Remarks by Director CIDO at the 2026 Peacemakers Network Advisory Group Meeting

"Shaping Peace in a Fractured World - The Imperative Role of Religious and Traditional Actors"
Session: "Peace as a Global Public Good: Why Investing in Peace Matters Today"
African Union Headquarters, Addis Ababa | 2 September 2026, 16:00-17:00
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Honorable Moderator, Dr. Mohamed Elsanousi, Executive Director, Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers,
H.E. Dr. Keyredin Tezera, State Minister, Ministry of Peace, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia,
Honorable Mr. Kesis Tagai Tadele, Secretary-General, Inter-Religious Council of Ethiopia,
Her Excellency Ms. Pirjo-Liisa Heikkila, Deputy Head of Mission and Deputy Permanent
Representative to the African Union, Embassy of Finland,
Distinguished Members and Representatives of the Peacemakers Network,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my privilege this afternoon to address you in two capacities: on behalf of H.E. the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, whose opening remarks to this Advisory Group Meeting I have been asked to convey, and in my own capacity as Director of the Citizens and Diaspora Directorate.

OPENING REMARKS (on behalf of H.E. Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, Chairperson of the African Union Commission)

"I am pleased to welcome the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers to the African Union Headquarters. For the first time in its history, the Network is convening its global membership in Africa, and it is a privilege for the African Union Commission to host you during a month in which the world also marks the International Day of Peace.

While the African Union's commitment to peace, security, governance and sustainable development highly values the contributions of Members States and the Union's intergovernmental machinery and mechanisms, the Commission has high expectations for the engagement of citizens and communities towards the same goal of maintenance of international peace and security in our continent. In that perspective, traditional and religious leaders, who hold the trust of communities, have a crucial role to play. That conviction was reaffirmed only three days ago, when our Assembly of Heads of State and Government, meeting in Luanda for its 21st Extraordinary Session on the Strengthening of Mechanisms for Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa, called upon Member States to build whole-of-society approaches to conflict prevention - naming traditional and religious leaders explicitly among the partners our continent's peace architecture must engage, alongside civil society, women, youth and academia.

It is a conviction the Commission has also put into institutional practice, including through the long- standing relation between this Network and the Commission. I wish this Advisory Group Meeting every success as it reflects on the Network's work and charts its course for the years ahead, and we looks forward to a partnership between the African Union and the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers that continues to grow, in service of the peaceful, integrated and prosperous Africa that Agenda 2063 envisions."

(End of Quote)

Those are the Chairperson's remarks. Allow me now to turn to my own capacity as Director of the Citizens and Diaspora Directorate.

STATEMENT (by Amb. Amr Aljowaily, Director, Citizens and Diaspora Directorate)

The Commission, through CIDO, has been a member of the Peacemakers Network for close to a decade. Our engagement has been a continuous one - including through our participation in the Network's 14th Advisory Group Meeting in Muscat, Oman, in November 2022, under the theme "Peacemaking in Current Times: Complex Challenges and Innovative Solutions." The question posed to this session - why investing in peace matters today - is one this Directorate has approached, over that time, less as an abstraction than as a working assumption behind our own programming.

That assumption rests on a simple premise: peace, like other global public goods, is under-provided when it is left to be produced by any single actor alone, and it is strengthened when institutions create durable space for the actors who sustain it on the ground - religious and traditional leaders foremost among them. For CIDO, that space has taken concrete form. Since 2010, the African Union's biannual Interfaith Dialogue Forum has served as the Union's standing platform for structured engagement with the faith community, and its most recent General Assembly, held in Windhoek, Namibia in November 2025, renewed that platform's mandate. Earlier this year, from 15 to 18 June 2026 in Accra, Ghana, CIDO worked alongside the Commission's Department of Political Affairs, Peace and Security in co-organizing the inaugural Continental Dialogue with Traditional, Inter-Faith and Judicial Leaders in support of the African Union's Silencing the Guns initiative - a first-of-its-kind gathering that brought those constituencies directly into the continent's peace and security architecture.

Investing in peace also means investing in the partnerships that make such platforms possible, and in keeping them current. In April 2026, the African Union Commission and the International Dialogue

Centre (KAICIID) renewed their Memorandum of Understanding here in Addis Ababa, deepening a partnership on dialogue-driven peacebuilding that has run since 2013. We mention it not as an isolated event, but as an example of the kind of institutional continuity that this Network's own Steering Group - with KAICIID among its members since 2015 - has itself modelled for a decade.

This Advisory Group Meeting will carry that continuity forward. As this Network reflects on its work and shapes its next multi-year strategy over the coming days, we look forward to remaining an active member of this community - one among some 119 organizations, more than a third of them headquartered on this continent, that make up its global membership - and to continuing a partnership with the Peacemakers Network that we value, and that we believe serves the shared goals of Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals alike.

Investing in peace is not a cost to be minimized; it is a dividend to be multiplied - in dialogue sustained, in trust rebuilt, and in societies made whole.

Thank you.

Citizens and Diaspora Directorate
Office No. 1106 (floor 11, Tower Building). AUC. P.O. Box 3243, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Direct Line: +251 115 182108 Website: https://au.int/en/cido Social Media Handles: @AUC_CIDO @AUCIDO