OBSERVARE

Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 10, Nº. 2 (November 2019-April 2020), pp. 12-32

OPPORTUNITIES FOR CONFLICT PREVENTION. LESSONS FROM THE ECONOMIC

COMMUNITY OF WEST AFRICAN STATES (ECOWAS)

Jara Cuadrado

jaracb.4488@gmail.com

PhD in International Security (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia). Postdoctoral

Researcher at Instituto Universitario General Gutiérrez Mellado (Spain). She is integrated

Researcher at OBSERVARE, Observatory of Foreign Relations, Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa.

Abstract

Conflict prevention has become an important doctrine within conflict management policies in

international and regional organizations, especially since the end of the Cold War. There has

been an evolution in the last three decades in the context of peace and security that has made

conflict prevention gains relevance. In the current context, with the arrival of António Guterres

to the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), conflict prevention doctrine could be

encouraged, since he has pointed out that it should be the priority of the organization.

Conflict prevention offers several advantages to face crisis contexts, since it works on avoiding

violence situations escalating towards armed conflicts and helping to control the spread of

security threats. By using preventive measures, the structural causes of conflicts can be dealt

with in the most durable and efficient manner since the final goal of preventive actions is to

transform actually or potentially violent conflict into non-violent processes of social and

political change.

While conflict prevention has gained greater importance, another trend has been promoted;

security regionalization. Since the mid-nineties, there has been a transition in international

peacekeeping missions, aimed to warrant peace and security all over the world that has

focused on regional actors. This practice has been particularly welcomed in Africa.

Both trends –conflict prevention and security regionalization– will be the object of study in

this article, using as a practical scenario the region of West Africa. It is a geographic area

where a series of cross-border threats are concentrated, hence becoming a zone of

international concern. Moreover, the experience on conflict prevention of the regional

organization, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is interesting.

Indeed, ECOWAS has carried out a significant activity regarding preventive diplomacy and

mediation in conflicts.

Thus, the objectives of this research are: (1) to study the evolution of conflict prevention

doctrine; (2) to assess the link between conflict prevention policies and security

regionalization; and (3) to use the case of ECOWAS as an illustration, since the organization

is at the forefront of conflict prevention iniciatives in the African continent.

Keywords

Conflict prevention, diplomacy, regionalization of security, West Africa, ECOWAS.

How to cite this article

Cuadrado, Jara (2019). "Opportunities for conflict prevention. Lessons from the Economic

Community of West African States (ECOWAS)". JANUS.NET e-journal of International

Relations, Vol. 10, N.º 2, November 2019-April 2020. Consulted [online] on the date of the

last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.10.2.2

Article received on November 29, 2018 and accepted for publication on May 2, 2019

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 10, Nº. 2 (November 2019-April 2020), pp. 12-32

Opportunities for conflict prevention.

Lessons from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

Jara Cuadrado

OPPORTUNITIES FOR CONFLICT PREVENTION. LESSONS FROM THE ECONOMIC

COMMUNITY OF WEST AFRICAN STATES (ECOWAS)

Jara Cuadrado

1. Introduction

The dynamics of the armed conflicts that have taken place since the decade of the

nineties have forced the development of different measures capable of addressing the

challenges that arise in the international scenario. Thus, the advances made in conflict

management respond to the changes in the normative and conceptual framework,

marked by the need to solve a series of increasingly complex contexts.

In this sense, policies aiming at prevention are an indispensable tool for the management

of armed conflicts, since they can help to control the spread of security threats. This set

of measures works on preventing situations of violence and insecurity that can lead to

an armed conflict as well as transforming those situations in which there are factors that

threaten the safety of people and turning them into peaceful and stable processes (Garca

Izquierdo, 2002).

Despite the advantages offered by this type of measures, as it is the “most pragmatic

and cost-effective option” (United Nations, 2015, p.4), it has not received much

attention, overshadowed by others measures that focus on more direct actions, such as

peacekeeping missions. However, this doctrine could acquire more interest in the future

from the UN, especially since the arrival of the new Secretary General, António Guterres,

on 1 January 2017, who proposes to return to the origins of the organization, which was

founded with the objective of taking “effective collective measures for the prevention and

removal of threats to the peace” (Charter of the United Nations, 1945, article 1).

In this context, the article tries to emphasize, firstly, the need to assess prevention as

one of the priorities in the field of security and peace, since it offers important advantages

for the management of situations of violence and conflict. Secondly, it also aims to

highlight an aspect considered essential for the progress of prevention policies: the

promotion of the regionalization of security. In the nineties, with the end of the Cold War,

theories about regional security began to emerge, since new actors appeared in the

international scene that presented a “challenge to international relations (IR) theory” and

Special issue of articles presented at the 1st International Conference on Conflict Resolution and Peace

Studies that took place at UAL on the 29

and 30

of November 2018.

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Opportunities for conflict prevention.

Lessons from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

Jara Cuadrado

that “revolves around the autonomy of a regional level of analysis between the state and

the globe” (Kelly, 2007, p.197).

