Tomorrow (30 October), the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) will convene its 1309^th open session on Women, Peace and Security in Africa: 25 years of UNSCR.

Following opening remarks by Tebelelo Boang, Permanent Representative of Botswana to the AU and Chair of the PSC for October 2025, Bankole Adeoye, AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (PAPS), will deliver the introductory statement. Liberata Mulamula, Special Envoy of the Chairperson of the AU Commission on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), is also expected to brief the Council on the progress of implementing the WPS agenda. Statements are also expected from Justice Effie Owuor, Co-Chair of FemWise-Africa; a representative of UN Women; a representative of the Delegation of the European Union to the AU; and representatives of the Regional Economic Communities and Regional Mechanisms (RECs/RMs).

As the AU marks the 25^th anniversary of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1325 (2000), this session provides a forum to review results, address persistent gaps and set a practical course for implementation. It comes fifteen years after the PSC institutionalised annual deliberations on WPS at its 223^rd meeting in March 2010. The Council may assess performance over this period, identify obstacles to effective delivery and agree on corrective actions.

The Council last considered the agenda in March 2025 at its 1268^th meeting. On that occasion, Council underlined ‘the need to advocate for the implementation of the UNSC Resolution 1325, which addresses the impact of armed conflict on women and emphasises the importance of women’s participation in peace and security efforts.’ The Council also ‘underscored the need for the AU Commission to carry out an assessment’ to assist Member States in advancing national policy and stressed ‘the need to establish clear indicators and robust monitoring and evaluation mechanisms’ to enable regular reporting on commitments.

This year additionally marks the 15^th anniversary of the PSC decision to institutionalise the WPS agenda. In tomorrow’s session, the Council may review the progress registered in advancing the WPS within the framework of the AU and the persisting challenges. The Special Envoy on WPS, established in 2014, serves as the lead and anchor of the effort for advancing the WPS agenda within the AU. It has helped initiate measures and institutional frameworks to advance women’s inclusion across peace support operations (PSOs), election observation and mediation. Developed through the Special Envoy on WPS, the Continental Results Framework (CRF) is the principal roadmap for tracking commitments across four pillars: participation, prevention, protection and relief and recovery; covering National Action Plans (NAPs) now adopted by 37 Member States, the growth of regional women’s mediation networks and recognition of women’s leadership in peace processes. A June 2025 high-level workshop on ‘Reinvigorate CRF Monitoring’ recommended a simplified digital reporting tool, biennial reporting, real-time feedback loops, harmonised AU reporting timelines and the use of CRF reports to inform policymaking and budget allocations.

Established in 2017, FemWise Africa and the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN) advance mediation and the promotion of women’s leadership, respectively. FemWise Africa, a subsidiary mechanism of the AU Panel of the Wise, identifies, trains and deploys women mediators in AU peace efforts and election observation processes, while AWLN increases women’s participation in decision making through peer learning, mentoring, solidarity, advocacy and capacity building.

Despite the emphasis on Resolution 1325, the WPS agenda has a strong normative foundation in the AU legal instruments. The Maputo Protocol (2003) aligns with and advances obligations consistent with Resolution 1325, with Articles 10–11 requiring participation in peace processes and protection in situations of conflict. The AU Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (2004) is a pledge by Heads of State to accelerate women’s rights and parity across governance, peace and security, education, health and economic life, with annual reporting to track progress. The AU Strategy for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (2018 to 2028) aligns Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to mainstream gender equality across AU organs and Member States, prioritising dignity and security, effective laws and institutions, economic empowerment and leadership and voice. The AU Policy on the Prevention of and Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peace Support Operations (2018) establishes zero tolerance and a survivor-centred system with vetting, mandatory training, confidential reporting, immediate support services and clear accountability, including investigations, repatriations, sanctions and referrals for national prosecution. And, the recent AU Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (2025) further reinforces existing legal guarantees, requiring states to prevent, protect, prosecute and provide survivor-centred support for all forms of violence, including cyberviolence and femicide, complements the Maputo Protocol.

In view of the foregoing, the session may deliberate on prioritising the concrete operationalisation of existing instruments, anchored in a forward-looking implementation strategy and tested by a rigorous stocktake of how deliberations have translated into practice. As recorded in Amani Africa’s special research report, the Council’s deliberations called for action on five priority issues: accountability that ends impunity and expands access to justice for women; meaningful representation across prevention, mediation, PSOs and post conflict reconstruction; attention to structural gender disparities and other drivers of conflict; formal institutionalisation of the agenda; and the systematic deployment of gender advisers. Yet outputs remain largely programmatic and weakly tied to measurable targets, time-bound delivery and independent review. Although the AU is positioned as a global leader in policy architecture, credibility now rests on converting commitments into measurable gains for citizens, articulating coherent African positions and mobilising Member States and civil society through implementation.

