By Kemo Cham
Majority of Sierra Leoneans tend to associate the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to merely an emergency response outfit, rather than the greater regional integration purpose it was created for, a survey has found.
A survey by the Ghana-based Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) released last week shows that there is a very low knowledge of the regional bloc in the country even among people who are supposed to know about it. The study, designed as part of an initiative aimed at raising awareness for the West Africa bloc among ordinary citizens, targeted three categories of people: civil society, media and ordinary citizens.
Respondents were asked about their knowledge of ECOWAS itself as an institution in the country, its intervention in emergencies, and its protocols and frameworks, notably the Protocol on Good Governance and Democracy (PDG G), and the Framework on pro-poor policies and economic redistribution.
In Sierra Leone, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development is responsible for ECOWAS matters. But when asked most of the respondents who participated in the survey identified the ministries of Foreign Affairs, and Internal Affairs as the national institutions responsible for ECOWAS, the report reveals.
Only 8 percent of respondents identified the correct institution, it adds.
ECOWAS, comprising 15 member countries, was established by the Treaty of Lagos on 28 May 1975. Its aim is to promote economic integration across the region. It has protocols, conventions and treaties, which are the legal instruments from which the organisation draws its mandate.
Among these protocols is the one allowing for the free movement of persons within the region, known as the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, residence and establishment. There is also a protocol relating to conflict resolution, as well as the PDGG.
“Our country is part of ECOWAS and a signatory to several protocols that the country is expected to uphold. Sadly though, citizens are mostly ignorant of these protocols and the commitments of their government”, Ransford Wright, Coordinator of the Media Reform Coordinating Group (MRCG), said at a media seminar organised to coincide with the launch of the report.
“This ignorance to a large extent limits citizens from holding their government to account,” he added.
MRCG is a coalition of partners involved in the development of Sierra Leone’s media landscape.
With funding from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the group was established as an independent corporate entity to strengthen democratic dialogue and accountability and ensure development through professional independent and sustainable media based on the right to freedom of speech.
This study and the seminar were part of a pilot project covering a total of four ECOWAS member countries aimed at increasing citizens’ awareness of the sub regional bloc and its relevant frameworks that mandate member states to implement pro-poor fiscal policies and fair economic distribution in the target countries. The other countries involved are Ghana, Liberia, and Burkina Faso.
In Sierra Leone the MFWA is collaborating with the MRCG in the initiative.
In each of these countries, the media training is concluded with the setting-up of a network of ECOWAS reporters with the goal of increasing coverage of issues relating to the bloc.
But even among journalists there was a huge knowledge gap on ECOWAS, according to the survey, pointing to the need to engender discussion and get journalists involved in research, rather than waiting for information, said Olufela Adeyemi, lead researcher and Executive Director of the Ascendant and Company, a Freetown-based outfit involved in research and training.
She said when media practitioners get involved in research and investigation of issues they stood a better chance of correctly informing the general populace.
“The more we know, the more questions we ask and get leaders accountable,” she said.
“It is the poor people who suffer when policies that are supposed to work for us don’t work for us,” she added.
MFWA is a freedom of expression advocacy organisation with focus on West Africa. The Foundation was represented in Freetown by Abigail Larbi-Odei, Programme Officer, Media, Democracy and Development. She said the formation of the journalist network was a key deliverable in the initiative.
“How do we as people who have the pen discuss these things so that our people are aware?” she asked, as part of a statement during the opening of the seminar held in the conference hall of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ).
Larbi-Odei spoke about the “huge gap” of inequality in the region which had occasioned many social vices like corruption and armed robbery “because people feel they are left out.”
One of the key things about the ECOWAS protocol on democracy and good governance is also ensuring poverty alleviation such that the inequality between the rich and the poor is bridged, she said.
“Most often when we talk about the protocol on good governance, people think about elections and how it can be free and fair and they are almost always silent about poverty alleviation,” she noted, adding that because of this silence there was little knowledge about opportunities from ECOWAS.
“All that we are saying is that as journalists, as people who bring information to the people, let’s at least try to know what the protocols are about” she added.
ECOWAS has an estimated population of 340 million people and a huge market that can be gainfully exploited if the region is fully integrated, say analysts.
Copyright (C) Politico 2016
