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Warning whom, for which response?

Sadiki Koko
Published online: 23 May 2013.

To cite this article: Sadiki Koko (2013) Warning whom, for which response?, African Security Review,
22:2, 54-67, DOI: 10.1080/10246029.2013.792550

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10246029.2013.792550

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 African Security Review 22.2, June 2013, 54–67
Sadiki Koko is a doctoral
candidate with the
Department of Politics,
University of Johannesburg,
South Africa (cocosadiki@
gmail.com)

Warning whom, for which response?

Appraisal of the early warning and early
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response mechanism of the Economic

Community of Central African States
Sadiki Koko

In June 2000, the Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Economic
Community of Central African States (ECCAS) adopted the Protocol on the establishment
of the Peace and Security Council for Central Africa (COPAX), with its two technical struc-
tures, namely the Central African Multinational Force (FOMAC) and the Central African
Early Warning Mechanism (MARAC). MARAC is tasked with collecting and analysing data
for the early detection and prevention of conflicts and crises. It currently consists of the
Central Structure located at the ECCAS Executive Secretariat in Libreville (Gabon) and
31 Decentralised Correspondents spread throughout the ten member states of ECCAS.
This article assesses the performance of MARAC in the light of its assigned objectives.
Bearing in mind the peace and security challenges facing the central African sub-region,
the central argument of this article is that while the establishment of MARAC is com-
mendable, it flowed more from the logic and context of the establishment of similar
mechanisms on the African continent during the same period than from any displayed
capacity and/or readiness on the part of ECCAS to implement the recommendations due
to emanate from such a structure.

Keywords early warning, early response, conflict prevention, MARAC, ECCAS, central Africa, peace and security challenges

Introduction
The end of the Cold War brought about significant changes with regard to the nature and fre-
quency of armed conflicts on the African continent, as well as the capacity of African actors to
prevent, resolve, manage and transform them. Firstly, it led to the temporary ‘withdrawal’ of

ISSN 1024-6029 print / 2154-0128 online

© 2013 Institute for Security Studies
DOI: 10.1080/10246029.2013.792550
http://www.tandfonline.com
 Features 55

world powers from Africa, the very players that had helped contain conflicts on the continent
in the previous decades. Secondly, and closely linked to the point above, it led to a signifi-
cant increase in the number of intra-state armed conflicts on the continent. Thirdly, with the
withdrawal of the world powers amid an increase in the number of armed conflicts on the
continent, African players found themselves compelled to shoulder the greatest responsibility
of dealing with the many conflicts facing the continent.
Furthermore, it ought to be recalled that the increased responsibility on the part of
African players to resolve the continent’s conflicts was equally a consequence of the ex-
treme capacity stretch experienced by the United Nations (UN) in the early 1990s, as it
had to deal with a continuously increasing number of armed conflicts in virtually all world
regions. If anything, it is the reluctance on the part of the UN borne out of the situation de-
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scribed above that resulted in, among others, member states of the Economic Community
of West African States (ECOWAS) deploying peacekeeping missions in Liberia and Sierra
Leone without the requisite authorisation of the UN Security Council. In a similar vein,
the changing world environment following the end of the Cold War also prompted African
sub-regional intergovernmental organisations to develop peace and security architectures as
they became fully aware of their primary responsibility in addressing conflict-related issues
in their respective neighbourhoods. This latter development was consistent with ongoing
efforts within the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which not only sought to beef
up its own conflict resolution and management capacity (starting with the establishment
of the Mechanism for the Prevention, Management and Resolution of Conflicts in Africa
in 1993), but also encouraged its constituting Regional Economic Communities (RECs)
to set up similar structures, including early warning and early response mechanisms, at
regional levels.1
However, very quickly, African players (including the OAU) seeking to fill the gap left
by both the withdrawal of world powers and the reluctance of the UN realised the hard-
ships involved in managing, resolving and transforming conflicts. Gradually, they became
aware of the cost-effectiveness of conflict prevention, paving the way to the development
of early warning and early response policy frameworks within interstate bodies throughout
the continent.
Consistent with the dynamics described above, the Heads of State and Government of
the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) decided on 25 February
1999 to establish the Peace and Security Council for Central Africa (COPAX). A year later,
the organisation adopted the Protocol relating to the establishment of COPAX, defined as
a mechanism to promote, maintain and consolidate peace and security in Central Africa.
COPAX is ECCAS’s decision-making body in the area of peace and security. It therefore
comprises all ECCAS member states and can meet at heads of state and government as well
as ministerial levels. Furthermore, COPAX has an advisory body called the Defence and
Security Commission,2 while the ECCAS Executive Secretariat serves as its implement-
ing agency. Lastly, COPAX is equipped with two technical structures, namely the Central
African Multinational Force (FOMAC) and the Central African Early Warning Mechanism
(MARAC). The latter is tasked with collecting and analysing data for the early detection and
prevention of conflicts and crises. 3
This article assesses the achievements and shortcomings of MARAC in light of its ascribed
role as enshrined in the COPAX Protocol. Bearing in mind the peace and security challenges
facing the central African sub-region, the central argument of this article is that while the
establishment of MARAC is commendable, it flowed more from the logic and context of the
 56 African Security Review 22.2 Institute for Security Studies

