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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

WEST AFRICA: ECOWAS to set up rapid response military force

LAGOS, 29 May 2003 (IRIN) - The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) security committee has decided to create a rapid response military force to tackle conflicts in the region. It also agreed to send more peacekeeping troops to crisis-torn Cote d'Ivoire, a communique said.

A meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, attended by the leaders of Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Senegal on Wednesday, resolved that the rapid deployment force would work through the activation of "standby units within the armed forces of member states."

The leaders articulated a subregional policy towards maintaining peace and security in West Africa. The framework of the policy includes strict compliance with the ECOWAS moratorium on the manufacture, export and import of light weapons and small arms to accord with UN and African Union provisions.

Additional troops to be sent to Cote d'Ivoire will "meet the expanded mandate of the ECOWAS mission" in that country, the communique said. Their number will be determined subsequently, officials told IRIN.

ECOWAS already has 1,200 peacekeepers in Cote d'Ivoire. Alongside 4,000 French soldiers, the peacekeepers are policing a fragile ceasefire since a failed coup on 19 September pushed the country into civil war. The UN too is preparing to send military observers there.

Over the past decade West Africa has been wracked by civil wars and armed conflict in which thousands have died and millions displaced. In Liberia what began as an insurrection against an incumbent in 1989, quickly spread to neighbouring Sierra Leone causing a decade of civil war.

Conflict subsequently not only touched neighbouring Guinea, but on 19 September took hold of Cote d'Ivoire, a regional economic powerhouse, with potentially the most devastating consequences for the entire region. Thousands have been displaced in the civil war pitching loyalist forces against rebels seeking to topple President Laurent Gbagbo.

Only the intervention of ECOWAS and international peacekeepers has so far put the various conflicts in check to enable negotiations toward peaceful resolution. The creation of a rapid response force by ECOWAS aims to institutionalise structures for maintaining peace and security in the region.

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict

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