Critical review of the realities shows that the major gap has nothing to do with a lack of normative, policy and institutional frameworks but the lack of implementation and disregard of the commitments thereunder.  Instruments to prevent and mitigate sexual and gender-based violence (GBV) in PSOs have yielded limited protection gains; declarations to end impunity are rarely paired with conflict-sensitive monitoring, adequate investigative capacity or accountability pathways with clear, realistic timelines. Gender analysis is inconsistently integrated into briefings, situation reports and mandate renewals and findings from the Office of the Special Envoy’s field missions seldom inform corresponding country and regional deliberations. Follow-through is uneven and senior-level ownership is fragile, while conflicts continue to target civilians, including the strategic use of sexual violence as warfare, terrorism and torture. The most recent Windhoek+25 Declaration urges bold action to ‘bridge persistent gaps’, an ‘intergenerational imperative’ to sustain gains, use of regional strategies and NAPs for implementation and review, and alignment of ‘political will, institutional reform and societal transformation’ grounded in unity, resilience and inclusion. In the same vein, on 31 July 2025 in Benin, the Cotonou Meeting reviewed implementation and urged accelerated responses to ‘climate insecurity, digital threats, and persistent gender inequalities’, ‘terrorism, climate-related insecurity, gender-based violence’, and the ‘weaponisation of digital technologies’.

For Council deliberation, a notable finding from the UN Secretary-General’s 2025 WPS report is that approximately 676 million women lived within 50 kilometres of deadly conflict in 2024, the highest level since the 1990s. Rising global military spending and an evident backlash against gender equality are straining the WPS agenda. Funding shortfalls are closing clinics, shrinking food aid and cutting education in Somalia, the DRC and the Sahel (including Mali). Protracted crises across the Sahel, Great Lakes and Horn of Africa disproportionately expose women and girls to GBV, displacement and marginalisation. In Ethiopia, the World Food Programme (WFP) cut refugee rations from 60 per cent to 40 per cent due to shortages. Without new funds, programmes for breastfeeding women and malnourished children will end in December 2025. In Somalia, women and children, who face heightened risks of GBV, sexual exploitation and eviction, accounted for more than 80 per cent of the displaced population. In South Sudan, violence is at the highest level since the 2017 cessation of hostilities, with women and girls often targeted. In El-Fashir, Sudan, reports indicate that 38 per cent of pregnant and breastfeeding women are malnourished. In its 2025 open letter to UN permanent representatives, the NGO Working Group on WPS underscores that the agenda’s norms remain far from realised and condemns the escalating backlash against women’s autonomy, rights and the advocates who defend them.

Tomorrow’s meeting is also expected to put women’s meaningful participation in peace processes front and center, heeding the Swakopmund Process Conclusions of 23 March 2024 that call for gender parity across all AU led and co-led mediation tracks. Such a policy should guide the selection and appointment of mediators, technical experts and special envoys, embed gender analysis in terms of reference and set measurable participation targets at every stage. Yet women remain underrepresented, particularly in high-stakes negotiations and security sector reform processes. With inadequate commitments, shrinking resources and efforts to roll back protection measures, obligations under the CRF and NAPs are under-enforced. Although the AU endorses a gender-parity policy for AU-led mediation and a 30 per cent minimum quota for women’s participation in peace missions and processes, accountability and regular reporting mechanisms are lacking. UN data from 2020 to 2024 show women’s participation in peace processes stayed far below targets. In 2024, women were 7 per cent of negotiators and 14 per cent of mediators; nearly 90 per cent of negotiation tracks and about two-thirds of mediation efforts had no women. Although Africa hosts many UN peace operations, including in the DRC and South Sudan, women still make up a small share of peacekeepers globally: 6.4 per cent of military personnel and 12 per cent of police personnel as of 2023. In light of this, the PSC may shift the focus towards identifying specific interventions for advancing the level of women’s participation in peace processes and periodic monitoring and reporting on trends in this respect.

The expected outcome of tomorrow’s session is a communique.  The Council may call for clear, realistic roadmaps and a pivot from norm setting to implementation, prioritising systematic integration of the WPS agenda across the conflict continuum from prevention to post-conflict. Member States may be urged to embed the agenda in national and local processes, and those without NAPs to adopt costed plans with meaningful participation of women, youth and grassroots groups. In terms of protection, the PSC may request the AU Commission to mainstream update on WPS in briefings and reports of conflict situations submitted to the PSC and task the Special Envoy to monitor, track and document violations against women in conflict and crisis situations in Africa and prepare a dedicated annual report on the same. The PSC is expected to condemn conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and reiterate the need for full and effective participation of women in early warning, prevention, mediation and dialogue, backed by adequate, predictable and sustained financing. It may seek concrete steps to implement the 30 per cent quota at the AU, REC/RM and national levels. It may encourage well-resourced national and regional FemWise chapters to expand the pool of women peace experts. It may press for stronger delivery across the four pillars and for integrating climate risks into implementation strategies. It may underline the coordinating role of the Office of the Special Envoy on WPS.