establishment of similar mechanisms on the African continent during the same period than
from any displayed capacity and/or readiness on the part of ECCAS to implement the recom-
mendations that might emerge from a structure like MARAC. The next section presents an
overview of ECCAS and its member states.

ECCAS and its member states

ECCAS was established on 18 October 1983 by 11 states, namely Angola, Burundi,
Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, and São
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Tomé and Príncipe.4 It emerged from the amalgamation of the Central African Customs
and Economic Union (UDEAC)5 and the Economic Community of the Great Lakes States
(CEPGL).6 With its current ten member states, ECCAS has a combined land mass area of
6 641 500 square kilometres (approximately 22 per cent of the African continent), with a
total population of 138,5 million, approximately 13 per cent of the African population (see
Table 1).7
The establishment of ECCAS came as a response by Central African leaders to the
OAU’s recommendations as contained in the April 1980 Lagos Action Plan for the
Economic Development of Africa and the Final Act of Lagos. Both policy documents called
for the establishment of a pan-African common market by the year 2000, designed to lead
to a continent-wide economic community.8 In the view of African heads of state and gov-
ernment meeting in 1980 in the then Nigerian capital city, the establishment of new sub-
regional communities and the strengthening of existing ones were but the first of the two
phases expected to fast-track the materialisation of the African Economic Community.9
Unsurprisingly, all objectives contained in the founding treaty of the ECCAS focused on
political and socio-economic cooperation issues. More explicitly, the organisation’s main
objective was

to promote and strengthen harmonious co-operation and balanced and self-sustained

development in all fields of economic and social activity, particularly in the fields of
industry, transport and communications, energy, natural resources, tourism, education,
further training, culture, science and technology and the movement of persons, in order
to achieve collective self-reliance, raise the standard of living of its peoples, increase and
maintain economic stability, foster close and peaceful relations among Member States
and contribute to the progress and development of the African continent.10

The ECCAS treaty entered into force in December 1984 but the organisation registered
poor performance from the very start and throughout the remainder of the 1980s. Between
1992 and 1998, ECCAS remained largely dormant mainly due to financial difficulties,
a lack of trust, and the absence of common values among member states, but more im-
portantly due to the differences and competition among sub-regional leaders11 and their
shared reluctance to surrender a measure of national sovereignty towards a supranational
project that was likely to encompass binding rules and the possibility of interference in
their domestic affairs.12 Furthermore, at least seven out of the initial 11 member states of the
community (namely Angola, Burundi, the CAR, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, the DRC, and
Rwanda) were embroiled in civil wars during this period while at the same time involved
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Table 1 Some statistics and figures on the ECCAS member states

Ibrahim Index
Features

UNDP Peace of African

Freedom
GDP2 (per HD2 (2011 Index3 (2012 Governance4
Official Area1 (Square Population2 House
Country capita PPP $ ranking on a ranking on a (2012
language kilometres) (million 2011) Ratings5
2009) total of 187 total of 158 ranking out
(2012) 33
countries)* countries) of 52 African
countries)32

Angola Portuguese 1 246 700 19,6 5 812 148 (LHD) 95 40 (44%) Not Free

Burundi Kirundi, French 27 884 8,6 392 185 (LHD) 138 37 (45%) Partly Free

Cameroon French, English 475 442 20,0 2 205 150 (LHD) 97 36 (45%) Not Free

CAR French 622 984 4,5 757 179 (LHD) 151 48 (34%) Partly Free

Chad French, Arabic 1 284 000 11,5 1 300 183 (LHD) 145 50 (33%) Not Free

Congo-Brazzaville French 342 000 4,1 4 238 137 (MHD) 104 41 (43%) Not Free

DRC French 2 345 809 67,8 319 187 (LHD) 154 51 (33%) Not Free

Equatorial Guinea Spanish, French 28 051 0,7 31 779 136 (MHD) 87 44 (41%) Not Free

