Sustaining Peace in Africa: Strengthening Peacemaking and Peace Operations for Conflict Resolution and Post-Conflict Recovery

Protracted and increasingly regionalized conflicts across Africa are straining existing tools for peacekeeping, peacemaking, and conflict resolution. At the same time, international and regional multilateral institutions face growing challenges related to their credibility, legitimacy, and leverage. From preventive diplomacy to mediation and peace support operations, multilateral actors are finding it increasingly difficult to shape peace processes and their outcomes.

This meeting note summarizes discussions from a retreat organized by IPI, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Amani Africa, and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), in partnership with the African Union (AU). Held as the AU marked twenty years since the creation of its Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development (PCRD) policy, the retreat brought together officials from the AU, the UN, regional economic communities (RECs), and member states.

Key themes from the discussion included the need for the AU to prioritize investing in areas where it can be most effective and the importance of aligning continental and subregional approaches to mediation. Participants also discussed recentering the UN–AU partnership at a more strategic level, ensuring that peace support operations are not deployed without an accompanying political framework, and matching mandates with the means to deliver, including through sustainable AU funding and greater investment in conflict prevention.