Institution
Ad Hoc Working Group on Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa
A two-year chairmanship of the Council's own advisory body on Africa, run under one guiding theme: listening better to the countries actually on the agenda.
The Ad Hoc Working Group on Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa is a subsidiary body the Security Council established in 2002, by Presidential Statement S/PRST/2002/2, to give the Council advisory and analytical support on African peace and security issues, a mandate that has not changed in the two decades since. Unlike a country file or a peacekeeping mandate, the Working Group has no conflict of its own to resolve; its work is entirely about how the Council itself engages with the continent that dominates so much of its own agenda.
Kenya chaired the Working Group for the full two years of its own Council term, 2021 and 2022, under a single guiding theme Kimani set at the chairmanship's opening meeting: "Listening Better to African Country Perspectives, and Learning Lessons from Successes in Conflict Prevention, Resolution and Transition." That theme shaped a deliberately consultative method, bilateral conversations with African countries at different stages of their own conflict-to-peace transitions, feeding into each year's thematic programme, rather than a Working Group that simply received briefings and moved on.
Across the two years, the Working Group held four substantive thematic meetings, on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR+); the nexus between conflict and underdevelopment; transnational terrorist and illegal armed groups; and why peace processes and peace agreements so often fail to hold, alongside the procedural work of convening two Annual Joint Consultative Meetings and Informal Joint Seminars with the African Union's own Peace and Security Council, in December 2021 and October 2022. The chairmanship closed on December 12, 2022, with Kimani's deputy delivering a public "lessons learned" statement to the full Council, the only session in this cluster with an independently confirmed public record; the Working Group's own working sessions are closed by nature, and the material behind the entries above is retained privately rather than published, consistent with this project's sourcing policy for sessions whose open or closed status cannot be independently confirmed.
Read together, the four thematic meetings trace a throughline: DDR and peace-agreement design are both about what happens after or instead of a ceasefire; the development nexus and transnational-armed-groups sessions are both about what feeds conflict before it starts. The closing statement's own recommendation, that the incoming chair build in more consistent ambassadorial-level engagement and a working paper structure to translate the Group's recommendations into Council action, reads as a direct answer to what this quieter, procedural work had made visible over two years: real, sustained content produced in venues most of the Council's own public record does not see.
Independent Sources for This Introduction
Chronology
| 2002-01-31 | event | The Ad Hoc Working Group is established The Security Council, by Presidential Statement S/PRST/2002/2, establishes the Ad Hoc Working Group on Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa, mandated to provide advisory and analytical support to the Council's own work on African peace and security issues, a mandate the Working Group retained unchanged when Kenya took its chair nearly two decades later. |
| 2021-04-30 | event | Kenya opens its chairmanship with the Working Group's inaugural 2021 meeting Kimani, chairing, sets the guiding theme for the full two-year term, 'Listening Better to African Country Perspectives, and Learning Lessons from Successes in Conflict Prevention, Resolution and Transition,' and lays out a seven-meeting programme of work for 2021 built on bilateral consultations he had conducted across Africa's sub-regions. Delivered at a closed working-group session; the working copy is retained in private notes rather than published, per this project's standing sourcing policy for sessions whose open/closed status cannot be independently confirmed. |
| 2021-06-04 | event | First thematic meeting: DDR+ The Working Group's first substantive session of the term, on 'Doing Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Better: DDR+,' identifying gaps in existing DDR practice across Africa that risk undermining fragile peace agreements. Closed session; retained in private notes. |
| 2021-08-27 | event | Second thematic meeting: the peace-security-development nexus A session using the Secretary-General's own reports on the causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa as a starting point, examining how underdevelopment and conflict reinforce each other. Closed session; retained in private notes. |
| 2021-10-19 | event | Preparing the 15th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting A procedural session settling the agenda for that December's Informal Joint Seminar and Annual Joint Consultative Meeting between the Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council, including AU-proposed topics on financing for AU-led peace operations, AMISOM's post-2021 posture, the Sahel, counterterrorism, and support to the SADC Mission in Mozambique. Closed session; retained in private notes. |
| 2021-12-16 | event | 6th Informal Joint Seminar and 15th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting The Security Council and AU Peace and Security Council hold their annual joint sessions, adopting a joint communiqué, per the Dec 12, 2022 closing statement's own account. A direct primary source for this specific joint session has not yet been retrieved. |
| 2022-04-06 | event | Third thematic meeting: transnational terrorist and illegal armed groups Kimani draws on the Security Council's October 2021 field mission to Mali and Niger, held during Kenya's Council presidency, to argue that transnational armed groups represent an underappreciated structural shift in the drivers of African insecurity, citing Al-Shabaab's decade-long hold on rural Somalia as the clearest example. Closed session; retained in private notes. |
| 2022-08-29 | event | Preparing the 16th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting A procedural session settling the agenda for the AU-hosted October 2022 joint seminar and consultative meeting, following consultations with the A3 and the AU Observer Mission on African Union priorities. Closed session; retained in private notes. |
| 2022-10-13 | event | 7th Informal Joint Seminar and 16th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting Hosted by Gabon during its October 2022 Council presidency, the Security Council and AU Peace and Security Council hold their second annual joint session of Kenya's chairmanship, again adopting a joint communiqué. A direct primary source for this specific joint session has not yet been retrieved. |
| 2022-11-30 | event | Fourth thematic meeting: peace processes and peace agreements The chairmanship's final thematic session, surveying why signed peace agreements so often fail to hold across Libya, Mali, the Great Lakes, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and the CAR, with briefers including former IGAD lead mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo. Kimani welcomes the Council's incoming 2023 members as observers, twelve days before delivering the chairmanship's closing statement. Closed session; retained in private notes. |
| 2022-12-12 | Statement | Brief to the UN Security Council on Lessons Learned and Experiences as Chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa Kenya's outgoing chair's statement, delivered by Amb. Michael Kiboino, Deputy Permanent Representative |