Community of the Sahel-Sahara States

Map of the member states

The Community of the States of the Sahel and the Sahara ( English Community of Sahel-Saharan States ; French Communauté des Etats Sahélo-Sahariens ; CEN-SAD , Arabic تجمع دول الساحل والصحراء, DMG taǧammuʿ duwal as-sāḥil wa-ṣ-ṣaḥrāʾ ) is a community of African states that aims to establish a free trade area . It is the largest regional organization in Africa in terms of membership, population and area. Efforts to establish a separate community of states within the Sahel zone go back to 1959, 1977 and 1981, respectively.

History and Development

The Community of Sahel-Sahara States was founded by six countries in Tripoli on February 4, 1998 on the initiative of the former Libyan President Muammar al-Gaddafi , and by 2009 it had grown to 29 member states. One of their main goals is to promote economic integration through the free movement of people and goods within their area and to establish a free trade zone. A joint bank for investment and trade ( Banque Sahélo-Saharienne pour l'Investissement et Commerce BSIC) is also to be established. In 2000 it officially classified the predecessor organization of the African Union, the OAU , as an economic community for the reasons mentioned above.

Bodies of CEN-SAD, the Conference of Heads of State (Conference of the Heads of States); the Executive Council (Executive Council); the General Secretariat (Secretariat General) and the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (Economic, Social and Cultural Council / ESCC).

At the international level, CEN-SAD has had observer status in the UN General Assembly since 2001 , and through association and cooperation agreements with the UN Economic Commission for Africa , with specialized UN agencies such as UNDP , WHO , UNESCO , FAO and the Comité Inter-etats de Lutte contre la Sécheresse dans le Sahel connected.

All member states of CEN-SAD are also members of other economic communities that are striving for an African economic community as a whole. The establishment of the envisaged CEN-SAD free trade zone would be difficult to implement in practice, as this zone would overlap with the planned customs unions of trading blocks such as ECOWAS , ECCAS and COMESA , which are already further advanced in their regional integration.

At the conference in June 2007, CEN-SAD also dealt with the existing conflicts in its area; she tried to mediate in the Darfur conflict between Sudan and Chad and to strengthen Somalia's transitional government . In 2008 the food price crisis and the peace process in Ivory Coast were the main topics of discussion.

The 20th summit of the heads of state and government took place in Morocco in 2014 and was shaped by the precarious security situation in the founding country Libya.

At the last CEN-SAD summit in 2019 in N'Djamena , Chad, a deeper cooperation in the area of prevention of cross-border crime was called for. The threat of growing terrorist activities in the region and the associated migration problems were also on the agenda.

precursor

Union Sahel-Benin or Entente

As early as 1959, the Ivorian politician Félix Houphouët-Boigny tried to coordinate the autonomous republics of Ivory Coast , Dahomey (now Benin ), Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso ) and Niger in the Union Sahel-Benin within the French Community . After independence in 1960, all four republics initially went their separate ways, but came together in the Conseil de l'Entente until 1966 .

In March 1977 the Union of Saharan Neighbors (Pays Riverains du Sahara) was founded in Niamey, Niger's capital . Member states were initially Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger and Chad - at the Fifth Summit Conference in Bamako in 1980 Mauritania also joined. The members of the international community did not come any closer to their goal of close cooperation in the economic, social, technical and cultural areas - but above all the goal of a peace zone - because of several interstate and internal conflicts. Mediation in Algeria in the Chad civil war failed in 1981.

Since 1981, the Libyan revolutionary leader Muammar al-Gaddafi had sought to merge Libya with Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Sudan to form the "United States of the Sahel" . In 1989 he asked them to join the Union of the Arab Maghreb . Both projects failed, but those six states became the founding states of CEN-SAD in 1998.