Research On The Paractices Of West African Collective Security Mechanism In Liberian Civil War

As an importance means of maintaining peace and stability, the formation and development of collective security mechanism in West Africa has experienced a long, hard process. In this process, the peacekeeping operations taken by related collective security organizations in the Liberian Civil War are especially representative and enlightening, which is an important turning point in the development process of collective security mechanism in this region. Taking the Liberian Civil War as a typical case, this paper aims to review the organizations’efforts of solving the Liberian internal conflict, summarize the achievements and deficiencies of these organizations’ construction and practice in the aspect of collective security mechanism, then put forward rational suggestion on collective security mechanism in West Africa. Besides epilogue, there are five chapters in this paper, the first chapter introduces the basic concept of collective security mechanism, reviews the theory and practice of collective security in this region; the second chapter mainly describes the causes, process and influence of the Liberian Civil War; the continuing chapters analyze the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity and the African Union, the Economic Community of West Africa respectively, elaborating the construction process of their collective security mechanism and the specific practices and reflection of their involvement in the Liberian Civil War. The conclusion part puts forward some rational suggestions on the construction of collective security mechanism, points out the challenges and future directions in the process of construction.The research in this paper finds that, since many African countries are poor, their integration degree is low and government administrative system and ability is weak, they cannot maintain peace and security on their own efforts. In this case, with the way of collective cooperation and dialogue, with the help of collective security system formed between countries, between the governmental, regional and international organizations, with the good interaction of the governments, folk force and other relevant forces, then maintaining peace and security in African countries can be possible, the countries’ conflict and regional conflict can be controlled and solved. This thesis argues that the key of collective security mechanism in West Africa is to establish and develop a multi-level security mechanism, in which ECOWAS treated as the core, the AU and the UN as the support. Although faced with many challenges, this security model is still the most effective way of maintaining regional peace and security in West Africa. In a word, with international, regional, sub-regional levels of collective security organizations as research objects, this paper extends and forecasts the construction of collective security mechanism in West Africa from the respective of peacekeeping operations in the Liberian Civil War.