 Good afternoon, good afternoon. Thank you very much for coming here this afternoon to the US Institute of Peace. My name is Princeton Lyman. I'm a senior advisor to the President of the United States Institute of Peace. Let me say a little bit about the Institute of Peace. USIP was founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent national institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, practical, and essential for US and global security. We pursue this vision of a world without violent conflict by working on the ground with local partners. We provide people, organizations, and governments with the tools, knowledge, and training to manage conflict so it doesn't become violent and resolve it when it does. We are making peace possible. Nowhere is USIP's mission as important as in Africa. And we are here today to discuss how the Africa Union can most effectively prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict on the continent. The discussion is anchored on a report. I hope you saw copies outside. African politics, African peace, that charts an agenda for peace in Africa, focusing on how the Africa Union can implement its norms and use its instruments to prevent and resolve the armed conflict. The report was launched in July 2016 and is based on detailed case studies and cross-cutting research. It draws on consultations with leading experts, peacekeepers, and mediators. If I can turn the page, I'll give you more. It discusses peace and security norms and mechanisms, including conflict prevention, conflict mediation, and political missions, and the spectrum of military peace operations. We are pleased to be joined by two of the report's authors, Dr. Alex DuWall and Dr. Mula Gettig-Eberhaud, who will present the key findings. And we are also pleased to be joined by Dr. Solomon DiResso, commissioner at the African Commission on Human and People's Rights, who will provide some initial reactions. Let me briefly give you briefly some bio-data on these three people, and then we'll have them come and present. Dr. Alex DuWall is executive director of the World Peace Foundation and a research professor at the Fletcher School. Considered one of the most foremost experts on Sudan and the heart of Africa, his scholarship and practice has also produced humanitarian crisis and response human rights, HRV-8s, and governance in Africa issues, and conflict and peace building. He received a defil from Oxford, and he is, I won't go on. It goes on for a long time. He's a terrific scholar. He's highly, highly renowned. And one of the things I find most interesting, Alex, he was on the list of foreign policies, 100 most influential public intellectuals. And in 2008, an Atlantic Monthly's 27 brave thinkers. I like that. That's nice, brave thinkers. Hulagata is program director of the World Peace Foundation, African security sector, and peace operations program. He leads the World Peace Foundation's project on peace missions in Africa. He served as the director of the Institute for Peace and Security Studies of Addis Ababa University from 2009 to 2011. He holds an MA in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, an MBA from the Open University of London, and a BA degree in international management from the Amsterdam School of Business. Until 2001, Hulagata was a member of the military and political leadership of the Tigray's People Liberation Front. And as a military leader, he contributed to the victory over the then military hunter led by Mengistu Haley-Mariam, and subsequently was in charge of demobilizing over 300,000 combatants of the defeated army. He has 20 years of experience as a senior manager, a well-regarded author, and a consultant. Dr. Salamanderso, commissioner, African Commission on Human Rights and People Rights, is a commissioner there, as well as the non-factly assistant professor of human rights and college of law and governance at Ababa Addis Ababa University. Dr. Salamanderso is a legal scholar and known analyst of security and current African affairs. As head of the Peace and Security Council report, Dr. Driso has led the work of ISS on the African Union and its Peace and Security Council, including through the production of the regular publication, the Peace and Security Council report. So we have an excellent panel, and I'm going to turn over to Alex to begin the discussion. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Can we have the slides, please? I'm going to briefly introduce this report, where it comes from, why it's been written. And then hand over to Mulageta, who has been the leader of the project, to brief you on the contents and the recommendations. But a very brief introduction to the World Peace Foundation, not as well known as USIP, although we have been in existence for 106 years, founded by a Bostonian publisher, Edwin Gin, who gave a million dollars in a bequest to the cause of peace just over a century ago, with the provision that the trustees of his bequest would meet every year to determine whether world peace has been achieved. And they've been meeting every year and voting and up to now. It hasn't been achieved. When it is achieved, then we will be disbanded. But I suspect that Mulageta and I are in business for a little while yet. We are based, we're an independent foundation, but since I came on five years ago, we've been based at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. And we are essentially an educational enterprise and foundation believing that intellectual leadership is very important to the cause of peace. Now, this report, African Politics, African Peace, Charts and Agenda for Peace in Africa, focusing on how the African Union can implement its norms and use its instruments to prevent and resolve, excuse me, armed conflicts. It's an independent report put together by the World Peace Foundation, supported by the African Union and presented to the African Union. We had, we were requested to do this by the Commissioner for Peace and Security of the African Union, but we were given complete independence for how we went about our business and the recommendations we came up with. Now, I'm sure you're all aware of the UN high level independent panel on peace operations, the HIPAA, which reported just over a year ago. Part of the reason why this report was commissioned by the African Union was the African Union recognized that the great majority of the world's peacekeepers and the great majority of the world's peace interventions of political missions, mediation exercises were conducted on the continent of Africa. And they felt that it was time for the African Union to review what it had done and what had been done in the African continent. And particularly in the last 15 years, the 15 years since the African Union was set up with its very ambitious constitutive act, its ambitious set of principles, and also the 15 years since the report by Lakhtar Brahimi on peace operations, the last such report by the UN. And so the commission felt that it was important to have an African voice in this and they asked us to work on convening that. It also takes place in the context of and parallel to the initiative by the African Union's high representative for the peace fund, Dr. Donald Khabaruka, and we can bring up, which is focusing on the financing of peace operations and we can discuss that more later. So, and this exercise