Gabon French 267 670 1,5 14 419 106 (MHD) 75 22 (54%) Not Free

São Tomé and

Portuguese 960 0,2 1 820 144 (LHD) – 11 (58%) Free
Príncipe
*
LHD = low human development; MHD = medium human development.
1
Available at the ECCAS official website, http://www.ceeac-eccas.org (accessed 1 December 2012).
2
See United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report 2011. Sustainability and equity: a better future for all, New York, NY: UNDP, 2011.
3
See Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), Global Peace Index 2012, London: IEP, 2012.
4
See Mo Ibrahim Foundation, 2012 Ibrahim Index of African Governance: summary, Swindon: Mo Ibrahim Foundation, 2012.
5
See Arch Puddington, Freedom in the world 2012: the Arab uprisings and their global repercussions, Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2012, http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/
files/inline_images/FIW%202012%20Booklet--Final.pdf (accessed 1 December 2012).
57

Source Author’s own compilation working with data from an array of sources.
 58 African Security Review 22.2 Institute for Security Studies

in reciprocal destabilisation activities. The organisation was only revived in February 1998,
coinciding with the expansion of its objectives beyond mere socio-economic and political
cooperation to encompass peace and security issues. This new orientation was confi rmed
during the 1999 Heads of State and Government Conference held in Malabo (Equatorial
Guinea), where four priority areas were identified, namely to develop capacities to main-
tain peace, security and stability, which are essential prerequisites for economic and social
development; to foster physical, economic and monetary integration; to develop a culture
of human integration; and to establish an autonomous financing mechanism for ECCAS.13
According to Meka, notwithstanding the economic integration objective enshrined in
the Abuja documents referred to above, the revival of ECCAS could be explained by two
main factors. Firstly, from a geopolitical point of view, it displayed the recognition by sub-
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regional leaders of the significance of Central Africa in either fostering or impeding con-
tinental stability and economic development. Secondly, it was a response to the increase in
the number of armed conflicts in the sub-region that tended to spill over from one country
to the others.14
Perhaps of importance beyond the objective motivations highlighted above may have
been the recognition by Central African leaders of the peace and security challenges facing
the sub-region, and that these ought to inform the formulation of ECCAS’s policies in that
regard. According to the International Crisis Group (ICG), the regional dimension of inse-
curity in Central Africa includes ethnic politics and cross-border ethnic allegiances, porous
borders, unequal distribution of natural resources, refugees and political exiles, cross-border
crime, arms and drugs trafficking, illegal migration and illegal fishing.15 By using a holistic
approach to security (encompassing both state and human security), the challenges to peace
and security in Central Africa can be broadened to include civil wars and unconstitutional
changes of government; autocratic rule; external interference; the proliferation of small
arms and light weapons; maritime insecurity along the Gulf of Guinea; election-related
violence; the spillover of conflicts from neighbouring regions; inadequate security sector
reform and post-conflict reconstruction; poverty, inequality and underdevelopment; envi-
ronmental degradation, food insecurity and tensions borne out of unequal access to scarce
resources (including land); high youth unemployment; uneasy cohabitation among social/
ethnic groups leading to inter-ethnic conflicts; and chronic diseases and inadequate access
to health care.
The decision to establish COPAX and the subsequent rolling out of its institutional struc-
tures should therefore have been designed to respond to the peace and security challenges
highlighted above, if it was to have any meaningful impact on the fostering of peace and
security in the region. This point is further discussed in the section below that seeks to locate
MARAC within the peace and security architecture of ECCAS.

MARAC within ECCAS’s peace and security architecture

As argued earlier, the inclusion of peace and security-related issues among the core objec-
tives of ECCAS coincided with the organisation’s revival in 1998 following several years of
inactivity. Two years later, the Conference of Heads of State and Government of ECCAS
adopted the Protocol on the establishment of COPAX. In the very preamble of the pro-
tocol, ECCAS’s heads of state and government emphasise that peace constitutes a crucial
ingredient to the achievement of the organisation’s objectives. Furthermore, they highlight
 Features 59

their deep concern regarding the proliferation and persistence of political crises and armed
conflicts in the sub-region, both of which constitute a major threat to peace, socio-economic
development, and the improvement of the social conditions of the masses. In an effort
to move beyond the restrictive state-centred approach to security, the heads of state and
government declared their awareness that democracy, good governance, and the strength-
ening of state institutions and the rule of law are essential to sustainable development and
conflict prevention.16
However, as may be perceived from the statements above, their embrace of human se-
curity only stops at political security, without explicitly expanding to the other six aspects,
namely economic, health, environmental, personal, community, and food security.17 Hence,
they define COPAX as the sub-regional political and military consultative body tasked with
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the promotion, maintenance and consolidation of peace and security.18 More specifically, the
COPAX Protocol defines the objectives related to peace and security as follows:

