July 21, 2011
International Monetary Fund

Abstract:

This paper identifies the factors linked to cross-country differentials in growth performance in the aftermath of social conflict for 30 sub-Saharan African countries using panel data techniques. Our results show that changes in the terms of trade are the most important correlate of economic performance in post-conflict environments. This variable is typically associated with an increase in the marginal probability of positive economic performance by about 30 percent. Institutional quality emerges as the second most important factor. Foreign aid is shown to have very limited ability to explain differentials in growth performance, and other policy variables such as trade openness are not found to have a statistically significant effect. The results suggest that exogenous factors ("luck") are an important factor in post-conflict recovery. They also highlight the importance in post-conflict settings of policies to mitigate the macroeconomic impact of terms of trade volatility (including countercyclical macroeconomic policies and innovative financing instruments) and of policies to promote export diversification....

August 24, 2010
Global Consortium on Security Transformation

Abstract:

Adequate and effective security has long been recognized as a pre-requisite for the socio- economic development of states and societies, and thus most individuals and states engage in various activities aimed at the achievement of security. Generally, states are responsible for the provision of security to their citizens. In many developing countries however, state security provision has largely been inadequate, being focused mainly on using military, police and intelligence services for state preservation against external aggression and internal disorder. An inordinate focus on this form of security has resulted in the neglect of the physical and other socio-economic needs of a majority of citizens, who have consequently resorted to 'self-help' mechanisms using the private, non-state sector to address their security needs. The term non-state actors as used in this paper broadly refers to individuals, groups and organizations that provide security services, but are not part of formal, statutory institutions mandated by the state to provide security related services, such as the police or military. This paper is organized into five sections. The first section provides a background to the study as well as the methodology that was employed. This is followed by an overview of the security situation in the country. The third section presents the findings on the identified non- state security actors in the country. Section four analyses the impacts of their activities on security in the country, and the last section concludes the paper....

December 9, 2009
Conflict, Security and Development // Routledge

Abstract:

In recent years, the potential security threat posed by climate change has caught the world’s political imagination, generating a perceptible shift in the way that a growing number of decision-makers in the North and the South are talking about the subject. The African Union, in a January 2007 decision, expressed grave concern about the vulnerability of Africa’s ‘socio-economic and productive systems to climate change and variability and to the continent’s low mitigation and response capacities’. The European Security Strategy predicts that climate change will aggravate competition for natural resources, and likely increase conflict and migratory movements in various regions. Meanwhile, climate change has become a core foreign policy priority of many governments, including the new administration’s programme in the US, a move that is rationalised, at least in part, by the security threat it presents. This paper explores the development of conceptualisations of environment and security that influence current discussions over the potential impacts of climate change on security. To illustrate, we devote particular attention to the ways in which West Africa is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and draw upon recent empirical evidence and climate change scenario planning research from two West African countries: Ghana and Burkina Faso....

September 24, 2008
Institute for Security Studies // African Security Review

Abstract:

Over the past decades, the way we talk about climate change has evolved. Traditionally seen as an environmental and an energy issue, climate change is now also being cast as a threat to international peace and security. Analysts argue that climate change will exacerbate existing tensions and triggers new conflicts by redrawing the maps of water availability, food security, disease prevalence, coastal boundaries and population distribution. The security implications of climate change have become the subject of unprecedented international attention; in 2007 the focus of a Security Council debate and the Nobel Peace prize. There have been some attempts to construct scenarios of the security implications of climate change at a global scale. But the country-level security impacts of climate change have been lost in the midst of the political rhetoric. Local experts in the subject countries are rarely consulted. In this article for the September 2008 edition of the African Security Review, published quarterly by the Institute for Security Studies, Africa’s leading human security research institution, Oli Brown and Alec Crawford draw on their fieldwork in Ghana and Burkina Faso to see to what extent the links that have been hypothesized reflect a realistic future for two different countries in West Africa as the impacts of climate change gather pace. KEY FINDINGS: 1. Ghana and Burkina Faso already face considerable development challenges from existing economic, population and environmental stresses. 2. Climate change is not new to West Africa. West Africa in general and the Sahelian region in particular are characterized by some of the most variable climates on the planet. 3. Future climate change will likely make many current development challenges more complex and urgent. 4. There are links between climate change and security in the region. However, there is little research that has managed to construct an empirical link between climate change and conflict in the region (or, for that matter, anywhere else). 5. Climate change could exacerbate existing, latent tensions in Ghana and Burkina Faso. 6. But only in the extreme scenarios does climate change begin to present a determining factor in future economic and political instability. KEY RECOMMENDATION: Adaptation needs to focus on the full range of development problems affecting countries. Adaptation to climate change clearly needs to be integrated within wider plans for development assistance, and the additional costs for that adaptation need to be funded with “new money” so as not to undercut development priorities elsewhere....

