Operationalizing the ECOWAS Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping, and Security

This report summarizes the discussions held at the task force meeting, organized jointly by IPA [now IPI] and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which took place in Dakar, Senegal, on August 12-13, 2002. The meeting built on the second of IPA’s three policy seminars in the current phase of its work (July 2000-June 2003), which took place in September 2001 in Abuja, Nigeria, and was also organized in partnership with ECOWAS. The Dakar task force meeting brought together about forty diplomats, parliamentarians, soldiers, academics, and civil society actors, drawn largely from West Africa, to develop recommendations on operationalizing and institutionalizing the ECOWAS Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping, and Security.