What are the pre-conditions and obligations?

Effective measures will depend on the extent to which ECOWAS Member States are willing and able to harness regional resources, work together to enhance the effectiveness of individual states, and work in close cooperation with all stakeholders. This should include key continental and international actors, and must complement individual and collective intervention in the maritime domain. The ECOWAS Integrated Maritime Strategy (EIMS) and implementation plan should stop and reverse these negative trends in the maritime domain and set out common standards to regulate and streamline related activities. EIMS objectives

The trans-boundary nature of maritime resources such as rivers, lakes, seas, minerals, oil and other maritime ecosystems makes regional cooperation imperative due to common experiences with violent conflicts over the control, distribution and management of the associated resources.

EIMS emphasises a people-centric response to the management and exploitation of the maritime domain and supports the shift from an ‘ECOWAS of states’ to an ‘ECOWAS of people’. In this context, the EIMS is predicated on inter-agency collaboration nationally and must bring together political affairs, legal matters, regional security and defence, law enforcement (police, gendarmerie, intelligence, investigation), maritime administration, and port authority, early warning/observation and monitoring and response, agriculture, environment, water resources, customs, industry, fisheries, strategic planning, transport and telecommunication, energy, trade, research and statistics, free movement of people, multilateral surveillance, employment and drug control, humanitarian and social affairs, human resources and development, gender, youth and civil society organisations (CSOs), industry, oceanography, shipping, and aquaculture etc, to coordinate and synergise their activities and responses in the maritime domain.

The implementation of this strategy requires the participation and collaboration of various stakeholders, who assume collective responsibility for the EMD (ECOWAS maritime domain) with a common focus. This underscores the need for integrated policies that are well articulated to mitigate collateral impacts or consequences.

Among the concrete regional steps taken are in maritime security and fisheries.

Download the ECOWAS Integrated Maritime Strategy (EIMS)

EIMS fits within a wider policy framework:

• regionally: the Yaoundé Architecture on the Gulf of Guinea;
• continentally: 2050 Africa’s Integrated Maritime Strategy (2050 AIM Strategy) of the African Union; and,
• globally: for example, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)