Tomorrow (27 July), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) is scheduled to convene a session dedicated to an update on the Political Transition in Burkina Faso and Niger.

The session is expected to commence with opening remarks by Rebecca Amuge Otengo, Permanent Representative of Uganda to the AU and the Chairperson of the PSC for July, followed by a statement by the Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), Bankole Adeoye. The Special Representative of the AU Commission for Mali and the Sahel and Head of the AU Mission in Mali and the Sahel (MISAHEL), Mamadou Tangara, is expected to brief the Council.

The last time the PSC formally considered the situation in Burkina Faso and Niger was on 30 September 2025, during its 1304^th session, when it addressed the Sahel region as a whole. That session, convened at ministerial level and attended by AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, produced perhaps the most notable Sahel-related decision the Council has taken in years: a request to the Chairperson of the Commission to establish a Task Force to support the countries of the Sahel in fighting terrorism, addressing the security, socio-economic and humanitarian dimensions of the crisis. It endorsed Angola’s proposal, advanced through its Chairmanship of the AU, to convene a Summit on the region. The Council has also engaged the situation in both countries directly using its informal consultation; the last one being held in February 2026 when the PSC held an informal consultation with suspended Member States in political transition, in which representatives of Burkina Faso and Niger took part.

Since April, the Council’s country-specific engagement on the central Sahel has also become more differentiated in response to evolving security dynamics. Mali has effectively been addressed through a separate track. Following the deadly attacks of 25 April 2026, the PSC convened its 1342^nd session on Mali on 28 April, engaging MISAHEL and ECOWAS, and subsequently held an informal consultation on 14 May with Mali’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Abdoulaye Diop. Against this backdrop, Mali does not feature on tomorrow’s agenda, reflecting the Council’s recent and sustained engagement on the country.

On the ground, Burkina Faso continues to face a severe and evolving terrorist threat, with Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) remaining the dominant armed group while the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) maintains operations in parts of the country. Signifying some shifts in the terrorist conflict dynamics in the country, terrorism-related deaths and attacks declined significantly in 2025, according to the Global Terrorism Index, despite the country being the second country on the list of most impacted countries by terrorism. JNIM accounted for more than 80 per cent of attacks during the year and has continued to intensify its campaign through coordinated assaults. Following major early-year operations targeting Titao, Kourakou and Tondobi, JNIM carried out coordinated, multi-pronged assaults between 4–5 July 2026 that overran a military camp in Di (Sourou province) and struck Dalan and Tiéré, inflicting casualties on Defence and Security Forces (FDS) and Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDP). These actions underscore the group’s growing operational reach into Central-North and Sahel urban perimeters.

Niger presents the starker deterioration. The AU Counter Terrorism Centre’s data for the second quarter of 2026 shows both attacks and fatalities in Niger nearly tripling compared to the equivalent period in 2025, with the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) and ISGS the most active perpetrators across the Tillabéri, Tahoua and Dosso regions. Two attacks on Niamey’s international airport, one in January, claimed by ISSP, and a second on 18 June that killed 11 members of the armed forces and two civilians, illustrate a widening geographic reach that now touches the capital itself. The Chairperson of the Commission’s own statement, issued after the 17 July ambush of a Nigerien detachment on the Bankilaré–Téra axis in Tillabéri, described a resurgence of terrorist attacks across the Sahel exacting a heavy toll on both security forces and civilians. Nigerian authorities responded with the December 2025 declaration of a ‘general mobilisation,’ and the March 2026 plan to establish territorial self-defence organisations, echoing what Burkina Faso adopted earlier. Since then, clashes were reported between self-defence militias and armed Islamist groups in Tillabéri, leading to a fresh wave of reprisal killings and displacement.

The humanitarian toll behind these trend lines is severe. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) figures for the first quarter of 2026 record 2,640 conflict-related deaths and 1,179 security incidents across the Central Sahel. The region hosts 2.8 million internally displaced persons, 2.1 million of them in Burkina Faso and 283,000 in Niger, alongside 444,400 refugees. An estimated 11.4 million people require food assistance, including 2.7 million facing IPC Phase 3-or-worse acute food insecurity, and 401,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. These figures give texture to what the Council is likely to describe, once again, as a humanitarian emergency inseparable from the security crisis.

Politically, with the withdrawal of AES states becoming effective, the states are entrenching their own independent trajectory. In Burkina Faso, in February, the Transitional Legislative Assembly made a move that went beyond a transitional measure by voting unanimously to abolish political parties, effectively nullifying the 2001 charter and the 2009 legislation governing party financing and opposition status. The transitional Legislative Assembly unanimously adopted a new ‘Charter of the Popular Progressive Revolution’ on 27 March 2026, replacing the 2022 Transition Charter and its 2024 amendment outright. The new text does not merely extend the timeline; it retires the word ‘transition’ altogether, formally enshrining what Traoré has termed the ‘Progressive Popular Revolution’ as the governing framework, renaming Parliament the ‘People’s Legislative Assembly,’ abolishing the seat quota previously reserved for political parties and movements, and confirming Traoré’s own eligibility to contest future elections whenever these are eventually held. Traoré also assumed the rotating chairmanship of the AES College of Heads of State in December 2025.

