The first article in this report is titled: With four new members, is the PSC at a crossroads? On 7 February 2019, at its 34th Ordinary Session, the Executive Council of the African Union (AU) elected four new members to the Peace and Security Council (PSC) for a three-year term. The article discussed the fact that Southern Africa will be represented by Lesotho, which joins the PSC for the first time. For the Central African region, Burundi comes back to the PSC after a two-year stint on the council between 2015 and 2017. The following article is titled: President el-Sisi will need to sustain the momentum for reform. The first time since the AU’s founding in 2002, Egypt gets to steer the organisation’s affairs and it’s a significant development considering the frosty relationship in recent years between the AU and Egypt. In 2013, Egypt was suspended from the union following the political crisis in the country during the 2011 Arab Spring. The 3rd article titled: Renewed focus on refugees in 2019 is discussing the security and political issue of dealing with refugees and migrants. The following article, titled: South Africa can bring the AU closer to the people discusses South Africa’s task to set the AU’s agenda and hopefully launching new initiatives that drive the continent forward. The following article is titled: Will the AU-led peace deal in the Central African Republic hold? The deal came after 10 days of talks in Khartoum between the protagonists, after more than two years of intense negotiations under the AU Initiative for Peace and Reconciliation in the CAR. This agreement could be a turning point for peace in the CAR, given the protracted nature of the conflict and the fact that armed groups control about 80% of the territory. The last article is titled: The PSC should put Sudan on its agenda. A government committee investigating the ongoing protests in Sudan admitted, in early February, that
the body of Ahmed El Kheir, a teacher who had died in the custody of the dreaded National Security
Service, showed signs of torture.