Thus, this article tries to answer the question of wether regional actors can play a

fundamental role in the prevention of conflicts within their regional security complexes

(Buzan, Wæver & Wilde, 1998) and how they do it. For this purpose, the case of ECOWAS

is analysed, as a regional organization with experience in conflict prevention.

The paper is structured in four sections. Firstly, it defines the concept of conflict

prevention and examines its evolution in the last three decades. Secondly, the

phenomenon of security regionalization is studied, with special attention to the African

continent. Thirdly, the article will focus on the case of ECOWAS and its experience in

conflict prevention. Finally, some of the conclusions of the research on conflict prevention

are presented.

2. The (re)emergence of a culture of prevention?

What is conflict prevention?

In this article, the concept of conflict prevention is understood as the set of measures

that are destined to: avoid the triggering of violence; avoid an active conflict worsens;

and that works over contexts before tensions arise. It pursues, as the ultimate goal, the

transformation of “real or potentially violent conflicts into peaceful processes of political

and social change” (Ramsbotham, Miall & Woodhouse, 2011, p.113).

Although conflict prevention is especially applied at the beginning of the conflict, when

tensions and disputes are escalating into violent conflict (graphic 1), it must be present

throughout the crisis. The efforts should be focus not only on trying to contain or stop a

situation of armed violence, but also on resolving the factors that lead to that situation.

Graph 1. Phases of conflict in the Lund conflict curve

Source: Lund (1993, p.38).

Preventive policies are developed from different areas (from the community, from the

local level, from national governments or from international spheres), so there is a wide

range of possibilities to used them. From tools such as preventive diplomacy, good offices

and mediation as preventive instruments in situations of war, it has been an evolution

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Lessons from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

Jara Cuadrado

into another type of more complete actions, adapted to the complexity of the current

contexts.

This is how they were classified

in the Final Report of the Carnegie Commission on

Preventing Deadly Conflicts, entitled Preventing Deadly Conflict (Carnegie Corporation of

New York, 1997) –a document of reference–, which distinguished between:

- Operational measures, which are launched in the face of an impending crisis. They

act against risk factors and are direct and short-term measures.

- Structural measures, which address the sources of conflicts, the underlying causes,

and involve broad and long-term change processes. These are measures for

economic, social and political stability.

This is the categorization used by most studies, but the concept of conflict prevention as

well as its scope of action have generated an intense and interesting debate ‒which is

not the object of study of this article‒, giving rise to different interpretations on what is

and is not the prevention of conflicts (Menkhaus, 2004; Lund, 2009, p.289; Igaripé

Institute, 2018).

Preventive measures, both operational and structural, represent an interesting field of

action in the management of troubled contexts and they can be employed simultaneously

throughout the conflict cycle. This is the case of preventive diplomacy, which took up an

important place in the UN’s agenda in the nineties. This concept is living a resurgence in

the present, (United Nations, 2017a). Preventive diplomacy is very useful at the first

stage of the conflict cycle, since it works before violence erupts through good offices and

negotiations, when a third party assists to parties in conflict to solve their problems. In

these cases, the role played by highly respected personalities in the international political

sphere is key. For instance, one of the main organs within ECOWAS peace and security

architecture is the Council of the Wise, made up of eminent personalities who act as

mediators (El Abdellaoui, 2009). Preventive diplomacy has been a very common practice

in conflictual electoral contexts –with more or less success–; such as in some cases in

West Africa, such as Côte d’Ivoire (2011), Senegal (2012), Nigeria (2015) or Gambia

(2017). Preventive diplomacy has also been used after coups d’États, like in Mali 2012.

As a kind of coercitive diplomatic measure, economic sanctions –authorized by the Article

41 of the UN Charter– are used when tensions have arisen and there is an overt crisis.

They are used when mediation do not work and before considering a military intervention.

They have been used at different types of conflicts, from Liberia, to Sierra Leone, Côte

d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau or Mali.

When conflict is imminent, preventive deployment becomes a useful tool as a dissuasive

measure. There has been much discussion regarding the maintenance of a rapid-

deployment peacekeeping force in different international and regional organizations

(Darkwa, 2017; Lotze, 2015; Rappa, 2017). In West Africa there is the ECOWAS Standby

Force that it is part of the African Union Standby Force (ASF), which is “a multi-

disciplinary, continental peacekeeping force comprised of military, police and civilian

components, which are on standby in their regions of origin and available to the African

This classification is then adopted by other institutions like the UN, the European Union (EU) or the African

Union (AU).

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Lessons from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

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Union for deployment in times of crisis” (Institute for Security Studies, 2015). This option

was used in Gambia, for example, through the deployment of the Economic Community

of West African States Military Intervention in Gambia (ECOMIG) to enforce the election

results in 2017, with a positive impact (Hartmann, 2017).

