Peace and Security in West Africa : Supporting Regional Organizations

Abstract

In West Africa, regional organizations - such as ECOWAS - represented the main actors behind peacekeeping interventions before 2003, but their record is not entirely positive in terms of promoting peace and stability. To analyze the contributions of such regional organizations, we shall revisit the ECOWAS interventions in Liberia in order to shed light on the weak organizational capacity and control of the operations throughout the 1990s. On an analytical level, three main sources of success for regional organizations are proposed: finances, manpower, and political legitimacy. The necessity of these factors in carrying out successful interventions can be gauged by looking at the United Nations peacekeeping operation deployed in region, which are deployed throughout the region with support from lead countries and other international organizations and have enjoyed considerable success.