Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) – Peace and Security Architecture

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ECCAS/CEEAC Secretariat
BP 2112
Libreville, Gabon

Tel: +241-73 3547/8

Website: http://www.ceeac.org

Mr. Sebastien Ntahuga, Director of MARAC

Description

On the basis of a desire to form a wider economic community, ECCAS—better known by its French acronym Communauté Économique des États de l’Afrique Centrale (CEEAC)—was established in October 1983 by leaders of the then Central African Customs and Economic Union (UDEAC) and members of the then Economic Community of the Great Lakes States (CEPGL). ECCAS member states are Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and São Tomé and Principe. ECCAS has overlapping membership with the Central African Economic and Monetary Union (CEMAC), which replaced UDEAC. Chad, CAR, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and São Tomé and Príncipe have dual membership in ECCAS and CEMAC, while Angola, Burundi, DRC and Rwanda also belong to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Angola and the DRC are also members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

ECCAS aims to raise the standard of living of its populations and maintain economic stability through harmonious cooperation. Its ultimate goal is to establish a Central African Common Market. Its inability to intervene in the proliferation of intractable conflicts in the sub-region, largely the result of a general lack of political will among member states, condemned ECCAS to irrelevance until October 1999, when it signed the Protocol on Relations between the AEC and the RECs, establishing itself as a building block of the African Economic Community (AEC). At a June 1999 summit, four organizational priorities were identified: to develop capacities to maintain peace, security and stability, which are essential prerequisites for economic and social development; to develop physical, economic and monetary integration; to develop a culture of human integration; and to establish an autonomous financing mechanism.

Conceptually, ECCAS’s peace and security architecture is similar to those of ECOWAS and SADC (see separate profiles). A non-aggression pact was signed in September 1999, giving renewed impetus to peace-building efforts. Earlier in the same year, ECCAS member states created the Council for Peace and Security in Central Africa (COPAX) as the main structure for the promotion, maintenance and consolidation of peace and security in Central Africa. COPAX has three key technical organs: the Central African early warning system (MARAC), which collects and analyses data for the early detection and prevention of crises; the Defence and Security Commission (CDS), a technical planning and advisory body made up of chiefs of staff and commanders-in-chief of police and gendarmerie forces of each member state; and the Central African multinational force (FOMAC), a standby force to comprise contingents made up of military, police and civilians from each ECCAS member state. In line with the African Union plan for an Africa Standby Force by 2010, FOMAC will constitute the Central African brigade, or CENTBRIG.

ECCAS organs are the Conference of Heads of State and Government, Council of Ministers, COPAX, the Defense and Security Committee (which prepares COPAX’s decisions), General Secretariat, Court of Justice, and Consultative Commission. The ECCAS General Secretariat is headed by a secretary-general elected for four years, backstopped by three assistant secretaries-general. Within the General Secretariat, peace and security issues programming is led by the Department of Human Integration, Peace, Security and Stability (DIHPSS). ECCAS soon hopes to operationalize a network of central African parliamentarians, established in 2000, and a Human Rights and Democracy Centre, inaugurated in 2001, to ensure civil society involvement in ECCAS’s peace-building efforts.

Track Record

With a population of some 110 million people, covering a surface area of 6 million square km, and considering the sheer scale of the endemic instability and conflict that has plagued the sub-region, particularly in the past two decades, ECCAS’s challenges are considerable. Four of its member states—Rwanda, Burundi, DRC and Angola—have barely emerged from what ranked among Africa’s worst and most protracted violent conflicts. Chad, CAR, and other member states remain unstable. The sub-region’s vast mineral wealth, a contradiction amidst profound poverty, has attracted strong external interest and engagement that has more often than not exacerbated conflict and deepened instability. Structural problems such as profound social inequalities and poor governance also continue to underpin instability in Central Africa. In light of these realities on the ground, and aside from two areas, ECCAS has not yet established a strong track record.

One relative success story has been ECCAS’s growing effectiveness in election monitoring and assistance. In 2006 ECCAS played an active role in monitoring the presidential elections in DRC and São Tomé and Principe, as well as in the legislative elections in Gabon. In DRC, ECCAS set up a dedicated office, headed by a special representative, to monitor the elections and the process of political transition. Plans are underway to monitor forthcoming legislative elections in 2007 and 2008 in Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon and Angola. Observer missions are in the process of being designated, and ECCAS hopes to provide technical assistance to the national electoral commissions in the three countries concerned.

The ECCAS mechanism encourages multi-sector collaboration with all stakeholders in peace and security issues in central Africa, with Article 4 stating that “the coordinator of MARAC shall work in close cooperation with national networks, as well as United Nations Organizations, the AU, and other agencies which may assist in the accomplishment of his/her mission”. However, and despite efforts from within DIHPSS to push for ECCAS-CSO partnership, bolstered by EU funding (see below), there had been little headway on this front. In stark contrast, ECCAS works successfully and in close collaboration with the UN system, particularly on small arms and light weapons.

