UNOAU participates in Expert Workshop on “African Wars in the 21st Century: Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Action in Post-Conflict Recovery”
From 1-2 July, UNOAU participated in the expert workshop “African wars in the 21st century: bridging the gap between policy and action in post-conflict recovery”. The workshop was jointly organized by the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) and New York University’s Center for Global Affairs (NYU-CGA) in Addis Ababa. The main objective of the workshop was to explore how the AU’s revised Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development (PCRD) policy can be implemented sustainably.
In this context, the participants critically reflected upon the policy, the operationalization of the nine PCRD pillars, the mandate of the AU PCRD Center in Cairo, as well as the collaboration with the AU colleagues in Addis Ababa, and provided thoughts on practical strategies on how to advance the revised PCRD policy.
About 30 participants attended the workshop including African scholars, advanced graduate students, senior military officers, lawmakers, civil society leaders, regional policy practitioners, youth peacebuilders, and representatives from multilateral and international organizations involved in post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding across the continent.
The sessions and discussions focused on the following interconnected themes: a) from paper to practice: implementing the PCRD; b) rebuilding trust: inclusive governance and recovery; c) future-proofing recovery: climate, finance, and regional resilience; d) catalyzing change: private sector, innovation, and tech-driven solutions; e) the sustainability question: resourcing the PCRD; and f) knowledge management systems: (re)thinking learning, monitoring and adaptive implementation.
In the discussions, the importance of the interconnected elements such as political will, (civic) trust, and institutional capacity, were underlined. In line with a recent visit to the AU PCRD center in Cairo, UNOAU contributed thoughts related to the implementation of the PCRD policy and the operationalization of the AU PCRD center, with a special focus on aspects related to security sector governance and security sector reform, in line with the nine pillars of the PCRD policy.