This type of measures, applied before the armed conflict breaks out, are operational and

direct; however, it is even more important to develop structural measures at the first

signs of tensions as well as throughout the entire cycle of the conflict. Actions focus on

the underlying factors of tensions are critical in contexts of political violence. These are

measures aimed at economic, political and social stability, whose development entails

longer-term plans than operational measures, and they focus on aspects like governance,

development and human rights (De Carvalho, 2017). However, in this article the focus is

on the operational measures.

Evolution and future

Until recently, preventive policies have been relegated to a second place on the agendas

of international and regional organizations, where attention has been directed

predominantly towards the contexts of active civil wars as well as to the activities of post-

conflict reconstruction.

However, since the end of the Cold War, conflict prevention has begun gaining a greater

role in the conflict management policies of international and regional organizations

(Cuadrado, 2018; Ramsbotham, Miall & Woodhouse, 2011), as evidenced by the more

often reference to it in the official documents

. Thus, regional organizations ‒such as

ECOWAS‒ have made conflict prevention one of their priorities.

Studies on the prevention of armed conflicts have proliferated in the last three decades,

marked by the failure of the UN in the nineties to anticipate and respond effectively to

contexts such as Somalia, Bosnia or Rwanda (United Nations, 2014a). These

humanitarian catastrophes showed the importance of prevention and the need to

overcome a culture of reaction, where actions take place after the violence has broken

out, which has featured the history of the UN (Dorn & Matloff, 2000).

Since the former Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, adopted the concept of

‘culture of prevention’ in his report entitled Prevention of Armed Conflict, of June 2001,

where he already talked about passing ‘culture of reaction’ and advancing to a ‘culture

of prevention’, there has been an evolution. Conflict prevention has lived different stages,

ups and downs.

Currently, it can be said that there is a new enthusiasm for prevention. In the agenda of

the present Secretary General, António Guterres, prevention occupies a high priority

(Leone, 2017). As the Secretary General has reflected, “the world spends much more

For example, the Report of the Secretary General entitled Armed Conflict Prevention of 2001, where a

classification of the type of preventive measures is made, Security Council Resolution 1366 of August 30, 2001

on the role of the Council in the prevention of armed conflicts, the Report of the General Assembly (A / RES /

57/337) of July 18, 2003 on the prevention of armed conflicts, or the Secretary-General's Report on the

implementation of the Security Council resolution 1625 (2005) on the prevention of conflicts, in particular in

Africa, of 2008.

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energy and resources managing crises than preventing them. Thus the UN must uphold

a strategic commitment to a ‘culture of prevention’” (United Nations, 2016, p.3).

In spite of this new enthusiasm that seems to exist within the UN for the prevention of

conflicts, there are important barriers that can hinder its success and that must be

overcome in the future. The reality is that “the Security Council's agenda is already

overburdened by managing ongoing conflicts [which] makes […] difficult […] to devote

time to crises bubbling below the surface” (Roberts, 2017).

Traditionally, the attention has been put on the management of immediate crises and

large-scale conflicts (United Nations, 2018). The efforts that active conflicts require in all

senses decreases the possibilities of focusing on prevention, even though these efforts

could be reduced if they were “able to focus on prevention” (Roberts, 2017).

The tipycal dynamics of international power relations can also influence the success or

failure of prevention. Thus, for example, it is important to take into account the

reluctance of some countries concerning the limits of sovereignty or that the Council

Security's “interest in acting in a preventive capacity [is] already limited in cases when

a powerful member was involved in a looming conflict” (Roberts, 2017). Other aspects

have to do with “the difficulty in […] demonstrating that a given action resulted in conflict

not taking place” (United Nations, 2018, p.1).

Thus, as Stephanie Sugars (2017) points out, so that the enthusiasm that Guterres is

demonstrating translates into success, it is necessary “a fundamental break with the UN's

current approach, not to mention sizeable reforms to address the body's its sluggish

response time to conflicts [or] its burgeoning bureaucracy”.

Added to this, it is the lack of political will to deploy measures that respond early to

alerts. Several authors (Stanton, 2005; Wulf & Debiel, 2009; Evans, 2016) have indicated

that political will is the key, either for the time to develop an accurate analysis, for not

being aware of the type of skills needed to handle the problem, or for the lack of interest

in specific topics or regions.

These obstacles, which make it difficult to carry out measures with a preventive effect,

could be overcome or reduced, to some extent, if the prevention of conflicts is further

promoted by regional organizations.

3. Regionalization as an opportunity: taking advantage of local actors to

promote prevention

The regionalization of security, a trend that has gained importance in the last three

decades (Berman, 2002; Francis, 2006; Moller, 2009), could help to encourage conflict

prevention. It is increasingly common for regional bodies, as ECOWAS, to assume the

management of their peace and security problems, through the development of new

policies and mechanisms (Tavares, 2009). The region of West Africa encompasses a

series of security threats that can have a destabilization effect throughout the region ‒

as it occurs with terrorism and organized crime, or with climate change and violence

related to resource scarcity. This produces a security interdependence, since national

security concerns of West African states are very similar and are so close that they can

not be addressed indpendently (Persson, 2012). Thus, regional problems are managed

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Lessons from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

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from a regional co-operation (Buzan, Waever & Wilder, 2003) under the ECOWAS

architecture.