March 26, 2008
Annual Convention of the International Studies Association // Centre for the Study of Civil War // International Peace Research Institute Oslo

Abstract:

The civil war that erupted in 2002 in Cote d’Ivoire split the country in half corresponding to the religious divide between the mainly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south. Cote d’Ivoire’s neighbor Ghana is situated on the same ‘civilizational fault line’ between a Muslim northern part and a Christian south, but no violent north-south mobilization has occurred. Apart from the cultural divide, there are also other striking parallels in conflict risk profiles between the two neighbors. Why have the conflict trajectories in the two countries been so different? This paper compares the way religious polarization played out in the two cases, to investigate which interactive factors can explain the outbreak of armed conflict in Cote d’Ivoire and the relative peace in Ghana. The two cases clearly illuminate that the existence of a religious divide, in and of itself, does not predetermine bloodshed, but that political strategies, religious concentration and reinforcing cleavages can act as intervening variables that help explain the difference in outcome....

July 17, 2007
Department for International Development

Abstract:

From 2003-2005 DFID provided over xc2xa3210 million in support of Ghana's Poverty Reduction Plans. In the 2006 calendar year DFID provided xc2xa378 million of bilateral aid to Ghana; with about 80% of this in the form of Poverty Reduction Budget Support (PRBS). Ghana received around $1.7m under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) relief in 2004 and will benefit from the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) in the order of $4 billion over the next 40 #years from 2005.

July 13, 2006
Project on International Courts and Tribunals // African International Courts and Tribunals

Abstract:

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS/CEDEAO) is well known for its military intervention in Liberia and Sierra Leone. ECOWAS was created in 1975 to replace the Customs Union of West African States originally created in 1959 to redistribute customs duties collected by the coastal states of West Africa. The Treaty on the Economic Community of West African States was revised at the Cotonou Summit of July 1993 to replace the inexistent Tribunal originally envisioned with a Community Court of Justice....

June 1, 2006
Energy Information Administration

Abstract:

Regional leaders created the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on May 28, 1975 in Lagos, Nigeria. ECOWAS is comprised of 15 countries, which include: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d'Ivoire , The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria , Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. The leaders established ECOWAS to promote regional integration and economic growth in West Africa, as well as to create a monetary union in the region. However, ECOWAS has encountered problems in the process of regional integration including: political instability and lack of good governance that has plagued many member countries, the insufficient diversification of national economies, the absence of reliable infrastructure, and the multiplicity of organizations for regional integration with the same objectives....

October 6, 2005
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

Abstract:

This fact sheet provides an overview of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Ghana, published October 2005.

October 6, 2005
Globalsecurity.org

Abstract:

On May 15, 1979, less than five weeks before constitutional elections were to be held, a group of junior officers led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings attempted a coup. Initially unsuccessful, the coup leaders were jailed and held for courtmartial . On June 4, however, sympathetic military officers overthrew the Akuffo regime and released Rawlings and his cohorts from prison fourteen days before the scheduled election. Although the SMC's pledge to return political power to civilian hands addressed the concerns of those who wanted civilian government, the young officers who had staged the June 4 coup insisted that issues critical to the image of the army and important for the stability of national politics had been ignored....

January 28, 2009
Pambazuka News

Abstract:

In early 2008 Liberian refugees in Buduburam camp in Ghana did something highly upsetting to the status quo: they held a protest requesting a larger say over the durable solution to their situation and specifically asking for greater material help in repatriation. The reaction of both the host government and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to this unexpected new voice highlights problems currently afflicting the global refugee regime. According to the governments and international agencies who assume charge of these refugees, the civil war in Liberia is over and any refugees currently remaining in Ghana are safe to return home. They are indeed positively encouraged to do so, and yet up to 2008 (five years after the war is supposed to have ended) repatriation numbers have been lower than expected. In UNHCR's view, the lack of repatriates meant that local integration needed to be encouraged as another option for these refugees, and so this has been increasingly promoted. It must have come as a shock to the agency then when, in February 2008, several hundred Liberian women convened on a football field in Buduburam camp holding banners with slogans such as 'Integration? No! Repatriation plus $1000? Yes! Yes! Resettlement? Why not' (UNHCR had been offering $100 with repatriation). It seemed not to have occurred to UNHCR that the refugees might want repatriation, but that they would also want a say over the circumstances in which it was carried out....

