Statement by Deputy Chairperson at Launch of OSE-WPS Strategic Plan 2026–2028

• Your Excellency Ambassador Liberata Mulamula, Special Envoy of The AUC Chairperson on WPS,

• Your Excellency Ambassador Amma Twum Amoah, Commissioner for Health, Humanitarian Affairs and social development

• Your Excellency Parfait Onanga Anyanga, UNSG Special representative to the AU and Head of the UN Office to the AU

• Excellencies, Ambassadors and Members of the Diplomatic Corps;

• Representatives of African Union Organs and Institutions as well as international and regional institutions based in Addis Ababa;

• Development Partners;

• Representatives of Civil Society and Women's Organisations;

• Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.

It is a pleasure to join you for the launch of the Strategic Plan 2026-2028 of the Office of the Special Envoy on Women, Peace and Security.

It is a pleasant duty for me to bring you the warm greetings, blessings and best wishes of success of H.E Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, the Chairperson of the Commission, whom I am honored to represent in this important event. His preface of this strategic plan is self explanatory and speaks volume. I invite you all to read it.

And as far as I am personally concerned, I could not be anywhere else this morning, but in this room.

Allow me to start by another pleasant duty that is to commend and congratulate H.E Ambassador Liberata Mulamula for her leadership, passion, commitment, energy and vision. I also commend her close team and the wider AUC team for bringing this important Strategic Plan forward, while duly recognising the contributions of Member States, the UN, women peacebuilders, civil society and our partners who have helped to shape it.

The launch of this Strategic Plan provides an opportunity to reflect not only on the work of the Office of the Special Envoy, but also on how the African Union, as an institution, can better deliver on its commitments to Women, Peace and Security.

The African Union has made clear commitments to advancing women's participation, empowerment, leadership and protection.

The question before us is, therefore, how we translate our commitments into the design of our policies, the allocation of our resources, the implementation of our programmes, and the measurement of our performance.

Excellencies,

Women, Peace and Security cannot sit at the margins of our institutional priorities. It must be central to how we respond to the challenges facing our continent. Conflict prevention and mediation, peace support operations, governance, humanitarian action, recovery and reconstruction, and sustainable development are interconnected. Women are affected by, and contribute to, every one of these areas.

Our ambition must then be a more coherent African Union, in which the different parts of the Union reinforce one another in advancing Women, Peace and Security.

The Strategic Plan before us gives us an important basis for doing so. It provides the Office of the Special Envoy with a clear framework for its work, while creating an opportunity for stronger coordination across the Commission, with AU organs, Member States, Regional Economic Communities and Regional Mechanisms, civil society and our partners.

But coherence must also be reflected in the way our institution works and delivers.

If Women, Peace and Security is a priority of the Union, it should be visible in our planning and programming. It should inform resource decisions. And it should be incorporated into how we assess performance and report results.

This is also where accountability matters. Our measure of progress cannot simply be whether WPS appears in our policies or discussions.

We must increasingly ask whether those commitments are changing the way our institutions operate and, ultimately, whether they are producing better outcomes for women and girls across the continent.

That responsibility belongs to all of us.

It requires leadership across the Commission and AU organs. It requires Member States and regional institutions to translate continental commitments into national and regional action. And it requires sustained engagement with women peacebuilders and civil society, whose experience and expertise must continue to inform our policies and approaches.

Most importantly, it requires us to recognise that Women, Peace and Security is not an additional obligation placed upon the Union. It is part of delivering effectively on mandates we already have. We cannot speak credibly about preventing conflict, building peace and strengthening resilient societies without fully recognising the leadership, experiences and contributions of women.

Excellencies,

This is the opportunity that the Strategic Plan presents.

As we move into implementation, I want to affirm my commitment, as Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission, to supporting the sustainable institutionalisation of this agenda. This means working to ensure that implementation is increasingly anchored within the Union's planning, budgeting, administrative and accountability systems, and aligned with our wider institutional priorities.

The success of this Strategic Plan therefore depends not only on the Special Envoy and her Office. It depends on how far we make its objectives part of our collective responsibility across the Union.

Let us use the next three years to strengthen that coherence: to connect policy with implementation, commitments with resources, and ambition with accountability.

Ultimately, progress will be measured not only by what the African Union says about Women, Peace and Security, but by whether those commitments show up in how the Union works and in the results we deliver.

That is how we build institutional ownership. That is how we make our commitments sustainable. And that is how we move from commitment to implementation.