Turning the ECOWAS Standby Force in a More Proactive Force: An Analysis of Past Interventions to Assess Key Deployment Hindrances.

摘要

The security situation in western Africa has been preoccupying in the last years with threats ranging from large scale radical Islamist groups to a pandemic Ebola outbreak, which have stressed the regional security mechanisms. This study, using a qualitative methodology, analyzes the regional crisis response in the attempts to solve the Ivory Coast crisis of 2002 and the recent Mali one of 2012, in which ECOWAS provided, through its standby force ESF, a military intervention to restore security and stability. However, in both of those interventions, forces were deployed on reactionary basis to humanitarian crisis, rather than in a proactive strategy that could have prevented the crisis from escalating to a point where an external intervention, that questioned the regional mechanisms, took place. The study finds that the weaknesses of the existing collective security institutions, the delay in implementing the stand by force, and the poor funding were the reasons of the inability to provide an early response. In order to be proactive in crisis management, ECOWAS needs to empower it security institutions, finalize the operationalization of an effective and capable standby force, and conceive, in coordination with other actors, a reliable funding mechanism.