ECOWAS, Good Governance and Collective Military Action in Liberia: A Post Conflict Assesment

• Main Authors: Mohammed Sambo, Abubakar, Othman, Muhammad Fuad, Omar, Rusdi
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: JZ International relations
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/24871/1/2nd%20IRC%202017%2098.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/24871/

One of the biggest social and political challenges of the states in west Africa south of the Sahara, is that of good governance. Lack of good governance had its debilitating consequences in post-colonial states of west Africa. Most states in this sub-region had a “taste” of military dictatorship at one point in time or the other. illiteracy, unaccountability, and corruption by the public servants in most states with the sub-region. Majority of the post-cold war conflicts and crises in this sub-region are attributed to the absence of good governance.This compels the ECOWAS to revise its treaty and adopt an additional protocol on Democracy and good governance, so that the potential source of conflicts in the sub-region tied to mis-governance can be handled by ECOWAS at the sub-regional level and for the ECOWAS to manage conflicts, crises and insecurity to forestall it from distracting economic integration processes of the regional economic group.Of all the reasons adjudge to the causes of the first Liberian crises leading to the first sub-regional military intervention initiative in 1989 for instance, which was the bases for ECOWAS shifting it base to security management is lack of good governance. Thus, the objective of this paper, is to evaluate how the absence of good governance contributed to ECOWAS shifting to non-interference to security management in west Africa, and to assess the impacts of the new protocol on democracy and good governance among the ECOWAS member states in the post-cold war and post-Liberian conflict.