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ECOWAS and Regional Peacekeeping Integration in West Africa: Lessons for the Future

During the 1990s, West Africa was ravaged by conflicts that required ECOWAS to intervene by sending a regional military force, ECOMOG, into Liberia and Sierra Leone. This paper analyzes the lessons learned from ECOWAS’s military intervention in Liberia and Sierra Leone. It argues that, while ECOMOG faced daunting challenges—disagreements among ECOWAS member states, financial constraints, equipment and logistical problems—key lessons were learned that subsequently shaped the military and diplomatic interventions by ECOWAS in Côte D’Ivoire in 2003 and Togo in 2005, respectively. ECOWAS learned that the impartiality of an intervention force and leaders’ political will to intervene through financial and logistical support may be crucial to averting similar crises in the subregion.