Ministers to evaluate security in Mano River countries

Ministers from West African states will meet on Saturday in New York to evaluate the security situation in the countries of the Mano River Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) reported on Wednesday. The Mano River countries are Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The ministers - from Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo - make up a Mediation and Security Council which was created in 1999 in Lome, Togo, to monitor peace and security issues in West Africa.

They will discuss child protection issues as well as the outcome of a meeting on trafficking in persons, held last month in Ghana's capital Accra, ECOWAS said. They will also draft a protocol on democracy and good governance as a supplementary mechanism in conflict prevention, management, resolution, peacekeeping and security.

Meanwhile, a joint UN-ECOWAS meeting to identify priority areas for collaboration between the two institutions will take place in New York on Monday, ECOWAS said. This is a follow-up to a visit to West Africa on 6-27 March 2001 by a UN/ECOWAS inter-agency mission.

The officials plan to agree on ways to revitalise political cooperation and economic integration in the Mano River countries, which have been ravaged by years of insurgency, and review the work of the Secretary-General's task force on West Africa. The task force, which was proposed by the inter-agency mission, will serve as a mechanism for collaboration between the UN and ECOWAS. It will focus on recommendations to address specific problems in the sub-region that were identified during the mission, ECOWAS added.