IRIN-WA: Background on the ECOWAS summit 30-31 October, 98

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IRIN-WA: Background on the ECOWAS summit 30-31 October, 98.10.30

Heads of State and Government of the 16 member countries of the Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS) will meet at the institution's new headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria's administrative capital, on 30-31 October. The summit is expected to endorse plans for a sub-regional mechanism for conflict prevention and management.

Central bankers will also be considering an outline for monetary union. Together with plans for sweeping reform of the ECOWAS secretariat to be proposed later this year and the ongoing rationalisation of inter-governmental cooperation, this week's summit may well mark a fresh start for the 24-year old West African organisation.

Conflict management

West African leaders are expected to agree on a plan for conflict prevention and management involving a monitoring unit, a diplomatic unit and a peacekeeping force.

The monitoring function would rest on three distinct units which would report to the Committee of Heads of State and Government about potential or existing conflicts either between states or within any given state.

Also to be created is a "council of elders" made up of prominent figures from the sub-region, Africa at large or even beyond.

ECOMOG, originally designed to be a military monitoring group but which assumed an interventionist peacekeeping role in Liberia and Sierra Leone, would remain the backbone of the peacekeeping force. Under the plan to be discussed in Abuja, the force would include troops from all member countries. The units would undergo a single training schedule and would be kept on permanent standby for any emergency.

Monetary cooperation

The Abuja schedule also includes a meeting of central bank governors from the sub-region. According to well-placed sources, the group may decide to take a significant step towards West African monetary integration.

To a large extent the 50-year old largely French-speaking West African monetary union, now known as Union economique et monetaire ouest-africaine (UEMOA), overlaps with ECOWAS. Both aim at regional integration but with its single currency, the CFA franc, UEMOA and its eight member countries are one step ahead.

On the governors' agenda will be a report about the feasibility of a single currency in the eight largely English-speaking ECOWAS countries outside UEMOA. The report makes a number of recommendations about convergence of economic and financial criteria across ECOWAS and the various stages leading to monetary union.

Based on the report, governors can make a number of recommendations of their own. Further meetings are scheduled in 1999, but a source told IRIN: "We are only waiting for Nigeria. If Nigeria is willing to go ahead with this and to accept the discipline, then things could move at a quick pace ñ indeed, quicker than most people might expect, because as far as other countries are concerned, the political determination is clearly there. You might be surprised."

Streamlining the ECOWAS secretariat

By the end of the year, ECOWAS Executive Secretary Lansana Kouyate will put forward his proposals for a sweeping reform of the ECOWAS secretariat.

The structure is expected to be more compact. Administration and finances would come under the Executive Secretary, as would a new, small strategic planning unit. A deputy would head the programmes division, including infrastructure and integration.

Regional coooperation

In Africa there are reportedly 360 inter-governmental organisations (IGOs), 75 of them in West Africa. As early as May 1983, ECOWAS heads of state recognised the need to rationalise cooperation efforts in order to foster regional integration.

Also in mid-1991, heads of state and government adopted a decision whereby ECOWAS was "designated as the sole West African Economic Community for regional integration and the realisation of the objectives of the African Economic Community". Accordingly, economic integration efforts were to be shifted away from other IGOs and channelled into the sole ECOWAS. A "flexible and pragmatic rationalisation within ECOWAS of all IGOs in the region" was to be completed within two years.

However, subsequent events absorbed and deflected the attention and energies of the organisation and its member countries away from this agenda. By the time the plan was adopted, Liberia had already plunged into a seven-year civil war, sparking off armed insurgency in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Liberia's civil war ended in 1997. ECOMOG, which restored the ousted constitional government in Sierra Leone, is still fighting rebels in the east and north.

In both cases, ECOWAS dispatched the Nigerian-led multinational ECOMOG force. Today, even as he is about to re-launch ECOWAS as an economic institution, Kouyate's time and energies are absorbed by another local internal conflict, this time in Guinea Bissau.

Peacekeeping missions drained the ECOWAS budget at a time when member-states themselves curbed expenses under the terms of structural adjustment programmes agreed with the IMF in response to the worldwide slowdown in growth in the late 1980s.

ECOWAS as sub-regional hub

Under Kouyate's proposals, the new streamlined ECOWAS secretariat would serve as the hub of what would become a network of the region's other IGOs. Under the 1991 vision as endorsed by Kouyate, ECOWAS would work along the lines of a central organisation surrounded by specialist agencies.

Rationalisation has already been tackled at a meeting at Abuja in June 1998. The first achievement is expected in early 1999, when West Africa's two organisations dealing with health ñ one French and the other English-speaking ñ are scheduled to merge into one.

Kouyate is said by insiders to be well aware that rationalisation will take time, as the survival of even moribund organisations is at times defended tooth and nail by existing or former staff. Analysts say streamlining does not mean systematic elimination, and duplication can be avoided through better coordination with ECOWAS while preserving the unique nature of any given IGO.

Democracy and the state of law

ECOWAS under Kouyate looks to set up its own Court of Justice and its own Parliament in order to affirm a democratic state of law across the length and breadth of West Africa.

A senior official told IRIN: "ECOWAS must not steer away from the current drive towards democracy. We must reflect the political forces at play in the sub-region and seek relays between us and public opinion." Kouyate is said to be very keen on the creation of an ECOWAS parliament or parliamentary assembly as early as possible.

A Court of Justice is seen as essential to affirming the rule of law and its implementation in a fair and effective sort of way in order to secure a "level playing field", especially for business. So far, any violations have remained mostly unsanctioned, with informal diplomatic pressure the only recourse against trespassers. It is also felt that the publicity typically surrounding judicial procedures, especially in the media, will go some way towards affirming the rule of law in the sub-region.

27 October 1998 [end]

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Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 11:52:47 +0000 (GMT) From: UN IRIN - West Africa <irin-wa@wa.dha.unon.org> Subject: IRIN-WA: Background on the ECOWAS summit 30-31 October, 98.10.30 Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.95.981030111701.7523A-100000@wa.dha.unon.org>