was supported by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and our own Funds at World Peace Foundation. The report was presented to the African Union in July and the African Union Commissioner for Peace and Security will be presenting his own report based on this to the Peace and Security Council of the AU. And you will notice that we have a preface by two eminent Africans, Tabor and Becky and Lakhtar Brahimi. And I would just say that we were obviously very pleased that they would contribute this preface but also impressed by the fact that this preface is 100% theirs, there was no ghost writing, there was no guidance, they came up with it absolutely themselves and are championing it and that is terrific. Next slide, please. This report, oh, I do it myself, I realize. This report is the most extensive review of the AU's peace missions that has been conducted to date. It's based on a series of detailed case studies, cross-cutting research, and draws on a whole series of consultations and at www.africanpeacemissions.org you will find all this supporting documentation. It covers AU peace and security norms and mechanisms, including conflict prevention, conflict mediation, political missions, and of course, peacekeeping operations across their entire spectrum. So our peace support operations, peace missions in our conceptualization cover this entire spectrum. It is not just peacekeeping operations, but peace support operations, which is the term preferred by the African Union, include conventional, old-style peacekeeping operations, stabilization and enforcement missions, such as in Somalia, and I must recognize our good friend, the ambassador of Somalia, Ambassador Ahmad Awad, who's here. Mediation and political missions. The cross-cutting issues that we have engaged in include the trends in African conflicts, the trends in African mediation, the mandating mechanisms for peace and support operation, the prevention of mass atrocities, the protection of civilians, gender issues, security sector reform. Architectural issues include the African peace and security architecture, is it, which was this ambitious set of norms and instruments developed over the last 15 years, are they suitable for purpose? Are they being implemented? The AU peace and security council, the doctrine of unconstitutional changes in government and other key issues that have been developed by the AU, panels of experts, the African standby force, and doctrinal issues to do with the deployment of African peacekeepers who are often being dispatched into the types of environment in which UN peacekeepers would not be sent on the current conditions UN peacekeepers, the UN would not consider sending its peacekeepers. So we think Africa is at a turning point. There's been very significant progress made since the AU was founded some 15, 16 years ago. But there are some troubling trends that require new focus. What we see is that conflict is again rising in Africa. There was a long period following the end of the Cold War in which the trends were pretty much all in the right direction. And this continued until maybe five years ago, approximately, a decline in military crews, a decline in the numbers of conflicts, a decline in the lethality of conflicts. But over the last few years we see an uptick. Today's conflicts are again increasing. The reasons for this, we identify as weak democracy, contested government transitions, which are a key driver, interstate contestation, something that is very widely overlooked. The conventional wisdom is that African conflicts are all internal. We disagree, we've done some analysis of the level of overt and covert military involvement in primarily internal conflicts, and we find a very, very high level of interstate contestation in Africa, not dissimilar, let's say, to the Middle East. We find violent extremism also to be a major factor. We fear that there is a risk that the principles on which the African Union was founded, and which were so effective in bringing real gains for peace in the first decade of this century, we fear that these are being abandoned or overlooked or marginalised. There's the emergent emphasis on very hard security approaches to peace and security challenges that is driven from a number of factors. The militarisation of governance, the militarisation of peace responses, which I think many of us feel very uncomfortable with, which has been ongoing, is jeopardising, we think, some of the important gains. It results in AU responses that are reactive to crisis situations, overly dependent on military interventions, and threatened to embroil the AU in unwinnable conflicts and transform the AU from being primarily a political diplomatic instrument to being a subcontractor for military operations, that we see as a danger. And we would note that a predominantly militarised response to these crises is financially unsustainable. So, what is the answer to this? And I will put up the next slide, the primacy of the political, and I will hand over to my colleague, Moraget. Thank you very much. Alex has summarised what are the existing challenges in promoting peace and security in Africa. My part will be discussing what's the way forward, what are the recommendations. The broader title could be, say, bringing the primacy of the political. And this has several dimensions, normative dimensions, architectural and relationship dimensions, and operational dimensions. I'm going to discuss these issues. You have unique capabilities that other international organisations do not have. And its key strength is not military, is not economic. Its key strength is political. It has specific political instruments and norms that it has developed. One, there is this principle of non-difference, a principle adopted by all African states, incorporated in its constitutional acts. That calls for intervention when and if an African state fails to provide the basic securities to its communities. And a state collapse and crimes against humanity are imminent to arise. Second, in its constitutional act, there is a clear normative principle calling for constitutional democracy and the rejection of unconstitutional change of government. As of the adoption of this principle, coup d'etats in Africa are going down and whichever coup d'etats take do not survive much. The Africans are acting vigorously and actively in promoting constitutional democracy to this extent. Although there are several problems that could be discussed. There is a norm of political inclusivity in peace processes that has been adopted by several mechanisms of the African Indian in several instruments of the African Indian. And that has a base in the fabric and tradition of the African society. And there are several other norms that are adopted by the African Indian. Norms that look into divided communities and border management. Norms that look into the fight of terrorism and houses should be managed and so. And therefore, the AU should more fully implement the norms that it developed. The practices that it follows in several areas fall short of its own normative mechanisms. For example, the most powerful body in AU mechanisms, the Peace Security and Security Council is done based on the elections of the member states and the statute of the Security Council elaborates what membership criteria requires and how members to the council should