Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Hot Issues on the AU needing popular advocacy (I) – or Travelling Cheaply in Africa, & Southern Sudan


“The Accidental Ecowas & AU Citizen”:

Hot Issues on the AU needing popular advocacy (I) – or Travelling Cheaply in Africa, & Southern Sudan

By E.K.Bensah Jr

Given the untimely passing of Qaddafi, it is all-too predictable to write more column inches about the man and his works for Africa. Suffice-to-say if Africa had a more vivacious media than we like to think we have, then media practitioners should have been making more noise about the manner in which his body was dragged through the streets of Sirte, and how the distribution of footage of his bloodied body worldwide shattered to smithereens any sense of decency the media is supposed to have – anywhere.
That notwithstanding, today I want to focus on equally-important issues that have lost their way off the radar of mainstream news.

Travelling cheaper in Africa?
For the longest time, travelling throughout Africa has been a hellish affair, what with never-falling cost of air tickets and entry of new airlines. Take the case of travelling throughout the sub-region, where the average cost of a ticket is around 500USD. This absolutely-unacceptable situation is made all the more painful by the fact that despite the increasing assertiveness of the eight-AU-recognised regional economic communities (ECOWAS; CENSAD; Arab Magreb Union; SADC; COMESA; ECCAS; East African Community; and IGAD), there are virtually no “regional carriers” that represent the “power” of  the RECs.

It seems forever that ECOWAS has been talking about “ECOAIR”, which would be the carrier for the ECOWAS sub-region. We all know that it has not happened. There is a glimmer of hope that ECOWAS will make some headway on the viability of air transport—as per the meeting it is holding as I write this—but results are likely to be very slow in coming. 

The meeting in question is attended by air transport experts and Chief Executive Officers of airlines from all the 15 ECOWAS Member States, with the objective of discussing “measures of creating an enabling environment conducive for viable, efficient, affordable and sustainable air transport industry in the West Africa sub region.” While this is encouraging, it looks like the real nettlesome challenge about travelling cheaply in West Africa has everything to do with air fuel costs.

To this end, in August, the 33-member Association of African Airlines (AFRAA) resolved to work on the project whose aim is to lower fuel costs for Africa, by jointly purchasing fuel. With only 33 members of the association,however, I wonder whether it is not high-time the AU is lobbied to join and help subsidise and operationalise this project?


Whither the future of CEN-SAD?
The Community of Sahel-Saharan States was established in 1998 by the late Colonel Qaddafi. After the rationalization of the regional economic communities in 2006, it became an AU-REC – that is one of the eight RECs mandated and recognized by the African Union. It has twenty-eight members, and Ghana is a member. 

Despite many meetings that had taken place and a fully-functioning website on http://www.censad.org, the uprising that started in Libya in March threw a huge spanner in the works of the organisation, effectively throwing the regional grouping out of sync with the other RECs at its base in Tripoli. Regrettably, the conspicuous absence of the African Union itself on the future of CENSAD has not helped dispel the notion that the AU is nothing more than a “toothless” bulldog. 

The passing of Qaddafi will effectively take the wind out of the sails of CENSAD, probably throwing all the good work – including the Great Green Wall being built along the sub-region to protect the region from climate change; as well as the establishment of a free-trade area of ECOWAS-UEMOA-CENSAD/ECOWAS-CENSAD/ECCAS along the likes of the SADC-COMESA-EAC tripartite free trade area, which was mooted in 2008.

Going forward, I would expect to see the AU taking serious the need to engage the National Transitional Council in Libya on their commitments to the African Union. This would include discussions on Libya and where it stands on the establishment of the AU-mandated and Tripoli-hosted African Investment Bank, as well as the state of play of CEN-SAD, and how it can be factored into discussions of Africa’s ongoing discussions over Africa’s integration.

South Sudan – which REC to belong to?
South Sudan might have slipped off the radar of news—not because it is not important, but other hot issues might naturally have tipped it off. Still, what has not been making the rounds too much has been the regional economic community to which South Sudan should belong. Given the location of that country, one cannot take it for granted that they would necessarily want to go with their Northern counterpart—and to the RECs is no exception.

There is no mechanism that can predict that South Sudan will want to become member of the East Africa Community or the IGAD. And what of COMESA? This is an important debate that African media practitioners – aware of the utility and increasing assertiveness of the RECs – might be ruminating over on the continent.

Although there have been major developments around South Sudan and its membership of some of these RECs, the point I am making here is about the absence of a debate in much of the African media. Going forward, African media practitioners, including here in Ghana, should move beyond the stage of talking about other AU member states only when they’re, at best, embroiled in conflict and/or at worst, are headline news over at the BBC!

You might be happy to know that South Sudan was made a member of COMESA at the 15th Comesa Heads of State and Government summit on 14th October in Malawi. Furthermore, on 17 October, South Sudan President General Salva Kiir confirmed that his country has started on the application process to become a member of the East African Community (EAC).

In 2009, in his capacity as a “Do More Talk Less Ambassador” of the 42nd Generation—an NGO that promotes and discusses Pan-Africanism--Emmanuel gave a series of lectures on the role of ECOWAS and the AU in facilitating a Pan-African identity. Emmanuel owns "Critiquing Regionalism" (http://www.critiquing-regionalism.org). Established in 2004 as an initiative to respond to the dearth of knowledge on global regional integration initiatives worldwide, this non-profit blog features regional integration initiatives on MERCOSUR/EU/Africa/Asia and many others. You can reach him on ekbensah@ekbensah.net / Mobile: 0268.687.653.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Time for ECOWAS to Ratify the Criminal Investigative Intelligence Bureau!