September 11, 2008
World Politics Review

Abstract:

Stepped up U.S. drug enforcement and interdiction in Latin America, coupled with a falling dollar and a surging demand for cocaine on the streets of Europe, is leading to political and economic chaos across West Africa, where international narco-traffickers have established their most recent, and lucrative, staging grounds. In fact, the drug trade is fast turning large parts of the region into areas that are all but ungovernable -- with major implications for international security. "The former Gold Coast is turning into the Coke Coast," said a 2008 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "The problem is so severe that it is threatening to bring about the collapse of some West African states where weak and corrupt governments are vulnerable to the corrosive influence of drug money." Though hardly alone in West Africa, Guinea-Bissau, the world's fifth poorest country, with a population of 1.5 million, has for all intents and purposes become the textbook example of the African "narco-state." Due to its relative proximity to South America, its hundreds of miles of unpatrolled coastline, islands and islets, along with the fact that Portuguese is its lingua franca, Guinea-Bissau has been increasingly targeted by South American drug lords as a preferred traffic hub for European-bound cocaine, according to the UNODC. What's more, as citizens of a former Portuguese colony, Guineans do not need visas to enter that EU country, further facilitating the movement of drugs. Authorities there can do precious little about it. "Guinea-Bissau has lost control of its territory and cannot administer justice," declared Antonio Maria Costa, the UNODC executive director, in a statement before the U.N. Security Council in December. "There is a permeability of judicial systems and a corruptibility of institutions in West Africa," he added. "Guinea-Bissau is under siege. Literally under siege." Guinea-Bissau enjoys plenty of company among its neighbors: To varying degrees, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, Cape Verde, Guinea-Conakry, Togo, Benin, Senegal, South Africa, and other West African and sub-Saharan states (including already-challenged states like Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast and Liberia) are all beginning to feel the long reach of cocaine smuggling....

October 22, 2004


Abstract:

Website of the Africa Union.

August 26, 2004


Abstract:

After a feasibility study conducted throughout the sub-region, representatives of seven West African countries in 1998 officially launched WANEP in Accra Ghana. They created WANEP as a mechanism to harness peacebuilding initiatives and to strengthen collective interventions that were already bearing good fruits in Liberia, the Northern Region of Ghana, and Sierra Leone.

June 14, 2007
Centre for Democracy and Development

Abstract:

The project is a three-year one designed to contribute to the operationalisation of the African Security Sector Network activities, but with particular consideration for the specific context of the West African sub-region. Funded by the UK Department of International Development (DFID), the specific activities of the project include security sector reform in Liberia through king's College London (KCL) in collaboration with other organizations such as the Governance Reform Commission (GRC) in Liberia, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) in Nigeria and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF, Africa Security Dialogue Research (ASDR) in Ghana; establishment of Kofi Annan Centre for Conflict Transformation at the University of Liberia; research on Youth and Vulnerability in Africa with Liberia and Nigeria as the focus and capacity-building and advocacy workshops by CDD in collaboration with the West African Civil Society Forum (WACSOF)....

July 8, 2011
Center for Strategic and International Studies

Abstract:

This report, Ghana: Assessing Risks to Stability, is part of a series examining the risks of instability in 10 African countries over the next decade. The 10 papers are designed to be complementary but can also be read individually as self-standing country studies. An overview paper draws on common themes and explains the methodology underpinning the research. The project was commissioned by the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The papers in this study are not meant to offer hard and fast predictions about the future. While they sketch out some potential scenarios for the next 10 years, these efforts should be treated as thought experiments that look at how different dynamics might converge to create the conditions for instability. The intention is not to single out countries believed to be at risk of impending disaster and make judgments about how they will collapse. Few, if any, of the countries in this series are at imminent risk of breakdown. All of them have coping mechanisms that militate against conflict, and discussions of potential “worst-case scenarios” have to be viewed with this qualification in mind....

