Application Of The Conflict Resolution Mechanism Of Ecowas On The Management Of The Gambia’s Post Presidential Election Crisis
Chapter One
Preface
Background to the Study
Africa has been the most vulnerable and most externally hovered region in the world. She has endured brutal, exploitative and rough form of colonialism; and this has left negatively impacting heritage on the African mainland. Since the 1990s, the sub region West Africa has come home to some of the bloodiest and deadliest conflict; and represents one of the sub regions that have the eventuality to come a real trouble to International peace and security. Over the times, the sub region has been affected by numerous cases of political insecurity, lack of governance and bloody mutinies. States like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea- Bissau, Cote d’ivoire and Nigeria have seen civil wars; and coup d’état have been endured by countries like The Gambia, Niger, Guinea as well as other ethnical and religious clashes in Benin Republic, Nigeria and Mali.
Conflict is inferable from the possession of, and pursuit of divergent ideas, pretensions, claims, interests and bournes by people in their relations( Ugokwe, 2006). Conflicts do between individualities, within countries( civil wars), and between countries( International Conflict). According to Ross Stagner( 2010) conflict is a situation in which two or further mortal beings ask pretensions which they perceive as being accessible by one or the other, but not both. This means that conflict has been part of humanity since creation, and that it’ll continue to be so. While resolution consists of all conduct taken to sustain the attendant peace from the operation of the conflict, and the forestallment of a reoccurrence of the conflict. This includes post conflict conditioning( peace structure) similar as choices, rebuilding of government and structure, recuperation of displaced persons and the establishment of medium for conflict forestallment. In 2011, Otite asserted that because there’s hardly any endless peace or endless resolution or metamorphosis of conflict, it might be more applicable to speak of conflict operation as a means of managing with the process of resolving and transubstantiating conflict. Conflict Resolution is defined as the system and processes involved in easing the peaceful end of conflict and retaliation.
ECOWAS has espoused some mechanisms in conflict forestallment and resolution and on Good governance and Republic. ECOWAS is the major indigenous profitable unit of the sub Saharan western Africa, the region encompasses 15 nations of which one member is an islet state. The Economic Community of West Africa State was established on 28th May 1975 in Lagos, Nigeria.
The original fifteen countries were Benin Republic, Burkina- Faso, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea,
Guinea Bissau, Cote d’ivoire, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togolese Republic. In 1976 the islet nation of Cape Verde joined ECOWAS as its 16th member and Mauritania left the association in 2002. ECOWAS brought together the 15 West African countries, irrespective of their sanctioned language or their social history. The objective assigned to the community by this original convention were at the morning basically profitable to promote cooperation and development in all fields of profitable exertion, accelerated and sustained profitable development of member states through effective profitable cooperation and progressive integration of economics.
Although security issues have been a problem in sub region. also in 1999 in Lome, the Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS espoused the protocol on Conflict operation, Resolution, peacekeeping and security. Another analogous protocol to this is the protocol on Republic and Good Governance which falls in line with the protestation of political principles of the Economic Community of West African State which was espoused in Abuja in July 1999, on Freedom, People’s right and Democratization. It’s by virtue of this protestation that the revised convention specified the creation and connection of a popular system of governance in each member state as a abecedarian principle of the community. Concerning election the protocol also prescribes asset of rules proscribing any substantial revision of electoral laws in the last six months before the election, encouraging conservation of over- to- date and dependable choosers list, calling that election choices be held at fixed ages, and calling for independent or neutral electoral commissions, acceptance of election results by all parties concern, and election monitoring and ECOWAS backing.
The time 2015 and 2016 were pivotal to the Economic Community of West African States ECOWAS from the perspective of its sweats to insure sustainable peace and stability in the region, through supporting the conduct of peaceful choices and the orderly transfer of power ECOWAS has a rich history of managing political transition and election in the once 18 times following the relinquishment of the 1999 protocol relating to the medium for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peace- keeping and Security as well as the 2001 supplementary protocol on Republic and Good Governance. December 2016 to January 2017 showed indeed how effective these mechanisms of ECOWAS were, in the intermediating in its member state; The Gambia, for the 22 times of its administration, its government was similarly indicted of mortal rights violation and the masculinity of political opponents. Following the disagreement December 2016 presidential election in the Gambia, ECOWAS manages to restore republic in the country by using the trouble of force, but without any use of direct physical violence. It should be noted that scholars haven’t really done important work on the general connection of the ECOWAS that Both African union and the United Nations Security Council backed ECOWAS, which gave ECOWAS legality for what was basically ECOWAS policy, and indeed an African result to African problems.
