The Peace Support Operations Division (PSOD) of the African Union Commission (AUC) held the
African Standby Capacity (ASC) Core Group Meeting from 22 – 24 November 2022 in Gaborone,
Botswana. The ASC Core Group consists of the Capacity Development Unit of the PSOD, the Policy
Development Unit of the PSOD, ACCORD, and more recently joined by the AUC’s Human Resources
Management Directorate (HRMD). The Core Group meets annually to review the activities of the
preceding year and to plan activities for the year ahead. The platform provides the opportunity for
the Core Group to determine areas of implementation as guided by the available resources outlined
in the work plan of the year ahead.
This year’s Core Group Meeting was the first to include the AUC’s HRMD. One of the observations
noted at the 9th ASC Annual Coordination Meeting, which took place in June in Lusaka, Zambia, was
that the selection guidelines for ASC Roster recruitment are no longer in line with the new AU
Human Resources (HR) Policies on recruitment. This observation gave rise to the need to align the
ASC Selection Guidelines with the AU HR Policies on recruitment. Pursuant to this observation, the
main objective of this year’s Core Group Meeting was to commence the planning process for this
alignment. An agreed outcome of the ASC Core Group Meeting was that the development of an AU
Human Resources Manual for Field Missions should commence in the first quarter of 2023 and go
through a validation process by the end of the second quarter. This process will mark the beginning
of the AUC’s efforts to ensure that civilian deployment procedures for all regional standby forces are
in alignment with those of the AUC’s HRMD. Programmes Officers, Ms Rumbidzaishe Matambo and
Mr Wandile Langa represented ACCORD at the meeting.
ACCORD is the AUC’s primary implementation partner for the ASC. Through the Training for Peace
(TfP) Programme, ACCORD continues to support the AU’s concerted efforts towards building a pool
of ready-to-deploy civilian experts. The TfP Programme at ACCORD is an initiative funded by the
Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