■ Prevent, manage and resolve conflicts

■ Undertake actions aimed at promoting, maintaining, and consolidating peace and security
within the sub-region
■ Work toward strengthening regional peace and security
■ Reduce areas of potential tensions and prevent the eruption of armed conflicts
■ Formulate confidence-building measures among member states
■ Promote policies aimed at the peaceful resolution of disputes
■ Implement crucial provisions relating to non-aggression and mutual assistance in the area
of defence
■ Strengthen sub-regional cooperation in the areas of defence and security
■ Contribute toward mediation efforts in crises and conflicts within and among member
states as well as with other non-member states
■ Formulate common policies with regard to peace maintenance and consolidation within
the sub-region
■ Coordinate member states’ efforts in addressing illegal migration
■ Coordinate member states’ policies with regard to the management of internally displaced
persons, refugees, and ex-combatants in accordance with the provisions of relevant inter-
national legal instruments
■ Propose measures designed to regulate the coordination and dispensation of humanitarian
assistance and set up the relating structures19

As argued earlier, in order to achieve the set of objectives mentioned above, COPAX is en-
dowed with two technical structures, namely FOMAC and MARAC. FOMAC is a non-per-
manent force consisting of military contingents from member states, whose mission is to un-
dertake peace, security and humanitarian relief missions in the sub-region,20 while MARAC
is tasked with collecting and analysing data for the early detection and prevention of conflicts
and crises. As per the COPAX Protocol, MARAC is set to be made up of: (1) the Central
Structure located at ECCAS’s headquarters in Libreville (Gabon) and comprising three bu-
reaus in charge of the monitoring and collection of information on the security situation in
the sub-region, information analysis and evaluation, and the compilation of the Central Africa
data base, as well as (2) national bureaus within member states comprising representatives of
government, parliament, agencies of international organisations, non-governmental organisa-
tions, civil society, and academic and research institutions.21 However, as further discussed
 60 African Security Review 22.2 Institute for Security Studies

Figure 1 COPAX in relation to MARAC

Conference of Heads of
State & Government

Council of Ministers

Defence & Security

Council
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Executive Secretariat

Deputy Secretary
General / DIHPSS

Liaison with civil Special Assistant to COPAX Secretariat

society unit
Management Secretariat

Regional Staff Directorate of Directorate of Political

Headquarters Human Security Affairs / MARAC

Central Structure / National Bureaus / DCs

Coordination Office

Angola

Burundi

Bureau I: Monitoring Bureau III: Compilation

Bureau II: Information Cameroon
& Collection of of Central Africa Data
Analysis & Evaluation
Information Base
CAR

Congo-Brazza.

Chad

DRC

E. Guinea

Gabon

São Tomé & P.

Source Author’s own drawing using information contained in the COPAX Protocol.
 Features 61

below, these structures as provided for in the COPAX Protocol are yet to be fully put in place
for a number of reasons, most of which have to do with the overall ineffectiveness of ECCAS
as an organisation. MARAC falls within the Directorate of Political Affairs, one of the three
directorates making up the Department of Human Integration, Peace, Security and Stability
(DIHPSS, see Figure 1).22

Assessing MARAC: achievements and shortcomings

Achievements
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The greatest achievement of MARAC as a structure within ECCAS’s peace and security
architecture lies in its very establishment, followed by its actual activation. The activation
of MARAC started in 2007 when the mechanism was allocated offices to accommodate its
newly designated director and selected experts. Besides its activation at the ECCAS head-
quarters in Libreville, MARAC has also established decentralised correspondents (DCs)
within individual member states. The DCs are conceived as interim mechanisms who are
to facilitate the establishment of national bureaus at a later stage. Their core missions con-
sist of providing weekly reports on the political, economic and security situation within a
specific country or location, alerting MARAC to an unfolding crisis in a particular country,
and working as a focal point in terms of information gathering and verification. They are
provided with the necessary equipment for their work, including laptops, printers and digi-
tal cameras. The DCs also receive a quarterly stipend to be mainly used for communication
needs and the maintenance of equipment. There are currently 31 DCs spread throughout
Central Africa, with four in the DRC and three in each of the remaining nine member
states. In each country, one DC is nominated by a state institution (generally from the
security cluster) and two (three for the DRC) are representatives of civil society (selected by
the ECCAS General Secretary among non-governmental organisations working in the field
of conflict prevention).
Since 2008, the activities of MARAC have focused on the production of the reports below
designed to inform ECCAS officials on the peace and security situation in the sub-region:

■ The Daily Monitoring: a daily compilation of press articles carried out by MARAC ana-
lysts relating to the overall security situation in the sub-region.
■ The Weekly Security Synthesis: a weekly report on the security situation in Central Africa.
As its name suggests, this report is a synthesis of the Daily Monitoring reports (produced
by MARAC staff within a specific week) and the weekly reports forwarded to by the
designated DCs.
■ The Monthly Security Report: an analytical report on the security situation in Central
Africa for a period of one month. It describes in detail and analyses the most salient and
imminent peace and security threats in the sub-region, while formulating guidelines on
appropriate preventive measures that need to be taken in order to avert crises.
■ The Geopolitical Review: an analytical report produced by MARAC every six months
for the United Nations Standing Consultative Committee on Peace and Security in
Central Africa.23
■ The Situation Report or Ad Hoc Analysis: an analytical report on an unfolding crisis in
a specific country or a number of countries within the sub-region. Its aim is to provide
 62 African Security Review 22.2 Institute for Security Studies

senior ECCAS officials with the necessary information on the particular crisis in order to
enable them to design the most appropriate early response.
■ The Information Alert: a short and descriptive report on a specific threat to peace and
security in one or more countries in the sub-region.

However, due to staff shortages within MARAC, only the Monthly Security Report and the
Geopolitical Review are produced from the suggested sequence, while all other reports are
produced on an ad-hoc basis.

Shortcomings or constraints
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Notwithstanding the ongoing efforts with regard to the full establishment of MARAC
as part of the peace and security architecture of ECCAS, the work of MARAC remains
constrained by a number of factors that continue to prevent it from emerging as a criti-
cal component within ECCAS’s institutional framework. These factors relate to the slow
establishment of MARAC, its inadequate personnel, the dominant state-centric approach
to security prevailing within ECCAS as an organisation, and the overall institutional weak-
ness of ECCAS.

Slow establishment of MARAC

Although the COPAX Protocol was adopted as far back as 2000, it was only in 2007
that MARAC was activated as an autonomous structure within the ECCAS Executive
Secretariat. But by launching a peace and security architecture only in 2000, ECCAS was
already lagging behind when compared to the Southern African Development Community
(SADC), 24 for instance, and taking into account the major crises which member states such
as Burundi, the CAR, the DRC, and Rwanda had experienced in the early 1990s. Still, this
slow establishment of MARAC is further compounded by its inadequate institutionalisa-
tion. In fact, as argued above, MARAC has not been able to set up the ten national bureaus
specified in the COPAX Protocol, thus hampering its performance and effectiveness. The
inability to set up national bureaus in earnest led ECCAS officials to establish the so-called
DCs; although the idea of establishing the DCs as interim mechanisms before the launch
of fully-fledged national bureaus seems justifiable and was taken as early as 2007, the first
DC teams were only established in 2010 in five countries, namely Burundi, Cameroon,
the CAR, Chad and the DRC. They were only extended to the other five member states
in 2012. 25
Lastly, the inadequate institutionalisation of MARAC – partly as a consequence of the
member states’ fear of possible interference from ECCAS in their internal affairs – has to be
approached within the political context in which MARAC was established, and taking into
consideration the political questions it was supposed to address. In fact, although the politico-
security situation in a number of member states (including Angola, Burundi, the DRC, and
Rwanda) had continued to improve by 2007, tensions still continued to characterise relations
between some member states. In a similar vein, virtually all ECCAS member states (with
the exception of São Tomé and Príncipe) had still to overcome serious deficits in terms of
national security, human rights and the rule of law, as well as political stability, participation
and democratic reforms. An effective performance from MARAC at this particular juncture
 Features 63

would have set the ECCAS Executive Secretariat on a collision course with the vast majority
of member states.

