Lome - Togo — A four-day ECOWAS Emergency Management Training Workshop opened in Lome on Tuesday, 18th May 2010 with a call to participants to be committed and ready for deployment on humanitarian missions in Member States when the need arises. The ECOWAS Director of Humanitarian Affairs, Dr. Daniel Eklu, made the call at the opening of the organization's emergency management training workshop for managers and specialists on Tuesday, 18th May 2010 in Lome, Togo.
The workshop is one in a series of training workshops to better prepare members of the ECOWAS Emergency Response Team (EERT) for humanitarian missions in the region. One such mission was undertaken in March 2010 to Jos in central Nigeria following civil conflicts leading to the loss of lives and an increase in the number of internally displaced persons in that country. Dr. Eklu stated that increased conflicts in West Africa and the recurrence of natural disasters such as flood which have devastated the region lately have had serious socio-economic impact on the people of the region. He also recalled that the absence of an ECOWAS civilian intervention mechanism to peace support operations (PSOs) such as in Liberia and Sierra Leone and natural disasters created a void which has contributed to the loss of several lives and properties in the region.
Dr. Eklu explained that such developments led the ECOWAS Commission in 2005 to take "a bold step to develop an emergency response capacity which, when fully operational, will provide first-line humanitarian response to victims of conflicts and natural disasters in the region". While warning that recent studies on the environment in West Africa have revealed that the region may also be susceptible to other natural disasters such as earthquakes and landslides, he called on "our collective efforts to develop a functional EERT because the region can bear positive fruits only when we show commitment to its cause". He further explained that an ECOWAS Emergency Response Team would complement the efforts of the institution's international partners, particularly the United Nation's organizations, in the area of providing a coordinated humanitarian relief to victims of conflicts and natural disasters, adding: "At the same time, it would also create a sense of ownership and responsibility to the peoples of the region". Dr. Eklu expressed gratitude to ECOWAS' partners, especially the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), for providing technical and financial assistance to the Commission.
The EERT Unit at the ECOWAS Commission has so far organized nine different training workshops and trained a total number of 84 managers and specialists from the 15 Member States. A training workshop was held in Abuja (2008), two in Accra (2006 and 2008), two in Cotonou (2009), two in Dakar (2007 and 2009) and one in Kaduna in northern Nigeria (2008). With participants drawn from Member States, the ECOWAS Commission and the West African Civil Society Forum (WACSOF), the Lome May 2010 training workshop is noted as "one of the few full simulation exercises to prepare participants for eventual deployment". The training workshops have generally provided participants with a variety of skills which would allow ECOWAS' civilian deployments in the field to develop and implement, including protection strategies which have featured prominently in past trainings.
