Expert Consultative Meeting on Developing African Human Security Index: Practices, Methods, and Designs

From March 05 to 06, 2020, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) AU Cooperation Office in partnership with the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU), the Human Security Unit (HSU) of the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) , convened an Experts Consultative Meeting (ECM) on the design and development of the African Human Security Index (AHSI).  The meeting was held with a general goal of stimulating conversation among experts and practitioners in developing the African Human Security Index. The consultative meeting specific objectives were probing human security concepts, practices, and methodologies; exploring the humanitarian, development, and peace triple-nexus; and developing the set of recommendations that will form the way forward on the efforts of developing a methodology.

The meeting brought together various participants with expertise in different areas of human security. During the experts consultative meeting, the concept of human security was discussed and its pragmatic application in the African context was interrogated with particular focus given to the design of the framework, methodology for the AHSI and piloting countries. The meeting resulted with identification of several issues as key priorities for consideration in future actions and a set of recommendations were agreed. After the meeting, a form of coalition/network was established – as a virtual space housed within UNECA for online deliberations and rich sources – which will be pertinent to the development of the AHIS, promotion and advocation of human security agenda in Africa. In general, the consultative meeting served as a knowledge sharing and networking platform and helped to receive feedback from experts on the suitability of the proposed conceptual design and methodology of the index and to examine the challenges the AHSI faces relating to data availability across member states.