Challenges

ECCAS’s challenges in the peace and security domain are interlinked and endemic of its broader constraints.

The first is the snail’s pace at which the peace and security architecture has been put in place. To date, COPAX and its organs have yet to be fully established. FOMAC, including the designated Central Africa Brigade of the Africa Standby Force, is still in the early stages—although better staffed than other organs, with staff in place at PLANELM (the regional military staff hub), training ongoing and procedure, concepts and other material already prepared. Progress on the military and police fronts is far in advance of work in putting in place civilian elements of FOMAC. As is the case in other RECs, training criteria are still being developed to ensure a harmonized force that cuts across countries, and there are plans to develop three centers of excellence. Discussions on the logistics needed for CENTBRIG are underway while various elements of the embryonic force have been identified as a result of a major comprehensive military exercises undertaken in Cameroon in 2006.

Second, ECCAS is chronically understaffed, as manifested by the fact that the Director of MARAC, head of the early warning observatory and two more staff members only begun work in March 2007. That ECCAS plans to have 20 staff members in place by 2010 demonstrates the scale of the human capacity problem. The challenge of identifying well-trained human resources in the sub-region looms large. An overall lack of capacity for planning constitutes a critical weakness in the Secretariat in general and in DHIPSS in particular. Another constraint is the lack of a culture of information exchange.

Third, ECCAS is unable to effectively mobilize sufficient resources to fund its work—partly because its internal capacity is weak, and partly because of a lack of political will among member states. Budgeting is insufficient and unstable, with the FCFA 260,000,000 (approximately US$550,000) allocated to peace and security in 2007 subject to constant change and yet to be approved by ECCAS heads of state. It should be noted that this amount does not include staff and administration costs, and does not cover PLANELM.

A fourth and related challenge is lack of political will at the highest levels of ECCAS. According to experts, this can partly be attributed to the lack of hegemony in the Central Africa region (such as Nigeria in ECOWAS and South Africa in SADC) that can push the ECCAS agenda forward and take the lead in funding its operations.

As with other sub-regional treaty-based organizations, ECCAS is faced with endemic non-payment of dues by member states. In 2004, and to address this problem, ECCAS leaders instituted a Contribution Communautaire d'Integration (CCI), a 0.7 percent tax on all imports emanating from third party countries. However, the scheme has taken off slowly, and is not yet operational in a number of countries. The practice of relying on external funding to meet core organizational and community mandates leaves ECCAS open to dependence on external resources.

The EU is the biggest donor, providing two different funding streams. The first is the EU Assistance Project in Conflict Prevention, part of the 9th European Development Fund (EDF) regional program, comprising € 4 million for general assistance to DIHPSS programming and coordination; operationalizing MARAC; capacity-building in political and diplomatic action; and strengthening of civil society and development of CSO-ECCAS cooperation. The second is the EU Peace Facility to the AU, which consists of a first tranche of € 7.5 million (including € 670.000 to ECCAS for MARAC and a liaison office in Addis), and a second tranche of € 20 million of which € 2.5 million is for support to MARAC, the Regional Brigade and PLANELM.

Another important source of funds is the African Development Bank, which in April 2006 provided an estimated US$4 million over 3 years to help strengthen the ECCAS General Secretariat so as to better enable it to lead regional integration efforts in Central Africa. In May 2005, the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) provided a multi-year grant of US$2.3 million to reinforce ECCAS’s institutional capacity, operationalize the CCI, strengthen financial capacity, and bolster infrastructure, among other objectives. France, which has a track record of supporting military interventions and peacekeeping operations in Central Africa, provides ongoing military support to ECCAS that includes peacekeeping training, the development of regional centers of excellence, and the deployment of a military adviser who is helping develop FOMAC’s vision and capacity. Canada is also believed to be considering support for the centers of excellence, particularly in policing.

Opportunities

The end of fighting in several ECCAS countries provides a major window of opportunity to build peace and ensure post-conflict reconstruction and development in a sub-region that has been largely ignored by traditional donors. Overall, investment in ECCAS’s peace and security architecture could have a knock-on effect that could benefit the community more broadly.

A clear entry point for private foundations would be to help deepen civil society’s engagement with ECCAS around peace and security and other aspects of its mission. Such support could seek to establish something similar to the West African Civil Society Forum (WACSOF) in West Africa (see ECOWAS and WACSOF profiles). The EU Project already includes funding to strengthen the ECCAS-CSO interface and build capacity, and private foundation funding could ensure that existing efforts achieve critical mass.

Building ECCAS’s own institutional capacity is a critical second area in which private foundations could potentially intervene. Current efforts to address the chronic shortfall in human, technical and institutional capacity are in their infancy and have by and large been slow to come on stream. It should however be borne in mind that it will take a year or two before the basic capacity is in place to engage effectively with potential as well as existing partners. As such, and in developing strategies of assistance, close attention should be paid to ECCAS’s absorptive capacity.