The African Union (AU) and Interpeace, an international organization for peacebuilding based in Geneva, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) confirming their mutual commitment to promote nationally-led peace processes to achieve sustainable peace, prevent violent conflict, and enhance resilient capacities for peace and development.
The signing ceremony took place on Friday, 2 September, at the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa. The MoU was signed by the Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security of the African Union, H.E. Amb. Bankole Adeoye and by the Vice -President of Interpeace, Simon Gimson.
Aligned with the AU’s priorities and strategies, the MoU aims to support more inclusive and participatory peacebuilding approaches that are gender and youth responsive, as well as to promote the opportunity and potential of societies as agents of positive change to achieve stronger social cohesion and sustainable growth and development.
Within the framework of their shared mandates to advance conflict prevention and resolution, the AU and Interpeace will support each other particularly through political dialogues, joint programmatic activities and joint policy and advocacy initiatives. Interpeace will provide technical support on conflict sensitivity and peace responsiveness and will help to sustain the AU in its conflict prevention capabilities to help member states mitigate the root causes of conflict.
Anchored in Interpeace’s Peace Responsive approach, this joint programming aims to increase member states’ capacities to implement bottom-up, community-centred peacebuilding infrastructure, as well as inform their development programmes to contribute to peace.
The AU and Interpeace will also work together to strengthen evidence-based programming to increase the effectiveness of the AU’s coordination with member states and regional bodies and the AU’s peacebuilding capacities. More concretely, the two will seek to carry out peace indexes and analyse findings to identify relevant programming approaches with a focus on mental health and psychosocial support as well as sustainable livelihoods.
This partnership reaffirms the direction taken by the AU through its African Peace and Security Architecture, the AU Master Roadmap on Practical Steps for Silencing Guns by 2020, the Structural Conflict Prevention Framework, the AU Transitional Justice Policy and AU Post-Conflict Reconstruction Policy as the bedrock of the African Union’s approach.
“We are delighted to formalise and deepen our engagement with the African Union through this MoU,” said Interpeace Vice – President Simon Gimson. “The MoU affirms our joint commitment to increase AU member states’ capacity to foster more bottom-up, community-led approaches to peace.”
Source: Interpeace