UN Office on West Africa and the Sahel: Briefing and Consultations
Tomorrow morning (20 December), the Security Council is expected to hold a briefing, followed by consultations, on West Africa and the Sahel. Special Representative and Head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS) Leonardo Santos Simão and a civil society representative are expected to brief. At the time of writing, a draft press statement, proposed by Sierra Leone and Switzerland (the co-penholders on the file), was being discussed by Council members. It appears that it focuses on the security, governance, and humanitarian challenges in the region.
Before the meeting, Council members that are supporters of the joint pledges related to climate, peace and security—France, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Switzerland, the Republic of Korea (ROK), the UK, and the US—are expected to hold a stakeout on climate, peace and security issues in West Africa and the Sahel. The US, the Council’s president this month, will deliver a statement highlighting the security challenges of climate change in the region and efforts to address these issues.
The threat of terrorism in West Africa and the Sahel is likely to be a focus of tomorrow’s discussion. The Secretary-General’s latest report on UNOWAS, which was issued on 2 December and covers the period between 1 July and 30 November, states that Al-Qaida affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) pose “the main threats to security in the Sahel and the wider West Africa region”.
While terrorism from these and other groups plagues much of West Africa and the Sahel, its growth has been especially striking in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. These countries are led by military juntas that came to power through coups d’état and jointly announced on 28 January that they were withdrawing from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), after the sub-regional bloc sought to pressure them to restore constitutional order. According to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), a non-profit research organisation which gathers and assesses data on political violence globally, reported fatalities across these three countries “reached a record-high” of 7,620 in the first half of 2024—a nine percent increase compared to the same period in 2023, 37 percent compared to 2022, and a “staggering” 190 percent compared with 2021.
Members may be interested in discussing and hearing more from Simão about regional and national efforts to address the security threat posed by terrorist groups. He may reiterate the Secretary-General report’s call for “the acceleration and full operationalization of the Accra Initiative and the ECOWAS Standby Force in line with its 2020-2024 action plan to combat terrorism in West Africa”. Simão might also address other collaborative efforts to counter terrorism in the region, including those of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), which is composed of forces from Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria that are fighting against the terrorist groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State-West Africa Province (ISWAP) in the Lake Chad Basin.
Members may also discuss current mediation efforts to convince Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—which created the Alliance of Sahel States, or l’Alliance des États du Sahel (AES), in September 2023 as a collective defence organisation—to reconsider their decision to withdraw from ECOWAS. In keeping with article 91 of the ECOWAS Revised Treaty of 1993, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger will cease to be members of ECOWAS on 29 January 2025, one year after they announced that they were leaving the sub-regional bloc. On 15 December, ECOWAS heads of state and government issued a communiqué at their summit in Abuja, Nigeria, in which they established a six-month transitional period (that is, until 29 July), during which the three countries could rejoin ECOWAS. President Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé of Togo and President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye of Senegal are leading the mediation efforts to encourage the AES countries to rejoin ECOWAS.
The Secretary-General’s report notes that Simão has “stressed the need for pragmatic and innovative approaches to regional collaboration to address the interlinked political and security challenges facing the Central Sahel region”. Tomorrow, members may be interested in learning more about Simão’s efforts to build bridges and develop trust between ECOWAS and the AES members to get them to work together to address these challenges.
While several Council members have been concerned about the unconstitutional changes of government in West Africa and the Sahel over the years, they are also likely to welcome the elections in the region that appear to have gone smoothly in recent months. There may, for example, be references to the presidential elections Mauritania (June) and Ghana (December) and the parliamentary elections in Senegal (November). Some members might also underscore the importance of enhanced women’s participation in decision-making processes, and in this respect, there may be calls for strengthening the implementation of national action plans related to women’s empowerment.
In addition to the stakeout before the meeting, the impact of climate change in West Africa and the Sahel will also be discussed at the meeting. Some members may recall the early December visit of members of the Informal Expert Group (IEG) on Climate, Peace and Security to the Nigerian part of the Lake Chad Basin. In addition to Mozambique and Switzerland, diplomats from Algeria, France, Malta, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and the UK also took part in the visiting mission, which was the IEG’s first visit to the field. During the visit, they met with a wide range of interlocutors, including UN officials, government officials, and civil society representatives. In their interactions, members learned how climate change has exacerbated conflict risks in the region and discussed strategies for building climate resilience.
