Comments on the Revised APFO COncept Paper

Here are some more detailed comments on your revised concept paper:

1. The commitment to facilitate early action by the Peace and Security Council - since the PSC is not yet in existence, it makes more sense to take the 1993 Cairo Declaration on the Mechanism for Conflict Resolution as your reference point. You can still measure what each state has done to make early warning work and their capacity to do so, but refer to the earlier commitment. As far as the PSC Protocol goes, I think you can only check whether all eight countries have ratified it or not.

2. The commitment to facilitate peace-making and peace-building in war-torn countries - the indicator "does the AU have a common understanding of what constitutes peace-making and building" is not relevant to our study, which focuses on what the 8 countries are doing, not the AU in general.

3. The right of intervention in grave circumstances is not really a commitment that may be tested at this stage - it hasn't been invoked yet as far as I know (Liberia?). You have listed philosophical questions as indicators here: " why should one intervene?" and "how can intervention be justified" - this may be addressed in your introductory section of the report, but these are not measurable indicators of state compliance to a commitment to intervention.