The involvement of regional organizations in security issues has significant advantages,

such as a better knowledge of the context and of the causes of conflict. They are actors

who know the terrain better so they understand the situation from another perspective

and have a direct interest in the repercussions and solutions of the conflict. Moreover,

“regional political actors [...] have both greater legitimacy and a much greater political

stake in taking a diplomatic lead” (Gowan, 2017, p.6).

Consequently, regional and local actors, with the support of the international community,

play a leading role in conflict prevention. As Guterres has outlined, regional organizations

are essential actors in conflict prevention and resolution, in peace operations and

promotion of development and human rights (United Nations, 2016, p.4).

However, this option is not always the best. One of the problem is the competition

between some regional actors that can affect prevention success. For instance, the

traditional rivalry of Nigeria and South Africa “have prevented consensus within the AU

on key preventive diplomacy efforts” (Hara, 2011). The leadership role developed by

Nigeria has awakened mistrust in other ECOWAS members at different conflictual

situations, like the civil wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone (Adebajo, 2002), which has

made difficult to come to an agreement within the regional organization.

Furthermore, personal ties between political leaders determinate the position that

governments adopt in the face of a crisis, therefore there is not impartiality. This has

occured in several ocassions within ECOWAS. While overwhelming measures were taken

after the coups d’État in Guinea in 2008 or in the Gambian context in 2017, a weaker

attitude has been shown during the recent crisis in Togo (RFI Afrique, 2017)

. Different

reactions are explained by the individual interests of each Member State, which have

diverse strategic views that hinder a common decision-making and effective responses.

Thus, this clash of interests can be detrimental to the advance of the empowerment of

regional organizations in sensitive issues like security.

Moreover, regional actors like ECOWAS have shortage of material, financial and human

resources, showing a dependence on external actors that limits the success of security

regionalization. In this sense, the African continent is one of the priorities for the UN. The

organization is aware of the need to cooperate with Africa’s regional organizations for the

promotion of preventive measures; this cooperation is essential to overcome the lack of

resources. Accordingly, the UN “reaffirms its intention to consider further steps to

promote closer and more operational cooperation between the United Nations and

regional and subregional organizations in the fields of early warning, conflict prevention,

peacekeeping and peacebuilding” (United Nations, 2014b). In 2002 the Ad hoc Working

Group on Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa was created (United Nations, 2002).

More recently, it was established a Cluster on Conflict Prevention and Crisis Management

by the UN Office for the African Union (UNOAU), which is a strategic partnership in conflict

prevention and mediation, working “throughout all phases of the conflict cycle”, between

the UN and the AU (United Nations Office to the African Union, n.d.).

Cooperation between different actors in the field of peace and security has been a trend

that has evolved and grown. That implies sometines an “institutional overlap of actors”

These cases will be addresseed in a later section.

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which “operate and intervene in the same geographical area […] in the same crisis at the

same time or replacing each other” (Sousa, 2017, p.572). Thus, a lack of alignment is

frequent as well as a tendency for divergence, contradictions and duplicity of efforts and

resources. Africa has been setting of disputes between the UN, the AU, and the regional

organizations (Nathan, 2017, p.151).

Operations launched by regional organizations need authorization by the Security Council

prior to deployment (UN Charter, Chapter VIII, Art. 53), causing in many ocassions

“disagreements […] at various levels of decision-making” between the UN and the AU

(Desmidt & Hauck, 2017, p.15), but also with ECOWAS, which does “not explicitly

acknowledge the supremacy of the UNSC [the United Nations Security Council] if it comes

to peace and security” (Jetschke & Schlipphak, 2019, p.4). As Williams has highlighted

(2017, p.129), it is necessary that “the UN develops appropriate support mechanisms”

for regional organizations in Africa, especially because of the lack of “predictable,

sustainable, and flexible funding” they have (Williams, 2017, p.129).

At the same time, divergence appears between the AU and the regional organizations,

like ECOWAS, where a “lack of clarity on subsidiarity and division of labor […] often lead

to ad-hoc and pragmatic solutions” (Desmidt, 2019, p.2), affecting the deployment of

preventive measures. From the AU, the concept of primacy is standed up (Desmidt, 2019,

p.4), however, the principle of subsidiarity “states that responses to conflict should be

formulated by organizations with closest proximity” (Desmidt, 2019, p.12); thus, as

Nathan (2017, p.157) has highlighted, policy documents “are ambiguous or

contradictory” when tackling crisis management.

On the whole, although security regionalization offers a great opportunity to encourage

conflict prevention policies, there is still a dependence on external actors. This has caused

an overlap and confusion between all stakeholders that intervene in a crisis, difficulting

the capacity of action to intervene or act preventively.