be elected. The African Indian needs to abide by those criteria and elections where governments are measured based on their commitment to constitutional democracy and on their commitment to the promotion of human rights in their areas of responsibilities. So when we say the primacy of political, the first thing we mention is abide by the norms that you establish. We're not looking into the need for the establishment of additional norms and mechanisms. The AU processes unique peacemaking capacity. It should expand its investments in the area of conflict prevention and mediation. Our research indicates that African-led mediation with international support is the most effective for peace-making, both in terms of delivering peace and in terms of sustaining peace on the ground. The AU mechanisms, such as the AU Peace and Security Council, which is a council that operates based on consensus, based on equal status of every member that doesn't have any veto power arrangements within it, and high-level panels that has been using it in managing several conflicts are valuable mechanisms and should be invested in. Right now, the high-level panels and related volume mechanisms are more or less managed on a dog support basis. The AU lacks internal strong institutional mechanisms to make them function effectively. Third, the AU should also focus funding for its core activities and peacemaking efforts rather than the expensive military operations and should understand that there can be no ownership without financial responsibilities. When we see the AU member states' participation in raising the funds required for the operations of the African-Indian, it's not even enough to cover the operational costs of the institution. And when it mobilizes funds from other partners, African partners, most of the funds flow to finance the most expensive military operations in the continent. On the other hand, the areas where AU strangers are most prominent, the political processes are ill-funded and ill-supported by technical capabilities from within. And therefore, there is a need that this funding structure should give priority to where the AU could be most resultant and most effective. The AU structures that form the APSA are working, but they can be enhanced to better position the AU to engage with regional international actors. There is a need to create a stronger liaison with the UN, particularly the peace and security of the African-Indian and the UN Peace and Security Council. Recently, there are improved relationships, but it has to reach to a level where there is a very clear cooperation and complementarity rather than contention in several areas. Africa has witnessed some conflicts as a result of contesting interests of these institutions in Libya, in Mali, in several other parts. And therefore, there is a need for a stronger cooperation with the UN. And there is a need for Africa to implement this shared financing responsibility between the UN and the AU as proposed by the US and as endorsed by the summit of the African-Indian in this summer in Kigali. There is also a need to create a stronger mechanism for coordination between the AU and the African regional economic communities. There are eight African regional economic communities recognized by the African-Indian. Each of these wrecks do have liaison officers at the African-Indian, but the institutional setup of each of the wrecks are variant and the AU peace and security council doesn't have a structure that it could communicate with, that takes the responsibility of the peace and security activities of that regional mechanism. These are usually made by the policy organs of the regional economic communities who come on an issue basis. And therefore, there is a need to streamline these relationships and to create a closer coordination that supports complementing each other's capabilities rather than contending, which is also witnessed in several areas. For there is also the need to create new mechanisms for engagement with trans-regional and extra-regional organizations. Africa shares spaces with other continents with the European Union on the Mediterranean Sea, with the GCC on the Red Sea. And whatever happens in these shared spaces affects the peace stability of Africa. Right now, each of these are left for the frontline states of these shared spaces to engage bilaterally in any of these initiatives. There is no an Africa-wide mechanism to guide, to lead these interactions with these extra-regional organizations in light of the shared spaces that are in between them. The EU's political leadership of peace support operations can also be strengthened. Number one, peace support operations combine a variety of issues. I mean, sending military observers, sending troops for preventing activities, traditional peacekeeping tasks and responsibilities, recently multi-dimensional peace support operations that also engage in every aspect of post-conflict reconstruction and development. The EU is not at a disposition to do every type of peace support operations in-house. There is a need to focus on its particular strangers. And the EU has been working for the last 10 years in developing the African Stand-by Force, which was initially designed for situations that were 10 years ago. It looked into preventive deployments, peace enforcement, basically focusing to dealing with spoilers, and also multi-dimensional peacekeeping responsibilities. There is a need to refine this mechanism. The SF could be divided as SF-1 and SF-2. SF-1 is the type of institution that the EU has been building that focuses on preventive deployment. And SF-2, the Amisum or the Antibokoharam West African type of peace enforcement and peacemaking initiatives led, organized by the coalition of the willing as SF-2 operations. And therefore, the African Union needs to streamline these two different approaches to its peace support operations. It's required to develop its own peacekeeping doctrine that informs its own deployments of SF-1. And it's required to develop its peace support doctrine to guide and inform the peace enforcement enforcement operations that are managed and run by the coalition of the willing. There is a visible development in terms of increased involvement of new diseases. In particular, new diseases that are frontline states to a particular conflict. If we see the Amisum forces, the Amisum forces essentially come from the frontline states, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, previously Uganda, and some other contingents from other parts. And there is this increasing interest of frontline states engaging in managing the conflict in a particular conflict situation. This has its own benefits, its own advantage, and this has also its own disadvantage. The disadvantage of such an involvement are it comes with history, it comes with stakes, political interests, which at times could be conflicting to one another. And therefore, there is a danger of complicating the operations. Its benefits are that it brings more commitment to the theater of operations when particularly the operations become peace enforcement operations. Nobody would think any other state would accept the type of price. The frontline states of Somalia are paying in Somalia. Had it not been to their interests and their invested engagements in the environment. And therefore, the AU needs to manage in between