Abstract:
Over the past decades, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
has a mixed record in conflict resolution in Africa. In some cases, ECOWAS demonstrated
its capabilities in conflict prevention and peace-making, but its conflict resolution efforts in
some countries ended up in failure. This research focuses on the conflict resolution efforts
of ECOWAS in Africa, and seeks to explain the following question: why did conflict
resolution efforts of ECOWAS ended up in failure in Burkina Faso?
Coup d‘état has always been a conflict trigger for the region and pose serious security
challenges to member states of ECOWAS. The case of Burkina Faso highlights that among
other factors, lack of leadership and collective will is the main factor leading to the failure
of conflict resolution of ECOWAS in Burkina Faso. ECOWAS proved in the case to be
incapable of intervening effectively in the coups in Burkina Faso. The reasons for this lack
of intervening capability include lack of leadership to exercise strategies of solving
conflicts, lack of sufficient budget to implement military coercion and meaningful
sanctions, institutional bureaucracy of ECOWAS fails to provide early warning of
coups,and lack of legal authoritative legitimacy.
The study concludes thatmember states of ECOWAS including Burkina Faso should
accept the check and balances or simply welcomes the supervision of power politics from
ECOWAS. Collective efforts in uprooting terrorism should be a priority.Political
inclusivity where all players including oppositions, civil societies and private sectors
should play collective role in national development.ECOWAS should ensure the
monitoring of constitutions of members and safeguard the implementation of regional
standards operational procedures, develop mechanisms of early warnings to mitigate any
political breakdown, and revise its treaty to include powers to enforce its decisions through
ECOMOG or parliamentary, so as to increases its leadership capability to peacefully resolve
disputes.