“The Accidental Ecowas & AU Citizen”:

Time for ECOWAS to Ratify the Criminal Investigative Intelligence Bureau!
E.K.Bensah Jr

Central to any regional integration arrangement is what most well-known integration schemes, like the EU, call four freedoms – that of movement; capital; goods; and services. With these come security-related challenges that call into question the need to strengthen intelligence of the sub-region. With UEMOA (comprising eight francophone ECOWAS member states) using ID cards and all ECOWAS member states having adopted national ID systems, the window of opportunity must be capitalised upon by member states to really get serious in securing a sub-region.


It was not too long ago when the West African sub-region became a by-word for drug trafficking; crime; and all the attendant vices associated with un-policed porous borders. In October 2008, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime launched a report[1] that castigated ECOWAS member states for their apparently-lackadaisical approach to fighting trans-border crime in the sub-region. Member states like Guinea-Bissau had become soft spots for drug traffickers who took advantage of often-corrupt systems of governance to use that country as a conduit for onward movement of their drugs.


Three years later, the situation has changed dramatically as ECOWAS member states got serious by engaging the UNODC and other UN agencies, such as the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), the United Nations Office for West Africa (UNOWA), and the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) to establish elite and so-called “Transnational Crime Units” in selected ECOWAS member states[2] to deal with the canker under the West African Coastal Initiative.


That ECOWAS has formulated a regional response through their Political Declaration of 2005 (that put forward the idea of establishing a criminal investigative intelligence bureau) has also helped to nip the problem in the bud. Truth be told, considering the fact that that the Criminal Investigative Intelligence Bureau(CIIB) had been proposed as far back as 2002 by Ghana for a meeting of the INTERPOL-backed West Africa Police Chiefs Committee(WAPCCO) in Abidjan, the challenge would have been better dealt with had member states resolved to establish the-said CIIB.


It goes without saying that while ECOWAS community citizens enjoy free movement in the sub-region, this is a region that has played host to internecine conflicts, such as the Liberian conflict of 1990 that prompted the intervention of ECOMOG. Add to that the porous border, the free movement of mercenaries, coupled with small arms trafficking and the recruitment of child soldiers and fighters to the cross-border crimes and we have ourselves a potential powder-keg that needs significant monitoring through significant systems of intelligence – as proposed by the yet-to-be-ratified CIIB.


Whither the future of ECOWAS law enforcement?
On 4 August, ECOWAS, alongside international partners, established the so-called Border Information Centres (BIC). While this is far from a holistic response to tackling crime and enforcing a rule of law in the sub-region, it nevertheless is an important step in tackling cross-border corruption and helping mitigate cross-border crime by providing citizens with transparent ways of obtaining information on free movement in the sub-region.


At the sub-regional level, ECOWAS has a number of structures that are helping rein in what might otherwise be a chaotic sub-region. These include the ECOWAS Regional Action Plan on illicit drugs trafficking, organized crime and drug abuse[3]; ECOWAS Committees of Chiefs of Security Services, and Chiefs of Defence Staff; WAPCCO; and GIABA.


Backed by the Canada-based “The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre”, the ECOWAS Committee of Chiefs of Security Services has assisted ECOWAS since May 2009 to create a committee that ensures proper communication and coordination efforts with member states on the police component of the African Standby Force and other regional security issues. The committee is now funded by the ECOWAS Commission’s regular annual budget and meets twice a year.
The ECOWAS Committee of Chiefs of Defence Staff—an exclusively military component—reviews security in the sub-region through quarterly meetings. The ECOWAS agency that is the Intergovernmental Action Group against Money-Laundering, or GIABA, is responsible for the prevention and control of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in the West African Sub-Region. Critical to its mandate is the “improvement of measures and intensifying efforts to combat the laundering of proceeds of crime in West Africa”.


In the final analysis, although ECOWAS might not have had the foresight of establishing a West African law enforcement mechanism (like the EU did with EUROPOL with respect to the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992) the very moment the Treaty of Lagos was revised in 1993 to reflect the current challenges of ECOWAS, it can never be too late to rectify the imperative of a sub-regional police force along the likes of INTERPOL or EUROPOL. ECOWAS's imperative and comparative strengths on peace, security, and conflict prevention ought to give it the necessary impetus to bring to fruition the belated “ECOWASPOL”/CIIB the sub-region so desperately needs.

ENDs





















In 2009, in his capacity as a “Do More Talk Less Ambassador” of the 42nd Generation—an NGO that promotes and discusses Pan-Africanism--Emmanuel gave a series of lectures on the role of ECOWAS and the AU in facilitating a Pan-African identity. Emmanuel owns "Critiquing Regionalism" (http://www.critiquing-regionalism.org). Established in 2004 as an initiative to respond to the dearth of knowledge on global regional integration initiatives worldwide, this non-profit blog features regional integration initiatives on MERCOSUR/EU/Africa/Asia and many others. You can reach him on ekbensah@ekbensah.net / Mobile: 0268.687.653.



[1] Online. Drug trafficking as a security threat in West Africa. http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/drug-trafficking-as-a-security-threat-in-west-africa.html

[2] So far, only four selected countries of Ivory Coast, Guinea Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone are involved. These countries were chosen as they already have UN presences. The idea is to also extend it to Guinea-Conakry and other ECOWAS member states over time.
[3] Online. http://www.unodc.org/westandcentralafrica/en/ecowasresponseactionplan.html

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