"After their independence, African countries undertook to establish sub-regional organisations in order to join their efforts towards improving the living standard of their populations. Primarily vested with economic objectives, these sub-regional organisations, aware that economic development cannot be attained withouth peace, security and political stability, are more and more involved with political issues, especially since the 'democratic wind' of the early 1990s. It is therefore interesting to study how sub-regional integration as an external factor affects democracy domestically, that is to contemplate to what extent this sub-regional integration is contributing to the strengthening of democracy in Africa, and to research ways of enhancing this contribution. ... The study is structured into four main chapters. The introductory chapter contains the research design. The second chapter is devoted to an overview of sub-regional integration. It examines the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), but without losing sight of other groupings. The third chapter analyses the way the ECOWAS is dealing with the issue of democratic consolidation. It is interested in the question of whether the ECOWAS has an express policy and whether it has set standards as regards democratic consolidation in West Africa and, if so, how effective this policy and these standards have been so far. The fourth chapter is devoted to summary, conclusion and recommendations." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2005. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

Thesis M.M. Finance and Investment, Faculty of Commerce, Law And Management (WBS), 2016 / This study seeks to identify and deepen the understanding of the root causes of infrastructure deficit with emphasis on the West African region. Amongst its objectives, the study explores tailored-approaches to infrastructure financing. The study takes direction from literature and similar work in the recent past and employs both conceptual and empirical - trend as well as cross correlation analysis - techniques in addressing its objectives. Literature points to Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) as the most suitable model for infrastructure finance provisioning which this study adopts. The study tests the significance of PPP and in so doing makes recommendations to policy-makers on key factors or barriers such as political stability and the absence of violence, rule of law, regulatory quality, etc. that require attention to enable the efficient use of PPP to mitigate the infrastructure gap within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the resulting consequences. / XL2018

Development economists generally argue that poor countries at their early stages of development are often faced with limited domestic resources for development, and can therefore borrow from the developed nations to boost their rate of growth and development. This financing gap problem, which is based on the Harrod-Domar growth theory, has made developing countries, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, to accumulate large amount of external debt that they could no longer sustain. Moreover, there is now a growing concern that the large external debt service payment is retarding economic growth and investment in the heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs), while also displacing current expenditure in priority sectors like health, education, and social infrastructure. This dissertation therefore, examines the impact of external debt on economic growth and investment in ECOWAS Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1980-1999. Unlike the traditional debt and growth studies that use a-spatial methods, this study employs spatial autoregressive growth and investment models to determine the effects of spatial interaction and spatial dependence among ECOWAS countries during the period of the crisis. It is obvious that countries are spatial entities that interact with one another, and as such, the growth trends in one country may actually depend on the growth trajectories of others. Based on the above assumptions, the models use external debt service and total debt stock ratios, which are extracted from the World Bank and African Development Bank databases, as key or control variables plus other explanatory variables. The maximum likelihood estimation of both models yield mixed results across time. The results indicate the presence of both positive and negative spatial dependence in ECOWAS countries across time. While external debt service ratio is found to have an inverse relationship with economic growth in most periods under investigation, the total debt stock to GDP ratio only affect growth in fewer periods than expected. With regards to public investment, the external debt service ratio is found to have no impact on public investment in ECOWAS countries. However, the total debt stock to GDP ratio is found to have a negative relationship with public investment in most periods, which suggest that relying on foreign capital to boost growth and investment could be counter productive in Sub-Saharan Africa. (author's abstract)

No description available.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Münster (Westfalen), 2005.

