By Yussif Ibrahim/Florence Afriyie Mensah,
GNA
Bekwai (Ash), Jan. 20, GNA – The Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been asked to do more to fight
crimes on the borders of member states to help promote trade and regional
cohesion.
Stakeholders at a national consultation
workshop on ECOWAS Vision 2020, who made the call, said this was critical to
the regional integration process, which the ECOWAS had been championing over
the years.
The two-day workshop, held at Bekwai in the
Ashanti Region, was to evaluate the Vision 2020 to enable the ECOWAS to
adequately assess the milestone chalked in the discharge of its mandate.
Adopted in 2010, the ECOWAS Vision 2020
sought to create a borderless, peaceful, prosperous and coherent region built
on good governance, where people could access and exploit its enormous
resources through the creation of opportunities for sustainable development.
It was put together by the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration and attended by representatives from
Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, security agencies, religious
bodies and academia.
Participants also raised concerns about the
slow progress to economic union by ECOWAS and called for viable policy
initiatives that would improve the economic wellbeing of the people in West
African states.
Heads of States of the Regional Body must
show commitment to ECOWAS protocols and policy frameworks beyond their
meetings.
The participants also identified the
sovereignty of individual member states against that of ECOWAS as a major
challenge militating against regional integration and called for a broader
consultation to address the problem.
On electoral violence in the Sub-region,
they underlined the need for ECOWAS observer missions to be independent of the
ruling governments in their operations to make their observations more
credible.
The observer missions should also strengthen
their early warning and post-election mechanisms to reduce electoral violence
for a stable Sub-region.
The stakeholders advocated for the
development of railway in the ECOWAS Sub-region to facilitate transportation of
goods and services.
GNA