Toward a pax west Africana: Building peace in a Troubled Sud region

Abstract

* The Economic of West African States (ECOWAS) has made various attempts to tackle the recurrence and emergence of news conflicts in its sub-region. With the ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group's (ECOMOG) unprecedented interventions in the 1990s in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau, the international community witnessed a major evolution in inter-African affairs. The ECOMOG interventions marked an important turning point in the practice of peacekeeping by regional and sub-regional organizations in Africa. * In recognition of the need to consolidate its decade-long peacekeeping experience, ECOWAS is in the process of establishing a security mechanism. However, while ECOWAS has been praised for its numerous military and diplomatic efforts to stem the tide of conflicts in West Africa, supporters and opponents alike have concluded that ECOWAS still has a long way to go if it is to fulfil the objectives it set for itself under its Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management,...