Magister Philosophiae - MPhil

"Ideally, peacekeeping operations demonstrate the concern of the international community in situations of instability or conflict arising between or within states. They are conceived to bring about peace and 'ensure the effective promotion and protection of [human] rights'. As a result, peacekeeping operations as well as peacekeepers are expected to comply with standards of human rights and humanitarian law. With respect to the Economic Community of West African States Cease-Fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), its intervention in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, and Côte d'Ivoire have been generally welcomed as a response to barbaric and devastating wars in West Africa. However, the observation of ECOMOG missions reveals several instances of violations of human rights and humanitarian law committed by ECOMOG peacekeepers. These violations include attacks against civilians, summary executions, rapes, torture, looting, etc. In other words, the saviours have turned into violators of rights. While these violations have provoked concern and indignation, few measures have been taken to address the problem, hold peacekeepers accountable and prevent abuses in the future. ... This study is divided into five chapters. Chapter one provides, among other, the background of the study, the statement of the research problem and the significance of the study. Chapter two gives an insight into the creation, structure, mechanisms and evolution of ECOMOG as the peacekeeping organ of ECOWAS. Chapter three examines the basis for the applicability of human rights and international humanitarian law to peacekeepers and shows the violations committed by the ECOMOG peacekeepers since 1990. Chapter four analyses the responses to abuses committed by ECOMOG peacekeepers. It discusses the national, regional and universal responses to these abuses. It investigates both prevention and accountability mechanisms existing to address abuses committed by ECOMOG peacekeepers. It also explores some potential accountability and prevention mechanisms. Finally, chapter five makes some concluding remarks and suggests specific recommendations for the improvement of the existing responses." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2004. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

On 18 November 2010, the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) held that legal reforms adopted by Senegal in 2007 to incorporate international crimes into the national Penal Code to enable its domestic courts to prosecute Hissene Habre for, among others, crimes against humanity committed in Chad twenty years before, violated the principle of legality, specifically the principle against non-retroactivity of criminal law. The court held that such crimes could be prosecuted only by a hybrid tribunal with the jurisdiction to try Habre for the international crimes based on general principles of law common to the community of nations. Some scholars opined that the ECOWAS decision was wrong, stating that the crimes in question were criminalised already under international law and that Senegal‟s legal reforms simply served jurisdictional purposes. Given that, as a core component of the principle of legality, the role of non-retroactivity is to prohibit the creation of new crimes and their application to past conduct, the opinions of such scholars may hold true. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2011. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/ / nf2012 / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

The paper examines through a legal analysis of some articles of the Cote d’Ivoire Stepping Stone Agreement, how ECOWAS can strengthened its approach in negotiating a comprehensive EPA for the region. These articles are scrutinized with a special focus on market access as to point out fields that need to be re-thinked with regard objectives set out in the agreement. It is argue that current bilateral and multilateral Trade and Investment Agreements are shrinking in their legal framework the policy space need for development in countries that need it the most. This study, underlines the fact that the legal provisions contain in the Cote d’Ivoire IEPA do reduce actually its ability to set up policies tool aim at achieving development goals. It is the sustainability of the IEPA legal provisions that is questioned under this topic with regard to sensitive issues such as the safeguard measures, the stand still clause, the MFN clause, the Rules of Origin etc….. In so doing, the analysis reveals as well the ambiguity of the IEPA relationship with the Cotonou Agreement and the multilateral trade rules of the WTO. This ambiguity is highlighted in an attempt to drawn the attention of the region on the fact that; if there is indeed a need to update the Economic Partnership Agreement currently negotiating with the EC, this cannot be done without first of all updating the negotiating approach of the region. In fact, its weak bargaining approach coupled with that overwhelming of the EC has resulted in the agreement currently on the table. Substantial changes can be made with this regard by acknowledging the insufficiencies in the legal framework of the IEPA but also in learning lesson from mistakes the region itself and Cote d’Ivoire have done in negotiating EPAs and its Interim version. Thus, since EPAs often triggered the debate on liberalization and what it may carry in terms of consequences on developing countries’ economies, examples of countries that took a different step toward liberalization and whose current situation may be use as a testimony by ECOWAS are quoted. Finally, propositions are made to ECOWAS region as to enlarge current development space while battling for more flexibility under the EPA. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Centre for Human Rights / unrestricted

No description available.