4. The experience of ECOWAS in conflict prevention

The West African region is a great example to analyse these issues, since it has

experienced an interesting process of security regionalization and has also lived

interventions from different actors.

This region has attracted a great interest and concern, due to the number of conflicts

that have been in the area. For this reason, in 2000, a regional conflict resolution office

was established in Senegal, currently the United Nations Office for West Africa and the

Sahel (UNOWAS

), whose objectives are to develop regional diplomacy to manage

political instability within the region (Gowan, 2017, p.9). UNOWAS has developed

activities coordinated with ECOWAS, specially in the field of conflict prevention. This

collaborative work had had great results in the cases of Guinea or Burkina Faso, for

example.

The area of West Africa has also been selected because interesting lessons can be

obtained from the activities related to conflict prevention of its regional organization.

Undoubtedly, the model developed by ECOWAS is the most interesting example in the

Before known as the United Nations Office for West Africa (UNOWA).

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continent (Wulf & Debiel, 2009).

At the end of 1990, the organization adopted the Protocol Relating to the Mechanism for

Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security (The

Mechanism), agreed on the Lome Summit on 10 December 1999, which is “the most

important legal and normative instrument for ECOWAS in all matters relating to peace

and security” (ECOWAS, 2018, p.16).

This legal instrument demonstrates that the prevention of conflicts acquires a great

importance for the organization, since among the objectives of the Mechanism are the

prevention of: internal and inter-State conflicts; serious and massive violations of human

rights; or an overthrow or attempted overthrow of a democratically elected government.

A next step was the approval of the Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance

adopted on 21 December 2001 and signed in Dakar, with the goal of incorporating

provisions regarding topics such as prevention of internal crises (United Nations, n.d.).

The most recent agreement on preventive policies has been the ECOWAS Conflict

Prevention Framework (ECPF), adopted by the Mediation and Security Council (the

central organ of the Mechanism) on January 16 2008, in Ouagadougou. The ECPF sought

to be the definitive impulse for the prevention of conflicts, acting as an strategic

framework for conflict prevention and human security and looking for a more pro-active

and operational conflict prevention posture from Member States (ECOWAS, 2008, p.12).

Finally, as a result of the agreements reached after the launch of the ECPF, in 2015 the

ECOWAS Mediation Facilitation Division (MFD) was established under the Directorate of

Political Affairs, with the aim of promoting preventive diplomacy in the region (ECOWAS,

2018).

This legal framework places ECOWAS as one of the most advanced regional organizations

of Africa in conflict prevention. However, more than a decade after the ECPF was adopted,

there are important constraints that limit its potential on the ground. The ECPF is an

structure that is still in the course of being implemented and needs a long process of

operationalization. One of the main challenges is the lack of funding, which depends on

Member States (“Peace building experts, others, urge ECOWAS to animate the

implementation of its Conflict Prevention Framework”, 2019). The limited human and

financial resources affect the development of the framework and makes the regional

organization has to select in what contexts or in what situations intervene. Thus, in a

region where there are significant challenges to peace and security, the lack of resources

makes some risk factors do not get enough attention and that the actions focus on the

most immediate threats (Yabi, 2010, p.55).

Together with resources constraints, there are other obstacles that conditionate the

implementation of conflict prevention in the region, which will be analyse in the next

section.

Prevention on the ground

Under this normative framework that has evolved and adapted to the changes and needs

of the region's security scenario, ECOWAS has developed an important activity in

preventive diplomacy and mediation in different contexts. With the objective of

illustrating the conflict prevention policies of ECOWAS, somes cases of study have been

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Lessons from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

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selected (Table 1), analysing factors like the different contexts in which preventive

measures were developed, the actors who participated together with ECOWAS or the

type of actions that those actors carried out.

Table 1. Case studies of ECOWAS conflict prevention measures

Cases

Type of conflict

Preventive measures

Liberia (1989)

Escalation to civil war

Diplomatic and mediation

efforts

Military intervention

Guinea (2008)

Coup d’État

Institutional incentives

Imposition of sanctions

Suspension of Guinea as a

member of ECOWAS

Côte d’Ivoire (2010)

Electoral violence

Suspension of Côte d’Ivoire

as a member of ECOWAS

Imposition of sanctions

Sent of diplomatic

delegations

Threat of use of force

Burkina Faso (2014)

Public demostrations

Imposition of sanctions

Arms embargo

Early warning mission

The Gambia (2016)

Electoral violence

Diplomatic and mediation

efforts

Preventive deployment

Togo (2017)

Public demonstrations

Mediation efforts

Monitoring activities

Source: author’s elaboration

Due to the theoretical framework that has been established to analyze the evolution of

conflict prevention doctrine in this article begins with the end of the Cold War, the first

selected case of analysis is Liberia (1989). It is, moreover, the first civil war in the region

that test the ECOWAS crisis management capacities.

