Ashraf AboArafe
Today Saturday, August 24, Mr. Badr Abdel Aati, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs, participated in the opening session of the ministerial meeting of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), held in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, with the participation of the Foreign Ministers of the African Union countries and the Japanese Foreign Minister, representatives of the United Nations, the African Union Commission, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, the private sector and Japanese civil society organizations.
The meeting aims to prepare for the ninth TICAD summit scheduled to be held in August 2025 in the Japanese city of Yokohama under the title “Participating in Finding Innovative Solutions with Africa”.
Ambassador Ahmed Abu Zeid, the official spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration, stated that the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration participated as a keynote speaker in the second session of the TICAD Ministerial Meeting, which is held under the title “Peace and Stability: Ensuring Human Dignity and Security”, where he pointed out in his speech the importance of exchanging views and discussing ways to deal with current risks and threats to peace and security, not only in Africa but all over the world. He added that current tools are ineffective or insufficient to deal with the successive, complex and interconnected challenges facing the international community, stressing that the ongoing war in Sudan and the unprecedented aggression on the Gaza Strip are examples that demonstrated the international community’s inability or unwillingness to intervene, stressing the need for urgent and profound reforms to the international peace and security architecture, so that it is more representative and better adapted to the current reality, and thus more influential on people’s lives. The official spokesman added that Dr. Abdel Aati stressed Egypt’s support for the post-conflict reconstruction and development agenda in Africa, in light of Egypt’s chairmanship of the Steering Committee of Heads of State and Government of the African Union Development Agency (NEPAD), expressing Egypt’s keenness to strengthen the interconnected relationship between peace and development, which is the best tool for preventing conflicts and building and sustaining peace. He noted that the success of the twelfth implementation plan of Africa’s Agenda 2063 is the key to achieving peace and prosperity in Africa, adding that the African Union’s partnerships, including the partnership with the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, are one of the important tools for achieving these aspirations.
Ambassador Abu Zeid revealed that the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration announced that the Egyptian government is about to complete its first-ever national action plan to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on empowering women and girls through promoting the Women, Peace and Security agenda, to accelerate development and promote peace, and that the Women, Peace and Security program will be included in Egypt’s presidency program for the African Union Peace and Security Council in October 2024.
The official spokesman concluded his remarks by saying that Minister Abdel Aati praised the pivotal role played by Japan in strengthening the relationship between peace and development in Africa, as one of the continent’s most important partners. He expressed Egypt’s keenness to work with Japan to build on the successes achieved in the past years, including the launch of the Aswan Forum for Peace and Sustainable Development, which Japan has supported as a strategic partner since its inception in 2019 during Egypt’s presidency of the African Union, as well as working to provide the necessary resources to key institutions, such as the newly established African Union Center for Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development, and the Cairo International Center for Conflict Resolution, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding, which play pivotal roles in strengthening national institutions and building local capacities in the field of sustainable peace and development.
