Three of the fourteen Standing Committees of the Parliament, comprising the following: Committees on Political Affairs, Peace, Security and African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) / Legal affairs and
human rights / Social Affairs, Gender and Women Empowerment, constitute the Joint Committee that will be meeting.
The main objective of the meeting is to create an opportunity for the Members of the Joint Committee to acquaint themselves with and take ownership of the ECOWAS texts on peace and security, democracy and good governance as well as identify the best mechanism for oversight for their effective implementation within Member
States.
Since its creation on 28 May, 1975, ECOWAS has adopted a significant number of Texts aimed at preventing, managing and/or settling conflicts within the Community, as well as maintaining and promoting peace and regional security.
However, attempts to effectively implement these Community Texts have thrown up, several apparent challenges.
Consequently, the impact of these texts on improving the security and good governance climate and environment within the ECOWAS region, remains insufficiently evident.
It is t h e r e f o r e within this context that the Joint Committee will meet to reflect on the role of
parliamentary oversight in the effective implementation of the ECOWAS texts on Peace, Security, Democracy and Good Governance.
The ECOWAS Parliament is composed of 115 seats. Each Member State is allotted a guaranteed minimum of five seats. The remaining forty seats are distributed in proportion to the population of each country.
Consequently, in total, Nigeria has 35 seats, followed by Ghana, wit h eight seats and Côte d'Ivoire, with seven seats. Others are Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Senegal which are allotted six seats each, whereas Benin, Cabo Verde, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Togo have five seats each.
