On 19 May, the SRSG to the AU and Head of UNOAU participated in a seminar with diplomats and academics focused on developments in the African peace and security architecture and landscape. The dialogue took account of shifting trends and threats following the 1992 publication of UNSG Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace, and is in anticipation of UNSG Guterres’s pending publication of a New Agenda for Peace. Academics from the Universities of Pretoria, New York, California, Yale, Sciences Po, the Nordic Africa Institute, the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Centre, the Institute for Peace and Security Studies, and Oxford University, joined Ambassadors and representatives from the AU, UN, EU, IGAD, ECOWAS, Uganda, Nigeria, the Netherlands and Sweden for the discussion.

The SRSG to the AU and Head of the UNOAU participated in two panels, one reflecting on developments in the African peace and security architecture and landscape and another reflecting on lessons learned from peacekeeping in CAR. The meeting further reflected on peacemaking in Eastern Africa and the Great Lakes, as well as in Central and Northern Africa, while also examining peacekeeping and subsequently peacebuilding modalities across the continent.