1. Established in 1975, ECOWAS is the principal regional economic grouping in West Africa. Its membership of 16 states — francophone, anglophone and lusophone — makes it the largest and by far the most complex subregional organization in Africa. Its members are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. See S. K. B. Asante, The Political Economy of Regionalism in Africa: A Decade of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) (New York: Praeger, 1986);
2. and C. E. Adibe, ‘ECOWAS in comparative perspective’, in Timothy M. Shaw and Julius E. Okolo (eds), The Political Economy of Foreign Policy in ECOWAS (London: Macmillan, 1994), Chapter 11.
3. UN Secretary-General, Report of the Secretary-General on Liberia, UN Security Council document S/26422, 9 September 1993, p. 11.
4. David Wippman, ‘Enforcing the peace: ECOWAS and the Liberian civil war’, in Lori F. Damrosch (ed.), Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993), p. 165;
5. see also W. Ofuatey-Kodjoe, ‘Regional organizations and the resolution of internal conflict: the ECOWAS intervention in Liberia’, International Peacekeeping, 1 (3), 1994, pp. 261–302.