Provisional Programme of Work of the PSC for the Month of October 2025
Date | October 2025
In October, the Republic of Botswana assumes the role of chairing the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC). The Provisional Programme of Work (PPoW) for the month envisages three substantive sessions. Additionally, it schedules the commemoration of the Africa Amnesty Month; the 16th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting and the 8th Joint Retreat between the European Union Political and Security Committee (EUPSC) and the PSC; the 19th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting and the 10th Annual Joint Informal Seminar between the members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the PSC. All three substantive meetings will be held at the ambassadorial level. Two of the sessions will focus on thematic issues, while the remaining session will be on a country-specific situation. The PSC plans to hold one of the meetings as an open session.
In addition to the activities of the PSC, the PSC Committee of Experts (CoE) is also expected to hold two meetings in preparation for the annual joint consultations between the PSC and the EUPSC, as well as between the PSC and the UNSC. The Military Staff Committee (MSC) will also meet to get a briefing from the Peace Support Operations Division (PSOD) of the Department of Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS) on the operationalisation of the African Standby Force.
On 2 and 3 October, the PSC will be in Kampala, Uganda, to commemorate the Africa Amnesty Month, which is the month of September. It was the 29th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly in July 2017 that declared September of each year as ‘Africa Amnesty Month’ for the surrender and collection of illegally owned small arms and light weapons (SALW). A part of the AU flagship project of Silencing the Guns, the commemoration, involving the symbolic destruction of illegal arms and weapons, seeks to raise awareness about the serious threat that the illegal trade and circulation of SALWs poses to peace and stability as a major driver of conflicts in Africa. The occasion encourages the surrender of illegally owned weapons to designated authorities in exchange for amnesty from prosecution for possession of such weapons. This session will build on the previous year’s commemoration, held in the Central African Republic, under the framework of ‘Advancing the Goal of Silencing the Guns in Africa by 2030.’
On 6 October, the PSC CoE will meet to prepare for the 16th Joint Consultative Meeting between the PSC and the EUPSC. Apart from working on the interventions that various members of the PSC will make on the various elements of the draft agenda for the meeting and the joint retreat, the preparatory meeting is expected to consider the draft of the expected joint communiqué to be adopted by the PSC and the EUPSC.
The PSC will be in Brussels, Belgium, from 7 to 10 October, for the 16th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting with the EUPSC and the 8th Joint Annual Retreat. Ahead of the consultative meeting, the 8th Joint Retreat will be held, focusing on identified thematic issues. One of these is on peace support operations – particularly the implementation of UNSC Resolution 2719 and the complementarity between African-led and EU-CSDP operations. It is also expected to cover maritime security and hybrid threats, including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and disinformation. The 16th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting, on the other hand, will address regional and specific conflict situations. Accordingly, the consultative meeting is expected to consider the situation in the Horn of Africa (including Somalia and the AUSSOM deployment and the war in Sudan), the Great Lakes Region, focusing on the situation in Eastern DRC, the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin. It is anticipated that there will be discussion under Any Other Business (AOB) as well. It should be recalled that last year, during the 15th AUPSC and EUPSC Annual Joint Consultative Meeting held on 22 November, the meeting concluded without the adoption of a joint communiqué. This was the third consecutive year that the two bodies failed to produce a shared outcome document, despite substantial agreement on all the agenda items. As discussed in our November 2024 Monthly Digest, the draft joint communiqué was not adopted because of a lack of agreement on items raised under AOB. Given that the AU and the EU held a ministerial meeting in May 2025 and are finalising negotiations on the outcome of the AU-EU summit expected to be held in November 2025, there is anticipation that the two sides will find common ground for adopting a joint communiqué this time around. The Chairperson for the month also plans to work hard to secure such an outcome.
On 13 October, the CoE will meet again to prepare for the Joint Consultative Meeting between the AUPSC and members of the UNSC in Addis Ababa. As the host of this year’s consultation, the PSC is responsible for initiating the agenda and the draft joint communiqué. It is expected that the preparatory meeting will focus on firming up the draft agenda for both the joint seminar and the annual consultative meeting. It will also continue to work on the draft joint communiqué.
On the following day, 14 October, the PSC is scheduled to consider and adopt the programme of work for the month of November.
