President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia has called for "robust international support' for the ongoing efforts of ECOWAS to accelerate the political processes in Code d'Ivoire, Guinea and Niger.
President Sirleaf was speaking at the opening of a five-day international conference on "Two Decades of Peace Processes in West Africa: Achievements, Failures, Lessons" on Tuesday, 23rd March 2010 at the Samuel Kanyon Doe (SKD) Stadium in Paynesville, Monrovia. She identified the causes of civil conflicts in Africa as bad governance, lack of respect for human rights, socio-economic and political inequity and grinding poverty and noted that conflicts had slowed the democratization process in the region.
In an emotional address which gave an account of the civil war in Liberia and the deployment of ECOMOG troops to that country in 1990, the President said the establishment and deployment of ECOMOG represented the first credible attempt at a regional security initiative, since the erstwhile OAU attempted, with an international African force, to intervene in Chad in 1981.
She said the ECOMOG operation was successful because ECOWAS Member States were "united in removing armed violence from politics", adding: "They recognized that a state of insecurity was completely counter-productive to socio-economic advancement, the main purpose for the establishment of ECOWAS", she added. President Sirleaf expressed confidence that the conference would produce the desired result and that "the people of the region will be even more proud of the success of ECOWAS, and that the ECOMOG model will be a trademark for West African progress". She paid special tribute to past Heads of State of ECOWAS Member States, ECOMOG Force and Field Commanders and their soldiers, diplomats involved in the peace process in Liberia, past ECOWAS Executive Secretaries, among others, for the peace in Liberia.
While acknowledging the challenges being faced by Liberia, she declared that "Liberia is on the move". "Liberia has launched its recovery and is poised for rapid, inclusive and sustainable development in the years to come", President Sirleaf stated. In his opening address, the President of the ECOWAS Commission, Ambassador James Victor Gbeho, stated that among others, the conference was "a memorial to the tens of thousands of the ordinary people, civilian and military personnel who paid the ultimate price to secure peace in the region".
He traced the global dynamics and local reactions which contributed to the derailment of peace in West Africa and ECOWAS' responses, including its search for permanent structures for conflict management. Ambassador Gbeho praised the adoption of such legal documents as the ECOWAS Treaty which was revised in 1993, the Protocol relating to the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security of 1999 and its Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance of 2001 and the 2008 ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework.
While observing the absence of active wars in the region and lauding the deepening of the democratization process, he warned that West Africa continued to face threats and uncertainties including transnational organized crime, youth unemployment, bad natural resource governance, citizenship and identity crisis as well as climate change and environmental crisis.
Ambassador Gbeho who said ECOWAS was constantly reviewing its approaches due to the dynamic nature of the threats facing the region, expressed the hope that the conference would initiate a process leading to the development of a "qualitatively new response framework to current and emerging threats to peace and security in the region".
He also called on the called for the establishment of a "Council of ECOWAS Statespersons", comprising former Heads of State to act as a forum through which ECOWAS and its Member States would continue to benefit from their experience in efforts to strengthen the region's peace and security architecture. Various speakers at the conference have so far acknowledged West Africa as one of the most unstable regions in Africa in the 1970-1990 decades.
They also agreed that the civil wars in the Mano River Basin took a heavy toll on human security and resulted in the rapid deterioration of the security environment. In addition, the conference acknowledged that the combined efforts of ECOWAS, its Member States, civil society and partners have greatly helped to improve the security environment in West Africa and that the region.
Among those present at the opening were former Heads of State - Sir Dawda Kaibara Jawara of the Gambia, retired Flt. Lt. Ferry john Rawlings of Ghana and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria; General Arnold Quainoo, first ECOMOG Force Commander, General Adetunji Olurin, former Commander of ECOMOG, General Festus Okonkwo, former ECOMIL Commander and members of the ECOWAS Council of the Wise.
Others included the African Union Peace and Security Commissioner, Ramtane Lamamra, the Special representative of the UN Secretary General in West Africa, Ambassador Said Djinnit, the Special representative of the UN Secretary General in Liberia, the Danish Ambassador to Ethiopia, AU and ECOWAS, Mrs. Pernille Dahler Kardel, Ambassador Thomas Greminger of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs, diplomats, academics and researchers as well as civil society and media representatives.