The first Liberian civil war began when rebels led by Charles Taylor crossed the border

from Côte d’Ivoire to fight against Samuel Doe's government. At that time, the legal

instruments

used by ECOWAS did not contemplate the prevention of internal conflicts,

but rather between States. Some of the first steps made by the regional organization

were focus on diplomatic attempts, creating the Standing Committee on Mediation in May

1990 (Suifon, n.d., p.3). However, those efforts failed and ECOWAS decided to act

because the crisis was considered a regional problem (Human Rights Watch, 1993).

Despite the fact that ECOWAS intervention occured once the war has broken out –that is

why the intervention was considered “largely reactive” (ECOWAS, 2018, p.35)– it was

the only actor who adopted an active attitude in the conflict and, as some authors have

pointed out, the military intervention was successful “at lease for a short period,

preventing the situation from degenerating into genocidal proportions” like that of

The dates that are included in parentheses reflect the year in which the violence begins.

At that time only existed the Protocol on Non-Aggression of 1978 and the Protocol on Mutual Assistance on

Defense of 1981.

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Rwanda (Draman & Carment, 2003, p.17).

Another example is the crisis opened in Guinea with the Lansana Conté’s succession.

After his death, in December 2008, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara and fellow military

officers led a coup d’État. The situation started worsening when he decided to present

himself to next presidential election, an announcement that provoked strong protests in

September 2009 that culminated with the massacre occured at the National Stadium of

Conakry, committed by soldiers under the command of the military junta (Human Rights

Watch, 2009). The government received “pressure and incentives [by ECOWAS] to allow

elections to take place and to enable an international investigation into the massacre

(Day & Pichler Fong, 2017, p.8).

Both ECOWAS and the AU used coercitive tools, such as the imposition of sanctions and

the suspension of Guinea as member of the regional organization. Moreover, there was

an important external pressure and preventive measures like threats of prosecution by

the International Criminal Court were used (Day & Pichler Fong, 2017, p.7). This had an

effective effect on some fellows of Camara, who suffered an assassination attempt that

forced his leave, facilitating the transition to civilian rule.

The UN also took a preventive attitude in this crisis through its regional office, UNOWAS

(then the United Nations Office for West Africa –UNOWA), and the Regional Coordinator,

who developed “intensive preventive diplomacy efforts” (Von Einsiedel et al., 2018,

p.15), acting as mediator with different stakeholders. Moreover, UNOWA provided

logistical and technical support to ECOWAS, that had the real leadership as mediator,

and more particularly, one of its Member States, Burkina Faso, whose president

convinced the transitional goverment to organize elections. Thus, “the engagement of

ECOWAS […] was largely considered a successful effort to avert further violence or

escalation to civil war” (Hara, 2011).

Another interesting experience for the regional organization was the civil war that arises

in Côte d'Ivoire after the 2010’s presidential elections. While the Electoral Commission,

as well as the international community, declared Alassane Ouattara the winner, Laurent

Gbagbo refused to accept the result as the Constitutional Council announced that he was

the real victor because he had obtained a larger percentage than his rival (Cook, 2011).

Given this scenario, ECOWAS asked the parties to respect the results and to celebrate an

extraordinary meeting, although they clearly showed their support for Ouattara.

Some of the first steps taken by the regional organization were the suspension of Côte

d'Ivoire as a member at the beginning of December, in addition to the UA, forcing Gbagbo

to accept the results (Cook, 2011) and the imposition of sanctions, following article 45

of the Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance. Both organizations sent diplomatic

delegations, such as the one led by the former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki,

who traveled to the country to make a generic call for peace and democracy, but without

issuing an important statement (Al Jazeera, 2010).

In the absence of action of the UN ‒that received a lot of criticism from different

organizations for its indifference‒ ECOWAS decided to take action. At the end of

December 2010, ECOWAS gave an ultimatum to Gbagbo, using the threat of the use of

force, that was ignored it, for which the organization found itself without options, and

had to contemplate other measures, including the use of force (Cook, 2011). On

December 31, a Nigerian defense spokesman announced that ECOWAS military chiefs

from several member countries had “prepared plans to ‘forcefully take over power’ from

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Gbagbo using a grouping of troops called the ECOWAS standby force […] if diplomatic

efforts to pressure him to cede the presidency fail” (Cook, 2011, p.39). However, military

intervention was finally conducted “by French, UN and pro-Ouattara ‘Republican’ forces”

(Yabi, 2012, p.3).

Despite the slowness with which preventive measures were carried out and despite the

external dependence to act, as some studies point out, it is interesting to highlight that

the second civil war in the Côte d’Ivoire would be one of the clearest examples in which

ECOWAS made use of preventive diplomacy (Kwabena, 2015).

The following example is found in Burkina Faso, which in 2014 experienced a stage of

public opposition due to President’s intentions to extend his term limit. This provoked

mass demonstrations that led to the resignation of then-President Blaise Compaoré

(Taoko, Cowell & Callimachi, 2014). Subsequently there was an attempted coup d'État

against the transition authorities.