July 8, 2011
Center for Strategic and International Studies

Abstract:

This report provides an overview of the CSIS study series examining the risks of instability in 10 African countries over the next decade. The 10 papers are designed to be complementary but can also be read individually as self-standing country studies. The overview draws on common themes and explains the methodology underpinning the research. The project was commissioned by the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The papers in this series are not meant to offer hard and fast predictions about the future. While they sketch out some potential scenarios for the next 10 years, these efforts should be treated as thought experiments that look at how different dynamics might converge to create the conditions for instability. The intention is not to single out countries believed to be at risk of impending disaster and make judgments about how they will collapse. Few, if any, of the countries in this series are at imminent risk of breakdown. All of them have coping mechanisms that militate against conflict, and discussions of potential “worst-case scenarios” have to be viewed with this qualification in mind....

July 8, 2011
Chatham House

Abstract:

I consider it a singular honour to have been invited today by Chatham House to address this august forum. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which I represent, is a regional organisation which has, over the years, gained your attention only for the unfortunate reasons of state implosion and instability caused by bad governance and marginalisation. I therefore welcome the opportunity to throw further light on its objectives, challenges, and achievements, which factors have effectively brought together fifteen West African states in the enterprise of improving upon the living standards of 230 million people as well as integrating them.

The term ‘Chatham House Rule’ is today an internationally-accepted cliché that this Institute has contributed to international diplomacy discourse, a reference norm in rigorous and policy-oriented exchanges on global peace and security. I therefore view your invitation to lead today’s discourse about ‘Democracy in the context of Regional Integration in West Africa’ as an unique honour for me personally, and a recognition of ECOWAS as a leading brand in regional integration.

Ladies and gentlemen, the evolution of ECOWAS can only be properly understood against the backdrop of the fascinating history and circumstances of West Africa since establishing contact with the world beyond its borders. The fact that slavery, colonialism, as well as racial and economic marginalisation, had left an intrinsic yearning for freedom, unity and solidarity among peoples of African descent everywhere defines its wish to integrate its states and peoples....

July 5, 2011
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees // School of Oriental and African Studies

Abstract:

The international refugee regime presents repatriation as the most optimal, most feasible of the three durable solutions. Nevertheless, the number of studies which have followed up the process of the reintegration of returnees to their country of origin is scant. This paper will therefore investigate the repatriation of Liberian refugees from Ghana and their economic adjustments upon return using detailed case studies.

In early 2008, Liberian refugees in Ghana were in a state of transition from almost two decades of relatively stable conditions to a post-refugee situation. This change was due to refugees’ protests between February and April 2008 against the promotion of local integration by UNHCR for the remaining Liberian refugees in Ghana. In response to a series of demonstrations, the host government took strong actions against Liberian refugees, including deportations and the threat of invoking the cessation clause of refugee status.

After this turmoil, UNHCR launched a large-scale repatriation programme for the residual Liberian refugees in Ghana. Under the repatriation pressure from the host government and UNHCR, about 10,000 Liberian refugees repatriated to Liberia between April 2008 and March 2009.

The results of their return were mixed. Upon their arrival in Liberia, some settled in with relatively little stress whilst others confronted a series of daunting hardships. The process of integration experienced by these Liberian returnees, including the construction of new livelihoods in their country of origin, was largely influenced by their asset conditions. In particular, their levels of access to social networks in Liberia played a principal determinant role in their integration....

May 24, 2011
Security Council Report

Abstract:

This special research report provides an analysis of a set of new issues that have been emerging in the West African subregion and possible implications for the Security Council in the coming year(s). It identifies some key emerging threats to peace and security in the 16-state subregion and their linkages to existing security challenges. The report points to a key feature: the fact that some of the new threats are essentially criminal rather than political in nature. However, it explains also the growing political and security implications. The report also highlights action already taken by the Council to recognise these threats and considers options available to the Council to tackle these issues going forward.

The raw material for the study was derived from literature research; field research in a number of countries in the West African subregion (including Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria); and interviews in the region with diplomats, government officials and officials of relevant international intergovernmental bodies (e.g. UN Office in West Africa or UNOWA, UN Office for Drugs and Crime or UNODC, the Economic Community of West African States or ECOWAS and the AU), NGOs and academics....