these two. It requires to develop mechanisms whereby it benefits out of this added value, out of this advantage, but also a mechanism whereby it can cater the negative side effects for this. To this extent, one possible instrument or report suggests is setting the norms for running such operations in every aspect. And therefore, controlling the funds. So that's the leverage of the African Indian becomes full and strong. And creating a stronger mechanism whereby the operations of these coalitions of the willing of frontline states report effectively and efficiently to the African Indian. And last, ensuring that mandates and concepts of organizations are guided by the challenge of the situation. Scaling back on ambitious and complex Christmas tree mandates. We have reviewed the mandates of literally all peace support operations in Africa. And we have seen a trend of increasing complexity, complexity of the mandates. And unfortunately, we didn't see any positive correlation between an increased complexity of the mandate and dividends of peace on the ground. In some aspects, we found it and saw it to be a complicating factor whereby one of the institutions undermines the other institutions works on the ground. It's just like the UN Human Rights Commission, the UN monitoring and the UN humanitarian agencies on the ground where the UN humanitarian agencies need to develop and nurture a close working relationships with the local authorities on the ground and the UN human rights monitoring group within that same mission works in reporting, naming and shaming the local authorities. That brings the mission's relationship with the local authorities in difficulty. In conclusion, as the EU develops more capacities, it should not lose sight of the fact that African proven advantage is in the politics of conflict prevention and mediation. And that's where the report concludes. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the US Institute of Peace and the World Peace Foundation. It's a pleasure to be here. As Ambassador Lehmann indicated earlier, I'm Solomon Derso. I'm a commissioner of the African Commission on Human and People's Rights, but today I'm speaking not in that capacity, but in my capacity as a peace and security analyst. My task is a simple one that of reflecting on the report that have been presented today and launched in Addis Ababa a few months back. This is as Alex indicated earlier on the most recent report in recent efforts at reviewing peace operations. The UN undertook a thorough review of its peace operations through HIPAA, as Alex indicated. On the part of the EU, the first such review was the 2010 African Peace and Security Architecture Review. Subsequently, the EU undertook similar review of the African Peace and Security Architecture as a follow-up to the previous review of 2010. And the result of this latest review of the African Union was the 20th-Kistin 2020 African Peace and Security Architecture Roadmap. While this report, the report that is being presented today to you, fits into and complements the very existing reports. It also has certain features that set it apart from these reports. What all these reports agree on, including that of the HIPAA report, is that the coming into existence of the African Union has brought about remarkable change on the peace and security landscape of the continent. And it has, at the result, changed not only the way Africa responds to peace and security issues, but also the way the rest of the international community engages in responding to peace and security issues on the African continent. Specifically, in comparing this report with other reports, much of the focus of the other reviews of EU peace operations has been on what this report calls instruments. Mulgeta mentioned earlier on that this report basically identifies some of the strings of the African Union. All right. You have indicated earlier on it has an normative dimension and then you have the instruments that are used and developed and being implemented and then you have the relationship dimension that he also talked about. Much of the focus of the other reviews has been on what this report calls instruments. These are the decision-making mechanisms and the tools that the EU has developed and used over the years. And it can be gathered from its title. African politics, African peace, on the other hand, puts singular emphasis on and dedicates considerable space to politics, particularly Africa's politics of peace. This is given expression and best captured through what the report calls the primacy of the political. While similar language has been used in the HIPAA report, the scope and content of the primacy of the political in this report is different. The report is unique in the clarity and depth of its articulation of the primacy of the political. It articulates the primacy of the political, not simply in terms of the centrality of a political strategy to guide and lead the use of conflict management tools and a political process for resolving conflicts. Importantly, actually, it defines the primacy of the political as containing the norms and principles, ownership of the goals and strategies for peace and security and the precedence assigned to conflict prevention. In drawing attention to and emphasizing the primacy of the political are the philosophical bedrock on which the edifice of the AUP and security is built, this report warns against and challenge the trend of reactive responses to conflicts, the trend of resorting to security-heavy responses to Africa's challenge to peace and security, the militarization of peace. It urges a shift from the dominant reactive and what I call firefighting approach to a proactive and preventive approach. Indeed, taking the primacy of the political to its full application, not only does the report gives primacy to conflict prevention, you will find out when you read the report, but it also makes the funding and financing of peace processes in Africa ancillary to the political goals and strategies of peace missions. Off late, much of the focus in AU's role in peace and security has been around the issue of financing of AU's peace and security work. As important and critical as that discussion is, there is a concern that it usually becomes the one that actually determines how the AU responds to the peace and security challenge facing the continent, finance actually determining the response rather than the other way around. The primacy of the political emphasize that AU's comparative advantage and hence the prospect of success of its responses to peace and security challenge lies not in hard security efforts, but principally in the full and effective implementation of its norms and principles. So implementation actually is the major challenge that faces the AU peace and security work because if you look at the norms of the AU, the decisions that are taken by its peace and security council and the African Union are simply generally very highly commendable norms as well as decisions. But if you compare the gap between those principles' norms and decisions and their implementation, there is a huge gap. And that is one major challenge that needs to be surpassed actually. The policy response to conflict should principally be based on well-tothed political strategies and principles. The report's discussion on ownership of the goals and strategies