The Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU) dedicated its 828th meeting on 19th February 2019, to an open session on Climate Change, Peace and Security. And the AU PSD Commissioner stated in December 2020, ”Silencing the Guns is a goal that we must remain devoted to in 2020 and beyond. Within this framework, I call on all Member States to promote socio-economic development, especially employment for youth; mitigate effects of climate change and root causes of intercommunal violence”. The topic has also garnered the attention of the UN Security Council where climate change was recognized as a risk to peace. References to climate security have been included in several UN resolutions and the topic was discussed prominently at the UN High- Level Political Forum.
But with increased recognition, comes increased demand to find adequate responses to climaterelated security risks. It is therefore important to interrogate how conflicts and conflict-related migration in Africa are affected by climate change and to identify and develop adequate measures for conflict prevention and conflict resolution that are regionally owned and supported.
PACJA, FES and SIPRI established the Horn of Africa Climate Security Working Group which has been focusing on the complexity of violent conflict and its relationship with climate change –how conflicts transcend borders and more broadly how the two issues relate to each other. The working group focused on various issues including; how climate change can be incorporated into ongoing peace agreements and processes; and how to improve regional mechanisms and global processes on climate security; identifying necessary, comprehensive and potentially supportive or complementary regional mechanisms on different levels to be able to better address climate-related security risks in the Horn of Africa as well as international efforts to regulate and end violent conflict in the region by addressing climate security risks. This work garnered a lot of interest across the African region, and it was important to have introspect of the climate security discourse in Africa.
It is with the above rationale that PACJA is organizing an Africa regional Climate Security workshop, bringing together regional stakeholders from across Africa drawn from civil society and experts to discuss to what extent climate-related security risks can be integrated in ongoing and future regional, continental and international efforts to regulate and end violent conflict in Africa region by addressing climate security risks. Click here to download the report