President José Maria Neves of Cape Verde has challenged the 15-member ECOWAS Community to be innovative in order to enable the organization cope with the complex situations in the region and to align the scope and speech of its integration with the practices and norms of other similar institutions.
Speaking at the opening of the 2022 international conference of the ECOWAS Court of Justice on Monday, 9th May 2022 in Praia, Cape Verde, the President underlined the primacy of the promotion and consolidation of democratic systems of government, tolerance and respect for human rights and the elimination of all types of discrimination as important issues that should constitute the permanent concerns of the 47-year old Community.
While acknowledging the enormous importance of the Court in the protection of human rights within the Community, the President stressed the need for the creation of a legal-institutional framework that ensures the principle of complementarity between National Jurisdictions and the Court.
He underlined the importance of regional integration as a fundamental option for the country which has informed its internal and external public policies but noted that as the only insular state of the region with the smallest population and surface area and lacking traditional natural resources, it was extremely vulnerable and sensitive to external shocks, mainly in the economic-financial domain as well as climate and environmental issues.
Such conditions, he emphasized, make it more imperative to work towards full integration in the region and required a fundamental understanding of the country’s insularity as an asset and factor that should encourage closer ties with other geo-economic areas.
According to him, this should also be the basis for building strategic dialogues and partnerships with the country taking cognizance of its position in the Atlantic as a corridor for peace, security and development.
The President spoke of the effect of recent global events which has added to the complexity of the international environment and which ECOWAS should not only be aware of but provide the inspiration for resort to dialogue and negotiation towards the resolution of misunderstandings, differences and disputes.
Earlier, Cape Verde’s Chief Justice, Justice Benfeito Mosso Ramos, described the occasion as historic, being the first time the Court has hosted such a large forum in the country that attracted about 150 participants drawn from the region’s academia, jurists and lawyers describing it an opportunity to reflect on the best model of regional integration while sharing knowledge that contributes to improving the lives of ECOWAS citizens.
Justice Ramos, who was a former Vice President of the ECOWAS Court and served for five years in the Court acknowledged its role in enriching his experience as a jurist and broadening his horizon in the field of international.
He added that the Court has delivered landmark decisions in the legal Community, reaching a level of irreversibility, where ECOWAS cannot be conceived without the Court while its capacity for looking at reality with a critical sense and finding the best solutions to its problems remains its outstanding feature.
In her remarks, the country’s Minister of Justice, Dr. Joana Rosa, said that by hosting the conference, Cape Verde has further demonstrated its commitment to deepen its integration into ECOWAS.
As a full member of ECOWAS since its creation in 1976, the Minister acknowledged that the country’s true integration into the region has not always been satisfactory and that additional efforts were required in order to ensure the profitable integration of Cabo Verde as well as other countries into the Community.
She maintained that the country desired the broadest possible involvement in the integration process that takes into consideration its territorial, demographic, economic, and cultural specificities, noting that the conference provided an opportunity to discuss West Africa’s model of integration as well as the political history and the legal specificities of the region.
The participants at the four-day hybrid conference are discussing the ECOWAS Integration Model: The Legal Implications of Regionalism, Sovereignty and Supra-nationalism, the theme of the conference under seven sub themes.
A total of 150 participants, including academics, jurists and lawyers are participating in the hybrid conference, the first to be hosted by the country.
GIK/APA