of peace and security offers a fine articulation of and defense to African solutions to African problems. Thus the report points out that the primacy of the political starts with and involves intellectual leadership. This entails both setting the political norms and principles and ownership of articulating those norms and principles in the realms of policy and practical political action. Central to the intellectual leadership is Africa setting the peace and security agenda and being at the center of both the definition of the problems of peace and the efforts for solving the problems. So the report says, for Africa to set its own agenda for the future, it must write its own history or it will remain a prisoner of histories written by others. It must define its own problems or find itself defined by its problems. Along the same lines, the report also acknowledges and emphasizes the need for African actors to shoulder the lion's share of the burden for funding AUP's missions. The report argues that it's not clear how African ownership can be retained if the AU is seeking funds from others. This report not only foregrounds the primacy of the political, but also in the report the primacy of the political runs across the report and becomes the golden thread that actually ties the various parts of this report together. Thus, political strategies are made to define the funding needs and mechanisms of the AU missions, not the other way around. Again, armed operations should be laid and serve political strategies and hence shouldn't be pursued in isolation and in a political vacuum. As, for example, when a question is asked, with respect to the proposal for the deployment of 4,000 troops into South Sudan, the question is what is the political strategy that the deployment of these troops has to pursue? Is basically anchored on? Similarly, even for protection of civilians, for effective protection, emphasis is put in this report more on the political process than the military and security mechanisms that are deployed. The report also identified the important areas of strengths of AU politics of peace and its experience thus far, which need to be prioritized and further enhanced. They include, for example, its capabilities and norms, articulation of political strategies and goals, some areas of peace support operations for which the UN lacks comparative advantage. Similarly, the report also highlights some of the areas of challenge or gaps in AU's existing approach to peace missions. They include, for example, challenge surrounding AU's relationship with sub-regional organizations, like, for example, AU and ECOWAS in West Africa. The extra African dimensions of African security challenge. African security challenges do not arise merely from within Africa law. There are security challenges that also come from out. That are related to situations of neighborhood. So the extra African dimensions of African security challenge, the synergy and interplay between the African government security architecture, because as earlier on Alex mentioned, one of the reasons why we have seen rise in conflict in Africa has to do with what we call contested traditions. So over the course of this year, we have seen various manifestations of those, either in the context of issues relating to debates and controversies and crisis associated with third term, manipulation of constitutional term limits by incumbents, be it in Congo, Brotherville, Burundi. Now we have a current situation on our hands relating to that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or in situations of elections with related dispute and violence. I did the case today, for example, in Gabo. So there is a need for increasing emphasis and focus on implementing the governance norms and frameworks of the African Union. Because this, moving forward, this will definitely be an area where we will see a lot of violence and contestation. And then with respect to the African standby force, its most useful contribution is its call for drawing clear demarcation between peace enforcement expected to be principally implemented by coalitions of the willing and other forms of peace support operations for which the AU assumes full responsibility. All right, good. Let me quickly say a few things by way of, I think, a conclusion. And I would like to raise a few points. First, I think in terms of giving answers to some of the questions, some of the issues that we need to ask is, for example, what did that report propose for addressing the policy to implementation gap, the norm to implementation gap, decisions made to implementation gap? All right, that is an area where the report hasn't given adequate response by way of responding to that, although it gives indications of different kinds there. But it's important to ask the question, why do we have that gap in implementation of nicely designed strategies, frameworks, and norms? With respect to the issue of, I think, finance and funding, one of the things that the report rightly points out is that the need for Africa to increase funding capacity from within African sources. One dimension of that issue that is not adequately probed to my mind has to do with the relationship of African peace and security with that of world peace and security. And the implication of that relationship in terms of burden sharing between Africa and the global security framework, whereby if Africa, with the mandating of the UN Security Council, takes responsibility to put on the line of fire men and women who risk their lives and limbs, what account do we give to those men and women who lose lives and limbs? How much account do we give to that in terms of the burden sharing arrangement between the international community because the AU is sharing the burden of the international community in terms of maintaining international peace and security, since that is anchored in the UN Charter, for which the UN Security Council has primary responsibility. That is an area that, to my mind, didn't come out strongly in the analysis on the relationship between the UN and that of the AU. Thank you very much. Well, this is a comprehensive report. It has 195 recommendations, if I may, or at least paragraphs of recommendations. Let me ask you what's been the reaction of the African Union since you submitted the report? More yet. Well, our project has two parts. And this is a final report. But we had also developed an interim report to the African Union to support its engagements with the HIPPO. It was at the time that the HIPPO was created by the UN Secretary General. And we presented our report to the African Union, the African Union Peace and Security Council deliberated on it, and came up with common African positions on international peacekeeping. It was formally sent to the HIPPO and the UN Secretary General, which we think is a high-level panel on international peacekeeping set by the Secretary General. And we believe the HIPPO report was highly informed by the African common positions on international peacekeeping. This report is building on that interim report. It's much more comprehensive. And it tries to look into every aspect. And we have been closely working with the African Union, its experts, and also have been very closely working with President Beki and Lahtar Ibrahimi, which the AU also valued their engagement very much. We believe that the