Articles

DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNANCE - West Africa

2005 – STABILITY SEE-SAWS IN THE SUB-REGION

West Africa, the world's poorest region, chalked up successes in 2005, with war-battered Liberia and Sierra Leone edging closer to lasting peace. But perennial problems such as corruption and unemployment could still scupper progress, and elsewhere in the region prospects remained bleak.

Liberia, Africa's oldest republic, became the first country on the continent to elect a female president, when Harvard-educated economist Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf won the second-round run-off vote last November.

Liberians prayed the polls would close the book on 14 years of brutal civil conflict, while Johnson-Sirleaf said she was "humbled by the awesome challenges" that lay ahead.

She certainly has plenty to do. Monrovia, the steamy seafront capital that bristled with economic development in the 1970s, is today a blackened, bullet-riddled ruin, with no mains electricity or running water.

As the 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission oversaw the landmark polls in Liberia, residents in neighbouring   Sierra Leone were starting to wave goodbye to their blue berets.

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SWAZILAND - Constitution Tests Opposition's Staying

Power The Swazi government starts 2006 with a publicity campaign for its new constitution, a document that has been at the centre of much controversy, but which few people have actually seen.

The document was signed last July by Swaziland's absolute monarch, King Mswati III, but legal commentators are still unsure whether its wording can be interpreted to legalise opposition political organisations.

Throughout 2005, analysts noted the constitution's split personality: the document is socially progressive, overturning centuries-old Swazi customs to permit equality for women, while on the other hand it is politically conservative, making no specific mention of the right of political parties to exist. 

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VIOLENCE JEOPARDISES FRAGILE PEACE

Although hopeful developments marked the beginning of 2005 for Sudan, they gave way to increasing scepticism by the middle of the year. And as violence in Darfur escalated and Ugandan rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) continued to wreak havoc in the south, the good-faith implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) started to look increasingly shaky.

On 9 January, the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) signed the CPA in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, giving hope to many that a corner had finally been turned after the  21-year civil war that claimed two million lives. 

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