AUPSC and the EUPSC will meet for their 17^th Annual Joint Consultative meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This will build on its previous 16^th annual joint meeting, in which (as analysed in Amani Africa’s October 2025 Monthly Digest) a notable breakthrough from the meeting was the adoption of a Joint Communiqué after three consecutive years of being unable to do so owing to disagreements over the language to be used on the war in Ukraine. As in previous years, the 17^th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting is expected to feature a combination of regional and thematic agenda items. The consultative meeting is likely to address regional and country-specific conflict situations, with continuity on issues that have featured in recent meetings, including particularly Somalia/AUSSOM, Sudan and South Sudan, the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin and the Great Lakes Region with a focus on Eastern DRC. It is also expected to involve AoB as in earlier consultative meetings such as in 2024.

On 10 November, the PSC will receive a briefing on the activities of AUSSOM. In July 2026, there was an Informal Consultation held on ‘Funding Support for Somalia/AUSSOM Logistics Package.’ At the meeting, the Chairperson of the AU Commission, among other things, urged the accelerated operationalisation of the AU Peace Fund, implementation of the 0.2% levy, and increased Member State contributions. Prior to this, the PSC convened its 1342^nd meeting on 28 April 2026 to consider the ‘Report on Joint AU-FGS–UN Progress against Benchmarks and AUSSOM Mission Configuration Plan.’ At the session, the Council reiterated its call for the Commission to convene the AUSSOM troop- and police-contributing countries at the level of Chiefs of Defence Forces. Developments in the following months were shaped largely by the mission’s financing crisis. The EU announced a €75 million funding package for AUSSOM’s military component in April 2026, and political tensions in Somalia deepened, including suspended cooperation between the federal government and the federal member states of Jubaland and Puntland and armed clashes in Mogadishu in June. With the AU failing to act on the PSC decision on the convening of AUSSOM troop- and police-contributing countries at the level of Chiefs of Defence Forces,  on 1 July, the US Mission to the AU wrote that the US would not support the renewal of AUSSOM’s mandate in December if it includes UNSOS or any UN logistical or operational support. The letter prompted a TCC/PCC experts’ meeting on 24 July and the troop-contributors’ summit in Kampala on 29-31 July. The summit mandated the TCCs’ foreign ministers to form a Joint Task Force for diplomatic outreach on predictable and sustainable financing, though the convening did produce no collective plan for the post-December scenario. The AU Commission is meanwhile consulting stakeholders and contributing countries to give the PSC options on AUSSOM’s fate after 2026. With no resolution of the financing crisis, it is reported that during this past week Uganda initiated the process of withdrawing its troops. It is striking that this will be the first time that the PSC is convening a session on AUSSOM since the US letter triggered unprecedented uncertainty about the immediate future of the mission since early July.

On 11 November, the PSC will convene a session on ‘Climate, Peace and Security in Africa: Emerging Challenges, Institutional Responses and Future Priorities.’ It was in September 2026 that the PSC had scheduled an ‘Open Session on the Nexus Between Climate Change, Peace and Security in Africa’ on its September 2026 Programme of Work, but the session was eventually postponed. The Climate, Peace and Security theme has featured regularly on the PSC’s agenda since its 585^th session in March 2016, where the Council committed to holding annual deliberations on the link between climate change and security. The upcoming session will be the second session this year focusing on climate, after the 1344^th meeting in May 2026, which discussed the ‘Impact of climate change on crises in the Sahel and Lake Chad.’ From that session, the AUC Chairperson was tasked with undertaking a comprehensive mapping of the impact of climate change in the Lake Chad Basin and the Sahel region. This upcoming meeting will also give an opportunity to get an update on the implementation of some of the decisions from the 1331^st meeting held in February 2026. These included tasking the AU Commission to ‘expedite the operationalisation of the African Humanitarian Agency and the Continental Civil Capacity Mechanism for preparations towards and response to disasters, in particular climate disasters.’ In addition, the PSC called for the finalisation of the study on the assessment of climate-related security risks and the implementation of the PSC Matrix of threats to peace and security on the continent, adopted in August 2025. This session may also give an update on the process of the development of the common position on climate, peace and security.