African Union has both into this report. I mean, we all know that the African Union right now is in transition as a result of the elections of the chairperson that should have been in this summer, which was postponed to coming year January, which has a lot of impacts in terms of its working mechanisms and engagements. Many of the officials, even the commissioner level officials, are engaged one way or the other. It is affairs of elections. But we feel they have fully taken it up. And they're looking for a peace and security council meeting at heads of state level where they can present this report and get an endorsement from the council. Let me follow up on something that Solomon raised. And that is the gap between the norms and the implementation. The emphasis, one of the main emphasis of the report is the African Union's strength is in the political. And it would be a mistake if it was too much in terms of the military. And it should build and strengthen its political role, all well and good. And there are good examples that you've pulled together from case studies. But there also is the dilemma here. Because when you think of the African Union leadership as a set of a peer group of presidents, when it comes to putting pressure on one of their colleagues, how effective are they? Solomon raised the question of the problem raised by term limits. It's not so much term limits per se, but the destabilization impact of individual leaders extending it. We have it in Burundi, we have it in DRC, we have it in Congo. And the ability of the AU, many of whose members have done the same thing, to emphasize it has not been very successful. So how does one overcome that? If the political is the instrument, how do you build a capacity to take on some of their colleagues? This is a very tough one. Isn't it? Which is why, yeah, it's precisely why you ask it. I think one of the issues there, and it came up in the Burundi case, is the relationship between the regional economic communities or sub-regional clusters and the African Union. Because very often the sub-regional organizations, if they take leadership of this, like the Ugandans, let's name names, the Ugandans took leadership vis-a-vis Burundi, and the position of President Museveni on term limits is well known. So it was not surprising that the views of the senior lawyers, the attorney generals and other Solomon can give the details. On the legality of the third term in Burundi, which was that it was not legal, was overridden by executive decision at the sub-regional level. Now, if you push this up to the African Union and the African Union has the sufficient clout and leadership, which is an unavoidable issue, then it is much easier to get these, or it is much more feasible, I should say, to get these norms actually upheld. This won't be possible. I mean, the upholding of these norms will not be possible without, without serious leadership. Isn't that the same dilemma we have on South Sudan? You have an IGAD in the lead, this is the regional instrument, and you've said to strengthen the relationship between the AU and these regional units. IGAD, with a lot of conflicts of interest, has not been able to really achieve an effective peace process. But the AU seems very reluctant to take it away from them, or take it up higher. Does the report deal with this kind of problem? Doesn't deal specifically with the South Sudan case, partly because of the timing issue. I mean, if you consider that the AU has the norm of non-indifference, now the AU itself had a commission of inquiry into what happened in South Sudan that found crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed. How old was the report? That was just released a year and a bit ago. It would be rather naive to presume that the war is resumed by the same actors using the same forces, and we're not committing similar crimes, and indeed the evidence that we have are there. So there is a legally, a prima facie case for intervention under that article. What happened in July, according to I think most observers, was de facto an unconstitutional change in government. And so far as the de facto constitution of South Sudan was that peace agreement, which was torn up by the powers that be. So the legal basis for an AU intervention is there. There hasn't been an AU intervention under the article of non-indifference against the will of a member state up to now. The sub, IGAD could not do that, and it could only be done by the AU having sufficient leadership and talent to take the ownership of this issue from IGAD and saying, you know, sufficiently polite way we need to, the African Union as a continent needs to implement these measures, which is why the strong leadership from the top of the AU is pivotal. What our report illuminates is, in this peace process and political process, we just saw that there are three levels of negotiation, three levels of mediation that take place at a particular conflict. Number one, there are the belligerents within the nation, the nationals. Number two, there are the frontline states who have in many cases their own clients, their own interests. And as Alex mentioned earlier, the perception that most African conflicts, most current African conflicts are interest state is wrong. They have all interstate dimensions in different forms, and therefore the frontline states who have a critical role in changing the situation for good or bad within the conflict environment have their own conflict of interests, and therefore there is a mediation, a mediation required between the frontline states to bring them into an negotiated set of interests because it's not something that you can ignore because you think they can complicate the peace process. I mean, for a fact they're there, for a fact their roles will either enhance the process or derail it, and therefore there is a requirement to bring this together to have a process that helps them come into a mediated, negotiated level of interest that brings their capabilities together, that makes them see beyond the day, beyond the year, long term interests, and also the other international actors. What is happening in South Sudan is there is a critical role that these frontline states could play, but the frontline states' interests are divergent, and therefore an institution you thought would lead the whole process becomes a forum where these frontline states fight on each other's conflicts, which gives the chance to the nationals who want to spoil these peace processes. Several chances for conference shopping, for several things, and therefore there is a need to look into mediation, political processes, as these three concentric circuits, and look into all levels that they should develop such a mechanism. On the other side, it will be difficult to say that the norms of, say for example, and the constitutional change of governments are not being implemented. We've seen African states implement these sanctions on their peers, several coup d'etats, and several forces that came, we have even seen it in Egypt, where the military took power on most these governments and declared this transitional process where the EU took a bold action of suspending it up until the referendum on election is coming, and we have seen them when Mubarak was going up, when all the North African political change were going out. I mean they inevitably translated it in