Participants in the October 16 conference included all 15 members of the AU Peace and Security Council and other key figures.

In partial commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the African Union Peace and Security Council (PSC), and on the eve of the PSC’s biennial informal consultations with the UN Security Council, the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs’ Blue Center for Global Strategic Assessment and the Peacebuilding Initiative joined with the AUPSC, AU Commission for Political Affairs, Peace and Security (AUCPAPS), and the AU Mission to the United Nations (UNAUM) for an in-depth discussion peace and security on the African continent.

The day-long conference, held October 16 in the Jackson School’s Horchow Hall, was organized by Jackson Senior Fellow Bisa Williams, a retired U.S. ambassador whose three decades of service included tours in Guinea (Conakry), Panama, Mauritius, France, the US Mission to the UN (NY), Washington, DC, including two years at the National Security Council of The White House, and Niger.

Amb. Bankole Adeoye was among the featured speakers.

Participants included the AU delegation—most of whom traveled to Yale from AU Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia—along with Yale students, faculty and visiting fellows. The program included detailed tabletop discussions of topics ranging from the relationship between the UNSC and the AU PSC, African women in peace & security, and coups in the Sahel Corridor  to ethnicity and nationality in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and Mali, effective uses of international accountability tools, negative trends in the application Protection of Civilians (PoC) and Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and climate change as a national security.

Featured speakers were AU Commissioner Ambassador Bankole Adeoye, AU PSC Chair for the month of October; Ambassador Mohamed Omar Gad; PermRep Fatima Kyari Mohammed; Blue Center Executive Director Philip Kaplan; and Williams. 

Amb. Gad and Commissioner Bankole encouraged Yale students and researchers to consider partnering with the AU Think Tank Network to maximize creative, comprehensive assessment and responses to the peace and security issues of highest priority on the continent.