Statement of the Problem
Since the decolonization process began in Africa in themid-1960s several African leaders who were tagged have had serious problem with relinquishing their position or allowing an election to take place in their everlasting hunt for power. similar leaders include Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Jose Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola, Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi, Paul Biya of Cameroon, General Idris Deby of Chad, Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea and Yahya Jammeh of The Gambia. A significant debate that has not only gulfed the academic sphere, but also the public space, is how to consolidate republic. This is maybe because the attempt at consolidating republic is a more laborious task than the trouble at establishing it( Schedler, 2001). The electoral experience of believable and defective choices, which have put numerous countries on antithetical circles regarding the connection of republic, further underlies the complications of this challenge.
In some African countries where republic have thrived, similar as Senegal, Ghana and Benin, there are fussing enterprises about the manner in which political elites flagrantly and constantly violate the principles of the rule of law, constitutionalism and liberties( Lynch and Crawford,
2011). In the absence of these principles, choices have been reduced to ‘ do- or- die affairs ’ or a zero- sum game attached to winning choices. By adhering on to political power, they don’t only engage in ‘ reckless manipulation, but are also gulfed with the politics of brinkmanship and subversion of popular rule and procedures ’( Adejumobi, 200059).
Within the ECOWAS frame they’ve observed that this is the problem and as similar have issued that all members should borrow the protocol on Good Governance and Republic and the protocol on Conflict Management, Security and Resolution which is in fact the reason why
ECOWAS leaders were commanded to seek resolution of the Post Election extremity in the Gambia.
Hence this study is anticipated to give empirical data on conflict resolution medium applied in the Gambian extremity
Exploration Questions
The following questions were posed as a companion to this study
1.. Did the principle of Non hindrance in the ECOWAS convention weaken early resolution of the Gambia’s post election extremity?
2. Did the deployment of Coercive tactfulness during thepost-election extremity contribute to
Popular connection in The Gambia?
3. Can ECOWAS tactics of Coercive tactfulness serve as a model to other indigenous bodies in the mainland?
Objects of the Study
The general ideal of this study aims at assessing critically the operation of the ECOWAS Conflict Resolution Medium. still the specific objects of this study are as follows
1. To examine if the Non hindrance in the ECOWAS convention weakened early resolution of the Gambia’s post election extremity.
2. To ascertain critically the deployment of Coercive tactfulness by ECOWAS in consolidating Republic in the Gambia.
3. To estimate if the ECOWAS tactics of Coercive tactfulness in the Gambia has the
possibility of General Applicability in the indigenous bodies in the mainland.
Suppositions
The following suppositions were formulated in the pursuit of the set objects
1. The principle of Non hindrance in the ECOWAS convention weakened early resolution of the Gambia’s post election extremity.
2. The employment of the Coercive tactfulness by ECOWAS in resolving the postelection extremity contributed to Republic connection in the Gambia.
3. The ECOWAS tactics of Coercive tactfulness in the Gambia has the possibility of
General Applicability in other indigenous bodies in the mainland.
Significance of the Study
This work has both theoretical and empirical significance.
Theoretically, it’ll be of great significance to the being body of knowledge on the content Conflict Resolution medium and Popular connection in West Africa; it’ll also serve as a base for educating people on electoral conflict and the significance of conflict resolution in Africa and its impact on Standardizing countries. It’ll also serve as a source of reference for other experimenters and for farther exploration.
Empirically, the study of this nature is anticipated to ameliorate the performance of ECOWAS in making opinions that will enhance peace and conflict resolution in warring countries. It’ll also pave way for other African leaders to have popular knowledge in enforcing and executing laws which will be of utmost benefit to all
compass of the study
The work is on operation of the Conflict Resolution medium of ECOWAS in the
operation of the Gambia’s post presidential election extremity. Its content compass is concentrated on the medium used by the ECOWAS in resolving the conflict in the Gambia.
Limitation of the study
During the course of this study the experimenter encountered a lot of constraints, prominent on the list is fund, time and inadequate accoutrements to carry out the exploration.
Another major constraint was the incapability to lay hands on vital information given that the content is commodity that happed lately and utmost work on it are substantially in journals and not by Text books. Also during the course of this study people weren’t too free to give me information for security reasons in the country. Despite these egregious limitations, the experimenter was suitable to pull through, thanks to the information gotten from the state library. All information attained were precisely scanned and placed within proper environment to avoid nebulosity.
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