a way that allows for a forced change in a certain situation where the incumbents become the critical impediments for any progress on the ground. So it's good to recognize that there are also these realities, this level of commitment that we see in certain parts. But to make it full, there is a requirement to create some sort of, you know, these three concentric circle level type of political process and negotiations. Well, let me open it up to the audience. We have some microphones, we do, and if you identify yourself and ask a question, do we have any people who would like to ask a question? Otherwise I will ask more. No questions from the audience. Yes, we do, right here. Wait, wait, wait for the, thank you. My name is Whitney Schinkel and I'm with Bankraft Global Development. And I guess my question is actually following up on Ambassador Lyman's a little bit. In the sense of, if you could expand a little bit on what the actual tools or instruments are that the AU has that are distinct from the economic forums or EGAD or other organizations. And I ask because I think, as you pointed out in the sort of after effects of the establishment of the AU, you saw this decrease in COOS, there's perhaps an argument to be made that it just pushed the challenge to the ballot box, whether they're contested elections or third term questions. And Burundi being the most recent example, when the AU did sort of push for an intervention, it was rejected by the president that's sort of now just laying in static state. And so I think the push that you're making for the political tools is probably a beneficial direction for them. But what are the actual resources they have? Are they things that are at their disposal or that they would have to create a new? Or put it another way, what's their leverage when they run into a situation like this? You want to? All right. Tom and you, over to you. Thank you. What's the leverage? I think earlier on, you know, Mr. Laman mentioned the issue of peer pressure and the issue of the fact that the African Union has become a platform where once decisions are taken, those become the basis on which international action is also mobilized. And therefore, the leverage is basically issues relating to the naming and shaming process itself. For example, one way of looking at what happened in Brunni is to say that it was a failure. Another way of looking at what happened in Brunni was to say that how did it affect the dynamics on the ground in Brunni when the AU on December 17 took the decision for proposing a deployment on the basis of the principle of non-intervention under Article 4H of the Constituent Act? How did it affect the dynamics on the ground? How did it affect the government? The government practically and, you know, the officials, they were sweating day and night in order to calm the situation down. And indeed, if you look in terms of the fatalities, all right, and intensity of violence, by the time the heads of state made in January, it has gone significantly, substantially down. And that was because that decision brought the limelight on the situation in Brunni and it mobilized everybody to take action against Brunni. So in creating that level of pressure, although in the end it was not followed up to its conclusion, it has helped in contributing to the scaling down of the situation in Brunni. So sure, in terms of leverage, what you can be able to say is basically, its most important leverage is basically one of ensuring that there is diplomatic pressure that is put on the government. Even when you see the debate of the heads of state, when they said we are not going to forcefully intervene in Brunni, some of the points that have been made to the senior officials of Brunni, very candid, serious stuff that they have been told by some of the heads of state, all right. When they were saying that, look, there's no way that you guys can't tell us that things are okay in Brunni. There's no way that you can say that we don't have any authority within the framework of the AU for us to engage in this situation. But the problem again is, as you said, there are instances in which sometimes if there is convergence, now as indicated earlier, part of the problem, when there is division, that's when the leverage of the AU becomes so ineffective because this leverage usually is in diplomatic pressure. So in Brunni, there was division. That's why Brunnians were able to play between the EAC, the African community, and that of the AU. But when there is convergence, for example, in Mali, against the coup that happened, all right, between Equos and the African Union, to a point where they were trying to impose not just diplomatic isolation, political isolation, and exclusion from the AU and Equos, but also even economic pressure by actually depriving Mali from trade. That was the one that forced the junta to agree to surrendering power back to a civilian administration. So that is where I see a lot of leverage and also the possibility of the AU providing that forum for international engagement. I think it's well about naming and shaming. There is this international legitimacy aspect of it and getting sanctioned by the African Union or being part of that community is either a serious minus or a serious plus, whichever way it goes. If getting sanctioned means it's a serious defect and a serious minus in the international legitimacy aspect of the state that is under sanction. Second, usually, it also fits into the decisions of the UN Security Council. Within the powers of the UN Security Council, there are powers that are usually reluctant for sanctions and similar type of things. But when Africa comes with one voice that becomes an excuse where these divisions usually do not affect the decisions of the UN Security Council. And again, it has an international legitimacy dimension aspect of it and it comes with every aspect and there has been this practice of for example, during its predecessor's time during the Organization of African Unity, the sanction, the trade bonds that the Africans implemented against apartheid South Africa had had a very significant element in terms of forcing change in South Africa and the combined effort of the African States through the Organization of African Unity to call for international premium against the system in South Africa had a significant impact and therefore it's beyond meaning and shaming. The leverage could be serious. Another question there, yes, right over here. Wait for the microphone please. Lawrence Freeman, I've been writing research economic policy for Africa for a few decades. I gather the report is to focus on the political as opposed to the military tools that the AU has. My studies of Africa show that many of these conflicts either at the beginning or some part of the process have a very significant economic component that is people end up fighting and killing each other over food, land, water, just to survive. And so the economic services delivered by countries in Africa or lack of seems to me part of the problem. And I mean the AU has the PETA report of for 2014. It has the agenda for 2063, which outlines vast infrastructure projects in water and energy and roads. It seems to me this has to be a component, an economic component, maybe on the strong and on the military and political that if we help develop the infrastructure and economic viability