There were important preventive measures, such as the imposition of sanctions asked

by ECOWAS to the AU (“UNOWA head Mohammed Ibn Chambas to brief on Burkina Faso”,

2015), who also “decided to suspend the participation of Burkina Faso from all AU

activities” (Desmidt, 2019, p.12). As some studies have pointed out (Day & Pichler Fong,

2017, p.7), these pressures were one of the key factors for “averting further chaos and

a high risk of violence”. ECOWAS decided to impose an arms embargo in September

(“ECOWAS arms embargo on Guinea”, n.d.).

Moreover, civil society organizations played an important preventive role in the crisis,

since they organized several workshops throughout the previous year of the elections on

monitoring and preventing violence, in which politicians and media were involved.

Despite these preventive measures, Compaoré refused to leave the power, and ECOWAS

decided to intervene together with UNOWA and deployed a joint early warning mission

with the aim of promoting a national dialogue between national political actors and civil

society. However, the president kept strong while tensions continued rising. This

provoked a new intervention of both actors to which the AU decided to join.

Finally, joint efforts resulted in “a new Constitution and a one-year civilian-led transition

that would culminate with general elections in November 2015” (United Nations, 2018,

p.6). The support of ECOWAS and its mediation efforts during the transition period were

key for the successful of the national dialogue. Equally important was the collaborations

with UNOWA, that gave its support to the regional organization, and with the AU, since

in spite of initial disagreements, in the end there was a collaborative work.

The same circumstances occured in The Gambia at the end of 2016, when President

Yahya Jammeh refused to accept his defeat in the December elections. This provoked a

climate of tension in the country that led ECOWAS to get involved, initiating diplomatic

and mediation work with President Jammeh to accept the results of the elections

(ECOWAS, 2017). There were several occasions in which the leaders of the region met

with both Jammeh and the elected president, Adama Barrow (Alfa Shaban, 2017).

Before considering a preventive deployment, ECOWAS’ Members developed mediation

efforts through high-level delegation visits in December 2016 (Desmidt, 2019, p.7).

Finally, ECOWAS decided to intervene on January 19 2017 according with the Article 25

of the ECOWAS Mechanism and with the support of the UN and the AU (Day & Pichler

Fong, 2017). The deployment of the ECOMIG would be applauded by the international

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community (Alfa Shaban, 2017). The good coordination between the UN and ECOWAS

was reflected by the role played by UNOWAS, that held “meetings with representatives

of the government, opposition parties, civil society and women and youth organizations”

(“Peaceful and credible elections: A case of UNOWAS’ holistic coordination”, 2017, p.7).

The Gambia has been an example of the success of ECOWAS preventive policies and

could be highlighted as a paradigm for future crises in the region; this preventive

deployment has served to prevent a post-electoral context of tension leading to an

escalation of violence.

Anti-government protests were also echoed in another country of the region, Togo, where

at the end of August 2017 a wave of demonstrations demanding constitutional reforms

and the resignation of the President Faure Gnassingbé Eyadéma

broken out, which were

harshly repressed (RFI Afrique, 2017). The regional organization called then for peace

“upon all political stakeholders and the people of Togo to exercise restraint and refrain

from violence, and dialogue in order to preserve peace” (RFI Afrique, 2017).

ECOWAS’ countries intervened, beginning a dialogue process between the ruling party

and the opposition that was initiated with the Presidents of Ghana and Guinea as the lead

mediators (United Nations, 2017b). Within ECOWAS, there was satisfaction for the

preventive efforts made by these two leaders (“ECOWAS hails Akufo-Addo, Alpha Condé

over Togo intervention”, 2018). The regional organization set the celebration of

parliamentary elections on December 2018. For that purpose, the “organization urged

the Togolese government to proceed with the complete revision of the electoral roll prior

to these legislative” (Gbenyedji, 2018). Parliamentary elections were finally celebrated

on December 20, with a victory of the ruling party, who ignored the recommendations

from the regional organization.

5. Conclusiones

These contexts of political and social instability are some examples in which the

preventive tools of ECOWAS and its coordination with other actors have been tested as

well as they have served to improve the management of its security challenges. Through

the study of these cases, it has been possible to see some of the tools the organization

can use to prevent conflicts, such as preventive diplomacy –through mediation and

dialogue between the parties–, the imposition of sanctions, the suspension from

membership of a Member State, or the threat of the use of force as a deterrent. The

analysis of these experiences showed that ECOWAS has had an important activity on

conflict prevention.

But these experiences have also revealed the main challenges that the organization face

in terms of prevention. Crises such as the one currently taking place in Togo or past

cases like Côte d’Ivoire have revealed the vulnerabilities of its policies.

Some of the main obstacles detected in the ECOWAS conflict prevention policies can be

summarised as follows. Firstly, there is a group of factors related to aspects like the fight

for political power, the personal relationships, or typical dynamics of power structures.

Within this group is the divergence of stakeholder’s interests. As it has been observed,

the agents involved in those scenarios maintained different attitudes to the crises. This

His family is the longest in a West African government.

