The Accra III Forum on Unconstitutional Changes of Government: Youth Inclusion and the Failure of Continental Norms

The Third Accra Reflection Forum on Unconstitutional Changes of Government (UCG), convening on 3 and 4 July in Accra, Ghana, under the theme Youth Inclusion for African Stability, takes place in a normative environment that its own convening history has failed to improve. The inaugural Accra Forum of March 2022 produced a declaration. The second forum of March 2024 produced conclusions. Neither produced measurable improvement in either the policy approach to UCGs or the continental trend of military takeovers.

The facts of the intervening period are unambiguous. In 2025 alone, two successful coups and one attempted coup occurred on the continent. The provision of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance most directly relevant to deterring coup-making — Article 25(4), which establishes the non-eligibility of coup perpetrators for elections — has been abandoned in practice. Military leaders who seized power in violation of constitutional order have been accommodated through political transition frameworks that have converted the AU's coup proscription norm from an enforceable standard into a negotiating baseline.

The July 2026 theme — Youth Inclusion for African Stability — reflects a genuine and evidence-based analytical priority. The demographic profile of the Sahel's and Central Africa's conflict zones, the documented role of youth unemployment and social exclusion in extremist recruitment, and the presence of youth movements as drivers of the popular sentiment that has, in several cases, accompanied or enabled military transitions all make youth inclusion a legitimate substantive focus.

The strategic risk is that the thematic focus on youth inclusion becomes a mechanism for deferring the harder institutional question that Accra I and Accra II have consistently avoided: why has the AU's normative framework against UCGs failed to deter coups, and what structural changes to enforcement mechanisms are required to restore deterrent credibility?

ASA's assessment of the Accra III Forum centres on three analytical observations.

The first is that the AU's UCG response has been characterised by a fundamental gap between normative standard-setting and enforcement consequence. The AU Constitutive Act, the Peace and Security Council (PSC) Protocol, and The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) collectively establish one of the most comprehensive normative frameworks against unconstitutional government change on any continent. That framework has not deterred coups because the consequences of coup-making — suspension from AU activities, targeted sanctions, diplomatic isolation — have been consistently softened, selectively applied, or progressively lifted in response to political pressure from coup-affected states and their regional allies. Coup-makers have learned that the AU's enforcement response is negotiable.

The second observation is that the accommodation of military regimes through political transition frameworks has converted what should be a temporary emergency response into a normalisation pathway. Transition timelines that extend over years, that are repeatedly renegotiated, and that are not backed by consequences for non-compliance do not create incentives for democratic restoration. They create incentives for time-buying — for military governments to manage international pressure while consolidating domestic political and economic control.

The third observation concerns the specific theme of youth inclusion. The evidence from the Sahel suggests that the youth populations most relevant to the UCG dynamic are not primarily motivated by exclusion from formal political processes, though that is a genuine grievance. They are motivated by the failure of preceding civilian governments to deliver security, economic opportunity, and governance quality — failures that military coup narratives have successfully exploited. Youth inclusion strategies that focus on political participation without addressing the governance quality failures that create the conditions for coup legitimisation will not resolve the underlying dynamic.

For Accra III to produce outcomes that change the trajectory, ASA assesses that it must address three questions that its predecessors have avoided: what specific enforcement measures — beyond suspension — can be credibly deployed against coup-perpetrating states and their leaders; how can Article 25(4) of the ACDEG be restored as an operational standard rather than an aspirational one; and what role can youth organisations, civil society, and community institutions play in building the governance accountability that reduces the conditions of popular legitimacy that military transitions exploit?

Without engagement on these questions, Accra III risks producing a third declaration whose conclusions will be assessed against the same metrics of implementation failure when Accra IV convenes.