West Africa recorded over 1,800 terrorist attacks in the first six months of the year resulting in nearly 4,600 deaths with extreme humanitarian consequences, and a top regional official said on Tuesday that’s just “a snippet of the horrendous impact of insecurity.
Omar Touray told the U.N. Security Council that half a million people in the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States known as ECOWAS are refugees and nearly 6.2 million are internally displaced. If there isn’t an adequate international response to the 30 million people ECOWAS assesses need food right now, he said, the number of people in need will increase to 42 million by the end of next month.Touray, who is president of the ECOWAS Commission, singled out the following drivers of insecurity in the region: terrorism, armed rebellion, organized crime, unconstitutional changes of government, illegal maritime activities, environmental crises and fake news.
He said the region is worried about the resurgence of the military, with three countries – Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea – under military rule. Touray added there have been a multiplicity of initiatives to tackle terrorism and insecurity which have had an impact on the ground, but there is a lack of coordination and ECOWAS wants to integrate the various initiatives into a regional plan of action. ECOWAS military chiefs of staff have held consultations to strengthen a regional standby force “in a manner that will enable it to support member states in the fight against terrorism and against threats to constitutional order,” he said. Touray said the military chiefs proposed two options, establishing a 5,000-strong brigade at an annual cost of $2.3 billion or deployment of troops on demand at an annual cost of $360 million. He reiterated the African Union’s request for African peace operations to receive funding from the U.N. regular budget, to which all 193 U.N. member states contribute.