Inadequate personnel

MARAC, like the rest of ECCAS’s structures, faces a serious shortage of personnel. From
a total of seven experts in 2008/9, the Central Structure of MARAC currently comprises
merely three staff members, stretched across the three MARAC bureaus (Monitoring and
Collection of Information, Information Analysis and Evaluation, and Compilation of Central
Africa Database).26 The Executive Secretariat has, in theory, repeatedly acknowledged the ur-
gent need for the recruitment of additional staff members for MARAC and other implement-
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ing structures of COPAX.27 A proposal on the specific positions to be filled has since been
drafted and submitted to the relevant authorities – yet power centralisation and bureaucratic
hurdles continue to delay the recruitment process, in spite of ECCAS having secured the
necessary financial resources from the European Union (EU) to support these new positions.
At the time of writing, ECCAS was in the process of recruiting two analysts for MARAC,
as well as an expert in preventive diplomacy, a training expert, and a manager for the peace
and security programmes unit, in an effort to alleviate the manpower shortage within the
DIHPSS in general and MARAC in particular.28 Although this move can be regarded as a
step in the right direction, there is still a very long way to go before MARAC becomes ad-
equately equipped to deliver effectively on its mandate.

The dominant state-centric approach to security

Furthermore, MARAC’s problems are compounded by the dominant state-centric approach

to security that is prevailing within ECCAS. MARAC falls under the DIHPSS, which con-
stitutes one of the four departments making up the ECCAS Executive Secretariat.29 It is led
by a deputy secretary-general. However, in spite of the extension of the scope of its work to
encompass human security, the dominant thinking within the DIHPSS remains stuck in the
state-centric approach to security that is prevalent within ECCAS. True to its state-centric
(or rather military-centric) approach to security, the DIHPSS has since July 2012 been led
by General Guy-Pierre Garcia (from Congo-Brazzaville), who previously served as the chair
of the Regional Staff Headquarters (July 2006 to March 2012), thus acting as the overall
chief-of-staff of FOMAC (the Central African brigade of the AU African Standby Force).
Furthermore, while the Directorates of Human Security and Political Affairs/MARAC only
have four staff members each, the Regional Headquarters has always enjoyed a virtually full
complement of its personnel, currently amounting to over 20.30

Overall institutional weakness of ECCAS

In its 2011 report on the implementation of the peace and security architecture in Central
Africa, the ICG described ECCAS as a centralised intergovernmental organisation char-
acterised by unbalanced institutional structures still under construction, inconsistent fi-
nancial contributions of member states, a geopolitics of distrust and an absence of regional
leadership. 31
The weak institutionalisation of ECCAS impacts negatively on all of its constituent struc-
tures, including MARAC, in at least two ways. Firstly, it denies them the possibility to ‘take
 64 African Security Review 22.2 Institute for Security Studies

root’ and perform their duties in an effective and efficient manner as implementing structures
of ECCAS. Secondly, it combines with the concentration of power in the hands of heads of
state and government characteristic of the majority of the ECCAS member states to ensure
that ECCAS is simply the sum of its parts (member states). Insofar as MARAC is concerned,
this state of affairs not only hampers its ability to perform effectively but also contributes to
rendering many of its formulated recommendations and proposals obsolete. In fact, given that
it deals with security-related matters (a topic still surrounded by many taboos in most Central
African states), most of the recommendations regularly formulated by MARAC fail to gener-
ate any meaningful early response or action before full-blown crises actually erupt. This helps
to explain to a large extent the absence of ECCAS in the ongoing crisis situation in the DRC,
and its reactive and still inadequate response to the recent Seleka rebellion in the CAR. The
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overall institutional paralysis observed within the ECCAS Executive Secretariat is further
fuelled by the inconsistency of the Conference of Heads of State and Government, the very
supreme organ of the organisation, as recently illustrated by its inability to stick to its calen-
dar to hold an ordinary summit once every year. After its 14th ordinary summit in Kinshasa
(DRC) in October 2009, the Conference only held its 15th ordinary session in January 2012
in N’Djaména (Chad), over two years after it was due.

Underscoring the relevance of MARAC and the way forward

As its name suggests, an early warning and early response system is designed to alert an
institution or group of institutions to a threat (or a number of threats) in order to trigger
an early and effective response, so as to prevent the eruption of a full-blown crisis. The
relevance of such a system arises from the reality that conflict prevention is far more cost-
effective than conflict resolution and management, let alone transformation, especially for
underdeveloped African countries. An early warning and early response system is based on
a complex process involving information collection, sharing and analysis, and the identifica-
tion of intervention opportunities before a crisis becomes inevitable. The activation of such
a mechanism thus requires adequate human, financial and material resources indispensable
to effective information collection, sharing and analysis, and the implementation of an ad-
equate early response.
As a region, Central Africa is prone to insecurity and political instability. Since 1990, a
sizeable number of the ECCAS member states, including Angola, Burundi, the CAR, Chad,
Congo-Brazzaville, and the DRC, have experienced civil war. Failed coup attempts have also
been witnessed in Equatorial Guinea, while Cameroon and Gabon have both been embroiled
in election-related violence. Furthermore, the sub-region faces several other human-security-
related challenges requiring the adoption by ECCAS of a holistic approach to security (en-
compassing both state and human security dimensions) if the region is to achieve sustainable
peace and development in the years to come. Against this backdrop, the relevance of MARAC
within ECCAS becomes self-evident. It represents, in theory, a crucial tool in the hands of
the leaders of a sub-region faced with the dual challenge of weak regional integration and
daunting peace and security uncertainties.
However, while the establishment of MARAC within ECCAS is commendable, it does
not and cannot, on its own, necessarily guarantee the effectiveness of ECCAS with regard
to its capacity to proactively address peace and security threats in Central Africa. Instead,
a number of actions ought to be taken by Central Africa’s Heads of State and ECCAS’s
 Features 65