of nations in Africa that we can actually deliver service to people and lessen the tensions of war which come from extreme poverty, lack of water, et cetera. I don't know if you consider this to be a key component of bringing peace to Africa, even though I guess it's not mentioned in your book, I haven't read it. But I wanted to know if you thought this was another viable track that the AU should step up its procedure and its implementation of these economic development policies? A big question and a very brief answer, which is that we didn't go into it in detail. We don't think that the AU has a comparative advantage in economic policy or development. That is for other international organizations policy making instruments and so on. And so our focus was very much on the more immediate political issue of what the AU is capable of doing within its governance and peace and security mechanisms. Not the, I mean, there are other mechanisms that the AU has, but we don't consider those to be strong enough really to make an impact on these very important agendas. I don't know, I said, at the back, way up there. Thank you. My name is Mishkat Idris. I'm from Darfur. I work with the UN there. My question is that I really have a very strong concern when it comes to implementation, operational implementation of AU policies or strategies. Put it in consideration or using Darfur as a case study. What is the policies and strategy that's put it in place to implement peace? Given the fact there is other factors also affect, majorly, in the peace keeping process. For example, the armed militia, also protecting of civilians, the government opposition and also the government express the exit strategies. My second question is that when it comes to financial assistance, I mean, there is a military have been deployed in Darfur and some of them are from African countries and the other one from out of country. For example, the Pakistani military, also Indonesian and et cetera. Why we don't use African military in peace keeping instead of from other countries? If we do such a thing, there is at least some financial benefits comes back to Africa. Given the fact that the same there is going to be the strength of the military and also financial returns. Thank you. I want to take Darfur. Let me respond to those also very briefly. I was part of the team that supported President Tabor Mbeki with the African Union high level panel on Darfur, which had its report. Oh, it's seven years ago now I'd seen. And then the process of coming to that report was for me as important as the report, which was a highly consultative process. Really the first time the people of Darfur had been consistently consulted us to their views. And I still think that that report contains the core of what the African approach ought to be, which is founded on that consultative process of engagement with all the people, all the stakeholders in Darfur, allowing them to identify their priorities and concerns and deriving a policy from that. And I think it's very unfortunate that seven years on the recommendations of that report have not been really implemented. Let me leave it at that. In terms of the African peacekeepers, I think what we have seen in the last few years is an enormous increase in the number of peacekeepers from African troop contributing countries, which are now the leading contributors to peacekeeping worldwide, including in Darfur. So I think your question, why not utilize African peacekeepers so that the financial benefits of paying these peacekeepers comes back to Africa? I think that's absolutely well taken, well adopted, and indeed it's one of the things that actually indeed is happening. I wanna ask a question that I know comes up in the report we haven't talked about. You've laid out kind of the priorities, et cetera. But there is a lot of organizational change and capacity building that's in this report, particularly in support of mediation in support of bringing the Africa governance part of the AU back closer to the mediation conflict. I wonder if you could comment a little more on that. Moel, get it? Yeah, the report covers several areas, not only organizational, institutional issues, but also a priority of programs as well. One clear sort of structural deficiency you see is the relationship between Apsai and Aga, the African peace and security structure and the African governance structure. The African governance structure looks into elections, democracy, human rights, and so on and so forth, while the African peace and security structure looks through issues of peace and security. With repeated experiences of post-election crisis or election violences, or some of the violences triggered by issues like this certain termism and so on and so forth, there is a very clear relationship between these two areas of responsibility. Although you can identify which is which, but it becomes difficult to draw the border. And therefore we are saying there is a more coordination required structurally that makes them inform each other. Our report simply leaves it to the African Union authorities to decide, rather than recommend a particular set of recommendation calling for sort of deputy chairperson to be responsible to coordinate both, which we thought this should come from within the African Union, but we indicated that there is a very, very clear need for coordination both these areas of responsibilities. And then in terms of programmatic issues, we can see the post-conflict and reconstruction issues could be taken as a conflict prevention strategy. Most conflicts in Africa, I mean our study indicates that one of three of African conflicts comes back to conflict every five years. So, former wars trigger coming wars, former violence triggers, and this is mostly related with failed attempts of post-conflict reconstruction and development. And that the African Union, they have a program which is essentially limited to one or two staff. And it usually taps into program funds that comes from other partners of Africa, rather than own funding managed, supplied by the institution itself. So our report indicates that this has to be, this has to get prominence within the programs of the African Union, as it should be viewed as a conflict prevention strategy. Most of the actors that act on DBR, SSR issues are these international organizations which unfortunately do have templates that they have already developed and which unfortunately do not help in terms of understanding the realities and making real change, real progress on the ground. And therefore, there is a requirement for source of South-South cooperation, taking experiences from, you know, successful experiences from here and there within Africa. And there is a need of closer investigation of these challenges and developing and supporting the national governments that engage in these programs. So to this extent, our report is recommending that there is a need to beef it up and to give prominence to this program. Well, other things. Thank you. We have come to the end of our time. I want to not only commend the report and urge those who follow these things to read it, but also take advantage of the case studies and backup reports on the website which provide a very rich background to the conclusions of the report. So I hope you'll join me in thanking our panelists and our panelists. Thank you.