ECOWAS and The Dynamics of Conflicts and Peace Building

Abstract

The paper has its central focus on ECOWAS and the Dynamics of Conflicts and Peace-Building. It examines the need of Africa leaders who sought to fight collectively their dependency and chart a new path for collective national political and economic independence. The paper relied on secondary sources of data collection inform of content analysis of articles, journals, papers and books written by season scholars in the areas of integration, conflict and peace- keeping and peace¬ building. Our findings show that, the establishment of ECOWAS in 1975 was mainly for socio- economic development in the field of economic activity among its member states; and in social and cultural matters for the purpose of raising the standard of its people thereby contributing to the progress and development of African continent. However, due to the distressing events in several of its member states, ECOWAS soon realized that for economic development to thrive there should be relative peace and stability. It thus, dawned on it that it had to proffer solutions to conflicts in member states by getting involved in the conflicts to ensure that an environment conducive to the implementation of its economic programmmes. Thus, the interventions of ECOWAS in member states such as Liberia, Sierra-Leone and Guinea-Bissau are good examples at finding sub-regional solution to the sub-regional conflicts and peace-building. The paper concludes that, to advance peace-building activities and address ECOWAS security threats, there should be the need for clear understanding of the different causes, dimensions and impacts of conflict and security threats among regional actors and decision makers.