senior officials for MARAC to effectively fulfil the duties bestowed upon it by the COPAX
Protocol. Firstly, there is a need for the Central African states and ECCAS as an institu-
tion to truly embrace a holistic approach to security, encompassing both state-centric and
human security dimensions, and readjust the mandate and work of MARAC to fit this ori-
entation. 32 Secondly, there is a need for member states and ECCAS to put in place all the
structures of the DIHPSS as required by its policy documents, filled with adequate personnel
and endowed with the necessary financial and logistical resources. To this end, the ECCAS
Executive Secretariat should fast-track both the recruitment of staff within MARAC and the
full establishment of the national bureaus, as specified in the COPAX Protocol. Of course,
for all the recommendations formulated above to be effective and thus enable ECCAS to
perform effectively and efficiently in the area of early warning and early response, the heads
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of state and government of ECCAS ought to enhance mutual trust among them and genu-
inely commit to surrendering part of their national sovereignty to the sub-regional body. This
radical attitudinal change, accompanied by meaningful financial and political support of the
ECCAS Executive Secretariat, constitutes the prerequisite to the construction of a successful
collective sub-regional entity in Central Africa.

Acknowledgements
This research has greatly benefited from firsthand information obtained directly from a num-
ber of anonymous respondents within the ECCAS Executive Secretariat. This author would
like to convey thanks to all of them.

Notes
1 See Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), Protocol relating to the establishment of a mutual security pact
in central Africa, 2000, Malabo: ECCAS, Preamble, paragraph j.
2 The Commission consists of Chiefs-of-Staff of national armies, police chiefs, experts from the ministries of foreign
affairs, defence, interior/security, and any other national experts the Commission deems necessary to call. Its main task
is to advise COPAX on the administrative, technical and logistical dimensions and needs of ECCAS’s peacekeeping
operations.
3 ECCAS, COPAX Protocol 2000, Article 21.
4 Although Angola was among the founders of ECCAS, the country only maintained an observer status within
the organisation until 1999, when it became a full member. Furthermore, Rwanda left ECCAS in June 2007, citing
among other reasons financial constraints, the recommendation of the African Union (AU) to African countries
to reduce multiple memberships in sub-regional organisations, and the need for the country to focus its efforts
on its priority trading region, namely East Africa; see Anastase Gakire, Le Rwanda quitte la Communauté des Etats
d’Afrique centrale, La Ligue des droits de la personne dans la région des Grands Lacs (LDGL), 2007, http://www.ldgl.org/spip.
php?article1737 (accessed 29 November 2012). But beyond these diplomatically sound causes, the real motives behind
Rwanda’s withdrawal had to do with its doubt about the future of the organisation and its distrust of an organisation
that it suspected to be under the influence of France; see International Crisis Group (ICG), Implementing peace and
security architecture (I): Central Africa (Africa Report No181), 7 November 2011, http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/
Files/africa/central-africa/181%20Implementing%20Peace%20and%20Security%20Architecture%20-%20I%20-%20
Central%20Africa%20ENGLISH (accessed 29 November 2012), 17.
5 The Central African Customs and Economic Union (UDEAC) was established in December 1964 and regrouped the
former French colonial territories of Central Africa or the so-called French Equatorial Africa, comprising Cameroon,
the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, and Gabon.
6 The Economic Community of the Great Lakes States (CEPGL) was established in September 1976 and comprises the
Belgian former colonies of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Rwanda.
 66 African Security Review 22.2 Institute for Security Studies