18^th Annual Retreat of the PSC on the Review of its Working Methods will be convened on 16 and 17 November in Arusha, Tanzania. Traditionally, the PSC retreats are held as part of the ongoing efforts to continue to further strengthen the PSC working methods in order to enable it to more effectively and more efficiently deliver on its mandate of promoting peace, security and stability in Africa. It will build on the 17^th Annual PSC Retreat held in November 2025 in Abuja, Nigeria, where several decisions requiring follow-up were put across. These included tasking the PSC Sanctions Sub-Committee to undertake a review exercise of the AU Sanctions Regime to ascertain when and how sanctions should be imposed and to ensure that they are effective in contributing towards the achievement of the desired results with minimum collateral impact on the population. The PSC secretariat was also tasked, among other things, to develop an ethic charter on confidentiality of documents and deliberations of the PSC, and a ‘Guide’/Orientation Manual on the work to be availed to new Members joining the PSC.

On 20 November, the PSC will convene for a ‘Discussion on Migration, Youth, Peace and Security.’ Given the Council’s growing focus on migration and youth, it has previously examined how persistent development and governance challenges drive rising youth migration and how migration has become intertwined with threats to peace and security, such as transnational organised crime, including human smuggling and terrorism. The upcoming session will build on its 1310^th meeting held in November 2025, in which it reiterated its previous call for the appointment of an AU Special Envoy on Migration and tasked the AU Commission to urgently submit the Draft Guidelines for the development and implementation of national action plans on Youth, Peace and Security. Other decisions that would require follow-up include the decision to reactivate the AU-UN-EU Tripartite Task Force on Migration in Libya, as directed at the Summit level, and the Chairperson of the AU Commission to commission a comprehensive study on migration, youth, peace and security in Africa.

On 24 November, the CoE will convene a virtual session on ‘Information on the Preparation for the 13^th High-Level Seminar on Peace and Security in Africa (Assisting the incoming A3) – Oran Process.’ This year’s seminar will be held on 1 and 2 December in Algiers, Algeria.

The last substantive session of the Council will be held on 26 November, focusing on the Situation in South Sudan. The session will come exactly three months since Council considered the latest developments in the country. This was on 26 August 2026, at its 1364^th session. With less than a month remaining to the 22 December 2026 date set for the general elections, the PSC decided, at its 1364^th session, to ‘hold a dedicated session on electoral preparedness in October 2026,’ and further requested the AU Commission ‘to submit a detailed fact sheet on election readiness ahead of this meeting, based on the findings of the missions of the AU High Representative for the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, C5, as well as the AU Assessment Mission to South Sudan.’ Although no substantive session dedicated to the situation in South Sudan was featured in the October 2026 Programme of Work, this upcoming session will be where the proposed PSC engagement will be undertaken. Since the last PSC session, the National Elections Commission has announced that voter registration will begin in early November, and its chair, who replaced the one that was removed without due process, briefed AU Commission’s Department of Political Affairs, Peace and Security officials in Addis Ababa on the state of preparedness. One of the major developments on the diplomatic front was the convening of the summit of the AU High-Level Ad Hoc Committee for South Sudan (C5) on 29 September virtually. Apart from recalling its earlier summit declaration of 15 February 2026, the summit expressed concern over renewed hostilities and reported ceasefire violations while affirming that the R-ARCSS remains the only viable and paramount framework for the country’s political transition. The summit also appealed to South Sudan’s Government to ‘publish a feasible, consensual and time-bound electoral roadmap that clearly sets out the legal basis, scope and sequencing of elections.’ This PSC session will be a major test in terms of the PSC ensuring that conditions necessary for credible elections are put in place and that the R-ARCSS is adhered to as a critical measure to prevent poorly organised elections from relapsing South Sudan into full-scale civil war.