In a bid to promote and consolidate peace and security in the Cassamance region, experts at a four day international meeting on ECOWAS conflict reconciliation and peace building in the region.

Speaking to journalist at end of the meeting held at the Paradise Suites Hotel, Dr. Abdel Fatou Musa, ECOWAS conflict prevention adviser said it is high time for all the communities, local groups together with ECOWAS agencies on the ground in Cassamance to involve all the people in the process of reconciliation and peace building.

According to him, the Cassamance crises, been there since independence will be given guidelines under the new ECOWAS conflict prevention framework as to how some of the approaches can be adopted for such situations in the Sub-region.

“There is no country in West Africa where you cannot find local tensions and most of the time, the issue of sovereignty makes it impossible for others to intervene in those problems because they are supposed to be internal”, he said, adding that we are living in a globalised world where the records of seemingly local tensions could be far beyond the local borders.

Dr. Musah added that under the conflict prevention framework, ECOWAS seeks to engage all stakeholders within member countries and the decentralised agencies of ECOWAS to build up energy to launch a dialogue in order to resolve any conflict, looked at the causes and see how can they be resolve.

“Ecowas works on the basis of consensus and our main methodology in dialogue. We have a firm programme to involve experts from member states in our discussions”, he added. He further reveal that he framework document is divided into fifteen components that identified areas of intervention.

Also speaking earlier Dr. Muhammed Faal, conflict prevention expert said ECOWAS is moving from the concept of conflict mediation, management to conflict prevention. “Before it use to be on mediation, peace building but owing to the lack to active was within the sub-region we are now focusing on the preventive measure.