7 See Angela Meyer, Economic community of central African states, in Giovanni Finizio, Lucio Levi, Nicola Vallinoto
(eds), The democratization of international organizations: first international democracy report 2011, Moncalieri: Centre for Studies
on Federalism, 2011, 3.
8 See Angela Meyer, L’intégration régionale et son influence sur la structure, la sécurité et la stabilité d’Etats faibles.
L’exemple de quatre Etats centrafricains, Unpublished PhD thesis, Institut d’etudes politiques de Paris, 2006, 218–219.
9 The second phase related to the steps leading to the establishment of a continental common market.
10 Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), Treaty establishing the Economic Community of the Central
African States, 1983, Libreville: ECCAS, Article 4.1.
11 See, for instance, ICG, Implementing peace and security architecture (I), 4–5.
12 See Meyer, Economic community of central African States, 5. Laurie Nathan found almost the same reasons behind the
difficulties for the emergence of a collective security regime in southern Africa; see Laurie Nathan, The absence of common
values and failure of common security in southern Africa, 1992–2003 (Crisis States Working Paper no.50), London: London School
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of Economics (LSE), 2004, 2–3.

13 Commission de l’Union Africaine, Etat de l’intégration en Afrique, Addis Ababa: Commission de l’Union Africaine, 2011,
100. See also Meyer, Economic community of central African States, 5–6.
14 Elie Mvie Meka, Architecture de la sécurité et gouvernance démocratique dans la CEEAC, Yaoundé: Presses Universitaires
d’Afrique, 2007, 57.
15 ICG, Implementing peace and security architecture (I), 2–4.
16 See ECCAS, COPAX Protocol 2000, Preamble, paragraphs h, m, and n.
17 Of course, one cannot overlook the fact that many of the security challenges outlined above fall under the purview of
human security which, as a concept, was not yet widely discussed in Africa at the time of the adoption of the COPAX
Protocol in 2000. Still, such an argument cannot suffice to absolve ECCAS and other African policy-makers, since the
concept of human security was introduced in the mainstream of international political debate by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) as early as 1994.
18 ECCAS, COPAX Protocol 2000, Article 2.
19 ECCAS, COPAX Protocol 2000, Article 4.
20 However, it ought to be noted that FOMAC also constitutes the central African brigade of the evolving African Standby
Force of the AU. Within this wider framework, FOMAC will deploy at AU’s request within central Africa and in any
other sub-region on the continent.
21 See ECCAS, COPAX Protocol 2000, Article 21. See also ECCAS, Decision No 09/ECCAS/CHSG/02 to adopt the standing
orders of the Central African Early Warning Mechanism (MARAC), 2002, Article 2.
22 The clarification regarding the institutional position of MARAC only occurred in 2009, two years after it was
first established. The two other directorates of the Department of Human Integration, Peace, Security and Stability
(DIHPSS) are Human Security and Regional Staff Headquarters.
23 The Committee was established in May 1992 by the UN Secretary-General. It is made up of representatives of regional
member states and its secretariat is currently run by the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA).
The overarching objective of the Committee is to promote stability and security in central Africa through preventive
diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building. Since the adoption of the COPAX Protocol in 2000, the
Committee has played a meaningful role in the process relating to the gradual establishment of ECCAS’s peace and
security architecture; see Commission de l’Union Africaine, Etat de l’intégration en Afrique, 102–103.
24 In fact, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) established its Organ on Politics, Defence and
Security Co-operation (OPDS) in June 1996. It is tasked with supporting the achievement and the maintenance of
security and the rule of law in the SADC region. However, it ought to be admitted that the SADC was the only sub-
regional organisation on the continent to have established such a structure at the time. Even the Economic Community
of West African States (ECOWAS) only started establishing a peace and security architecture in 1999, in spite of its
peacekeeping deployments in Liberia and Sierra Leone some years earlier.
25 Anonymous staff member of the ECCAS Executive Secretariat, personal communication, 21 November 2012.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 See ECCAS’s official website, http://www.ceeac-eccas.org (accessed 18 February 2013).
29 The other three departments are dedicated to Physical, Economic and Monetary Integration; Social and Cultural
Integration; and Programmes, Budget, Administration and Human Resources.
30 Anonymous staff member of the ECCAS Executive Secretariat, personal communication, 21 November 2012.
 Features 67

31 ICG, Implementing peace and security architecture (I).

32 There is need to acknowledge the existence of the Directorate of Human Security within the DIHPSS, alongside
the Directorate of Political Affairs/MARAC and the Regional Staff Headquarters. The directorate is tasked with
elections and good governance; justice and human rights; fight against crime and free movement of people. The
directorate currently has four staff members with three of them working on small arms and light weapons, and one
on elections.
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