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lack of agreement or understanding among crucial actors explains the slowness with

which the measures were applied once the early warnings were identified.

The clash of interest between ECOWAS Member States was present during the First

Liberian War. Nigeria wanted to play a leadership role while the government of Burkina

Faso had personal interest in the crisis due to his ties with Liberian dissidents (Murison,

2004, 603), which affected the decision-making.

There have also been clashes of interests between the regional organization and the

continental organization, the AU, which had repercussions on the ground, turning the

decision-making about the management of crises difficult. During the previous context

of the Liberian civil war, for example, the countries of the Organization of African Unity

(OAU), predecessor of the AU, showed a different position than the one that ECOWAS

had. The OAU was opposed to a military intervention in Liberia, especially those countries

that supported Charles Taylor, the rebel leader (Wippman, 1993, p.165). This lack of a

common action between the two organizations was also present in the Côte d’Ivoire’s

electoral crisis of 2010, since within the AU there were disparity of positions on the

support to the two political leaders, Ouattara and Gbagbo, ECOWAS kept a posture of

unity.

Moreover, partiality was present in some cases. Some of the Member States of ECOWAS

had significant influence in the political context of Côte d’Ivoire, such as the president of

Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, who could have put more pressure on the parties. The

role played by his government was seen as not neutral by other ECOWAS Member States,

since he “has been strongly identified as an ally of Ouattara and accused of being a key

mover behind the initial insurgency in [Côte d’Ivoire] in September 2002” (The Guardian,

2011). This lack of impartiality existed also in Togo. One of the main obstacles for the

dialogue experts saw (RFI Afrique, 2017) was that the presdient of Togo had been

chairman of ECOWAS for one-year, until June 2018. This is an important factor to

consider, since the regional organization was not revealing a neutral position to this crisis

and there was a certain lack of political will to act. As some organizations have described,

there was abuse of power and dictatorial measures during the electoral contexts (Bailey,

2019), but both ECOWAS and the AU have call the elections as “free and transparent”

(“Togo President's Party Wins Majority in Parliament”, 2018).

Added to this, it is the lack of political will to deploy measures. A clear example is Guinea,

since despite the successul final result, with a pacific transitional government, it is

necessary to highlight that the crisis and specially the deaths of civilians could have been

prevented if stakeholders, mainly ECOWAS, had reacted more immediately to the coup

d'État. Thus, between the coup d’État and the massacre of September 2009 some other

measures could have been used, such as imposition of sanctions and an arms embargo,

which were launched immediately after the high death of civilians.

In addition, contradictions often occur in the approaches and functions to be performed

when collaborating with the AU. Strong disagreements between both organizations were

presented during the crisis in Burkina Faso. However, there are some examples in which

the cooperation between them had positive impacts on the ground, like in Guinea o The

Gambia (Kreß & Nußberger, 2017).

Secondly, it is neccessary to have in mind a group of factors related to more operational

or logistic aspects that are present in organizations like ECOWAS, like the complex

bureaucracy, which makes decision-making difficult, and prolongs the time that elapses

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from the decision to implement a preventive measure up to the application of that

measure. In addition, this sometimes makes it difficult to design a strategic approach

(Yabi, 2010, p.13), as it occured, for example, in the case of Côte d’Ivoire. At the end of

2010, when the electoral crisis was driving to an escalation of violence, ECOWAS threated

with the use of force, but in January the mission had not been yet launched, so the

suspicion was confirmed that an intervention by force would be difficult to deploy since

it lacked a plan and it would require additional resources (Kwabena, 2015, p.32).

This last aspect is a very important constraint that has been present in all the cases

analysed in this article. The lack of human and financial resources in ECOWAS makes it

has dependency on the external ators to be able to intervene preventively.

Finally, it is important to highlight the need to incorporate the work of civil society

organizations (CSO), as it has been underlined in recent political meetings (“Peace

building experts, others, urge ECOWAS to animate the implementation of its Conflict

Prevention Framework”, 2019). Collaboration between ECOWAS and CSO has proved to

be very useful in contextst such as Burkina Faso (Somé, 2014).

In conclusion, the organization still has a long way to go to become an effective actor,

given the complexity of the challenges it faces, many of which do not only have an

internal character, but also feed on external factors. Currently, it seems that regional

political actors in West Africa have a commitment to implement the organization's

framework of action in conflict prevention (African Media Agency, 2019; “Peace building

experts, others, urge ECOWAS to animate the implementation of its Conflict Prevention

Framework”, 2019). Thanks to the management developed in cases such as The Gambia,

ECOWAS has received the applause from the international community. This regional actor

plays undoubtedly a key role in implementing conflict prevention and among its priorities

it is to continue developing and improving preventive policies (“ECOWAS launches Plans

of Action for its Conflict Prevention Framework”, 2019). The history of this regional

organization offers interesting lessons on the importance that the regionalization of

security has for the African continent, where conflict prevention could become the main

challenge.

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