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This document is a draft agenda for the Twelfth Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union, scheduled for February 1-3, 2009, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

This report summarizes a seminar held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which analyzed post-conflict reconstruction in the Republic of Congo (RoC) through the lens of the African Union Policy Framework on Post conflict Reconstruction and Development (PCRD). The seminar examined whether the RoC has transitioned away from its war economy and evaluated the tension between state stability and human security.

The document introduces a collection of speeches and session papers from a seminar held during 'South African Week' in Brazzaville. The event, organized by the South African Embassy, IDASA, and the Institute for Security Studies, focused on the South African transitional process from apartheid to democracy to provide lessons for the Republic of Congo.

The document examines the link between poverty, human insecurity, and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that the 'security first' approach of international donors is flawed because it focuses on state security while ignoring the structural economic collapse caused by neo-liberal structural adjustment programmes and unsustainable debt. The author describes 'new wars' in Africa as rational economic responses to exclusion, where warlords utilize global markets for lootable commodities. The paper advocates for a shift toward 'human security' and a significant increase in official development assistance (ODA) to meet Millennium Development Goals, warning that current donor strategies continue to prioritize market liberalization over genuine poverty alleviation.

The study analyzes 285 conflict episodes to determine how natural resources affect the duration of postconflict peace. It identifies three primary mechanisms: distribution, financing, and aggravation. The findings indicate that while natural resource conflicts generally show shorter peace periods bivariately, only conflicts driven by disagreements over the distribution of resources and revenues significantly increase the risk of recurrence in a multivariate analysis. This suggests that resource-related grievances are a more persistent driver of conflict relapse than the mere opportunity to finance warfare.

The research evaluates three dimensions of state capacity—coercion (revenue extraction), co-optation (government spending), and cooperation (trust in institutions)—to determine their impact on the onset of civil war. Using a global dataset, the authors find that high government spending and trustworthy institutions (proxied by contract-intensive money) are significant predictors of civil peace, whereas coercive capacity (relative political capacity) has little predictive power when controlling for other factors. The findings suggest that civil peace is co-produced through social cooperation and the provision of public goods rather than through state repression.

The research analyzes the relationship between state repression of 'empowerment rights' (social, political, and economic liberties) and ethnic fractionalization in predicting civil war onset. Using data from 143 states, the study finds that state repression does not have a direct effect on war onset. However, it discovers a significant conditional effect: in ethnically fractionalized societies, higher levels of state repression actually reduce the probability of civil war, whereas in homogeneous societies, repression increases the risk. These findings challenge 'grievance-based' theories of ethnic conflict, suggesting instead that the opportunity to mobilize—which is constrained by repression—is the primary driver of rebellion in diverse societies.

The document provides a comprehensive overview of global conflict trends from 1989 to 2019, noting a record high of 54 state-based conflicts in 2019. It highlights the significant role of the Islamic State (IS) in driving recent conflict increases and the prevalence of internationalized civil conflicts. While battle-related deaths have generally decreased over the last 20 years, specific hotspots in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia remain deadly. The paper also analyzes the decline in peace agreements since 2015 and the persistence of non-state conflicts, particularly violent drug cartel activity in Latin America and communal violence in Africa.

In 2021, at least 3.43 billion people across 54 high-impact countries faced cooling access challenges. The rural poor population at high risk grew to 355 million, driven largely by the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on poverty, with India, Nigeria, and Bangladesh having the highest numbers. The urban poor population increased to 732 million, with China and India accounting for 36% of that growth. Additionally, the lower-middle income segment grew to 2.34 billion people, a group at risk of adopting inefficient cooling devices that could increase greenhouse gas emissions. Conversely, the middle-income population decreased by approximately 140 million people, primarily driven by declines in China and India.

The WRI Results Framework establishes a structured system to plan and evaluate programmatic progress across three primary human systems: food, land & water; energy; and cities. It sets specific global targets for 2030 and WRI intervention targets for 2027, focusing on outcomes such as reducing agricultural land demand by 100 Mha, increasing the share of zero-carbon electricity by 9% in target geographies, and improving urban climate resilience. The framework integrates Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and utilizes a tiered approach of global, intervention, and country-specific targets, supported by impact indicators for people, nature, and climate.

The report describes the transition of Global Forest Watch from GFW 1.0, which relied on laborious manual data collection and paper maps in pilot countries, to GFW 2.0, a transformative online platform launched in 2014. Developed through a partnership between the World Resources Institute, Google, and the University of Maryland, GFW 2.0 utilizes satellite data and cloud computing to provide near real-time deforestation alerts. The platform is used by corporations like Nestlé and Unilever to clean supply chains, by indigenous communities to protect ancestral lands, and by civil society to fight illegal logging. Notably, the document highlights that communities in Peru using GFW have reduced deforestation rates by at least 58%.

The document details the diet, social structure, and species diversity of gorillas in central and eastern Africa. It highlights the role of gorillas as an "umbrella" species whose habitat protection supports broader biodiversity and climate change mitigation, particularly in the Congo Basin. The text also outlines threats such as Ebola, poaching, and habitat destruction, while noting that ecotourism provides financial incentives for forest preservation.

The 'Food is Local' fellowship by WWF International provides funding for master's and PhD students from 32 eligible countries to conduct interdisciplinary research on transforming food systems to be more sustainable, equitable, and climate-resilient. Eligible applicants must be citizens of the listed countries, have two years of conservation experience, and plan to start their studies by January 2024. Research proposals are encouraged to cover themes such as agroecological practices, gender equity, and the role of food systems in achieving Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).