On 16 and 17 October, the PSC and the UNSC will convene for the 10th Annual Informal Joint Seminar and the 19th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting, respectively, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In August 2025, Ambassador Mohamed KHALED, Permanent Representative of Algeria to the AU and PSC Chairperson for August 2025; and Ambassador Eloy Alfaro de Alba Permanent Representative of Panama to the UN and President of the UNSC for August 2025, co-chaired an online meeting in preparation for the 10th Annual Informal Joint Seminar and the 19th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting between the AUPSC and the Members of the UNSC. This meeting was also attended by Ambassador Boang, Permanent Representative of Botswana to the AU, and the Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, who will respectively co-chair (Botswana and Russia) the upcoming annual consultations. This year, it is expected that the 10th Annual Informal Joint Seminar, scheduled for 16 October 2025, will focus on the Women, Peace and Security agenda, in which the 25th anniversary of the adoption of UNSC Resolution 1325 will be marked. It is worth recalling that this year also marks the 15th anniversary of the adoption of the PSC’s agenda on WPS as a standing agenda of the PSC. The joint seminar will be followed by the 19th Annual Joint Consultative meeting between the AUPSC and UNSC members on 17 October 2025. The issues anticipated to feature include the situations in the Sahel region, the Horn of Africa (with a focus on Somalia and the status of implementation of UNSC Resolution 2719 on financing AU-led peace support operations, Sudan and South Sudan) and the Great Lakes region, particularly Eastern DRC.
On 21 October, the MSC will receive a briefing from PSOD on the Strategic Review of the African Standby Force (ASF), specifically on its effective functioning.
The ICRC is expected to brief the Council on 23 October on its activities and the humanitarian situation in Africa. Since becoming a statutory meeting in 2007, this year’s session is expected to feature a briefing by the ICRC President, highlighting key humanitarian concerns in Africa and trends in humanitarian assistance. It will be the first time that the current president of the ICRC will brief the PSC. It is expected that the focus will include country-specific humanitarian situations, with a particular focus on Sudan, South Sudan, the DRC, and the Sahel. Also to be addressed are key thematic issues such as the humanitarian impact of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA); the humanitarian impact of digital technologies in armed conflict; climate change, peace and security; and a highlight on the recently launched Global IHL Initiative by ICRC and six other states – including Brazil, China, France, Jordan, Kazakhstan and South Africa – to ‘galvanize political commitment to IHL.’
Following this, the PSC will convene an open session on Women, Peace, and Security in Africa on 28 October, marking the 25th anniversary of UNSC Resolution 1325. The last meeting of the PSC focusing on this agenda item was held in March 2025, during its 1268th meeting, in which, among other things, Council underlined ‘the need to advocate for the implementation of the UNSC Resolution 1325, adopted on 31 October 2000, which addresses the impact of armed conflict on women and emphasizes the importance of women’s participation in peace and security efforts.’ The Conclusions of the High Level Ministerial Seminar on WPS in Africa of March 2024 requested the AUC to develop a ‘Policy Framework of Women Quotas in Formal Peace Processes across Africa, which will guide the Continent to meet the statutory minimum of thirty percent (30%) gender quota for women’s participation in all conflict prevention and management missions, peace processes and election observation missions led by the AU.’ It is also worth recalling that this session comes fifteen years after the PSC institutionalised annual discussions on this theme through its landmark 223rd meeting in March 2010. The upcoming meeting, therefore, offers a timely opportunity to reflect on the 15-year journey of the PSC on WPS, focusing on progress made, gaps and challenges affecting the effective pursuit of the WPS agenda.
The last PSC meeting of the month, scheduled for 30 October, will focus on the situation in South Sudan. This agenda item was specifically proposed by the Chairperson of the AU Commission to ensure that the PSC closely monitors developments in the country ahead of the December 2026 elections. The meeting comes few weeks after the Council released a Press Statement, on 18 September, in which as much as no substantive decision came from the document, it ‘reaffirmed the AU’s unwavering commitment to continue supporting efforts aimed at enhancing reconciliation, building trust and facilitating the full implementation of the RARCSS and encouraged both, the signatory and non-signatory parties to the Revitalized Peace Agreement to demonstrate their commitment to fostering lasting peace and stability in the interest of the entire people of South Sudan.’ This statement came against the background of the initiation of prosecution of the country’s first vice president and the signatory of one of the two parties to the RARCSS, Riek Machar. This meeting is expected to follow up on the commitments pledged during the 1297th meeting of August 2025, in which the Chairperson of the AU Commission was tasked, among others, ‘to urgently appoint an AU High-Level Representative to South Sudan, preferably a former Head of State, to maintain regular engagements with the South Sudanese authorities and other key stakeholders.’