Niger’s trajectory mirrors this pattern. The ‘Refoundation Charter’, promulgated in March 2025, granted General Abdourahmane Tchiani a five‑year mandate lasting until 2030. It simultaneously dissolved all political parties, required that any future establishment of foreign military bases be subject to a referendum, and authorised extensions of the transition period based on the ‘security situation’, without providing a definitive timeline for a return to constitutional order.

In terms of AU’s engagement, a major development, which follows the PSC’s call in its 1304^th session for the ‘intensification of diplomatic engagements with the countries of the Sahel’, was the AU Commission Chairperson Youssouf’s first visit to Ouagadougou, on 15-16 July, meeting Foreign Minister Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré and Prime Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo. In view of the existential threat facing the countries of the Sahel, this is a long overdue mission. Youssouf stated that his visit was ‘intended to convey the Union’s solidarity with the Government & people of Burkina Faso in their efforts to restore peace, combat terrorism & promote stability.’ He went on to reaffirm ‘the Commission’s commitment to accompanying Burkina Faso, through the relevant organs & institutions of the AU, in support of humanitarian response, public health & sustainable development.’

This mission was undertaken as part of what the PSC at its 1304^th session called ‘constructive engagement’ for restoring the strained relations through direct and high-level AU Commission engagement with the AES states. In this context, Youssouf underscored the importance of strengthening regional cooperation to address shared peace, security & development challenges. He also called for revitalising the Nouakchott Process on security cooperation and for closer AES-ECOWAS harmony, while committing the Commission to a three-pillar Sahel strategy of governance, security and development. In what signals the recognition of the need for a multidimensional approach inclusive of addressing governance issues, the Chairperson noted that the African Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Governance ‘remains an important continental framework for promoting good governance & responsive institutions.’

Tomorrow’s session will follow up on its earlier decisions. In this context, it is of interest for the Council to receive an update on the establishment of the Task Force adopted at the 1304^th session of the PSC. It may also follow up on whether the PCRD Centre has developed its promised Sahel programming, and whether Ndayishimiye’s mandated field visit to all three AES countries, so far realised only in Burkina Faso, will be completed. Other previous decisions of the PSC that warrant follow-up during tomorrow’s session include the 1279th session that called for an AFRIPOL-anchored mechanism to map transnational criminal networks and a joint AUC-AFRIPOL-CISSA study on organised crime in the Sahel.

The expected outcome of the session is a communiqué. The PSC could express deep concern over the deteriorating security situation in Burkina Faso and Niger, particularly the persisting terrorist activities by groups affiliated with JNIM, ISGS and ISSP, and underscore the urgent need for strengthened regional and continental coordination to address the evolving threat landscape. The Council may condemn continued terrorist attacks targeting civilians, national defence forces and security institutions, while expressing solidarity with the people of Burkina Faso and Niger and emphasising the importance of responses that address not only immediate security threats but also the governance, development and humanitarian dimensions of the crisis. The PSC may call for enhanced coordination among the AU, ECOWAS, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), and other regional and international actors, to ensure that the limited resources available are organised around addressing the growing threat endangering the collective existence of affected countries. The PSC may welcome the visit that the AU Commission undertook to the Sahel countries and encourage the AU Commission to sustain its engagement with Burkina Faso and Niger through high-level diplomatic channels. The PSC may request that the Chairperson to develop a strategy to deliver on the commitment he expressed during his visit for AU’s accompaniment of the Sahel countries in their quest for restoring peace, addressing humanitarian challenges and advancing regional cooperation. The PSC may also reiterate its decision on the establishment of the AU Task Force for supporting the Sahel countries in the fight against terrorism and efforts for restoring peace and security. The PSC may also emphasise the importance of addressing governance challenges alongside efforts for restoring peace, including through taking steps that progressively facilitate the creation of conditions for implementation of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance thereby ensuring that suspension of fundamental rights can only be justified for a limited period of time and be carried out only in the public interest and in strict compliance with the principles of necessity, legality and proportionality. The PSC may express concern about and call for enhanced effort for ameliorating the severe humanitarian consequences of the crisis, and may encourage the AU Commission, in coordination with humanitarian actors and regional organisations, to reinforce interventions anchored on a peace-security-development nexus approach that recognises the interconnected nature of the sources of vulnerabilities and humanitarian needs in the Sahel.